to make believe the fiction.37 As Walton does not discuss film in great detail, I shall turn to Gregory Currie for an explanation of cinematic depiction.38
Currie begins with a general theory of depiction that holds that pictures are realistic by being like the things they depict.39 A written description of a horse can be entirely accurate, but the experience of reading it is entirely unlike the visual experience of seeing a horse. Pictures differ in that recognition is by spatial features: my visual capacity to recognize a horse is the capacity to associate some visual feature of what I see with the concept horse, thereby enabling me to bring what I see under that concept.40
The horse and the picture of the horse have spatial features in common. While the font and typeface of a written description of a horse do not affect one’s recognition, spatial changes in a picture might cause one to mistake a horse for a zebra or a unicorn. Inherent in this capacity for visual recognition is the mind’s ability to discriminate between a real horse and a pictorial representation thereof.41 Looking at a photographic representation of a horse is realistic because it deploys the same object-recognition capacity, and object recognition causes natural generality, which means that—generally—one can recognize a picture of X if one can recognize X itself.42 Currie holds that where representation displays natural generality, it is perceptually realistic and that an absence of natural generality results in a lack of perceptual realism.
Currie maintains that film is distinct in “its portrayal of time by means of time,” distinguishing three kinds of temporarily: the temporarily of the work, the temporarily of the observer’s experience of the work, and the temporarily of what the work represents.43 All representational art forms are representation ally temporal; literature, cinema, theater, and music are also experiential temporal; and cinema, theater, and music are additionally work temporal.44 “It is the default set- ting for cinematic interpretation that the representation of duration in cinema is anthropomorphic.”45
Thus, even in a film that is as complex as Memento, one should assume that the time it takes Leonard to discuss the unreliability of memory with Teddy (Joe Pantoliano) over lunch is about a minute and a half, which is the actual time it takes to watch the conversation occur on-screen. If the duration of the work differs from the duration of
the representation—as in Memento, where story which takes place over approximately forty-eight hours is represented in a work of just under two hours—there will be visual cues to indicate the difference.
Currie believes that the representation of space is more difficult than time due to the representation of three-dimensional objects on a two- dimensional screen: “In cinema, spatial properties of representations represent spatial properties of the things represented.”46 Spatial representation is homophobic rather than anthropomorphic: the spatial properties of cinematic representations function anthropomorphically for relative spatial proper- ties and anthropomorphically for absolute spatial properties.47 The difference in height between the cinematic representations of Leonard and Teddy will therefore be a ratio of the difference between the actors, but it will be only coincidental if the im- age of Leonard appears as 1.8 meters tall (Pearce’s height) on the screen.
The combination of natural generality, the anthropomorphic representation of time, and the homophobic representation of space leads Currie to conclude that film “has the capacity for realism not merely in its depiction of objects but in its depiction of spatial and temporal relations between those objects.”48 This perceptual realism admits of degrees and has been greatly enhanced by the introduction of color and sound. Color makes object recognition more effortless, and the addition of a sound track which corresponds to the visual representation brings a new perceptual dimension to cinematic experience, making the experience so much more like reality. Contrast, for example, the cinematic experience of the abolitionist lecture in The Birth of a Nation with the cinematic experience of the marshal attempting to raise a posse in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. For my purpose in this article, I take cinematic depiction to be representation by means of moving, audible photo realistic pictures.49
Cinematic depiction means that films can, in Walton’s terms, “be understood without decoding and inference.”50 The depictive realism in films is greater than all the other representational art forms. Photographs tend to be more realistic than paintings, but photographs do not move or make a noise. The closest art form in terms of realism is theater, but film is more perceptually realistic still, and requires less decoding. If one watches a performance of Richard III, for example, one