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Narrative Machines, Or, from ‘Bottom to Top’ Early Discourses on the Novel and Film

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Narrative Machines, Or, from ‘Bottom to Top’ Early Discourses on the Novel and Film 10.1515/nor-2017-0302 Narrative Machines, or, from ‘Bottom to Top’ Early Discourses on the Novel and Film JOHN SUNDHOLM There is a certain tendency in the contemporary rience of modernity. The subject of film and cultural historiography of early film studies to construe mo- modernity is an established field of its own within dernity as a model for the textual analysis of spe- the broader film studies context.3 However, such cific, isolated moments in film history. Furthermore, historiography could also be criticised as a sort of film history – and other media histories – is usually “historical blind spot”, founded on an excessively studied and written within the academic boundaries expressive interpretation of history. of different departments. We are given the history The original arguments used in early 20th cen- of media according to media and communications, tury discourse are reproduced in studies by later film studies, art history, literature and so on. Very scholars as expressing a homogeneous tendency – seldom are we offered a perspective founded on an broadly defineable as modernity – thus placing the interdisciplinary or comparative approach. discourse aside from most historical and compara- Therefore, I will both criticise some trends in tive relations with, for example, previous 19th cen- early film historiography and argue in favour of the tury discourse. Such deterministic views on tech- importance – and necessity – of employing a histo- nology – and on film vs. society – often fail to con- rico-dialectical and comparative analysis. I support sider that the object under study and the agent that my argument and discussion by comparing the constitutes the object are both part of the same paradigmatic interpretations of “modernity vs. process, which includes several different media and early film” and the Finnish discourses on early film often incongruous views. Hence, the method I criti- in the 1920s and the early novel in the 1850s. cise has been similar to textual analysis, in its ten- dency to read a particular situation primarily in ac- cordance with a pre-existing set of concepts and in- Film Historiography terpretative strategies. It did not treat the situation In film studies, it is often forgotten that film was as something born out of change, i.e. in potential op- not the first ‘narrative machine’. Conversely, liter- position to pre-existing paradigms and/or constitut- ary academics often forget that the book was in it- ing a part of conflicting and different forces.4 self quite the “technological invention”. Even the The conditions for a historical study are thus not novel was once considered to be an instrument, a necessarily only to put an object into its accurate vehicle, a material embodiment or means of convey- context, but also to consider it as part of a forma- ance,1 i.e., a technological form. This is also the tion over a period of time, an incoherent assembly “early” modern sense of technology, as “a descrip- of conflicting ideas and interests in constant tension tion of the practical arts”, which Raymond Williams and change. Consequently we should pay attention dates roughly to the 19th century.2 to, as Sven-Eric Liedman reminds us, “the contro- It is common in humanities today to consider versial or, dialectical character” of a specific situa- film the technology and machine of modernity as tion.5 According to this view, historical context is well as the medium that gave life to the visual expe- not something that simply exists, but is rather con- stituted within a complex constellation in constant Department of Culture and Communication, Uni- process, and is effected by a dual process of inclu- versitetsgatan 1, Karlstad University, SE-651 88, sion and exclusion together. An analysis adherent of [email protected] such an ideal has thus to avoid both mechanic cau- 107 sality (local relations of cause and effect) and ex- freeze the sound, however, a significant reason why pressive causality (treating a phenomenon as having sound often appears as the ‘immaterial’ element in an essence, an inner unity, that causes something film analysis. Or, according to Fredric Jameson, specific) by historicizing its own concepts and pre- who envies film studies because he sometimes feels suppositions.6 Accordingly, the context for early that it is “easier to be a materialist when you had a discussion on film need not be found necessarily in “really” material object to work with”.9 This is es- the contemporary discourse of the time, but in ear- pecially evident when dealing with silent – or lier discourse as well. A relation and a comparative “early” film – but in a more general sense film em- perspective generate a “context” and a critical view. bodies a permanent struggle with material elements Certainly, historico-dialectical studies may not – equipment, matter and objects – whereas reading be critical as such, but are at least anti-dogmatic. and analysing a novel appears points more to a They are critical, since they relativise the object of time-based, personal, interior and less material ex- study by stressing that conditions have been differ- perience in which the process of material and con- ent and open to change; this in turn implies that crete materialization falls mostly with the reader/au- conditions might also become different in the future dience. and that individual studies are part of such a his- Thus, the analysable physicality and material torical process. There seems often to be a lack of concreteness of film makes it suitable for arguments awareness regarding historical process, the history about its material qualities, or its technological char- of concepts and of words, and forms for under- acter. But could this not be another sort of histori- standing and appropriation, in the different histori- cal blind spot? And perhaps especially so if the ma- cal interpretations offered in film studies, which terial is seen as expressing something unique to film, concentrate on the visual.7 It seems, on the contrary, and not as being part of a new historical situation as if there already existed a specific tradition of which changes different media, and causes different thought with regard to film history in relation to and contradictory attempts to deal with these modi- technical and material issues. Different studies are fications. If the history of modernity is constructed then turned into case-studies that can only confirm around film and that which is contemporary to film, an a-priori interpretation. That tradition is, for ex- one medium is cut loose from the context and seen ample, detectable in Siegfried Kracauer’s Theory of as constituting the history of modernity through the Film when the author quotes Erwin Panofsky in process of neglecting the media and its germane 1947: “It is the movies, and only the movies, that processes, which precede it. Obviously, audience of do justice to that materialistic interpretation /’from the early 20th century were not making their expe- bottom to top’/ of the universe which, whether we riences as cultural individuals only at the cinema, like it or not, pervades contemporary civilisation”.8 and neither were they suddenly thrown out of time When I first read Kracauer’s use of Panofsky’s quo- into an entirely new period. Hence, most modernity tation I wanted simply to check if the critics at the studies are projected from a position in which film time also considered film to require a materialistic is thought to have – so to speak – outmoded litera- interpretation. I chose to browse some Finnish jour- ture and as if it existed as a distinct practice. This is nals from the 1920’s because that period seems to something which actually reflects the present me as good a starting point as any to trace the ori- boundaries among academic disciplines. Or, per- gins of today’s media culture. Kracauer himself uses haps, film is observed from a ‘viewing’ position, in the quote – in 1960 – to argue in favour of the mate- which the meaning of literature has changed – from rial aesthetics of film. Panofsky instead- in 1947 – signifying the practice of reading and writing to attempts a historical argument to explain why film ‘pure’ literature (‘belles lettres’) – and where even expresses a cultural change. film is shifting in its meaning – from film as cinema, or ‘film as film’, into film as “medium”; in short: The Materiality and Modernity from mechanic machine with a specific aesthetic into digital ‘media’ and its new aesthetic. In other of Film and Literature words, the categories and the concepts we use to Everyone who has been teaching film knows how define film are also subject to the historical pro- easy it can be since films can always be easily pre- cesses of change. sented/represented, just like a concrete machine or For that reason we should perhaps attempt to any other object. You may easily freeze a picture – pose questions such as: What happens if we are from the string of frozen pictures that film is – and even more historical and venture back even further, point out different technical devices. You cannot to a cultural stage when film didn’t exist? What was 108 then experienced as material? As technology? That stellation is similar to how film was considered in is, as “a description of the practical arts”. In order the 20s. The difference is that the middle class now to make that step possible, however, we should first felt threatened by the new media, the film. The look back at the 1920s and at the discourse on film. technology of the novel was a question about creat- This will allow to grasp appropriate terminology ing a middle-class; consequently the discourses and concepts, and to see how they can be used.
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