Susan Sontag's Film Formalism Aesthetics

Susan Sontag,a woman writer who shines in American literary circles,and Simon Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt are the most valuable contemporary female intellectuals in the World.Susan Sontag has always insisted on thinking and writing independently.She is not only a novelist,but also a critic.Her views cover drama,film,philosophy other fields.After the social and ideological changes in the 1960s in the United States,Santag constantly provides readers with alternative perspectives in the expression and creation of ideas.In the field of art criticism,Santag has won wide acclaim for his three famous articles "Against Interpretation","Where the Stress Falls","A Culture and New Sensibility".While shaking the academic circles,Santag has brought scholars a new perspective on art appreciation.Among them,her main point of view is to balance the relationship between content and form,oppose the over-exploration of the connotation of art,and guide people to appreciate art with subjective and independent eyes,so as to gain their own perception.The phrase "In order to replace art hermeneutics,we need an art pornography" surprised people at that time,and people who loved art rethought more"artistic" aesthetic thinking.At the same time,in the process of film development,Santag saw the richness of the seventh art and tried to base his argument on formalism through his theory of opposing interpretation.She believes that the film is not just a form of traditional art,but a comprehensive collection of many other forms of art.Therefore,the consideration of the film should be based on a higher level,and understand the aesthetic feeling of the art itself with a reflective attitude.The two directors she mentioned mainly were Bresson and Godard.Sontag believed that most of the films that shared her theory in film art came from them.So in the process of discussing the film,she also connected her aesthetic thoughts with it.Since the birth of human art,philosophers ’discussion on "form" has continued to this day.From the earliest "monism" centered on ancient Greek and Roman aesthetics to the later German classical aesthetics,which gradually discussed dualism,to the change of the post-industrial development environment of formal aesthetics today,an "ancient"theory gradually became more and more abundant in the process.On this track,Susan Sontag added a unique style of Soviet new formalism to her idea of "opposing interpretation",which affected many people later.She criticizes the dualism of form and content.She believes that a complete work of art must not be separated.At the same time,she does not agree with the practice of paying attention to form and neglecting content.The only thing Santag insists on is that the senses must not be passivated in the process of appreciating art.She believes that it is very important to protect the sensitivity of perceptual experience.Therefore,between Susan Sontag’s prose-like strokes,she broadens the research angle of formalism and awakens people’s new thinking of aesthetic art.