- character and illusionist tradition -

Brecht believed that an actor should present a character in a way that wasn't an impersonation, rather, a narration of the actions of the character. He constantly reminded his audience that they were watching a play. According to him, if the audience developed an emotional attachment to the characters, then they could not evaluate the social realities of the play. Stanislavski's opinion was that if an actor believed he was a character, then the audience would believe this as well, and feel the emotions that the character was feeling. Acting in Brecht's Epic Theatre means that an actor is required to play characters believably without convincing either the audience or themselves that they are, indeed, the characters. There is an audible and visual distance between the actor and their character and the actors will often 'break the fourth wall' and address the audience, play multiple characters, and use exaggerated or repetitive actions to make their distance and social commentary known.

Brecht's idea (and subsequently of Walter Benjamin), was that radical work or art must oppose the illusionist mode at every level. Thus, the means of expression are itself called into question. Because the “means of expression” are ideologically determined, it is no longer sufficient to place a new “content” within the old structures of expression. Instead, the signifying system itself must be attacked, in order to overthrow the basis upon which the dominant ideological message rests. This procedure constitutes the crux of Godard’s work, particularly since 1968, and it lies similarly embedded in the films of Jean-Marie Straub. Much of Straub’s work may be elucidated in terms of a systematic “deconstruction” of the old forms of cinematic expression. The camera, in an illusionist film, is subordinated to the central dramatic characters’ movements. It pans to follow their motion, or it moves to a close up to record moments of “intensity”. Straub’s camera never pans to follow movement, but follows a logic of its own. That logic is devoted to the articulation of the material space in which the action takes place.

Where the illusionist film centers its lead actors in the frame, Straub does not. And where the illusionist film cuts when a character exits from the frame, in order to expedite the progress of the narrative, Straub frequently lets his camera rest for twenty or thirty seconds on the “empty” screen. Thus, the materiality of the space in which the characters operate is reasserted.

There is, however, a crucial difference between the austerity of Bresson, and that of Straub. Bresson pares away the non-essentials in order to enable the viewers to feel their way to the heart of the film. His end is epiphanous, transcendental. Straub’s austerity is functional. It forces the audience to think. For Straub, conscious mental activity is a prerequisite of understanding. In taking this position, he clearly stands in opposition to the mainstream of cinema’s evolution. The conventional film denies the eye’s responsibility to the mind. This filmic technique is devoted to the total creation and sustaining of illusion, in the course of which the director attempts to make the viewer forget the camera’s omnipresence and manipulation of one’s perspective. Emotional identification, in which the spectator associates with a character and thus vicariously enters the world of the film, is another staple of the “illusionist” tradition.

Straub rejects any attempt to anaesthetize the viewer’s mind. He refuses to make concessions to his audience’s expectations. We are never allowed to identify with the characters that inhabit his films. Our eyes are not glutted by sweeping camera movements or cluttered frames. We cannot enter into his worlds, but we may reflect upon them. His style’s “spareness” functions as an invitation to reflection, to analysis. Straub’s later films, in particular, create spaces in which, deliberately, nothing happens. They offer spaces in which the eye and mind are invited to interact.

- character, function, unmotivated action -

characters are part of every storytelling, whether it is fiction, documentary, news, reality show or theory. When characters stop looking like living men as one meet in the reality of life and history, their function takes over which creates manipulation on ideological level. 

Nevertheless, 

"The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." (paraphrase of Mark Twain)

In economic theory, the entrepreneurs, capitalists, landowners, workers, and consumers are not living men as one meets them in the reality of life and history. They are the embodiment of distinct functions in the market operations. Economics, in speaking of entrepreneurs, has in view not men, but a definite function. This function is not the particular feature of a special group or class of men; it is inherent in every action and burdens every actor. (Ludwig von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics)

Erich Fromm makes a distinction between individual character, which describes the richness of the character structure of an individual, and the social character which describes the emotional attitudes common to people in a social class or society. In order that a society functions adequately, their members must acquire a character structure which enables them to do what they need to do in order to prosper. It is for example expected in an authoritarian society that people are motivated to subordinate themselves to a hierarchy and fulfill selflessly the instructions brought to them. However, in the permissive consumer culture people are socialized to consume gladly and extensively. Thus the character structure in every society is formed in such a way that people can fulfill expectations quasi voluntarily.

Action is always political, as Hannah Arendt says. Louis Althusser points out that ideology always manifests itself through actions, which are "inserted into practices" (Lenin), for example, rituals, conventional behavior, and so on. Indeed, Althusser, Marxist philosopher, goes so far as to adopt Pascal's formula for belief: "Pascal says more or less: 'Kneel down, move your lips in prayer, and you will believe'". 

Action = the causation of change by the exertion of power or a natural process (dictionary definition)

- east -

Wu-wei is the principle of unmotivated action in which nonintervention in the natural course of things is to be encouraged. Action may be taken when it is spontaneous, devoid of premeditation and is appropriate to the situation. The concept of wu wei is often described as performing a selfless act but this merely exposes the background of the writer. 

The Sage is occupied with the unspoken

and acts without effort.

Teaching without verbosity,

producing without possessing,

creating without regard to result,

claiming nothing,

the Sage has nothing to lose.

- west -

"This is the mark of the act: a basic rupture in the weave of reality that opens up new possibilities and creates the space for a reconfiguration of reality itself. Like the miracle, the act is ultimately unsustainable - it cannot be reduced to, or incorporated directly within, the symbolic order. Yet it is through the act that we touch (and are touched by) the Real in such a way that the bonds of our symbolic universe are broken and that an alternative construction is enabled; reality is transformed in a Real sense. (Slavoj Zizek)

different types of action