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Abstract
With the advent of online distribution and the rise of multiple media devices, claims of the cinema’s imminent death have surfaced with greater intensity than ever before. Of course, with an ever-widening array of platforms these accounts have placed a newfound emphasis on the cinema as a distinctive physical space, one that plays host to a very particular and much cherished cultural activity. This article considers the substance of these claims by tracing a very particular historical route. Firstly, be revisiting Baudry’s notion of the dispositif, this article detects the importance of the physical environment in the process of film consumption. Secondly, I relate this emphasis on the physical to the traditional notion of the cinephile, a practice that ritualises the cinema experience. Many accounts across the spectrum of film history will attest to the profound ways in which the physical experience of the cinema summons a rich emotional response. Lastly, I consider how the cinema and the collective nature of film consumption provides an authentic trace to the past and a very certain time and place in history. In turn, despite competition from cheaper and more convenient platforms, this article will endeavour to show how the cinema retains its place at the centre of contemporary film culture. KEYWORDS Cinema, dispositif, cinephilia, cultural memory.
Highlights
In certain respects, film has always faced an uncertain future
This article has endeavoured to show how the cinema retains its centrality within the cinephile community despite an ever-growing range of platforms jostling for consumer attention
Scanning the history of cinema spectatorship we can detect a number of deeply profound encounters with the ‘big screen’, all united by their strong emotional connection to the cinema
Summary
Film has always faced an uncertain future. From Antoine Lumière to JeanLuc Godard, the medium’s imminent death has been an ever-present feature of film’s rich history. with the advent of online distribution and the rapid rise of multiple media devices, this apparent death has grown stronger in voice, but has taken on new form. From Plato’s cave to the cinema, Baudry’s notion of the dispositif imposes a dominant model of spectatorship; one, as already established, that is based on the darkness of the theatre, the enormity of the screen, the concealment of the projector and the spectator’s passive position between the two As many, such as Vance Kepley Jr. have stated, the traditional notion of the dispositif has overlooked the ways in which models and methods of spectatorship have altered over time (1996, 536). From Maxim Gorky in 1896 to Susan Sontag a century later, these encounters (to be discussed shortly) articulate a profound fascination, one that it is firmly rooted in the dispositif and their investment in the dynamic between the darkness, the screen and their bodily position In this sense, despite the numerous advancements that have altered the means of motion picture presentation, we can see how the fundamental conditions that embody the cinema experience (the darkness, the screen, the audience) have remained largely in place since the late nineteenth century. We can see how accounts from the past and the traditional practice of cinephilia articulate this desire for the physical
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