Why Can't Screenplays Be Artworks?

Abstract

Reviewing film and literary theorists’ writing on the subject of the screenplay, one finds a tradition both of conceiving of the screenplay as a kind of artwork and of denying it art status.1 However, philosophers of art have been surprisingly quiet on this matter. I say ‘surprisingly’ because, pretheoretically, there seem to be some significant similarities between screenplays and theatrical scripts: typically, both are verbal objects which relate narratives that are intended to be enacted, either before a camera or a live audience. So, one might reasonably have the intuition that the screenplay is, like the theatrical script, a kind of dramatic literary work, and that the screenplay affords the same kinds of aesthetic interest and study as its theatrical cousin. However, the one philosopher of art who has broached this topic, Noël Carroll, explicitly denies that screenplays are works of art. To be fair to Carroll, it is worth noting that his remarks on the screenplay have all appeared as peripheral comments in the context of broader discussions regarding the ontology of film. Nevertheless, he has maintained the same position in various publications over the last fifteen years—in his 1998 monograph, A Philosophy of Mass Art, his 2006 essay “Defining the Moving Image,” and his 2008 volume, The Philosophy of Motion Pictures—so I take him to be committed to it.2 In these publications, Carroll argues that there is a substantive ontological difference between the theatrical script and the screenplay and, furthermore, that the screenplay's ontological status precludes it from being a work of art.

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