The Politics of Film Canons

Abstract

Canon formation in film, as in any other area, can be located in a variety of projects. In film criticism, whether popular or academic, some films will be chosen for extensive discussion and analysis; others will be ignored. In theoretical writing, arguments are buttressed by films cited as examples of points. In histories, films are marked as worth mentioning for one reason or another (e.g., influence, aesthetic significance, typicality). This occurs not only for historiographical reasons (every causal explanation invariably privileges particular linkages or conjunctions), but for practical reasons as well: a history including every film would be trapped by the Tristam Shandy contradiction of constantly losing ground to the increasing number of films added daily to the list of those to be covered.' Even filmmakers are involved in canon formation. Those films chosen to be reworked, alluded to, satirized, become privileged points of reference, pulled out from the rest of cinema's predecessors.2 As ideal fathers, these select films are given homage or rebelled against. That canons exist in film studies and that canon formation is involved with the political sphere is evident.3 Much less evident is the shifting politics, past and present, of the factors contributing to canon formation. In attempting to identify and characterize some of these factors, as well as the limitations they impose on our understanding of cinema, I will consider which films our critics, theorists, historians, and filmmakers have chosen for study and why certain shifts have occurred in our canon even over the short period of cinema's existence-now only ninety years. In addition, I will be suggesting that escape from canon formation will be difficult to achieve. Competition in academics and the film industry reinforces canons and canon-making. However, my project is not to encourage a stance of relativity or political pluralism upon recognizing that all canonical projects are tied into a political activity but rather to make those politics self-evident, to find the political centers of particular enterprises. For even in revising and decentering dominant canons, new centers appear. My hope is to encourage as knowledgeable, humane, and progressive a choice as possible among the various politics.4