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21L.015 INTRODUCTION TO MEDIA STUDIES

 

WORLDS OF WONDER: THE CINEMA OF ATTRACTIONS

24 April 1997

Martin Roberts

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1. INTRODUCTION

CLIP: Lumière bros., Arrivée d'un train en gare de La Ciotat (1895)

QUOTE: Gunning, "Aesthetic," 118.

Gunning's argument = a displacement of MYTH by HISTORY

"Aesthetic" 129: "Placed within a historical context and tradition, the first spectators' experience reveals not a childlike belief, but an undisguised awareness (and delight in) film's illusionistic capabilities."

- debunking the myth of credulous audience mistaking representation for reality > audience were astonished by the animation of the still image, the illusion of motion

• This image doesn't astonish us at all today
  • - we neither mistake representation for reality nor are amazed at the still image coming to life
  • - technology has lost its "magic"
• This fact points to a problem with Gunning's historical argument: doesn't include any account of how "astonishment" may change over time, and how the "threshold of astonishment" clearly does change
• Leads to question: what DOES astonish us today? What is OUR cinema of attractions?

CONTINUITIES

• Panoramas: Letter From an Unknown Woman (simulated travel)
• Vaudeville: until 1905 cinema was shown primarily in the context of vaudeville (Gunning, "Cinema of Attractions" 60)

OVERVIEW

• The term "cinema of attractions" itself (Linda Williams quote)
• The word "attraction": Fr. parc d'attractions > amusement park
• ORIGINS of cinema in the notion of attractions: amusement parks (Coney Island) > world's fairs and the Midway > exhibitions of P.T. Barnum > carnival

CLIP: Coney Island

• I won't be providing a historical overview of antecedents and descendants, but exploring two theoretical questions relating to the cinema of attractions: what exactly WAS the attraction; and the problematic relationship between immersion and spectacle
• > PROBLEMS inherent in Gunning's concept:
• "the cinema of attractions stands at the antipode to the experiences Michael Freed, in his discussion of eighteenth-century painting, calls absorption" (123)
• "the very aesthetic of attraction runs counter to illusionistic absorption" (127)

IF WHAT GUNNING SAYS IS TRUE HERE, THERE WOULDN'T *BE* AN ATTRACTION

2. WHAT EXACTLY WAS THE "ATTRACTION"?

CREDULITY vs. INCREDULITY

• Credulity: naive, even gullible belief in the reality of something (e.g., that the film image of the train coming at you is a real train).
• Incredulity: NOT THE OPPOSITE OF CREDULITY: NOT DISBELIEF. Actually revolves around a CONTRADICTION between KNOWLEDGE AND PERCEPTION, knowing and seeing, consciousness and the senses, mind and body
• you KNOW something isn't true, can't be real, etc. and yet it SEEMS real: "I can't believe it"
• ALSO: the BODY responds as if it were real--reflexes of faster pulse rate, sweating, etc.
• this is the basis of the pleasure of illusionism/magic > we KNOW it can't be possible/true/real, and yet it SEEMS to be

QUOTE: Gunning, "Aesthetic" 117: "Méliès's theater... only illusions."

• there's a whole history of popular entertainment which revolves around this dialectic between simultaneously believing and disbelieving, "the suspension of disbelief":
• the theater
• the novel
• trompe-l'oeil painting
• Ripley's "Believe it or Not" museums

The pleasure derived from the hesitation between belief and disbelief, danger and safety > the TECHNOLOGICAL SUBLIME

3. FROM ATTRACTIONS TO SPECIAL EFFECTS

Gunning: "What happened to the cinema of attractions?" ("Cinema," 60) > what DOES astonish us today?

• morphing: T2, Michael Jackson morphing into a panther; (poss. show Mona Lisa)
• "the Spielberg-Lucas-Coppola cinema of effects" ("Cinema," 61).

CLIP: Universal Studios's Earthquake simulator

> STAGED CATASTROPHE: Casson, Amusing the Million 71-72.

CONCLUSION: THE CULTURE OF DISTRACTION

Why do we want distraction?

• Gorky: the need for thrills in an increasingly industrialized urban society
• Benjamin: impoverishment of experience in modern life
• QUOTE: Gunning: "attractions are a response to an experience of alientation" ("Aesthetic" 126--read as final quote)

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mroberts@mit.edu