The Life of a Film: Medianatures, Camphor, and the Ideology of Technological Modernity

Abstract

By analyzing the discourse of film trade journals from the early twentieth century on "the life of a film" and examining newsreel footage of camphor extraction in Formosa (now Taiwan), this article argues that the value of film as media has been overdetermined by the ideology of scientism and monopoly capitalism, or what might be called technological modernity. Technological modernity understands media such as film in a way that produces a separation between nature and culture while also creating global processes of racialization or dehumanization. I use the term medianatures as a way to connect these severed threads so that it's possible to be more attentive to the various everydays involved in the production of film, from camphor workers in Formosa to factory workers in New Jersey and even to camphor trees themselves.