Dead
Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |
Subject: Dead Media Working Notes 01.5
Dead Media: Silent Film, Diorama, Panorama
From: wex_AT_media.mit.edu (Alan Wexelblat)
Source: VIEWING POSITIONS: WAYS OF SEEING FILM, Linda
Williams (ed.), Rutgers University Press 1995
ISBN 0-8135-2133-5, 1995.
This collection of essays deals with the philosophy,
theory, and sociology of film viewing. Of particular
interest to necronauts are a couple of essays on
"Historians View Spectators:"
In "An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the
(In)Credulous Spectator" Tom Gunning takes on the myth
that early film audiences ran in fear from a film of a
train apparently coming at them. He discusses several
of the (now dead) technologies that immediately preceded
film and shows how they were used/presented in such a way
as to achieve maximum amazement.
He shows that while audiences may have been amazed by
the new moving images, they were not apt to confuse these
images for reality. An important debunking of popular
mythology.
In "Cinematic Spectatorship before the Apparatus: The
Public Taste for Reality in Fin-de-Siecle Paris," Vanessa
Schwartz discusses Parisian's methods of self-amusement in
the immediate pre-film period. Flanerie (the taking in of
sights while strolling/shopping) translated itself into a
bizarre entertainment spectacle whereby the Paris Morgue
because a medium of reality display. Bodies of crime
victims were put on display, ostensibly so the public
could identify the people but in fact for entertainment.
Her description of the many-days display of the corpse of
a child is particularly interesting. She also discusses a
couple of other dead techs -- the diorama and the panorama
-- and talks about how the newspapers of the day combined
'true crime' stories and serial novels.
Alan Wexelblat, http://wex.www.media.mit.edu/people/wex/
Dead
Media | 0.01-02.0 | 02.1-04.0
| 04.1-06.0 | 06.1-08.0 |
08.1-10.0 | 10.1-12.0 |