Narrative Machines, or, from ‘Bottom to Top’

Abstract

There is a certain tendency in the contemporaryhistoriography of early film studies to construe mo-dernity as a model for the textual analysis of spe-cific, isolated moments in film history. Furthermore,film history – and other media histories – is usuallystudied and written within the academic boundariesof different departments. We are given the historyof media according to media and communications,film studies, art history, literature and so on. Veryseldom are we offered a perspective founded on aninterdisciplinary or comparative approach.Therefore, I will both criticise some trends inearly film historiography and argue in favour of theimportance – and necessity – of employing a histo-rico-dialectical and comparative analysis. I supportmy argument and discussion by comparing theparadigmatic interpretations of “modernity vs.early film” and the Finnish discourses on early filmin the 1920s and the early novel in the 1850s.