Clayton George Wickham - final thesis

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them morally “bad”. It can just mean that the writer intends to avoid having his/her
observations and conclusions t(a)inted by their worldview. The other response,
taking a cue from Bordwell’s quote, would be: So what?
Wimsatt and Brooks provide what seems to be a useful summary of the
arguments against neoformalism, despite criticising formalist literary theory, writing,
The theory, despite a more overt tendency to tautology than is apparent in
most art theories, might be a good enough theory if it could be compelled
to answer the question whether lines and colors ever have their complete
‘significance’ in a state purged entirely of our concrete optical experience
– the resemblance of a circle to the sun and the moon and the wheel, the
contrast between the geometrically ruled straight line and the whole
world of organic nature. (1957, 490)
Essentially, Wimsatt and Brooks here claim that formalism ignores our familiarity
with the elements of our environment to viewing art as something wholly separate.
Again, although this addresses early formalist literary theory, the argument still
lingers amongst opponents of neoformalist film theory. This makes the assumption
that semiotics, among other things, are wholly done away with in the neoformalist
mindset. V. N. Voloshinov, a contemporary of the Russian formalists, addresses this
argument when he writes, “However far we go in analyzing all the properties of the
material and all the possible combination of those properties, we shall never be able
to find their aesthetic significance unless we slip in the contraband of another point
of view that does not belong within the framework of analysis of the material.”
(1976; 158) It is also echoed by no less than Leon Trotsky, who spoke in careful