Widdowson\'s Claim That Television and Film Cannot Produce an Aesthetic Effect

Aesthetics

Widdowson claims that television and film do not fit the definition of "literary" objects. For one, a script for film or television production has no autonomy. As Widdowson points out, "while there is always a script on which the finished product is based, the script is granted little status or autonomy as an object of reading in and for itself" (124). Of course, an interested party can seek out the script for study but scripts are rarely encountered for their literally literary function: as pieces of writing that exist for the sole purpose of being read as texts.

Moreover, Widdowson notes that the finished product in film or television is "always already mediated/interpreted" in order to become a motion picture. In other words, the director, actors, and cinematographers alter the original script in fundamental ways. These fundamental means of altering the original (or, as Widdowson calls it, "originary") product, the script, are exactly what makes film and television not have the same aesthetic effect as other literary forms like poetry. With film and television, the problem of interpretation exists. The same script can be interpreted in a number of different ways, just as a poem written by an ancient Greek can be interpreted (translated) in different ways. What one person believes to be the original intent of the poet might not be what another believes: this is why there are differences in aesthetic effects when reading different versions of the Bible, or Homer, or other seminal pieces of writing in archaic languages. Interpretation problems occur even with living languages, as two different translators will render the poetry of Borges or Rilke in completely different ways, using different diction. A resulting aesthetic effect will be unique for each reader, too. The same script in the hands of two different directors will also be rendered totally differently.

As Widdowson notes, the word cinematic itself derives from the Greek word "kinematic," for motion. The fact that both film and television are arts of motion means that these art forms are malleable. Their aesthetic effects will be correspondingly malleable, changeable, and in flux. In many film and television productions, the dialogue can even be considered secondary to the visual element. This is not always true, of course. In films like Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, the script is rendered no differently from its stage production in the sense that the action is secondary to the dialogue. Only one actual scene encompasses all the action between the protagonists. However, there are ample examples of television and film productions that rely more on visual elements than on literary prowess. Jerry Bruckheimer movies are an example of films that rely on visuals, with scripts serving as delivery mechanisms for special effects. Animated films are likewise reliant solely on visuals to convey the aesthetic effect the original producer and writer intended. When the film involves an adapted screenplay, one that is based on a literary text like a novel, the aesthetic effect differences are especially apparent. The screenplay adaptation will "involve the transference of much written dialogue into visually enacted forms," (124).