In 1968 the philosopher Roland Barthes predicated the death of the author. He wasn’t talking about an Agatha Christie novel but was stating that he felt an author’s biography should be of less importance than their bibliography. In Barthes’ mind too often people’s interpretations of an Author’s work were clouded by what they knew of that author’s life. He hoped that over time people would break away from this trend, relying solely upon a work’s content and no outside sources when writing about it.
New media has made the late Frenchman’s dream both further away and closer than ever. If you try and read up on a film in a scholarly work after the plot the first piece of information you will be given is the director’s bio, if it’s an entertainment magazine the first piece will be the actors’ bios. However anonymous artists have emerged in literature and music so with all the possibilities for production and distribution why couldn’t one emerge in film?
Ever heard of Thomas Pynchon or The Residents? The first is a writer most English majors have attempted to analyze at some point, the second is one of the more bizarre bands you are ever likely to encounter. Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow is one of those books which every English student has been reading or trying to read since it was first published in 1972. However despite the notoriety of his work very little information on Thomas Pynchon exists; most photos of him date from the 1950’s and he almost never grants interviews. He’s had two cameos on the Simpsons in which he is depicted as man with a bag over his head that has a question mark on it. For close to forty years The Residents have been using every single advancement in recording technology from videotape to the Internet. They have consistently expanded their art without compromising their identities. Now if anonymous artists can exist in literature and music why not film? Today thanks to digital recording, editing, and distribution one can make a movie almost anywhere in the world. While the Anonymous Director has yet to arrive they may be only a few years away.
While the Internet may one day provide for an anonymous author at the present state such an idea seems like only a pipe dream. Countless books and now websites devoted to film spend most of their time discussing the biographies or off-screen dramas of the people who make the films. Many movies today are marketed based on the eccentricity of their director or the off screen drama of their costars. With such a huge side industry in magazines like Entertainment Weekly or sites like TMZ it seems the Author will be here for some time to stay.
Auteur is a word associated with a group of Frenchmen Roland Barthes did not belong to, the New Wave. Their Auteur theory held that when studying a film the most important piece of information to consider is the director. This theory has come dominate film studies both in schools and texts. However with the information available via sources like IMDB and Wikipedia one can now know about other contributors to a movie besides the director.
Let’s uses the Film Taxi Driver as an example, in 1976 it one of film’s highest awards the Palme D’or at Cannes. The career of the Film’s director Martin Scorcese really took off after this; film four years later he directed Raging Bull, which many consider his best picture. However a few clicks through Wikipedia shows both of these films had the same writer (Paul Schrader) and the same Cinematographer (Michael Chapman). Keep searching and you’ll discover these two men worked on another movie, 1979’s Neo-Noir Thriller Hardcore. When writing about Taxi Driver and Raging Bull could one not write a book or article on the works of Paul Schrader and Michael Chapman? Before the age of Hyperlinks almost all works film works focused on the director, however now lists of the entire Oeuvre of Editors, Writers, even Costume Designers is available at one’s finger tips. It’s hard to know what this will mean for the future, but you can be certain with easy access to information future films students will seem ill informed if all they know is a film’s director.
Well, as Barthes died in 1980 it’s impossible to know what he would have thought of the Internet and other forms of new media. Certainly the author is quite alive and well since by now it is even easier to get a film director’s biography. So many people involved in the making and distribution of a film know news stories particularly controversial one sell movie tickets; until this trend ends directors and actors will continue to act crazy knowing that whenever their antics are reported on it can potentially fatten their bank account.
However there will always be those artists who for one reason or another chose to keep their biographies a mystery. Anonymous artists have emerged in literature and music and continue to do so. Since New Media in the form of streaming sites like Youtube make media content easier to distribute anonymously one should expect that not just anonymous directors but fully anonymous films could be around the corner. The death of the Auteur which Barthes may very well of predicted had he lived longer and studied film, seems to be very soon at hand.
