Of dogs and hot dogs: distractions in early cinema

Abstract

In Electric Animal, Akira Mizuta Lippit argues that when animals, understood in traditional Western thought as lacking language, become images on film, they are turned into languages or semiotic facilities. Inspired by Lippit’s claim, this study poses four interrelated questions. First, is Lippit referring to the animal in general or to specific kinds of animals? Second, how does cinema enact the process of signification? Third, are animals as filmic elements necessarily turned into signs? Finally, what does it mean for animals to be transformed into signs? I address these questions by tracing the appearances and functions of dogs in early cinema in relation to Tom Gunning’s paradigmatic account of early cinema as a medium of attractions. Certain dogs in film, I argue, function as distractions that disrupt viewers’ absorption into either attractions or narratives and push them into reconsidering the status of the image in relation to their own viewing positions.