‘Not the obstacle but the means’: Film history and the postmodern challenge

Abstract

This article consists of two main parts. The first part provides a brief summary of the historico-philosophical debate between so-called modernist and postmodernist historians, before moving on to an investigation of how film historians have responded to the challenge posed by postmodern historiography. As it turns out, they have very rarely taken into account the epistemological issues raised by postmodern historians, possibly because the field of film history for so long was rather out of sync with most other kinds of history, relying as it did on anecdotal accounts of heroic individuals. Only after turning to methodical, archive-based research in the early 1980s could postmodern historiography become an issue, for presumably there has to be a body of accumulated knowledge to critique and be reflexive about in the first place. The second part of the article considers the possible practical consequences of postmodern historiography by looking at two competing accounts of the transition in American cinema in the late 1970s and early 1980s from the Hollywood renaissance to the blockbuster era. The two accounts are not postmodern, but I hope to suggest a different epistemological ideal from which to consider them that might be thought of as postmodern.