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University of Texas Press
Society for Cinema & Media Studies
Woof, Warp, History
Author(s): Lee Grieveson
Source: Cinema Journal, Vol. 44, No. 1 (Autumn, 2004), pp. 119-126
Published by: University of Texas Press on behalf of the Society for Cinema & Media Studies
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Cinema Journal.
http://www.jstor.org
andthe
Study
of
Early
American
Cinema,"
Wide
Angle
5,
no.
3
(1983):5,
in which
they
mentionnot
only
the
emphasis
on "firsts"
but
the
organiza-
tion of historicalaccountsthatfollowthe "decisive"actionsof individualswho then
influenceoutcomes.
18. Paolo
Cherchi-Usai,
"The
Philosophy
of Film
History,"
Film
History
6
(1994):
4.
19. See
Jane
Gaines,
"First
Fictions,"
Signs:Journalof
Women
no. 1
(forthcoming).
20. Gunnar
Iverson,
"Sistersof Cinema:Three
Norwegian
ActorsandTheir
GermanCom-
pany,
1917-1920,"
in
John
Fullertonand
Jan
Olsson,eds.,
Nordic
Explorations:
Film
before
1930
(Sydney:JohnLibbey
&
Co., 1999),
93-101.
21. See
AngelMiquel,
Mimi
Derba,
and PatriciaTorresSan
Martin,
"Introduccion,"
in Cultureand
Society
30,
in
Mujeresy
cine en AmericaLatina
(Guadalajara:
CentroUniversitariode Ciencias
Sociales
y
Humanidades).
22.
Randolph
Bartlett,
"Petrova-Prophetess,"
in
1917,
Petrovahadrolesin
severalAlice
Guy
Blachefilms.
23.
Among
the
productivesuggestions
asto howto inventnewhistorical
approaches
are
Barbara
Klinger's
Photoplay
December
17,
1917,
27. Before
self-reflexive
activity."
Klinger,
"Film
History,
TerminableandInterminable:
Recovering
the
Past
in
Recep-
tion
Studies,"
Screen
38,
no. 2
(1997):
12.
Woof,
Warp,History
by
Lee Grieveson
Late in
1908,
a court case
raised the
question
of the role of film as historical ex-
pression.
In
challenging
the
legality
of a
judgment against exhibiting
The
James
Boys
in Missouri and
Night
Riders under the terms of the
Chicago
Censor Ordi-
nance of
1907,
exhibitor
Jake
Block
made what was taken as a rather
surprising
claim:the
films,
he
asserted,
were based on the "Americanhistorical
experience"
and thus could not be
challenged
on the
grounds
of
immorality
and
obscenity
inscribed in the
ordinance.'
The
lawyers
for Block
made a
complicated conceptual
move here:
they sought
to blur the
porous
borders
separating
fiction from
history
so that films would be included in the
category
of
history,
which,
as
nonfictional
discourse, was,
it was
claimed,
divorced from
the
category
of the immoral.
The
arguments
held little
sway
in the Illinois
Supreme
Court,
where Chief
Justice
James
H.
Cartwright
observed that even if the films
depicted "experiences
connected
with
the
history
of the
country,"
it did not follow that
they
were "not
immoral"since
they "necessarily
portray
exhibitionsof crime"
and,
crucially,
do so
to
audiences made
up
largely
of children "aswell as
by
those of limited means who
do
not attend the
productions
of
plays
and dramas
given
in the
regular
theatres."2
Cartwright
made a
straightforward
distinction between film and
history,evidently
Cinema
Journal 44,
No.
1,
Fall 2004
119
andthe
Study
of
Early
American
Cinema,"
Wide
Angle
5,
no.
3
(1983):5,
in which
they
mentionnot
only
the
emphasis
on "firsts"
but
the
organiza-
tion of historicalaccountsthatfollowthe "decisive"actionsof individualswho then
influenceoutcomes.
18. Paolo
Cherchi-Usai,
"The
Philosophy
of Film
History,"
Film
History
6
(1994):
4.
19. See
Jane
Gaines,
"First
Fictions,"
Signs:Journalof
Women
"Linearity,
Materialism,
"Linearity,
Materialism,
in Cultureand
Society
30,
no. 1
(forthcoming).
20. Gunnar
Iverson,
"Sistersof Cinema:Three
Norwegian
ActorsandTheir
GermanCom-
pany,
1917-1920,"
in
John
Fullertonand
Jan
Olsson,eds.,
Nordic
Explorations:
Film
before
1930
(Sydney:JohnLibbey
&
Co., 1999),
93-101.
21. See
AngelMiquel,
Mimi
Derba,
and PatriciaTorresSan
Martin,
"Introduccion,"
in
Mujeresy
cine en AmericaLatina
(Guadalajara:
CentroUniversitariode Ciencias
Sociales
y
Humanidades).
22.
Randolph
Bartlett,
"Petrova-Prophetess,"
Photoplay
December
17,
1917,
27. Before
in
1917,
Petrovahadrolesin
severalAlice
Guy
Blachefilms.
23.
Among
the
productivesuggestions
asto howto inventnewhistorical
approaches
are
Barbara
Klinger's
starting
herown
company
starting
herown
company
self-reflexive
activity."
Klinger,
"Film
History,
TerminableandInterminable:
Recovering
referenceto historical
writing
as"a
vigorously
referenceto historical
writing
as"a
vigorously
the
Past
in
Recep-
tion
Studies,"
Screen
38,
no. 2
(1997):
12.
Woof,
Warp,History
by
Lee Grieveson
Late in
1908,
a court case
raised the
question
of the role of film as historical ex-
pression.
In
challenging
the
legality
of a
judgment against exhibiting
The
James
Boys
in Missouri and
Night
Riders under the terms of the
Chicago
Censor Ordi-
nance of
1907,
exhibitor
Jake
Block
made what was taken as a rather
surprising
claim:the
films,
he
asserted,
were based on the "Americanhistorical
experience"
and thus could not be
challenged
on the
grounds
of
immorality
and
obscenity
inscribed in the
ordinance.'
The
lawyers
for Block
made a
complicated conceptual
move here:
they sought
to blur the
porous
borders
separating
fiction from
history
so that films would be included in the
category
of
history,
which,
as
nonfictional
discourse, was,
it was
claimed,
divorced from
the
category
of the immoral.
The
arguments
held little
sway
in the Illinois
Supreme
Court,
where Chief
Justice
James
H.
Cartwright
observed that even if the films
depicted "experiences
connected
with
the
history
of the
country,"
it did not follow that
they
were "not
immoral"since
they "necessarily
portray
exhibitionsof crime"
and,
crucially,
do so
to
audiences made
up
largely
of children "aswell as
by
those of limited means who
do
not attend the
productions
of
plays
and dramas
given
in the
regular
theatres."2
Cartwright
made a
straightforward
distinction between film and
history,evidently
untroubled
by
conceptual correspondences
between
historiography
and the mass-
distributed media of indexical
imagining.3
In so
doing,
he was
motivated,
in
part,
by
anxietiesabout the constructionof
history
for those
groups
rather
enigmatically
described as of "limited
means,"
a
categorycovering
economics/class and the
per-
ceived limited cultural"means"of the
immigrantpopulations
of
Chicago.
Later
legal
decisions
effectively
deferred to
Cartwright'sconceptual
distinc-
tion,
most
notably
in
1915,
when the
Supreme
Court denied cinema the constitu-
tional
guarantees
of free
speech
and thus
effectively
cast
it
outside
the
sphere
of
public
discussion that
encompassed
such nonfictional discourse as the
press
and,
although precariously,
"artistic"fiction that had a licensed role of cultural
nega-
tion.4
A
cartoon
in D.
W. Griffith's
pamphlet
The Rise and Fall
of
Free
Speech,
produced
after the
struggles
over his own historical
fiction,
The Birth
of
a Nation
(1915)
responded
to this decision
by showing
a
globe
next to a
moving picture
camerathatwas
tugging
at a
length
of fabricwith the word
"History"
written on it.
The
globe
is
complaining,
"I can't
accept
this fabric-it's
nothing
but
warp!"
and
the
moving picture
camerais
responding, "Sorry,
sir!The censor took the woof!"5
Legal
decisions,
subtended
by regulatory
discourses and
practices,
and com-
bined with the
developing
commercial
practices
of the mainstream
film
industry,
constructed a discursive
identity
for cinema that centered on its distinction from
nonfictional
discourses,
referentiality,
and the realworld. Mainstreamcinema be-
came,
in
part
at
least,
a self-referential
space, purposively
disconnected from other
forms of discourse and from social relevance.
Woof,
as
history
and the
world,
was
ostensibly
cast aside.
Yet this
process
of
delimiting
mainstreamcinema's
place
in
the
public sphere
was a
consequence,
in the
main,
of
political
interventions into the social function
of cinema. The
policing
of
populations
and of the
public sphere by
various
agents,
groups,
and institutions led to the restriction
of commercial cinema's role in the
public sphere,
that
"metatopical
common
space"
in which membersof
society
meet
through
a
variety
of media and discuss matters of common interest.6 Anxieties
about cinema'seffects on audiences and its
place
in
the
public sphere,
like
those
Cartwrightexpressed,
were
widely
articulated,
subtended
by
broadconcerns about
the
governance
of
populations.
Woof,
then,
necessarily
created the
warp
that was
mainstream
American
cinema. Put another
way,government
discourses and
prac-
tices delineated and delimited the
possible
social function of
cinema,
marking
a
terrainoutside the
public sphere
as
metatopical
common
space
connected to ideas
of"harmlessentertainment."I believe this
process
was a crucial
generative
mecha-
nism in the formationof what we call "classical
Hollywood
cinema."7
This
argumentsuggests
a revisionto the now-canonical
conception
of the for-
mation of
classicism,
which,
in
turn,
is
predicated
on a different
emphasis
in his-
torical
writing
on cinema. I will startwith the local
question
of the forces
shaping
classical
Hollywood
cinema to drawout some
implications
for current
conceptions
of cinema
history, seeking ultimately
to
assay
some
thoughts
on the broad and
fundamental
question
of how we
conceptualize
the
pressures
and connections
between "contexts"and texts. In what is one of the crucialworks of so-called new
film
history,
The Classical
Hollywood
Cinema,
David
Bordwell,
Janet
Staiger,
and
120
CinemaJournal 44, No.
1,
Fall 2004
Kristin
Thompson
propose
that the
interdependency
of aesthetic and industrial
decisions
shaped
mainstreamAmericancinemainto a narrativeformbest
described
as classical.Aesthetic aims are "sustained
by"
and in turn
help
sustain "an
integral
mode of film
production,"
and this "modeof film
practice"
marksthe most "perti-
nent and
proximate
collective context"for
analyzing
mainstream
Hollywood.
At
crucial moments of
technological
transformation,
the authors
argue,
aesthetic de-
cisions took
precedence
over economic decisions in
determining
and
maintaining
the
form of classical
cinema; likewise,
moments
of
social transformationhad little
impact
on aesthetic norms.8In this
sense,
the authorsarticulatea nuanced formal-
ist
history,
a "historical
poetics,"
that
maintains,
in the last instance as it
were,
the
primacy
of
style
but that connects it to material
practices
in an
extraordinarily
detailed
way.
A critical
practice
of historical
poetics,
Bordwell has
proposed, "produces
knowledge
in answerto two broad
questions
about cinema:
(1)
What are the
prin-
ciples according
to which films are constructedand
by
means of which
they
achieve
particular
effects? and
(2)
How and
why
have these
principles
arisen and
changed
in
particularempirical
circumstances?"9In
proposing
these
questions,
the
project
of historical
poetics
takes leave of
interpretive
criticism and
theory,
putting
to one
side
questions
about what films mean and how
they
resonate with cultural con-
texts to instead describe and
explain
formal norms.10The broad
currency
of this
critical
project
and
historiographic
method
is,
of
course,
widely
visible
in
contem-
porary
cinema
studies,
underpinning important
and
justly
influential work
by
Bordwelland
Thompson,
in
particular,
and,
as a
consequence
of the
jointly
authored
textbooksFilm Art:An Introductionand Film
History:
An
Introduction,
having
an
impact
on
widely
shared
pedagogical practices.11
Let me
clarify
this
important
critical move
by returning
to the
question
of
Hollywood
classicism.The
conception
of the
generative
mechanismsin
play
in the
establishment and maintenance of mainstream American cinema as outlined in
Bordwell,
Staiger,
and
Thompson'sstudy
stood in contradistinctionto the
argu-
ment
that
ideology shapes
aesthetics,
which was central to
then-prevailing
con-
figurations
of film
theory
as
political
modernism.
Aside from the broad
arguments
about monocular
vision,
bourgeois subjectiv-
ity,
and the classic realist text that
proliferated
in the
post-1968
intellectual con-
text,
the
specific
focus for
Bordwell,
Staiger,
and
Thompson's
revision of ideas
about
Hollywood
classicismwas Noel Burch'saccount of what he termed the insti-
tutional mode of
representation
(IMR).
Burch had
argued
that the
potential
radi-
cal
heterogeneity
of
early
cinemawas foreclosed
by
conservativeforces-in a
word,
the
bourgeois-and
thus that the formation of the IMR was a
consequence
of
ideological pressures.12Thompson
and Bordwell took issue with Burch'saccount
prior
to
completing
The Classical
Hollywood
Cinema,
arguing
with some of the
historicaldetail in Burch's
work,but,
more
fundamentally,
with both the broadness
of this
ideology
and with the historical model of causation in Burch's
account.13
Instead,
advocates for a historical
poetics
of classicism
propose
that
ideological
pressures
are molded
by
the aesthetic norms that
precede
them. Yet if this is the
ultimate
endpoint
of the historical
poetics
of
classicism,
the
possibility
of the social
Cinema
Journal
44, No.
1,
Fall 2004 121
affecting textuality
is never
simply
denied but ratheris bracketed
off,
givingprior-
ity
to the examination
of formal norms and industrialformations as
"proximate"
contexts. For
example,
Bordwell states:
Toframeresearch
questions
aboutsuchformal
processes
as
style
is notto commitone-
selfto a beliefthatthe
ensuingexplanations
are
wholly
of a formalorder.Itis
perfectly
possible
to findthatthe formal
phenomena
we're
trying
to
explainproceed
fromcul-
tural,institutional,
orothersortsof
causes.l4
In
practice,
for
Bordwell,
as for
other formalist
scholars,
cultural causes are rel-
egated
in
importance
and the methods for
connecting
culture and aesthetics are
subject
to critical
scrutiny.
One
example
can
perhaps
stand as emblematic here. In
a
body
of recent work on
early
cinema,
scholars have
suggested
that the broad
cultural context of
modernity
influenced film form. Tom
Gunning,
for
example,
has
proposed
that the
aggressive viewer-confronting
address and discontinuous
structureof
early
film as
a
"cinemaof
attractions"can be connected to
large-scale
transformationsin
daily experience
and
sensory perception
and
perceptual
envi-
ronments in the era of urbanizationand modernization.15
In Bordwell's
critique
of what he terms the
"modernity
thesis,"
he
questions
the
possibility
of
historicizing
vision and
perception
and thus the connections be-
tween,
on the one
hand,
the
wide-ranging
transformationsin
society
characterized
as
"modernity"
and,
on the other
hand,
film texts.16
According
to
Bordwell,
these
connections are
vague,
unclear,
cannot be classified as
"empirical
circumstances,"
and thus
negate fine-grained analysis
of texts and textual transformation.Moder-
nity
scholars,
if
they might
be called
that,
have
responded
to this
critique, arguing,
among
other
things,
for the need to delineate
relationships
based on textualconti-
guity
and interaction in order to understandthe
significance
of films and cinema
within
larger
social and intertextual
contexts.17
What
seems to be at stake
in
the
dispute
about
modernity
and
early
cinema
is a broader
question
about the divisions and
possible
connections between for-
malist
historiography
and the
practices
of cultural
history.
I take this to be a
significant
issue for
contemporary
film studies
(and, indeed,
study
in
the hu-
manities more
generally).
What are the
possibilities
for a cultural
history
of cin-
ema that takesthe tenets and reservationsof historical
poetics seriously?
Likewise,
what are the
possibilities
for a historical
poetics
that takes
seriously
the aims
and
possibilities
of a cultural
history
of cinema? I want to
propose
a
necessarily
brief
answer
by turning initially
to
Gunning's
earlier work on
preclassical
cinema
and,
by way
of this
work,
once
again
to the constitution of classical cinema and thus
my opening examples.
In
the
important
essay "Weaving
a
Narrative,"
Gunning
delineates the institu-
tional
forces at work in the rationalizationof narrativeform associated with the
work
of D. W. Griffithat the
BiographCompanybeginning
in 1908.18
Arguing
that
these forces were
connected to an effort within the film
industry
to attracta well-
to-do middle-class
audience,
Gunning suggested
that a narrative
form,
exempli-
fied
by
the subdivision and linearizationof
plot
lines,
mirrored aesthetic criteria
widely
visible in
plays
and novels. If
part
of this
argument
was
about economic
122
Cinema
Journal 44,
No.
1,
Fall 2004
biographical,
Plik z chomika:
MKTK
Inne pliki z tego folderu:
woof, warp, history.pdf
(312 KB)
jargon and the crisis.pdf
(165 KB)
intro.pdf
(256 KB)
history can work for you.pdf
(264 KB)
historiographic.pdf
(262 KB)
Inne foldery tego chomika:
Cahiers du Cinema
David Bordwell
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