Shivers Down Your Spine: Cinema, Museums and the Immersive View

Abstract

Among the books at the intersection of cultural studies, media studies and arts theory, some can also be usefully applied in the field of film studies. These works generally address the interrelation between the spectator gaze, the device regulating this gaze, and the various modes of representation resulting from this particular interaction. Foremost among these books, both European and American, published in the last thirty years are Wolfgang Schivelbusch's Geschichte der Eisenbahnreise, Max Milner's La Fantasmagorie and Jonathan Crary's Techniques of the Observer.1 Alison Griffiths's Shivers Down Your Spine can now be added to this list. In this review of Griffiths's book, commentary on the nature of cinema – a medium that mummifies and embalms time – within an exhaustive study of the history of museums and museology (specifically the museology of scientific exhibitions) may clarify such previously hazy concepts as immersion and interactivity. In her book, Griffiths recounts how in 1799 a spectator saw a panorama exhibition which he described as having sent ‘shivers’ down his spine. Thus, despite the current hype surrounding the concepts of ‘immersion’ and ‘interactivity’ informed by their presumed novelty, it would seem that immersive modes of spectatorship are far from new. Choosing the panorama spectator's experience as the title for her book, Griffiths argues that the concepts of immersion and interactivity are older than some might think, being associated, among other things, with museums, panoramas and mediaeval cathedrals, ‘antecedents for today's so-called immersive and interactive new media’ (p. 4). However, another important factor common to these environments is their size. The size of the universe which is created through a particular visual representation plays a key role in the emotional response of the spectator: in other words, size can inform the quality of our shivers. As Jean-Luc Godard said, ‘When we go to the movies, we raise our head. When we watch television, we lower it.’ When we are looking up at the sky, we may be more likely to be swept away by what we observe.