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Time Zones and Jetlag: the Flows and Phases of World Cinema

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Time Zones and Jetlag: the Flows and Phases of World Cinema DUDLEY ANDREW Time Zones and Jetlag: The Flows and Phases of World Cinema PREAMBLE: CINEMA OUT OF STEP WITH ITSELF Cinema distinguished itself as the twentieth century's genuinely international medium. Far more than literature, so dependent on tramlation, films fr om the outset were:� warched by peoples in the most fa r-flung areas. Hardly had they in­ vented the ciucmatc�mpiiC than the Lumiere brothers sent it around the world. This apparatus-capturing, processing, and projecting images-was carried like Scendhal's mirror on the backs of operators fr om region to region where people gazed at pic­ tures of themselves and their surroundings taken just a fe w days or weeks before. Thi� same fo otage was then shipped back to Paris which in 1900 fu nctioned not only as a production source but also as a depot and distribution center. Imagine fo otage shot, say, in the Caucasus packaged for exhibition in Rio de Janeiro and vice versa. Many pam of the globe were touched by the ciuemntogmphc, each re­ sponding to this international phenomenon at its own speed, each stamping it with its own image and its own temporality. This vast geographical flow of images, as well as the time-lag that inevitably accompanies it, remain still with us today even as the international circulation of cinema has become infinitely more complex. To :tchieve even the slightest histor­ ical understanding of "world cinema," in the fol lowing pages I wish to consider two ways to categorize the fu ll phenomenon. First, we should be able to identify the patterns whereby, out of all films produced in the world, a certain set emerged that distributors, critics, scholars, and cinephiles consider to belong to the class of "world cinema." Second, we can note distinct historical phases of"world cinema" that reveal the aesthetic criteria employed, often unwittingly, to define this quite varied set of films which seem to speak to audiences everywhere, that seem to define a global matter. Although I propose fivephases that periodize world cinema history (cosmopolitan, national, fe derated, world, and global), it must be stressed that the notions of cinema running through these phases often overlap and coexist; moreover, I am most interested in the ways in which certain films travel out of phase, fo r cinema in my view is constitutionally out-of-phase with itself. The critic, the scholar, and the cinephile, not to mention industry personnel, can find themselves repositioned by certain films that rework our very understanding of what the cinema holds out, what it represents, and to whom. Surely all industries of cultural production can be tracked through geographical flow and historical phases, but not to the extt:nt of cinema. When at mid-century television came along, it scarcely challenged cinema's internationalism, being at once 813 814 GLOBALIZATION congenitally national and potentially global. Te levision was immediately licensed by the state and, particularly during the broadcast era, w:�s often fu lly state controlled. Even today it addres�cs its audience as national citi'Zens, as in it� ubiquitou� news programs. At the same time, tdevJsion can claim true globality because, in principle, everyone alive can simultam:ously witness an event like the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, or the World Cup every fo ur years, or the annu:tl Acade111y Award�. The audit:I'Jcc fo ra film, however, even a blockbuste�. can only be projected to bc worldwide. "llox office projection," though not qmtc a mirage, is an image of the sum of innumerable actual proJections taking place here and there, skipping bor­ ders and oceans over the course of what is called a film's "run." The �ynchronized rdea�e of Sterr Wars: RcPCII.f.!C ciftfrc Sitll aimed to establish a Guinnes� !look of Records benchmark, a marketing stunt that is an exception proving the rule. And that rule is that cinema's voltage depend� on delay and slippage, what I dub the cll:caltt�c at the heart of the medium and of each film between "here and there" as well as "now and then." Thi� French term connotes discrepancy in space and deferral or jump in time. At the most primary level, the film image leaps fr om pres­ ent to past, since what is edited and shown was filmed at least days, weeks, or months earlier. This slight stutter in its articulation then repe.1ts itself in the time and dist:mcc that separates filmmaker fr om spectator, and spectator� fr om each other when they sec the same film on separate occasions. The gap in each of these relation� constitutes cinema's difference fr om televi�ion. Films d1splay traces of what i� past and inaccessible, wherca� television fe el� (and often 1�) present. We live with television continually as part of our lives and our homes: sets arc �old a� fu rni­ ture. Keeping up a 24-hour chatter on scores of channels, tdcvision is banal by definition. In contrast we.�<' c>lll to the movies, leaving home to cross into a different realm. Every genuine cinematic experience involves dcwla.l!c, Jetlag. After all, we are taken on a flight during and after which we :ue not quite oursdves. To track changing conccptiom :tbout a phenomenon that is fo rever out-of­ phase with itself, we do best to hold f.1st to a particular domain. I will keep the East Asian region in view and monitor the potential energy accumulatmg, a� it were, on that s1de of the internation.tl D.1tc Line. From tunc to tunc (and increasingly) films and entire film movement� JUIIIP the Date Line on their way to light up screens elsewlu!re, subtitled or dubbed of course. Spinning the globe until the Pacific Rim f.1ces fr ont represent� :111 ac:tdcnuc displacement of its own, since nearly all large­ �calc assessments of cinema have been made by and fo r the We�t. with the "Prime Meridian" running through either Hollywood or Paris. Miriam Hansen fo llows out in Ea�t Asia what she aptly tenm "a theoretically impired histoirc croisee, a 1m­ tory of cntJnglement that traces actual interconnections."' She remind� us that Western accounts of cinema's development assume all too quickly a continuous narrative with Hollywood\ norms as the trunk and mainly European alternatives branching and fo rk ing--but always growing-year after year. Ea�t A�ia's nauons, on the other hand, have clearly developed with les� synchrony, and somemnes Minam Hansen, "Vernacular Mmlcrmsnl' Tracking Ctnema on a Global Scale," 111 ll'cttltl Cmt111t1J, ·/r,mm<�timutll'crJt"ctit•rs, cd. Nata�a Durnv1cova ami K�thlccn Nt:\\ man (Taylor and franu�. 2UIIJ). TIME ZONES AND JETLAG 815 without any visible interaction among them at all. Neither the Chinese nor the Koreans could sec a Japanese film fo r decadl-s after World W:� r II; nor were PRC fe atures viewable in T:�iwan, :�nd vice verse. d The staggere development of fo rms of cinem:1 within Eas; Asi:1 have resulted fr om f.u more complex patterns of circulation and influence th:�n anything ob­ t:�ining in the West. Despite political, economic, and linguistic blockages, films, personnel, money, and ideas have intermittently :�nd increasingly circulated along the Pacific Rim. Moreover, depending on import restrictions and censorship, Hollywood influenced to varying degrees the shape of genres in each East Asian country, as did prominent European imports. This is not to mention the national or ethnic entertainment traditions that distinguish the w:�y films arc viewed, say, in distant PRC villages :1s opposed to Tokyo or to Bangkok. Perhaps the energy and the variety evident in current Asian cinema has been powered by the interf.,ce and negotiation of so many cosmopolitan :�nd local fo rms. Emerging Asian cine­ mas have been more able than their European or Latin American counterparts to pick and choose among options held out by national trnditions nt one extreme and Hollywood or European modernism at the other, with intermediate options bor­ rowed from neighbor cultures. Quite distinct strains of nntionnl and regional styles and gentes surely tell sev­ eral histories of East Asian film, each harboring its particular idea of cinema. Just how have such ideas come into being and affected the way films arc made and viewed? And where arc those ideas to be fo und? In its first decades, before the existence of institutions like history, criticism, cine-clubs, and fe stivals, ideas of world cinema were best articulated by distributors and by those intellectuals and journnlists drawn to this new art and to the way it visibly was reconfiguring the constellation of social life. To return to the beginning, but now fr om an Asian point of view, the Lumiere ci11cmntograplu:was thought to complete, less than a half-century later, Commodore Perry's mission of opening up Japan. By 1910 concerned intellectuals and national­ ists decried what they fe lt was unauthorized fo reign exploitation: imnges of Mount Fuji, the Emperor's Palace, and Japanese beauties in ornate kimonos were being seized by the camera and shipped to the West, to be hnwked at f.1 irgrounds, inter­ polated into tawdry dramas, and in every case misinterpreted. At the same time, this spectacular fo reign technology was a pipeline through which Rowed images of Western customs, values, and commodities that challenged local mores and tempted some Japanese to cast their allegiance with a cosmopolitan community.2 Soon a second anxiety would grip even those Asians who had joined this community: within a scant twenty years cinema's vaunted internationalism had been stamped with a particular national fo rm, an American one.
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