Page 186 - Darko Štrajn, From Walter Benjamin to the End of Cinema: Identities, Illusion and Signification. Ljubljana: Educational Research Institute, 2017. Digital Library, Dissertationes, 29.
P. 186
from walter benjamin to the end of cinema
ly an opposition between two film-makers and contemporaries. Certainly,
Epstein’s sophisticated ideas of photogénie and pure cinema should be tak-
en as a point of elucidation. Rancière does not make any gesture of a hiér-
archisation of the both early cinema artists, but, regarding the point of his
whole debating of the important unfolding of cinema as art, it is obvious
that he, for reason in his idea of the politics of aesthetics, in a given constel-
lation somehow favours Chaplin.
The art of moving images cannot be reduced to that of the cam-
era’s movements. The ‘medium’ of cinematic art cannot be iden-
tified with the instrumental paraphernalia that captures move-
ments, gathers and projects moving images. A medium is neither a
basis, nor an instrument, nor a specific material. It is the percepti-
ble milieu of their coexistence (Rancière, Aisthesis, ch. 11).
And exactly the notion of immediacy in “Chaplin‘s version” deter-
mines not only what we always knew as the art of cinema, but also what we
know now as visual culture. Rancière does not bluntly define the concept
of immediacy, but he brings it into a relation with the “redemption of em-
pirical world proclaimed by German idealism: the redemption of sensible
world where spirit recognizes the exterior form of a divine thought that it
knows from now on as its own thought” (Ibid., ch. 4).
The notion of immediacy brought forward by cinema as art makes
it possible to explain much more than it seems at first sight. Immediacy
has nothing to do with simplicity; it has to do with exactly the opposite:
the complexity. Although film as an art form and as entertainment for a
wide range of audiences was transforming through time the effect of im-
mediacy of what is contained, narrated, recognised, perceived and so on
in the movement of images, remains a constant and most powerful “tool”
of cinema as an art. This power works both ways: it is, for instance, used
in visual advertisement and it works as a subversive impulse of all genre
and non-genre cinema – often as a rule against a filmmaker’s intention. In
Rancière‘s terminology immediacy is operating the dissensus propelled by
the complex imagéité of films.
My concluding remarks require further elaboration and explica-
tions, but let me just give a hint of a possible understanding of film pro-
ductions within the capitalist market system and their polyphonic mean-
ings through the notion of immediacy. In all its incarnations, Hollywood
was always a cinematic condensation of capitalism as spectacle. Howev-
184
ly an opposition between two film-makers and contemporaries. Certainly,
Epstein’s sophisticated ideas of photogénie and pure cinema should be tak-
en as a point of elucidation. Rancière does not make any gesture of a hiér-
archisation of the both early cinema artists, but, regarding the point of his
whole debating of the important unfolding of cinema as art, it is obvious
that he, for reason in his idea of the politics of aesthetics, in a given constel-
lation somehow favours Chaplin.
The art of moving images cannot be reduced to that of the cam-
era’s movements. The ‘medium’ of cinematic art cannot be iden-
tified with the instrumental paraphernalia that captures move-
ments, gathers and projects moving images. A medium is neither a
basis, nor an instrument, nor a specific material. It is the percepti-
ble milieu of their coexistence (Rancière, Aisthesis, ch. 11).
And exactly the notion of immediacy in “Chaplin‘s version” deter-
mines not only what we always knew as the art of cinema, but also what we
know now as visual culture. Rancière does not bluntly define the concept
of immediacy, but he brings it into a relation with the “redemption of em-
pirical world proclaimed by German idealism: the redemption of sensible
world where spirit recognizes the exterior form of a divine thought that it
knows from now on as its own thought” (Ibid., ch. 4).
The notion of immediacy brought forward by cinema as art makes
it possible to explain much more than it seems at first sight. Immediacy
has nothing to do with simplicity; it has to do with exactly the opposite:
the complexity. Although film as an art form and as entertainment for a
wide range of audiences was transforming through time the effect of im-
mediacy of what is contained, narrated, recognised, perceived and so on
in the movement of images, remains a constant and most powerful “tool”
of cinema as an art. This power works both ways: it is, for instance, used
in visual advertisement and it works as a subversive impulse of all genre
and non-genre cinema – often as a rule against a filmmaker’s intention. In
Rancière‘s terminology immediacy is operating the dissensus propelled by
the complex imagéité of films.
My concluding remarks require further elaboration and explica-
tions, but let me just give a hint of a possible understanding of film pro-
ductions within the capitalist market system and their polyphonic mean-
ings through the notion of immediacy. In all its incarnations, Hollywood
was always a cinematic condensation of capitalism as spectacle. Howev-
184
