Cinematology--Old and Young

Film theory is still relatively young—but is it already too old? In an early mainstream press discussion of the rise of film theory—referred to as “cinematology”—an article in The Christian Science Monitor in 1960 noted that in “universities the study of film production has become an accredited course. The motion picture, as a popular or even a fine art, has become an increasingly likely subject for intellectuals to theorize upon.” The article—entitled “The Day of the Cinematologist”—differentiates cinematologists from film journalists: “The cinematologist is a scholar rather than a journalist, a theoretician rather than merely an articulate spectator.” The article lists several books—including The Three Faces of the Film, by Parker Tyler, Theory of Film, by Siegfried Kracauer, and Motion Pictures, by A. R. Fulton—as examples of film theory.

The article takes a few swipes at “rarefied” film theory, noting for instance that “this sort of criticism . . . can take a slender insight and dangle an ever heavier burden of argument from it.” But compared to Pauline Kael’s 1964 essay “Zeitgeist and Poltergeist; Or, Are Movies Going to Pieces?” the Christian Science Monitor essay is downright worshipful with regards to film theory: “The ‘pure’ cinema enthusiast who doesn’t react to a film but feels he should,” Kael writes, “and so goes back to it over and over, is not responding as an individual but as a compulsive good pupil determined to appreciate what his cultural superiors say is ‘art.’ Movies are on their way into academia when they’re turned into a matter of duty” (24). And here is Kael near the end of her essay: “Our academic bureaucracy needs something alive to nourish it and movies still have a little blood which the academics drain away” (26).

It’s hard to know what to make of this. On the one hand, Kael was fundamentally wrong. Her underlying anxiety that movies would be made too respectable, too arty, too pretentiously oblique and obscure never really materialized. Movies continue to be almost defiantly populist, and—as Ray Carney and others have pointed out—many who write about, review, and report on movies in the popular press serve as little more than public relations machinery for individual films. And yet who can deny that so much academic writing about movies is terminally dull, obscure, and pretty obvious? The post-structuralist attempts to deconstruct cinema in the 1960s and 70s were thrilling; reading some of the work of Mulvey, Comolli, and others was like being part of a street riot. There are passages in the work of Walter Benjamin, or Theodor Adorno, or Roland Barthes, or Robert Ray, or bell hooks, or Paul Virilio that continue to thrill, not just because of their content, but because of their expressive power, their aphoristic confidence, their fundamental understanding of the importance of aesthetic dimensions of writing.

It’s too early to say, but perhaps new media forms—such as blogs—will provide an outlet for a style of writing that is not bound by the formulaic expectations of many (not all) academic presses. For once film studies became a legitimate discipline, one it became institutionalized, the unruly tone of those working around its edges and fringes became lost amid the duty-bound obligations for authors to deploy the usual discursive formulas in making their arguments. The cautious but experimental tone of many who post their writings to the web may yet take even further risks--risks that acknowledge that the shape of writing is undergoing dramatic transformations.

If we are lucky, the evolution of cinematology into into film theory was only just the beginning.

Comments

[dvd]

Kael seems, in that quote, to be justifying her own moviewatching habits by decrying academic interests: she was proud of the fact that she never watched - nor needed to watch -a movie more than once (considering her anti-intellectualist bent, it's a shame she never gave Cassavetes the time of day, as he was convinced to the end that he was making populist cinema and may have agreed with her on a lot of things).

[Matt]

The only problem with publishing to blogs--or at least *exclusively* to blogs, which I can't imagine you're suggesting--is getting your stuff read and, more importantly, taken seriously. It's an old concern, of course, and a somewhat pedestrian one, but there's always the question of credibility when it comes to blogs. Not necessarily in the sense that professionals are credible and amateurs aren't, but just in general.

Personally, I still think experimental criticism can come out of the academy (and elsewhere, of course), assuming that the academy remains well-stocked with people who think outside the box. Robert Ray's work--particularly 'How a Film Theory Got Lost'--is testament to that, as is Nicole Brenez's work. A lot of theory is still fresh and challenging, and...well, yeah...I think it can still come out of the universities.

[Nick]

There’s so much to think about here. On a personal level, my own experiences with academic journals and book publishers has been terrific. And as Matt suggests, people like Robert Ray and others publish provocative, beautifully written work out of presses like Indiana UP (and places like Harvard UP have taken chances on folks like Greil Marcus, whose book Lipstick Traces is a testament to creative scholarship). Dj Spooky and Lev Manovich push the boundaries with books out of MIT Press.

And yet so much of the classical, foundational film theory occurred around the fringes, the margins of academia. The initial French New Wave theories played out in the pages of Cahiers du Cinema. The articulation of Andrew Sarris’s Americanized auteur theory happened in the pages of Film Culture, which wasn’t an academic journal. Many of Andre Bazin’s essays appeared in non-academic magazines and newspapers, such as Cahiers and Esprit. Susan Sontag’s essay on Jack Smith’s Flaming Creatures appeared in The Nation; her essay on sci-fi film, “The Imagination of Disaster,” was published in Commentary. By the 1960s and 70s, when many academic film journals began to emerge and proliferate, theory became more and more associated with academia, and with “film professors” who edited and published in specialized film journals.

The question about the respect and seriousness accorded web-based film scholarship and theory is important. Film studies itself—in the U.S.—is still relatively new. It’s hybrid and impure, and I know of professors who are still mildly suspicious at the idea of “movies” being a legitimate academic discipline. So it seems sort of natural and in keeping with the mixed, outsider history of film studies to expand onto the web, and to legitimate through practice new styles of scholarship. Perhaps new forms of digital media provide an opportunity for new forms of writing, or at least writing in new forums. Blogs are just one example. Their episodic, evolving, archived, nature in some ways draws upon the most traditional values of academic work: experimentation, trial and error, and collaboration. But whether or not—on their best days—they push beyond mere hermeneutics and into something approaching art….that remains to be seen.

[DB]

Kael reviewed Cassavetes at length on a couple of occasions, which is not quite never giving him the time of day. And saying she had an anti-intellectualist bent is a little reductive, though it's certainly true that she had no time for theory. And even if she was justifiying her own habits, it's still true that there are an awful lot of "good pupils" out there, many in academia and some occasionally blogging.

[Matt]

Let's not forget that Cassavetes was an anti-intellectual bully as well.

Personally, I find the Paulettes to be a terribly annoying bunch. I suppose that's because I greatly prefer Sontag.

[Nick]

It's strange how these three--Sontag, Cassavetes, and Kael--are connected (however slightly) in that regard. Sontag's "Against Interpretation" is against a certain kind of intellectualism...