According to Wiki: World cinema is a term used primarily in English language speaking countries to refer to the films and film industries of non-English speaking countries (those outside of the Anglosphere)
Although a problematic definition at best, the Wiki definition encapsulates the apparent domination language has over thought and therefore thoughts about culture.
“ Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection. The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built upon the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached... We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation. (Sapir, 1958 [1929], p. 69) ”
This extremist position (thoughts and sensations are generally considered as being interactive) can be interpreted as an extension of classical thought, rediscovered during the Renaissance, where language an logic, representing the political, was polarised from it's defective counterpart the aesthetic, representing passion. The aesthetic was concerned not only with appearance but with all forms of sensation and thus was seen as an irrational subject of Passion. The political however stemming form logical thought was seen as a product of Reason. The role of the body in the aesthetic was seen as passive, in the political, active. An active life by definition was one which concerned itself with politics.[1] Through the body the border between the aesthetic and the political becomes blurred.
At the time of the French Revolution political theorists recognized the functional role of the aesthetic in politics. Rouseau’s influential book ‘The Social Contract” pointed out that a government which disregarded and suppressed sentiments and feeling lent itself to rebellion and revolution. Underlying rebellion are isolating, antagonistic desires dictated by abstract thought. Aesthetics comprised of feelings and shared bodily experiences however act as a unifying force. Ignoring the aesthetic is thus seen as the irrational path. By incorporating feeling into law, tapping into a shared aesthetic, transgressions of that law become a violation of the self and society becomes self regulatory.
Under this system power lies in the aesthetic. This power however is incomplete. There are those who chose to follow their own aesthetic guided by their subconscious or intuition. The surrealists of the 1920's rejected the aesthetics and conventions of the bourgeois society of their parents which the saw as being responsible for the chaotic state of the world.
[1] Quentin Skinner, Visions of politics: Renaissance virtues,
Bunuel and Dali 's "Un Chien Andalou" (1929) depicts the struggle to escape from these values through atemporal dreamlike sequences. Most grotesque of all images in this film is the vision of a razor cutting through an eye strongly suggestive of the need for a new vision. A the foundations of the bourgeois vision is the church, the rotting carcus of a war ravaged society and high art. Other images reflecting the rejection of high art include a book being dropped and falling open on Vanmeers "The lacemaker" and possible references to Manet's "The Luncheon on the Grass" when the man falls to his death into a forest in which a naked lady sits. Insects are also used in the piece. Ants which crawl from a stigmata like wound in a characters hand symbolise this decay, a moth the possibility of metamorphisis.
The importance of dreams in David Lynches films connects him to the surrealists. Surrendering to our dreams and other worldly coexistence allows us to breakdown existing boundaries whether or not they are for our own good.
Somewhat hesitantly i suggest that film which combines our sense of sight and sound and ruptures our sense of time and space can break through the boundaries of language.
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