Cinema

Asian New Wave Cinema

The initiation of Asian cinema into the global public arena can be traced back to 1895.  It was in 1895 that the very first cinematic production was released in the Grand Café of Paris.  At this same time, in Asia, the treaty of Shimonoseki was signed by the Chinese Quing Dynasty turning over rule of Taiwan to Japan, which lasted until 1945.  During this period, Taiwan progressively attempted to establish its own identity; this desire manifested itself in the form of aesthetics, specifically film.  The shift in film style and technique that occurred in Asia specifically around the early 1950’s became known as Asian New Wave Cinema. 

The more influential new wave film out of Asia comes from the eastern region.    This includes the films of China, Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, North Korea and South Korea.  East Asian cinema is particularly famous in the west for the genres of Martial arts films, Jidaigeki, J-Horror (Japanese Horror), Anime, Heroic bloodshed, and Tokusatsu (Japanese science fiction).  Within Asia itself, the culture established its own ideals of what made good cinema.  Traditional sentimental themes, as well as old cultural connotations had well established their place in the film practice of film critique.  This was until certain directors came on to the scene and challenged the social norms and traditional expectations of Asian Cinema.  One of these

In the late 1950’s, there was an underground film culture that erupted in Japanese cinema.  In his article Against the Solemn Serious Sect, Nakahira Ko talks about his experience as a director in Japan and likens it to his dealings with Hollywood.  He argues that during this period there was a designated Big 10 films each year, whose directors were awarded for their social contributions to society as opposed to their cinematic talents.  This inadvertently isolated many talented Asian directors from receiving acclaim, of which Nakahira was one.  He connects this cinematic academy bias to that of the western cultures as well.  He points out that, while he was in the west in 1957 judging for a roundtable discussion called Screen, the two films he deemed cinematically excellent and compliments to the aesthetic had very cold receptions in regards to the western judges.  Nakahira’s main position in his article is that films should be judged not solely on their social commentary, but on their cinematic relevance, artistic narrative, and style.  His ideals are in essence the core belief that triggered the Japanese new Wave in cinema during the 1960’s.  Yasuzo also comments on, and rebels against, this idea of the Big ten films.  In his article he states:

There are two kinds of films that always occupy the best ten of Japanese cinema: the first is the genre of naturalist film that depicts the fragile and sentimental petit bourgeois, while the second is constructed on ideology, abstractly drawing the faults of Japanese society and overflowing with truth-what is commonly known as realist film.  I have no interest in either. (Masumura Yasuzo, Eiga hyoron, March, 1958)

This attitude depicted here by Yasuzo is the core concept that drove Asian new wave film in the 1950’s.  Directors that adhered to the radical norms of this era in film, appeared on to the scene as underdog filmmakers, but soon found themselves as the figure heads of a rising generation. This case is especially true of the director previously mentioned Nakahiro Ko who in 1956 released his film Crazed Fruit and he changed the industry.  Ironically, Nakahiro actually worked under the direction of Yasuzo for more than fifteen years before producing his first film.

I don’t like sentiment.  The reason is that in Japanese cinema, sentiment means repression, harmony, resignation, sadness, defeat, and escape.  To Japanese, things like chases, victory, comedy, life and death struggle, conflict and dynamic movement do not belong to sentiment.  Originally, josho meant emotion, and it should refer to the amplification of all emotions, but the Japanese came to call sentiment only those feelings that were negative and passive. (Masumura Yasuzo, Eiga hyron, March, 1958)

Here Yasuzo talks about some of the reasons why his films spark controversy in the Asian community.  His claim that he doesn’t like sentiment and that his films lack it is in direct response to his feeling that Japanese culture as a whole is very passive and repressed.  He attempts to free his community from this type of obsessive repression by displaying vulgar and clever forms of expression his films.  This is an aspect of Asian new wave cinema that formed in direct response to the social conditions of Japan.  This says a lot about film in general being a window into one’s society and a form of a cultural medium, in that one who knew nothing about Japan might view Yasuzo’s films and assume that all Japanese people were aggressive and vulgar.  While at the same time forming new stereotypes, Yasuzo shows his community that film has the power to incite individuals to reflect upon their own social characteristics.

            In Chow’s article from the book Visuality, Modernity, and Primitive Passion, he argues that Western modernism primitized non-western cultures with their interpretation of the world.  In this case, modernism includes the paintings of Picasso, Cezanne, Gauguin, Matisse, Modigliani and the philosophical ideals of scholars like Sally Price and Marianna Turgovnick.  Chow argues that during this era, when the rebellious writings of authors such as James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, and Henry Miller were taught in high schools and Universities as the first promoters of the bohemian lifestyle used to loosen up the prude and prejudice bourgeois society, by the nature of their perspective, they were primitizing other cultures.  This can be seen in the fact that these authors viewed their western communities as over-civilized, and adopted the sexual and cultural traditions of societies they felt were least civil and in touch with their animal instincts.  This implies that eastern areas like China are primitive in comparison to the West.  The main thing that signifies Asian New Wave as being so rebellious is its sense of newness.  The conscious understanding of concepts like Western primitization, as well as the genre’s attempt to confront traditional norms within its own culture, puts Asian New Wave Cinema in the position of battling social conflicts within and beyond it borders; this resulted in a shift in both eastern and western popular culture that can be seen to this day.

Virtually all the films produced, during the 1960’s, in Japan were considered anything but artistic. Around this time, a new wave erupted giving birth to films more aesthetically compatible with the politics of their era. Directors paid closer attention to frames, lighting, and distanced characters from their single dimensions giving them broader and more universally-conscious meanings. One of the main rebel directors of this new wave was Shinoda Masahiro. His film adaptation of the 1721 bunraku [puppet] play Shinjû ten no Amijima [The Love Suicide], by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, proved to be more dramatic, and thus more socially conscious than the original. Masahiro titled his film Double Suicide. Atop greater character depth, he also used multiple film techniques to relay a sense of social consciousness. The beauty of Japanese culture blended with ancient traditions to turns this Shakespearian-like tale into a political satire.
The main characteristic of Japanese new wave film is to address ideology and politics within film. Shinoda Masahiro gained a reputation for being an avant-garde film maker, who was radically cutting edge, but still conservative. This view, of course, came from the west. He is classified as conservative because the culture he is representing is considered conservative by American standards. In Double Suicide Masahiro subtly pokes fun at the hegemonic principles of his society, in a way I’m sure his fellow Japanese would consider anything but conservative. He presents human characters as walking live puppets, with no control over their destinies. Critics credit this to his underlying need to connect his films to the Japanese social structure. By portraying them as puppets, he is portraying the rest of Japanese society ruled by these same traditions as puppets as well. It is a simple connection but one of the many symbolic tools Masahiro uses to cross his film over to connect with real world concerns. More so than any conflict addressed is the topic of sexuality and the differences between women and men in the culture. Masahiro juxtaposes man and woman on screen in multiple ways. He uses sexual tension to draw attention to the traditions of the culture as well as keep the audience focused on the plot. The trait that is most common and significant about Masahiro’s work is that there is always more than one plot being carried out. There is always more than one message being told.

The love triangle that occurs among Osan, Jihei and Koharu poses many subtle ironies that can’t be seen as anything else but statements made by the director. An example of this is the scene when Osan confronts her husband Jihei about the agreement she set up with Koharu. It almost appears as Osan and Koharu are the only ones making decisions to address the situation, and Jihei comes across as being very weak. When it is found that Koharu is to be killed, Osan swallows the pride she has to help her husband save his mistress. This only makes Jihei more despicable. This male weakness isn’t just depicted in how the women tend to make the hardest decisions, but also in the facial expressions of the characters. Jihei is often very passionate. In moments when it appears he might burst into tears Koharu’s face is stern and steadily focused. The women seem disconnected from the plot, carried along by the plot of the bunraku play and by the social confines of their society. Their objectification is the most substantial political trait of the film.

The symbolism behind the relationship between the two main characters is mostly obvious to the common western eye. This is due to commercial comfort with Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare was loved for his ability to target the stories that best connected with the fears, loves and concerns of the people. His tragic stories targeted the sympathies of common people. They were sympathetic because they didn’t want to experience the same fate as Shakespeare’s main characters. Macbeth and Hamlet’s tales were tragic, but when Shakespeare made Romeo and Juliet, he cut a cord that would touch people forever. This is the same cord Masahiro stumbles across by remaking Chikamatsu’s play. This is the type of tale that transcends sexist ideals and misogynist theory. The two main characters are so deeply in love that love rules over all, and you’re just waiting for it to win. The only problem is that Japanese culture is more conservative than Shakespeare could even imagine. There are conflicts that need to be addressed that European, or western thinking isn’t even prone to think of. We are talking about a film made in 1969, which addresses the social conflicts of the 1700’s. No matter how introspective of a thinker you are, somewhere you’re going to fall short. But, as Cornyetz reveals, though Masahiro fails to provide a solution for his community’s social problems, he did acknowledge the modern day’s view of the future within the traditions of the past.

A common trend that formed in Japanese films around the 1960’s was the commercial use of soft pornography. Japanese women were presented as a commodity within Japanese culture. The objectification of women in Japanese culture is taken so far as to consider them pieces of artwork. This was a major confine of Japanese life in the 60’s and evenmore so during the 1700’s. Masahiro depicts this side of the culture very well with Osan and Koharu. In her article, Gazing Disinterestedly: Politicized Poetics in “Double Suicide,” Nina Cornyetz analyzes the film’s aesthetic metaphors and sexual subtleties for meaning. She connects Japanese theorist Kuki’s ideal of iki, which is anything or person personifying the Edo period (1603-1868), in a restrained, open-minded, unselfconscious, indifferent or unintentionally coquettish way, to the Japanese woman.

I believe that Kuki’s notion of iki (his twentieth-century invention that, it is important to remember, incorporates his imaginary of Edo culture), evolved in conjunction with other factors (including Buddhist detachment and twentieth-century Zen) into a modern valorization of the disinterested gaze in film and other arts. This “disinterested” gaze is, however, constitutively eroticized–frequently elicited by the prostitute’s body–, distinguishing it from high Kantian disinterestedness. This gaze is also linked (sometimes only covertly) to a national imaginary and implicated in a particularized, and culturally exceptionalized, narrative and filmic gaze. Double Suicide cites–I believe in order to critique–this modern reformulation of iki as complicitous with an essentialized and homosocial transhistorical notion of Japanese “culture,” which relies on the commodification of the Japanese female erotic body as the repository of “tradition.” (Cornyetz)

Here Cornyetz caters Japan’s objectification of women to more than just a simple tradition, but she actually gives the custom and the women carrying it out credit for keeping track of Japan’s history. It gives a double edged quality to the practice. The artistry of this concept comes across in Mashiro’s film. Koharu is not just an object to be admired, but she also has an implied value by her being a courtesan. In a society that objectifies their women to such a degree that they ultimately end up viewed as unattainable or unreal, a woman for hire is a great commodity. It is no surprise how these customs could have lasted for so long. They hold many similarities to the way American women are objectified.

By theatrically citing the exteriorized subjectivity and ideal of iki that informed Edo puppet theater, Double Suicide suggests in modern filmic time-space a way out of the impossible dilemma and at least gestures toward the Real.(Cornyetz)
Mashiro uses many revolutionary film techniques. The film opens with Mashiro and the author of the script debating where the two lovers will have their death scene. This adds to the predestined nature of the character’s outcome and the theme of them being puppets with no control over their future. It also puts Mashiro in the class of directors like Hitchcock and Tarentino, who just can’t seem to keep himself out of his films.
Mashiro’s use of mis-en-scene keeps everything on screen relative to his message. He depicts intricate and ancient aspects of Japanese culture, while presenting new wave themes we now consider modern. He connects the live characters to the ancient puppet show by having stage hands fallow behind them. He also glides in and out of the puppet show back to real life in a way that almost makes them indistinguishable. His use of black and white, in an era when he easily could have used color, signifies the importance he was trying to place on the black garb of the stage hands, the shadows, the light and the contrast between male and female. He also designates the power of the characters through scene placement. There are many scenes where Jihei is seen sitting, while Koharu is standing. As he ponders over the anguish he feels about his lack of money, and the dishonorable nature of his actions, Koharu stands indifferent jaded by her place in the social structure. In the opening sequence of the film, when the stage is being set, you already know the outcome for these characters is predestined. The way they lie dead next to each other after committing suicide is symbolic of their relationship transcending death and the director’s way of subtly saying they are still together.

Shinju, the act of double suicide, is a well known part of Japanese culture. Its popularity in the west, in American films like The Last Samurai, can largely be credited to the contrast between Christian ethics and Japanese ideals of nobility.  Its cultural connotation is largely part of the reason why the film was celebrated nternationally. In the west suicide is largely viewed as a sin, and an easy way out of life. This is in part due to the major influence of Christianity in the west. The reason why I think Americans are so intrigued by the Japanese concept of suicide is because their ideals are completely the opposite. Suicide is not only viewed as a difficult path, but a noble one. In his journal, Tragedy and Salvation in the Floating World: Chikamatsu’s Double Suicide Drama as Millenarian Discourse, Steven Heine goes over the many aspect of Japanese culture he studied on his trips to Asia. Heine feels that shinju, and specifically the suicides carried out in Chikamatsu’s plays embody Buddhist ideals. Themes like impermanence of pleasure or happiness. For example, the idea that no matter how comfortable you are in a chair, you will eventually become uncomfortable in a certain position and have to switch it. This is a concept of impermanence and therefore a Buddhist belief. This idea is present in Chikamatsu’s plays as well in Masahiro’s film. It’s present in the fact that the audience is always given the impression time is fleeting. Even during Jihei’s moments with Koharu, they are both aware that their love is temporary. The conflict of the film is with the impermanence and frailty of human nature. The agony and anguish is not over the fact that they can’t be together, but that they can’t be together forever. Even if Jihei is able to buy Koharu, they are both still forced to acknowledge that death is inevitable. Since there is no guarantee they will die together, committing a double suicide becomes the only noble act they can carryout in honor of their love, and the only way they ensure one never lives without the other.

A contemporary example of the influence which Asian New wave has had on the film industry can be seen with films like Park Chan-wook’s Old Boy.  It has alos found much international success in both the east and the west, and it represents the most recent interpretation of eastern culture.  It is a film that crosses all genres, with a Tarantino-esque film style, real time fight scenes and a psychologically viable narrative, it keeps pulses racing, pupils dilated and wits tested at every turn.  Based in Korea, the film’s use of subtitles highlight the deeper meaning within the writing as opposed to deterring from the plot.  The films main characters are Oh Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) and Lee Woo-jin (Ji Tae Yuu).  The main theme of the film, like most of Chan-wook’s work revolves around the ideal of vengeance.  Oh Daesu is kidnapped, locked in a room for 15 years, and then released.  The rest of the film follows him as he attempts to find his captors and make them pay for this grave injustice.  There is one scene in particular that demonstrates an excellent use of cinematography by the director.  Oh Dae-su is torturing a member of the triad that locked him up, by pulling out one of the man’s teeth for each year that he was locked away.  The mis-en-scene and frame shifts used in this scene are very similar to that used in the shower scene from Psycho.  The audience is never actually allowed to see the act, but the pain and violence is implied well enough to make anyone cringe. The main theme that the film presents is that of a strong male lead.  The fact that the film has done so well in the west is very promising considering that Orientalism theory places the west as the main culprit effeminizing Asian males.  For the west to embrace a male lead character like Oh Dae-su who is very strong and devout with his convictions only shows how influential Asian New Wave has been on Western audiences.

In sum, Double Suicide (1969) and Old Boy (2003) are both examples of the evolution which Asian new wave cinema has gone through.  The films contest social norms while at the same time they are cinematically excellent, asking more of their aesthetic.  Directors like Nakashira Ko and Masumura Yasuzo are considered rebels in the east.  Their contributions to the film aesthetic are unparalleled unquestionable.  They combat ideals of Orientalism, while at the same time, they confront the prejudices inherent in their own societies.  Asian New Wave cinema marked a shift in societal expectations of the east, on the behalf of Asians themselves and Westerners.  There has been an evident change in the way westerners view Asian culture.  It is no longer depicted as a less civil primitized way of life.  Asian culture has grown in appreciation world wide; examples of this can be seen in the popularity of films like Crouching Tiger Hidden dragon, and Hero, which depict eastern culture as being beautiful and elegant.  This can all be credited to the 50’s and 60’s directors who were brave enough to be unconventional and give a new face to their culture, and to the Trans-generational genre that has become known as Asian New Wave.

Work Cited

Abbas, Ackbar. Culture ; The Politics of Disappearance. University of Minnesota 1997.

Chow. Primitive Passions New York: Columbia, 1995.

Cornyetz, Nina.  Gazing Disinterstedly: Politicized Poetics in Double Suicide A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies 12.3 (2001) 101-127

Harvey, David. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Blackwell. Cambridge MA. Oxford UK.

Jingsheng, Bai.  Chinese Film Theory: A guide to the New Era. 1990

Ko, Nakashira. Against the Solemn Serious Sect., Eiga hyron, March, 1958.

Oshima, Nalisa. Is It a Breakthrough? (The Modernists of Japanese Film).  Dawn Lawson Trans. Cambridge: MA Press 1992

Yasuzo, Masumura. A Defense- Turning Away from Sentiment, Truth, and Atmosphere. Eiga hyron, March, 1958.

Yuan Wenshu, About Film Study, Reference of World Cinema, June 1980.

Cinema has always been a world of fantasy and grandeur. What a common man cannot do in the real world is done by the star in the reel world. The artistic eyes of the filmmaker always wants the frame to be outstanding or beyond normal. How do you get it? The film is shot in exotic locations. Indian cinema has always fantasized about shooting in foreign locales. It was in the late 1970’s Indian cinema industry went abroad to film.

They mostly frequented U. S. A, Singapore or the United Kingdom.In the early days mostly songs were shot in these foreign countries. They were received well by the audience which made more filmmakers to follow suit. The three major movie industries in Indian cinema go to foreign locations to shoot the most. They are Hindi, Tamil and Telugu industries respectively.

Films in other languages are rarely shot in foreign countries. In the last few years Hindi films are shot entirely in foreign countries. This has given the audience a refreshing experience.Hindi films released recently like Race, Dhoom, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, My Name Is Khan, Housefull , Kites, Prince, New York , Kambakth Ishqq, Blue, London dreams , Life partner, Dostana, Chandni Chowkh to China, Luck, etc, were filmed entirely in foreign locales. These films were well received by the Indian audience especially the locations. Many foreign countries encourage shooting of Indian films by providing very good support. There are countries which provide monetary help to films shot in their country.

Countries like U. S. A, U.K, South Africa, France, Italy, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Australia provide support to Indian film companies and are frequented mostly for shooting. Though shooting in foreign locations make the film look more grand,the cost of shooting is much cheaper when compared to shooting inside india. This sis because when shooting abroad the number of people in the crew is considerably less than in local shooting which infact makes hindi film producers to opt for filming in foreign countries. Songs in Tamil films were shot in foreign locations usually.

But the trend has been changing lately with films shot entirely in foreign countries. Last year the film Asal was shot entirely in France which was a new location for the Tamil industry. Films like Billa,Thillalangadi, Thambiku intha ooru, vinnai thandi varuvaya were shot in foreign countries. Kamal Hassan starrer Manmadhan ambu is being shot entirely in a cruise liner in Greece. Poda Podi a film starring Silambarasan is being filmed entirely in and around London. But not only foreign countries are exotic locations.There are many extraordinary places in india which are more beautiful than those alps and the ports.

Locations like Shimla,Kashmir, Coorg, Athirappaly, Hogennakal etc,. Are indeed exotic locales in India. These locations in fact are more adhering to the Indian culture and are beautiful too. There are legendary filmmakers who have shot their films entirely inside the subcontinent. Maniratnam, Mahendran, Balumahendra, Ram Gopal Varma are few brilliant filmmakers who have not wandered around the globe scouting for locations.They shot entirely inside India and showcased its beauty to the world. Recently released film Raavanan which was shot entirely around the southindian forest region was appreciated by the international audience.

The audience found the jungle and the rivers more terrorizing than the amazon. So we can conclude that any location as such which adds to the beauty of the scene and supports the emotions and feelings of the characters can be justified as an exotic location. But the trend of shooting scenes and songs in foreign countries for no reason is rather a disturbing fact.

Abstract

The very perceptions and style of ethnographic cinema was changed with the intervention of late Jean Rouch’s films. He was considered as one of the founding fathers of Cinema Verite or Real Cinema In France, and Surrealism. Jacques Rivette (1968) considers Rouch as the force behind the entire French cinema made in past ten years. Rivette comments that the importance of Rouch is much more in the evolution of French Cinema than Godard with few people realizing it (Rivette,1968). According to Henley(2009) his sudden death in a road accident, in February 2004, made Visual Anthropology lose one of its precious gems. Rouch was a visionary and a true believer in the strength of lenses. In most of his interviews he talked about the power of camera and the responsibility attached to it. He believed that camera had the power to reveal the inner most beliefs and impressions of mankind (Henley,2009). My first encounter with Rouch’s films was in my Visual Anthropology classes. At first I found it quite difficult to understand his films as most of them were in French. However Rouch’s different and controversial approach to ethnographic cinema with his very interesting personal touch in all his films molded me to watch his movies in spite of such difficulties. Henley comments that though Rouch made more than one hundreds of films but only handful films have been distributed far wide while majority of the films remain unknown and difficult to see specially for English speaking world (Henley,2009). The most interesting fact about Jean Rouch’s cinema, as Mick Eaton puts forward was that, Rouch believed that more observations can be done with a film rather in direct observations. He suggested that through films you can get more feedback from your subjects and participants which make the observation far more interesting and trustworthy. Rouch belived that his films were for greater number of people, it is a fight against the colonial oppressions and colonial notions of other societies as savages.(Eaton, n.d) Through his films he conveyed the message that was given by Malinowski long back. He asked people to understand each society in their own unique context and to respect their values and institutions. Rouchs films are true representation of his thoughts on humanity and global understanding (Eaton,n.d).

Introduction

My earnest desire to write a Visual Anthropology essay on the works and contributions of Late Jean Rouch grew more profound after watching his film” Les Maites Fous” (The Mad Masters) .The film was released in the year 1955 and was a subject of great dispute among the various African intellectuals and French scholars. At the first glance I felt very uncomfortable with the scenes and visual presentations of the Film, but as I kept on watching it, true meanings of the film kept on unfolding in front of my eyes. One of the major reasons for choosing Jean Rouch and his film as the topic of my essay is because through my research I realized that most of the scholars and researchers have avoided critical evaluation and organized research on Rouch’s films due to unavailability of the films and also because major number of films are in French. This has diminished the contribution of Jean Rouch and his films in the sector of Anthropological and Ethnographic films to an extent especially in the English Speaking Countries. The neglecting behavioral pattern towards Rouch’s films instigated me to find out more about Jean Rouch and his films. As Paul Stroller (1992) puts forward, that Jean Rouch is not given the right place in the history of anthropology and film and is often misunderstood and condemned by different scholars. In this essay I will talk about the various notions attached to Jean Rouch and his films, while critically evaluating his work “Les Maitres Fous”(The mad masters), 1955.

Jean Rouch as a film maker and an ethnographer

Jean Rouch saw cinema as an adventure and himself as an adventurer. As Claude Jutra(1960) comments “ A chronicle of the Rouchian adventure is certainly an exciting prospect , but it is one that I approach with caution. One never admires without reservation. Any tribute carries within it an element of denunciation. No eulogy deserves to be trusted unless it is combined with certain degree of meanness”. (Jutra,1960:2).

Jean Rouch dreamt of cinema as the only means of telling truth about people and societies. Stroller designated Rouch as the most prolific ethnographic filmmaker in the world whose ethnographic works are much unknown (Stroller,1992). Rouch clearly represented a unique combination of anthropology and art in his films. According to Brink, he was a filmmaker who did the most initiating job in pushing the boundaries of visual anthropology to an extent whilst still following the important norms and perceptions of visual anthropology of his time (Brink,n.d). Henley(2009) claimed that his films blurred the distinct lines between fiction and reality. As Jean Rouch himself, elaborately comments “For me as Filmmaker and ethnographer, there is practically no frontier between documentary film and fiction film. Cinema art of the double, represents a transition from the real world to the world of the imaginary, while ethnography, the study of other a peoples’ system of thought, involves a permanent criss-crossing from one conceptual universe to another, a form of acrobatic gymnastics, in which losing your footing is the least of the risks”.(Rouch,1981:31)

Rouch’s most remarkable films were Les Maitres Fous (The Mad Masters 1955),Moi Un Noir (1958),Jaguar (1967), andChronique d’un ete (1960).Grimshaw and Eaton suggested that Jean Rouch’s films were much controversial in nature as well as did create a lot of debates among the scholars and intellectuals of younger generations. Surprisingly enough, among the anthropologists, there has been a substantial transformation in the approach towards Rouch’s films which has made it as one of the best examples of traditional ethnographic films. Stroller comments Jean Rouch as the Champion of the African Ethnography and the “Father of The Nigerian Cinema”(Stroller,1992).Brink states that Rouch gave primary focus to African people in his films, which made his cinema appealing and engaging to a limited number of audiences (Brink,n.d). According to Eaton, Rouch wanted his cinema not only to serve the purpose of anthropological education but also to use it in much greater scale in order to understand the universal human interests and disciplines (Eaton,n.d). Henley remarked that Rouch believed in 100% participation in the events he filmed (Henley,2009). According to Edgar Morin, Rouch was a “Filmmaker Driver” who immerses himself into the life of his subjects and participants. Morin who was a well known French sociologist, worked with Jean Rouch in one of his most celebrated works “Chroinicle of a Summer” or “Chronique d’ un ete”in 1960. It was him who categorised Rouch’s films as “Cinema Verite”. Morin has explained this term as “there remain the most difficult, the most moving, the most secret (aspect of social life): wherever human feelings are at stake , wherever the individual is directly involved , wherever there are interpersonal relationships of authority, subordination , comradeship , love , hate – in other words everything connected with emotion fabric of human existence . There lies the great terra incognita of the sociological or ethological cinema , of “Cinema Verite” . There lies its promised land (Morin, 1962:5)

“Cinema Verite” is very much different from the direct cinema. Rouch viwed “Cinema Verite” as “Cinema Provocation”. He explained that through this provocation a new form of cinema emerges which is more realistic than the real. The most interesting fact is that at first Rouch, himself was a great supporter of direct Cinema but with the time he got more indulged into the fictional films following the ethnological perception. According to Michel Marie (1976), “Direct” in the technical sense of the term designates the synchronous recording of image and sound , the concept of direct cinema designates first of all a new technique of recording pro-filmic reality. This term replaced the more enigmatic cinema such as “Cinema Verite” at the beginning of the sixties, applies beyond a simple technique, to the whole new stream of practices which overthrew methods of film making that was previously standardized completely through the industrial model. Marie commented that “As opposed to industrial cinema, fictional and spectacular, in case of direct cinema the action to be filmed is void of an anterior status” (Marie,1976:35). “Cinema Verite” It is a kind of cinema where there is a good amount of conversation and interaction between filmmaker and his subject. In this form of cinema there may be also little provocations which can be noticed from the filmmakers side to his subjects (Feld,2003). Rouch as a kid was very much influenced by the film “Nanook Of the North” (1922), which became an inspiration to the films that he made in later life. Brink states that Rouch inserted new forms and ways in the style of film making. With his work he blurred the difference between real and unreal, truth and fantasy and literally played with his lenses. It was interesting to note that his inquisitive nature and the use of new technology gave birth to a different genre of cinema which more or less became unique in its own ways. As Mick Eaton (n.d) suggests that Rouch has tried to defend his film making practice in a very significant way, according to Rouch his presence during the film making is a very crucial factor not because people i.e. his subjects and participants will reveal themselves more openly and honestly out of trust and faith but more because they will lie and feel uncomfortable. It is the manifestation of this side of participants which will be regarded as more profound disclosure than anything “candid camera” or “living cinema” ever could disclose. Eaton followed the words of Jean Rouch believed that camera uniting with presence of its director acts as a catalyst to the whole process of film making. Thompson comments that Surrealism played a very important role in the development of Rouch’s films (Thompson,n.d). Surrealism as a cultural movement influenced the mind of Jean Rouch to a great extent. It was a philosophical movement which according to Henley became very popular in Paris during the world war. Jean Rouch claimed in 1967 that for him making a film or cinema is like a surrealist painting. Rouch was a bridge builder in true sense. He bridged the gap between film and anthropology along with an introduction to new techniques and style of film making.

Brink comments that:

“The filmmaker who was educated as civil engineer became a true bridge builder between film and anthropology, film and art, fiction and documentary , Europe and Africa”(Brink,n.d:2)

Grimshaw states that Rouch’s Anthropological films are mostly based on the sense of intuition and are idiosyncratic in approach. His films are a visual treat for the students of visual anthropology. Grimshaw strikes a comparison between the anthropological cinemas of Jean Rouch and Mac Dougall where she describes Mac dougall cinema as detailed and practical while Rouch’s anthropological films to be more idealistic and imaginative. According to Grimshaw , rouch was a visionary who used his films as a way to interpret the complexities and connections between the world and humanity. His ethnographic films were very much influenced by the political situation at that time. Rouch was very much inspired by the different freedom movements by the colonial people during that time which brought huge political, economic and social transitions around the world saw the colonies as oppressive masters. According to Grimshaw, Rouch was not only supportive of these movements but also gave different humanitarian expressions to it (Grimshaw,2001). Rouch’s ethnographic sensibilities as a film maker and anthropologist was very much shaped by his individualistic nature, background and political circumstances in France during that time (Grimshaw,2001). Rouch as an Anthropologist was very much trained in the path Maussian ideologies a very well know French anthropologist during 1920s till 1940s. Henley comments that Rouch himself never met Mauss but he came to know about his contributions in Anthropology through his supervisor Marcel Griaule who was a student of Mauss himself. Maussian influence is very much evident in earlier works of Jean Rouch, especially in the films he and Rosefelder produced together during their expeditions. Inspired greatly by Mauss’s idea to use camera gave birth to Rouch’s lifelong interest in “salvage ethnography”(Henley,2009). The most significant and appealing part of Rouch’s journey is that though other leading ethnographic film makers such as Robert Gardner and Judith Mac Dougall (2006) have made films based on different continent. However, Rouch’s focus has always been on Paris and Africa, with more concentration on Niger. This approach of his was mostly influenced by Griaule (1938) and Dieterlen (1987) who believed that it takes twenty to thirty years to understand and have a deep knowledge about a particular society. This view is significantly supported by Jutra’s comment “Rouch, the ethnologist! Rouch, the explorer! Rouch, the traveler ! mere appearances. Rouch has two very circumscribed habitats : Paris and Niger… he has no desire to cross these boundaries that he has so carefully traced…. Rouch is sedentary, a stay – at – home.”(Jutra,1961:116)

From all the works of Jean Rouch I will consider Les Maitres Fous as the starting point of his greater expression for universal humanity. This film is notable in ways that it establishes and evokes the contours of Rouch’s humanistic vision (Grimshaw,2001)

“Les Maitres Fous” (The Mad Masters)

This film was first screened in Paris in the year 1955. According to Grimshaw the small number of audience of African intellectuals and French anthropologist present in the premiere of the film in Musee De l’ Homme was largely antagonistic in its response to Rouch’s works. Marcel Griaule called for the fim to be destroyed; Africans present during the screening of the film rejected it as bigoted and insulting. Shortly afterwards British government banned this movie to be shown in the colonial territories of West Africa (Grimshaw, 2001). Today” Les Maitres Fous” is widely accepted and considered as a classic of contemporary cinema. After watching the film consecutively for the third time I realized that the film’s power to move and perturb the audience has not reduced at all with the passage of time. Grimshaw comments that “Les Maitres Fous” inaugurates the distinguished series of films, which Rouch made between 1954 and 1960. Some of the films which were made during this time was Jaguar, “Moi Un Noir”and “Chronique d’un Ete”, the most important fact about all of these films was that all f them were based in different themes. It is one of the most significant films in the growth of Rouch’s works as an ethnographer (Eaton n.d). Feld (2003) illustrates that Les maitres Fous was the earliest departure from purely evocative cinemas into a more unreal approach to event structures. He claims that having experiencing a ceremony several times, Rouch thought of breaching the vital aspects and approaches them as dramatic narratives.

According to Eaton Rouch was asked to make this film after him and his wife Jane had given lecture at the British council in Accra. Rouch was approached by some of the Hauka priests and initiates present in that lecture who approached him to film their Hauka Annual Ceremony. The priests wanted to record the event not only to preserve it as a film and memory but also so that it could be used I the ritual itself (Eaton,n.d) .

Grimshaw reflects that the film basically documents the course of possession ceremony held during one Sunday by members of the Hauka sect working as migrant labourers in Accra. During 1920s there was a form of strong resistance against the French colonial rule by this Hauka cult who had moved from their villages to work in Kumasi and Accra , the commercial areas of British dominated Gold Coast (Grimshaw, 2001) . According to Feld the Haukas were the most famous possession cult among the Songhay , that reached its full expression in Ghana, brought by the migrants from Niger. Mick Eaton explained that these ceremonies of Hauka sect started in the late 20s in the upper Niger region. Discriminated by the French colonial administration and adjudicated by rigid Islamic supporters many of the members of the Hauka sect moved to Ghana in the thirtees working as a migrant labourer throughout the gold coast region. Haukas defined themselves as the “new gods” the spirits of power and the winds (Eaton n.d) .The film vividly views the members of the Hauka cult working at menial task in the city during the week then in the possession trance during the weekend and again back to work in the week. The film starts with the scene of Bustling city of Accra where different people from across West Africa jostle up with one another sharing the “Great African adventure of work and life”. From the start the film appears to be imparting a sense of complexities, movements and characteristics of urban life. Then there is sudden shift of events and audience find themselves plunged into a dark deep forest where Hauka people travelled by buses and trucks. According to Rouch’s commentary this was the place where the Hauka annual ceremony takes place and where the high priest of Hauka known as Mountebya lives. The film shows the preliminary stages of confessions and appointment of new members before arriving into a dramatic climax where members become possessed, adopting the identities and conventional behavior of British governor and his crew. The ceremony reaches its peak with the killing and eating of a dog, slowly Dusk approaches and Hauka people emerges from their trance and get prepared to return to Accra. The film ends with streams of flashbacks. Rouch is shown to return the following day to the same Hauka members who were possessed in the ceremony, calmy and efficiently working in their respective jobs (Grimshaw,2001). The possessed and frothing of the mouth, dribbling saliva flecked with the blood of the butchered dog, the violent and uncontrollable body movements and disturbing style of eating the dog meat are the most troubling factors of the film which shocks the senses of human mind and leaves a lifelong impression in ones’ mind. These shocking scenes of the film justify the fact behind the film being rejected by most of its audience as a whole. Indeed as James Clifford notes that this film stands as Rouchs’s manifestation of Griaule’s recognition that ethnographic observation involves conflict. According to Grimshaw “Les Maitres Fous”, reveals the sharp contrast between the conception of a shared or participatory anthropological cinema persued by Mac Dougall and the one practiced by Rouch”(Grimshaw,2001:101)

“Les Maitres Fous” is distinguished for its intricate style camera work which Rouch adopted during his earlier life after the destruction of his tripod. Grimshaw (2001) also talks about Rouch’s narration in the Film as improvised or unrehearsed. It is his commentary that makes the film comprehensible and incomprehensible at the same time.

Feld commented that Rouch made the film “ Using a montage to create contexting boundaries and making the most of the technical limitation of twenty five second shots (he was still using a 16mm camera),Rouch was able to make a short film with more explicative depth and synthesis than his previous ethnographic studies”.(Feld,2003:5)

As Feld (2003) and Eaton (n.d) both expressed that the film was shot on a hand cranked 16mm Bell and Howell Camera which allowed for 25 second shots, but it was also edited in the camera as much as possible and the ultimate shooting ratio turned out to be 8 – 10. The sound was recorded by Lam Ibrahim Dia and Damoure Zika, one of the first Africans whom Rouch knew quite well from his first trip to during the war, using a scubitophone which is a portable though heavy tape recorder with a clockwise motor that had to be wound up between takes. Henley added that the film is of 28 mins, edited by Suzzane Brown and produced by Les Films de la Pleiade and was awarded Grand Prix in the ethnographic category of the Venice Film festival in 1955 (Henley,2009). Eaton significantly estimated that Rouch’s use of voice over in “Les Maitres Fous” does not preserve the primacy of the images rather sets up completely different relation with sound and image. Rouch not only translates the ceremony held by Huaka sect but more or less acts it out which in a way kills the authenticity of an ethnographic documentary (Eaton,n.d). Cooper (2006) suggests that though Rouch has tried to gain ethnographic knowledge through his ethnographic films as claimed by Jay Ruby (2000) but there is still a lot of space in acknowledging the fact which cannot be known or understood through the lenses. With no formal training in film making and direction, Rouch suprsing arose as a rule breaker in the Film world. Les Maitres Fous was one of the biggest examples of such rule break. According to Cooper” Les Maitres Fous” as a film can be represented in two ways at first considering the fact it is filmed by a western filmmaker it can be interpreted as a show of uncivilized attitude by the African Hauka people and secondly it can also be deciphered as African representation of the oppressive colonial western culture and its position in their society (Cooper,2006). According to Homi.K .Bhabha the film is a clear representation of mockery to the oppressive colonial rule and their power show while showing the deep sighted pains of oppressed Africans (Bhabha,1994). The voice over used by rouch in the film is quite assertive and does influence the thinking process of the audiences a lot.

Conclusion

Rouchian cinema indeed consists of the most exciting form of ethnography which can be traced in all of his movies. My personal experience of Rouch’s film is a mixture of both the senses of agitation and fascination simultaneously. His film is indeed an experience of life time which stays in your memory till the last days of your life and which evokes the true spirit of humanity irrespective of class race and ethnicity. Through this Essay I have tried to discuss the various aspects of Jean Rouch’s cinema significantly concentrating my attention on ““Les Maitres Fous”. This movie disturbed my senses and my thinking about the human acceptance of culture. Through this film I realized that each society is different and is composed of different social dynamics. To me this film is a clear representation of the influence of oppressive western civilizations on the Africans and there after effects on African society. Though it should be also noted that this film has a element of fiction into it which sometimes covers the facts and presents a new form of truth which cannot be trusted sometimes. Cinema is the combination of rational, irrational, fiction and fact. Rouch expresses these elements more profoundly through his movies.

References

1. Henley, P .2009. The Adventure of the Real: Jean Rouch and the craft of Ethnographic Cinema. London and Chicago: The University of Chicago Press Ltd.
2. Grimshaw, A . 2001. The Ethnographer’s Eye : Ways of seeing In Anthropology .New York , Cambridge and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
3. Stroller, P.1992 .The cinematic Griot:the ethnography of Jean Rouch .London and Chicago: The University Of Chicago Press.
4. Cooper , S .2006. Selfless Cinema?:Ethics and French Documentary. London: Legenda.
5. Bhabha, H.K.1994. Bhabha: The Location Of Culture. New York: Routledge.
6. Ruby ,J. 2000.Picturing Culture: explorations of film & anthropology. Chicago and London:The University Of Chicago Press.
7. Griaule , M. 1938. Masques Dogons. California:Institut d’ethnologie .
8. MacDougall , D.2006. The corporeal image: film, ethnography, and the senses. Oxfordshire and New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
9. Eaton, M.,n.d. Chronichle. In: Eaton. M,ed. 1979. Anthropology Reality Cinema: The films of Jean Rouch. Colchester and London:British Film Institute. p 1-34
10. Michel, M.,n.d. Direct. In: Eaton. M,ed. 1979. Anthropology Reality Cinema: The films of Jean Rouch. Colchester and London:British Film Institute. p 35-39
11. Eaton, M.,n.d. The production of Cinematic Reality. In: Eaton. M,ed. 1979. Anthropology Reality Cinema: The films of Jean Rouch. Colchester and London:British Film Institute.p 40-53
12. Rouch,J.,n.d. The Camera and Man. In: Eaton. M,ed. 1979. Anthropology Reality Cinema: The films of Jean Rouch. Colchester and London:British Film Institute.p54- 63
13. Brink.J.T.,n.d. Introduction. In.Joram .T.B,ed. 2007.Building Bridges: The cinema of Jean Rouch.London and New York :Wallflower Press.p 1
14. Nijiland,D.,n.d. Jean Rouch: A builder of bridges. In.Joram .T.B,ed. 2007.Building Bridges: The cinema of Jean Rouch.London and New York :Wallflower Press.p21
15. Grimshaw.A.,n.d.Adventure on the Road:Some reflections on Rouch and His Italian Contemporariries. In.Joram .T.B,ed. 2007.Building Bridges: The cinema of Jean Rouch.London and New York :Wallflower Press.
16. Thompson.C.,n.d. Chance and Adventure in the Cinema and Ethnography of Jean Rouch. In.Joram .T.B,ed. 2007.Building Bridges: The cinema of Jean Rouch.London and New York :Wallflower Press
17. Feld.S.,2003. Cine-ethnography Jean Rouch.Minneapolis:University Of Minnesota Press

Scott McQuire Millennial fantasies As anyone interested in film culture knows, the last decade has witnessed an explosion of pronouncements concerning the future of cinema.

Many are fuelled by naked technological determinism, resulting in apocalyptic scenarios in which cinema either undergoes digital rebirth to emerge more powerful than ever in the new millennium, or is marginalised by a range of ‘new media’ which inevitably include some kind of broadband digital pipe capable of delivering full screen ‘cinema quality’ pictures on demand to home consumers.The fact that the doubleedged possibility of digital renaissance or death by bytes has coincided with celebrations of the ‘centenary of cinema’ has undoubtedly accentuated desire to reflect more broadly on the history of cinema as a social and cultural institution. It has also intersected with a significant transformation of film history, in which the centrality of ‘narrative’ as the primary category for uniting accounts of the technological, the economic and the aesthetic in film theory, has become subject to new questions.Writing in 1986 Thomas Elsaesser joined the revisionist project concerning ‘early cinema’ to cinema’s potential demise: ‘A new interest in its beginnings is justified by the very fact that we might be witnessing the end: movies on the big screen could soon be the exception rather than the rule’. 1 Of course, Elsaesser’s speculation, which was largely driven by the deregulation of television broadcasting in Europe in conjunction with the emergence of new technologies such as video, cable and satellite in the 1980s, has been contradicted by the decade long cinema boom in the multiplexed 1990s. It has also been challenged from another direction, as the giant screen ‘experience’ of large format cinema has been rather unexpectedly transformed from a bit player into a prospective force. However, in the same article, Elsaesser raised another issue which has continued to resonate in subsequent debates: Scott McQuire, ‘Impact Aesthetics: Back to the Future in Digital Cinema? ‘, Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, vol.

6, no. 2, 2000, pp. 41-61. © Scott McQuire. All rights reserved.Deposited to the University of Melbourne ePrints Repository with permission of Sage Publications . 2 Few histories fully address the question of why narrative became the driving force of cinema and whether this may itself be subject to change.

Today the success, of SF as a genre, or of directors like Steven Spielberg whose narratives are simply anthology pieces from basic movie plots, suggest that narrative has to some extent been an excuse for the pyrotechnics of IL;M. 3 Concern for the demise, if not of cinema per se, then of narrative in cinema, is widespread in the present.In the recent special ‘digital technology’ issue of Screen, Sean Cubitt noted a ‘common intuition among reviewers, critics and scholars that something has changed in the nature of cinema — something to do with the decay of familiar narrative and performance values in favour of the qualities of the blockbuster’. 4 Lev Manovich has aligned the predominance of ‘blockbusters’ with ‘digital cinema’ by defining the latter almost entirely in terms of increased visual special effects: ‘A visible sign of this shift is the new role which computer generated special effects have come to play in the Hollywood industry in the last few years.Many recent blockbusters have been driven by special effects; feeding on their popularity’. 5 In his analysis of Hollywood’s often anxious depiction of cyberspace in films such as The (1992), Paul Young argues that ‘cyberphobic films overstress the power of the visual in their reliance on digital technology to produce spectacle at the expense of narrative’, and adds this is ‘a consequence that [Scott] Bukatman has argued is latent in all special effects’. A more extreme (but nevertheless common) view is expressed by film maker Jean Douchet: ‘[Today] cinema has given up the purpose and the thinking behind individual shots [and narrative], in favour of images — rootless, textureless images — designed to violently impress by constantly inflating their spectacular qualities’.

7 ‘Spectacle’, it seems, is winning the war against ‘narrative’ all along the line.Even a brief statistical analysis reveals that ‘special effects’ driven films have enjoyed enormous recent success, garnering an average of over 60% of the global revenue taken by the top 10 films from 1995-1998, compared to an average of 30% over the previous four years. 8 Given that the proportion of box office revenue taken by the top 10 films has held steady or increased slightly in the context of a rapidly expanding total market, this indicates that a handful of special-effects films are generating huge revenues each year.While such figures don’t offer a total picture of the film industry, let alone reveal which films which will exert lasting cultural influence, they do offer a snapshot of contemporary cultural taste refracted through studio marketing budgets. Coupled to the recent popularity of paracinematic forms, such as large format and special venue films, the renewed emphasis on ‘spectacle’ over ‘narrative’ suggests another possible end-game for 3 inema: not the frequently prophesied emptying of theatres made redundant by the explosion of home-based viewing (television, video, the internet), but a transformation from within which produces a cinema no longer resembling its (narrative) self, but something quite other. Complementing these debates over possible cinematic futures is the fact that any turn to spectacular film ‘rides’ can also be conceived as a return — whether renaissance or regression is less clear — to an earlier paradigm of film-making famously dubbed the ‘’ by Tom Gunning.Gunning long ago signalled this sense of return when he commented: ‘Clearly in some sense recent spectacle cinema has re-affirmed its roots in stimulus and carnival rides, in what might be called the Spielberg-Lucas-Coppola cinema of effects’.

9 For Paul Arthur, developments in the 1990s underline the point: The advent of Imax 3-D and its future prospects, in tandem with the broader strains of a New Sensationalism, provide an occasion to draw some connections with the early history of cinema and the recurrent dialectic between the primacy of the visual and, for lack of a better term, the sensory. 0 In what follows here, I want to further consider the loops and twists of these debates, not so much with the grand ambition of resolving them, but firstly of adding some different voices to the discussion — particularly the voices of those involved in film production. 11 My intention is not to elevate empiricism over theory, but to promote dialogue between different domains of film culture which meet all too rarely, and, in the process, to question the rather narrow terms in which ‘digital cinema’ has frequently entered recent theoretical debates.Secondly, I want to consider the relation between ‘narrative’ and ‘spectacle’ as it is manifested in these debates. My concern is that there seems to be a danger of confusing a number of different trajectories — such as cinema’s on-going efforts to demarcate its ‘experience’ from that of domestic entertainment technologies, and the turn to blockbuster exploitation strategies —and conflating them under the heading of ‘digital cinema’.While digital technology certainly intersects with, and significantly overlaps these developments, it is by no means co-extensive with them. ‘Spectacular sounds’: cinema in the digital domain Putting aside the inevitable hype about the metamorphosis of Hollywood into ‘Cyberwood’, like many others I am convinced that digital technology constitutes a profound revolution in cinema, primarily because of its capacity to cut across all 4 sectors of the industry simultaneously, affecting film production, narrative conventions and audience experience.

In this respect, the only adequate point of reference for the depth and extent of current changes are the transformations which took place with the introduction of synchronised sound in the 1920s. However, while the fundamental level at which change is occurring is widely recognised, it has been discussed primarily in terms of the impact of CGI (computer-generated imaging) on the film image. A more production-oriented approach would most likely begin elsewhere; with what Philip Brophy has argued is among ‘the most overlooked aspects of film theory and criticism (both modern and postmodern strands)’ — sound. 2 A brief flick through recent articles on digital cinema confirms this neglect: Manovich locates ‘digital cinema’ solely in a historical lineage of moving pictures; none of the articles in the recent Screen dossier mention sound, and even Eric Faden’s ‘Assimilating New Technologies: Early Cinema, Sound and Computer Imaging’ only uses the introduction of synchronised sound as an historical analogy for discussing the contemporary effect of CGI on the film image13. While not entirely unexpected, this silence is still somewhat urprising, given the fact that digital sound technology was adopted by the film industry far earlier and more comprehensively than was CGI. And, at least until the early 1990s with films like Terminator 2 (1991) and Jurassic Park (1993), the effect on audience experience was arguably far greater than was digital imaging. Dominic Case [Group Services and Technology Manager at leading Australian film processor Atlab] argued in 1997: I am more and more convinced that the big story about film technology as far as audiences are concerned in the past few years has been sound.

Because, although you can do fancy digital things, the image remains glued to that bit of screen in front of your eyes, and it’s not really any bigger… But the sound has gone from one woolly sound coming from the back of the screen with virtually no frequency range or dynamic range whatsoever … to something that fills the theatre in every direction with infinitely more dynamic range and frequency range.

To me, that’s an explosion in experience compared to what you are seeing on the screen.However, the visual bias of most film theory is so pervasive that this transformation often passes unremarked. Part of the problem is that we lack the necessary conceptual armature: there are no linkages which pull terms such as 5 ‘aural’ or ‘listener’ into the sort of semantic chain joining spectacle and spectator to the adjective ‘spectacular’. Film sound-mixer Ian McLoughlin notes: Generally speaking, most people are visually trained from birth. …

Very few people are trained to have a aural language and, as a result there isn’t much discussion about the philosophy of the sound track. .. There has been very, very little research done into the psycho-acoustic effects of sound and the way sound works sociologically on the audience. 14 Compounding this absence is the fact that the digital revolution in sound is, in many respects, the practical realisation of changes initiated with the introduction of Dolby Stereo in 1975. (On the other hand, the fact that CGI entered a special effects terrain already substantially altered by techniques of motion control, robotics and animatronics didn’t prevent critical attention to it. Four-track Dolby stereo led to a new era of sound experimentation beginning with films such as Star Wars (1977) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).

As renowned sound mixer Roger Savage (whose credits include Return of the Jedi, 1983; Shine, 1996; and Romeo + Juliet, 1996) recalls: ‘Prior to that, film sound hadn’t changed for probably 30 years. It was Mono Academy … Star Wars was one of the first films that I can remember where people started coming out of the theatre talking about the sound track’. 5 While narrative sound effects such as dialogue and music were still generally concentrated in the front speakers, the surround sound speakers became the vehicles for a new range of ‘spectacular’ sound effects. In particular, greater emphasis was given to boosting low frequency response, explicitly mirroring the amplified ambience of rock music.

There was also greater attention given to the ‘spatialisation’ of discrete sound elements within the theatre.As Rich Altman has argued, these developments presented a significant challenge to one of the fundamental precepts of classical Hollywood narrative: the unity of sound and image and the subservience of sound effects to narrative logic: Whereas Thirties film practice fostered unconscious visual and psychological spectator identification with characters who appear as a perfect amalgam of image and sound, the Eighties ushered in a new kind of visceral identification, dependent on the sound system’s overt ability, through bone-rattling bass and unexpected surround effects, to cause spectators to vibrate — quite literally — with the entire narrative space.It is thus no longer the eyes, the ears and the brain that alone initiate identification and maintain contact with a sonic 6 source; instead, it is the whole body that establishes a relationship, marching to the beat of a different woofer. Where sound was once hidden behind the image in order to allow more complete identification with the image, now the sound source is flaunted, fostering a separate sonic identification contesting the limited rational draw of the image and its characters. 16 Altman’s observation is significant in this context, inasmuch as it suggests that the dethroning of a certain model of narrative cinema had begun prior to the digital threshold, and well before the widespread use of CGI.It also indicates the frontline role that sound took in the film industry’s initial response to the incursions of video : in the 1980s the new sound of cinema was a primary point of differentiation from domestic image technologies. However, while Dolby certainly created a new potential for dramatic sound effects, in practice most film makers remained limited by a combination of logistical and economic constraints.

In this respect, the transition to digital sound has been critical in creating greater latitude for experimentation within existing budget parameters and production time frames. In terms of sound production, Roger Savage argues: ‘The main advantages in digital are the quality control, the speed and the flexibility’. This is a theme which is repeated with regard to the computerisation of other areas of film making such as picture editing and CGI. ) Enhanced speed, flexibility and control stem from a reduction in the need for physical handling and a refinement of precision in locating and manipulating individual elements. In sound production, libraries of analogue tape reels each holding ten minutes of sound have given way to far more compact DAT tapes and hard drive storage. The entire production process can now often be realised on a single digital workstation. There is no need for a separate transfer bay, and, since digital processing involves the manipulation of electronic data, there is no risk of degrading or destroying original recordings by repeated processing.

Once the sounds are catalogued, digital workstations grant random access in a fraction of a second (eliminating tape winding time), and, unlike sprocket-based sound editing, all the tracks which have been laid can be heard immediately in playback. The creative pay-off is an enhanced ability to add complexity and texture to soundtracks. In terms of sound reproduction, the most marked change resulting from six track digital theatre systems is improved stereo separation and frequency response which assists better music reproduction in theatres — a change which goes hand in glove with the increased prominence that music and soundtracks have assumed in promoting and marketing films in recent years. 7The enhanced role of sound in cinema is even more marked for large format films which, because of their high level of visual detail, demand a correspondingly high level of audio detail. Ian McLoughlin (who, amongst many other things, shares sound mixing credits with Savage for the large-format films Africa’s Elephant Kingdom, 1998 and The Story of a Sydney, 1999) comments: If you look at the two extremes of image technology, if you look at television, and then you look at something like Imax, the most interesting difference is the density of the sound track that is required with the size of the picture. When you’re doing a TV mix, you try to be simple, bold. You can’t get much in or otherwise it just becomes a mess.

With 35mm feature films you’re putting in 10, 20 times more density and depth into the sound track as compared to television, and … when you go to Imax, you need even more. McLoughlin also makes a significant point concerning the use (or abuse) of digital sound: When digital first came out and people found that they could make a enormously loud sound tracks, everyone wanted enormously large sound tracks. ..

. Unfortunately some people who present films decided that the alignment techniques that companies like Dolby and THX have worked out aren’t to their liking and they think audiences like a lot of sub-base and so they sometimes wind that up. … [S]uddenly you’ve got audiences with chest cavities being punched due to the amount of bottom end. .

..Dolby and screen producers and screen distributors in America have actually been doing a lot of research into what they are calling the ‘annoyance factor’ of loud sound tracks. Because audiences are getting turned off by overly jarring, overly sharp, soundtracks. This comment is worth keeping in mind for two reasons. Firstly, it underlines the fact that the image is by no means the only vehicle for producing cinematic affect: in this sense, ‘impact aesthetics’ offers a more apt description of the trajectory of contemporary cinema than ‘spectacle’. Secondly, it warns against making hasty generalisations when assessing the long-term implications of CGI.

While digital imaging undoubtedly represents a significant paradigm shift in cinema, it is also feasible that the 1990s will eventually be seen more as a teething period of ‘gee whizz’ experimentation with the new digital toolbox, which was gradually turned towards other (even more ‘narrative’) ends. (The way we now look at early sound films is instructive: while contemporary audiences were fascinated by the mere 8 fact that pictures could ‘talk’, in retrospect we tend to give more weight to the way sound imposed new restrictions on camera movement, location shooting and acting style). Painting with light In contrast to the relative dearth of attention given to changes in areas such as sound and picture editing, digital manipulation of the film image has received massive publicity.While this is partly the result of deliberate studio promotion, it also reflects the profound changes in cinematic experience that computers have set in train. When we can see Sam Neil running from a herd of dinosaurs — in other words, when we see cinematic images offering realistic depictions of things we know don’t exist — it is evident that the whole notion of photo-realism which has long been a central plank of cinematic credibility is changing. But how should this change be understood? Is it simply that ‘live action’ footage can now be ‘supplemented’ with CG elements which replace earlier illusionistic techniques such as optical printing, but leave cinema’s unique identity as an ‘art of recording’ intact? Or is a new paradigm emerging in which cinema becomes more like painting or animation?Lev Manovich has recently taken the latter position to an extreme, arguing that, ‘Digital cinema is a particular case of animation which uses live-action footage as one of its many elements’, and concluding: ‘In retrospect, we can see that twentieth century cinema’s regime of visual realism, the result of automatically recording visual reality, was only an exception, an isolated accident in the history of visual representation..

. ’. 17 While I suspect that Manovich significantly underestimates the peculiar attractions of ‘automatic recording’ (which produced what Walter Benjamin termed the photograph’s irreducible ‘spark of contingency’, what Barthes ontologised as the hotographic punctum), it is clear the referential bond linking camera image to physical object has come under potentially terminal pressure in the digital era. However, any consideration of ‘realism’ in cinema is immediately complicated by the primacy of fictional narrative as the dominant form of film production and consumption. Moreover, cinema swiftly moved from adherence to the ideal of direct correspondence between image and object which lay at the heart of classical claims to photographic referentiality. ‘Cheating’ with the order of events, or the times, locations and settings in which they occur, is second nature to film-makers. By the time cinema ‘came of age’ in the picture palace of the 1920s, a new logic of montage, shot matching and continuity had coalesced into the paradigm of 9 classical narrative’, and cinematic credibility belonged more to the movement of the text rather than the photographic moment — a shift Jean-Louis Commolli has neatly described in terms of a journey from purely optical to psychological realism.

18 Within this paradigm all imaginable tactics were permissible in order to imbue pro-filmic action with the stamp of cinematic authority — theatrical techniques such as performance, make-up, costumes, lighting and set design were augmented by specifically cinematic techniques such as stop motion photography and rear projection, as well as model-making and matte painting which entered the screen world via the optical printer.Given this long history of simulation, the digital threshold is perhaps best located in terms of its effect on what Stephen Prince has dubbed ‘perceptual realism’, rather than in relation to an abstract category of ‘realism’ in general. Prince argues: A perceptually realistic image is one which structurally corresponds to the viewer’s audio-visual experience of three-dimensional space … Such images display a nested hierarchy of cues which organise the display of light, colour, texture, movement and sound in ways that correspond to the viewer’s own understanding of these phenomena in daily life. Perceptual realism, therefore, designates a relationship between the image on film and the spectator, and it can encompass both unreal images and those which are referentially realistic.

Because of this, unreal images may be referentially fictional but perceptually realistic. 19I have emphasised Prince’s evocation of fidelity to ‘audio-visual experience’ because it underlines the extent to which the aim of most computer artists working in contemporary cinema is not simply to create high resolution images, but to make these images look as if they might have been filmed. This includes adding various ‘defects’, such as film grain, lens flare, motion blur and edge halation. CG effects guru Scott Billups argues that film makers had to ‘educate’ computer programmers to achieve this end: For years we were saying: ‘Guys, you look out on the horizon and things get grayer and less crisp as they get farther away’. But those were the types of naturally occurring event structures that never got written into computer programs.They’d say ‘Why do you want to reduce the resolution? Why do you want to blur it? ’. 20 10 By the 1990s many software programs had addressed this issue.

As Peter Webb (one of the developers of Flame) notes: Flame has a lot of tools that introduce the flaws that one is trained to see. Even though we don’t notice them, there is lens flare and motion blur, and the depth of field things, and, if you don’t see them, you begin to get suspicious about a shot. 21 In other words, because of the extent to which audiences have internalised the camera’s qualities as the hallmark of credibility, contemporary cinema no longer aims to mime ‘reality’, but ‘camera-reality’.Recognising this shift underlines the heightened ambivalence of realism in the digital domain. The film maker’s ability to take the image apart at ever more minute levels is counterpointed by the spectator’s desire to comprehend the resulting image as ‘realistic’ — or, at least, equivalent to other cine-images. In some respects, this can be compared to the dialectic underlying the development of montage earlier this century, as a more ‘abstract’ relation to individual shots became the basis for their reconstitution as an ‘organic’ text. But instead of the fragmentation and re-assemblage of the image track over time, which founded the development of lassical narrative cinema and its core ‘grammatical’ structures such as shot/reverse shot editing, digital technology introduces a new type of montage: montage within the frame whose prototype is the real time mutation of morphing.

However, while ‘perceptual realism’ was achieved relatively painlessly in digital sound, the digital image proved far more laborious. Even limited attempts to marry live action with CGI, such as TRON (1982) and The Last Starfighter (1984) proved unable to sustain the first wave of enthusiasm for the computer. As one analyst observed: ‘The problem was that digital technology was both comparatively slow and prohibitively expensive. In fact, workstations capable of performing at film resolution were driven by Cray super-computers’. 2 It is these practical exigencies, coupled to the aesthetic disjunction separating software programmers from film makers I noted above, rather than a deeply felt desire to manufacture a specifically electronic aesthetic, which seems to underlie the ‘look’ of early CGI. 23 Exponential increases in computing speed, coupled to decreases in computing cost, not only launched the desktop PC revolution in the mid-1980s, but made CGI in film an entirely different matter. The second wave of CGI was signalled when Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991) made morphing a household word.

24 Two 11 years later the runaway box-office success of Jurassic Park (1993) changed the question from whether computers could be effectively used in film making to how soon this would happen. The subsequent rash of CGI-driven blockbusters, topped by the billion dollar plus gross of Cameron’s Titanic (1997), has confirmed the trajectory.Cameron is one of many influential players who argue that cinema is currently undergoing a fundamental transformation: ‘We’re on the threshold of a moment in cinematic history that is unparalleled. Anything you imagine can be done. If you can draw it, if you can describe it, we can do it. It’s just a matter of cost’. 25 While this claim is true at one level — many tricky tasks such as depicting skin, hair and water, or integrating CGI elements into live action images shot with a hand-held camera, have now been accomplished successfully — it is worth remembering that ‘realism’ is a notoriously slippery goal, whether achieved via crayon, camera or computer.

Dennis Muren’s comments on his path-breaking effects for Jurassic Park (which in fact had only 5 to 6 minutes of CGI and relied heavily on models and miniatures, as did more recent ‘state of the art’ blockbusters such as The Fifth Element, 1997 and Dark City, 1998) bear repeating: ‘Maybe we’ll look back in 10 years and notice that we left things out that we didn’t know needed to be there until we developed the next version of this technology’. Muren adds: In the Star Wars films you saw lots of X-wings fighters blow up, but these were always little models shot with high-speed cameras. You’ve never seen a real X-wing blow up, but by using CGI, you might just suddenly see what looks like a full-sized X-wing explode. It would be all fake of course, but you’d see the structure inside tearing apart, the physics of this piece blowing off that piece. Then you might look back at Star Wars and say, ‘That looks terrible’. 26Clearly, George Lucas shared this sentiment, acknowledging in 1997 that ‘I’m still bugged by things I couldn’t do or couldn’t get right, and now I can fix them’. 27 The massive returns generated by the ‘digitally enhanced’ Star Wars trilogy raises the prospect of a future in which blockbuster movies are not re-made with new casts, but perpetually updated with new generations of special effects.

Stop the sun, I want to get off Putting aside the still looming question of digital projection, the bottom line in the contemporary use of digital technology in cinema is undoubtedly ‘control’: 12 particularly the increased control that film makers have over all the different components of image and sound tracks.Depending on a film’s budget, the story no longer has to work around scenes which might be hard to set up physically or reproduce photo-optically— they are all grist to the legions of screen jockeys working in digital post-production houses. George Lucas extols the new technology for enhancing the ability to realise directorial vision: I think cinematographers would love to have ultimate control over the lighting; they’d like to be able to say, ‘OK, I want the sun to stop there on the horizon and stay there for about six hours, and I want all of those clouds to go away. Everybody wants that kind of control over the image and the storytelling process. Digital technology is just the ultimate version of that. 28A direct result of digital imaging and compositing techniques has been an explosion of films which, instead of ‘fudging’ the impossible, revel in the capacity to depict it with gripping ‘realism’: Tom Cruise’s face can be ripped apart in real time (Interview with the Vampire, 1994), the Whitehouse can be incinerated by a fireball from above (Independence Day, 1996), New York can be drowned by a tidal wave, or smashed by a giant lizard(Deep Impact, Godzilla, 1998). But, despite Lucas’ enthusiasm, many are dubious about where the new primacy of special effects leaves narrative in cinema.

The argument put forward by those such as Sean Cubitt and Scott Bukatman is that contemporary special effects tend to displace narrative insofar as they introduce a disjunctive temporality evocative of the sublime.Focusing on Doug Trumbull’s work, Bukatman emphasises the contemplative relationship established between spectator and screen in key effects scenes (a relationship frequently mirrored by on-screen characters displaying their awe at what they– and ‘we’ – are seeing. )29 Cubitt suggests that similar ‘fetishistic’ moments occur in songs such as Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend, where narrative progress gives way to visual fascination. His example is drawn from a strikingly similar terrain to that which inspired Laura Mulvey’s well-known thesis on the tension between voyeurism and scopophilia in classical narrative cinema: Mainstream film neatly combined spectacle and narrative. (Note, however, in the musical song-and-dance numbers break the flow of the diegesis).The presence of woman is an indispensable element of spectacle in normal narrative film, yet her visual presence tends to work against the development of a story line, to freeze the flow of action in moments of erotic contemplation. 30 13 This connection was also made by Tom Gunning in his work on the early ‘cinema of attraction’: ‘As Laura Mulvey has shown in a very different context, the dialectic between spectacle and narrative has fueled much of the classical cinema’.

31 In this respect, a key point to draw from both Mulvey and Gunning is to recognise that they don’t conceive the relationship between spectacle and narrative in terms of opposition but dialectical tension. 32 This is something that other writers have sometimes forgotten.Presenting the issue in terms of an opposition (spectacle versus narrative) in fact recycles positions which have been consistently articulated (and regularly reversed) throughout the century. In the 1920s, avant-garde film makers railed against ‘narrative’ because it was associated primarily with literary and theatrical scenarios at the expense of cinematic qualities (Gunning begins his ‘Cinema of Attraction’ essay with just such a quote from Fernand Leger). Similar concerns emerged with debates in France over auteur theory in the 1950s, where the literary qualities of script were opposed to the ‘properly cinematic’ qualities of mise-en-scene.In the 1970s, the ‘refusal of narrative’ which characterised much Screen theory of the period, took on radical political connotations. Perhaps as a reaction to the extremity of pronouncements by those such as Peter Gidal, there has been a widespread restoration of narrative qualities as a filmic ‘good object’ in the present.

However, rather than attempting to resolve this split in favour of one side or the other, the more salient need is to examine their irreducible intertwining: what sort of stories are being told, and what sort of spectacles are being deployed in their telling? While it is easy to lament the quality of story-telling in contemporary blockbusters, few critics seriously maintain that such films are without narrative.A more productive framework is to analyse why explicitly ‘mythological’ films such as the Star Wars cycle have been able to grip popular imagination at this particular historical conjuncture, marrying the bare bones of fairy-tale narrative structures to the inculcation of a specific type of special effects driven viewing experience. (To some extent, ths is Bukatman’s approach in his analysis of special effects). In this context, it is also worth remembering that, despite the quite profound transformations set in train by the use of digital technology in film making, there has thus far been little discernible effect on narrative in terms of structure or genre. The flirtation with ‘non-linear’ and ‘interactive’ films was a shooting star which came and went with the CD-ROM, while most contemporary blockbusters conform smoothly to established cine-genres (sci-fi, horror, disaster and action- 14 dventure predominating), with a significant number being direct re-makes of older films done ‘better’ in the digital domain. One of the more interesting observations about possible trends in the industry is put forward by James Cameron, who has argued that digital technology has the potential to free film makers from the constraints of the ‘A’ and ‘B’ picture hierarchy: [I]n the ’40s you either had a movie star or you had a B-movie. Now you can create an A-level movie with some kind of visual spectacle, where you cast good actors, but you don’t need an Arnold or a Sly or a Bruce or a Kevin to make it a viable film.

33 However, Cameron himself throws doubt on the extent of this ‘liberation’ by underlining the industrial nature of digital film production. 4 In practice, any film with the budget to produce a large number of cutting edge special effects shots is inevitably sold around star participation, as well as spectacle (as were films such as The Robe, 1953 and Ben Hur, 1926). This point about the intertwining of narrative and spectacle is re-inforced if we look at developments in large-format film, an area frequently singled out for its over-dependence on screen spectacle to compensate for notoriously boring ‘educational’ narrative formats. Large-format (LF) cinema is currently in the throes of a significant transformation The number of screens worldwide has exploded in the last four years (between 1995 and January 1999, the global LF circuit grew from 165 to 263 theatres. By January 2001, another 101 theatres are due to open, taking the total to 364, an increase of 120% in 6 years).More significantly, the majority of new screens are being run by commercial operators rather than institutions such as science museums. These new exhibition opportunities, coupled to the box-office returns generated by films such as Everest (the 15th highest grossing film in the USA in 1998, despite appearing on only 32 screens) has created significant momentum in the sector for the production of LF films capable of attracting broader audiences.

For some producers, this means attempting to transfer the narrative devices of dramatic feature films onto the giant screen, while others argue that the peculiarities of the medium means that LF needs to stick with its proven documentary subjects.However, most significantly in this context, none dispute the need for the sector to develop better narrative techniques if it is to grow and prosper, particularly by 15 attracting ‘repeat’ audiences. In many respects, the LF sector is currently in a similar position to cinema in the 1900s, with people going to see the apparatus rather than a specific film, and the ‘experience’ being advertised largely on this basis. While it would be simplistic to see current attempts to improve the narrative credentials of LF films as a faithful repetition of the path that 35mm cinema took earlier this century, since most production is likely to remain documentary-oriented, it would be equally as foolish to ignore the cultural and commercial imperatives which still converge around telling a ‘good story’. 5 Distraction and the politics of spectacle Despite the current rash of digitally-inspired predictions, narrative in film is unlikely to succumb to technological obsolescence. But nor will spectacle be vanquished by a miraculous resurgence of ‘quality’ stories. A corollary of a dialectical conception of the interrelationship between narrative and spectacle is that neither should be seen simply as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ objects in themselves.

For Mulvey, spectacle (exemplified by close-ups which turn woman’s face and body into a fetish), as well as the more voyeuristic strategy of narrative, were both attuned to the anxious imagination of patriarchal culture in classical cinema.Both were techniques for negotiating the threat of castration raised by the image of woman, an image classical cinema simultaneously desired and sought to circumscribe or punish. Nevertheless, even within this heavily constrained context, ‘spectacle’ could also assume a radical function by ‘interrupting’ the smooth functioning of narrative, disturbing the rules of identification and the systematic organisation of the look within the text. (This is the gist of her comparison between the films of von Sternberg, which privilege a fetish image of Dietrich over narrative progress, and those of Hitchcock which more closely align the viewer with the male protagonist). Can spectacle still exert a ‘progressive’ function in contemporary cinema?While most critics answer this question negatively without even posing it, Paul Young is unusual in granting a measure of radical effect to the renewed primacy of spectacle. Young draws on Miriam Hansen’s account of the ‘productive ambiguity’ of early cinema, in which the lack of standardised modes of exhibition, coupled to reliance on individual attractions, gave audiences a relative freedom to interpret what they saw, and established cinema as (potentially) an alternative public sphere. He takes this as support for his argument that contemporary ‘spectacle’ cinema constitutes an emergent challenge to ‘Hollywood’s institutional identity’.

36 16 Young’s analysis contrasts markedly with Gunning’s earlier description of the ‘cinema of effects’ as ‘tamed attractions’. 7 Nevertheless both share some common ground: Young’s reference to the ‘productive ambiguity’ of early cinema, like Gunning’s rather oblique and undeveloped reference to the ‘primal power’ of attraction, draws nourishment from Siegfried Kracauer’s early writings on the concept of distraction. In the 1920s, Kracauer set up ‘distraction’ as a counterpoint to contemplation as a privileged mode of audience reception, seeing it as embodying a challenge to bourgeois taste for literary-theatrical narrative forms, and also as the most compelling mode of presentation to the cinema audience of their own disjointed and fragmented conditions of existence. 38 While distraction persisted as a category used by Walter Benjamin in his ‘Artwork’ essay of the mid1930s, by the 1940s Kracauer seemed to have revised his position.As Elsaesser has pointed out, this re-appraisal was at least partly a re-assessment of the ‘productive ambiguity’ which had characterised social spaces such as cinema; by the 1940s distraction and spectacle had been consolidated into socially dominant forms epitomised by Hollywood on the one hand and fascism on the other. 39 If Kracauer’s faith that the 1920s audience could symptomatically encounter ‘its own reality’ via the superficial glamour of movie stars rather than the putative substance of the era’s ‘high culture’ was already shaken by the 1940s, what would he make of the post-pop art, postmodern 1990s? The extent to which surface elements of popular culture have been esthetically ‘legitimated’ without any significant transformation of corresponding political and economic values suggests the enormous difficulties facing those trying to utilise spectacle as a ‘progressive’ element in contemporary culture. However, it is equally important to acknowledge that this problem cannot be resolved simply by appealing to ‘narrative’ as an antidote.

While the terms remain so monolithic, the debate will not progress beyond generalities. In this respect, Kracauer’s work still offers some important lessons to consider in the present. Here, by way of conclusion, I want to sketch out a few possible lines of inquiry. On the one hand, his concept of the ‘mass ornament’ indicates that any turn, or return, to spectacle in cinema needs to be situated in a wider social context. 0 Spectacle is not simply a matter of screen image, but constitutes a social relation indexed by the screen (something Guy Debord underlined in the 1960s). Developments in contemporary cinema need to be related to a number of other trajectories, including cinema’s on-going endeavours to distinguish its ‘experience’ 17 from that of home entertainment, as well as the proliferation of spectacle in social arenas as diverse as sport (the Olympic games), politics (the dominance of the cult of personality in all political systems) and war (the proto-typical ‘media-event’). On the other hand, the specific forms of spectacle mobilised in contemporary cinema need to be examined for the extent to which they might reveal (in Kracauer’s terms) the ‘underlying meaning of existing conditions’.

Kracauer’s analysis of cinema in the 1920s situated the popularity of a certain structure of viewing experience in relation to the rise of a new class (the white collar worker). In contemporary terms, I would argue that the relevant transformation is the process of ‘globalisation’. While this is a complex, heterogeneous and uneven phenomenon, a relevant aspect to consider here is Hollywood’s increasing reliance on overseas markets, both for revenue, and, more importantly, for growth. 41 In this context, the growing imperative for films to ‘translate’ easily to all corners and cultures of the world is answered by building films around spectacular action setpieces. Equally as ignificantly, the predominant themes of recent special effects cinema— the destruction of the city and the mutation or dismemberment of the human body — are symptomatic of the underlying tensions of globalisation, tensions exemplified by widespread ambivalence towards the socio-political effects of speed and the new spatio-temporal matrices such as cyberspace. 42 The most important cinematic manifestations of these anxious fascinations are not realised at the level of narrative ‘content’ (although they occasionally make themselves felt there), but appear symptomatically in the structure of contemporary viewing experience. The repetition of awe and astonishment repeatedly evoked by ‘impossible’ images as the currency of today’s ‘cutting edge’ cinema undoubtedly functions to prepare us for the uncertain pleasures of living in a world we suspect we will soon no longer recognise: it is not simply ‘realism’ but ‘reality’ which is mutating in the era of digital economy and the Human Genome Project.

If this turn to spectacle is, in some respects, comparable to the role played by early cinema in negotiating the new social spaces which emerged in the industrial city remade by factories and department stores, electrification and dynamic vehicles, it also underscores the fact that the ‘death’ of camera realism in the late twentieth century is a complex psycho-social process, not least because photo-realism was always less an aesthetic function than a deeply embedded social and political relation. 43 18 Finally, I would argue that it is important not to subsume all these filmic headings under the single rubric of ‘digital’. There is a need to acknowledge, firstly, that digital technology is used far more widely in the film industry than for the production of blockbusters and special effects (for example, it is the new industry standard in areas such as sound production and picture editing).Moreover, as Elsaesser has argued recently, technology is not the driving force: ‘In each case, digitisation is ‘somewhere’, but it is not what regulates the system, whose logic is commercial, entrepreneurial and capitalist-industrialist’44 What the digital threshold has enabled is the realignment of cinema in conformity with new demands, such as ‘blockbuster’ marketing blitzes constructed around a few spectacular image sequences of the kind that propelled Independence Day to an US$800m gross. It has rejuvenated cinema’s capacity to set aesthetic agendas, and, at the same time, restored its status as a key player in contemporary political economy. In this context, one aspect of the digital threshold deserves further attention. In the 1990s, product merchandising has become an increasingly important part of financing the globalised film industry.

While some would date this from Star Wars, Jurassic Park offers a more relevant point of reference: for the first time, audiences could see on screen, as an integral part of the filmic diegesis, the same commodities they could purchase in the cinema foyer. As Lucie Fjeldstad (then head of IBM’s multimedia division) remarked at the time (1993) : ‘Digital content is a return-on-assets goldmine, because once you create Terminator 3, the character, it can be used in movies, in theme-park rides, videogames, books, educational products’. 45 Digital convergence is enacted not simply in the journey from large screen to small screen: the same parameters used in designing CG characters for a film can easily be transmitted to off-shore factories manufacturing plastic toys.