Film, Relay, and System: a Systems Theory Approach to Cinema Thomas Schur University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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University of Wisconsin Milwaukee UWM Digital Commons Theses and Dissertations August 2013 Film, Relay, and System: A Systems Theory Approach to Cinema Thomas Schur University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Follow this and additional works at: https://dc.uwm.edu/etd Part of the Film and Media Studies Commons Recommended Citation Schur, Thomas, "Film, Relay, and System: A Systems Theory Approach to Cinema" (2013). Theses and Dissertations. 757. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/757 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by UWM Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of UWM Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FILM, RELAY, AND SYSTEM: A SYSTEMS THEORY APPROACH TO CINEMA by Thomas Schur A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee August 2013 ABSTRACT FILM, RELAY, AND SYSTEM: A SYSTEMS THEORY APPROACH TO CINEMA by Thomas Schur The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, 2013 Under the Supervision of Professor Tasha Oren Film theory is replete with references to systems, yet no theory has emerged to provide a cohesive explanation of how cinema, as both technology and institution, operates as a relay system. Interdisciplinary in nature, my dissertation proposes a systems theory of cinema deriving largely from the work of social scientist Niklas Luhmann. Systems theory is especially productive for the ways that it intervenes at crucial sites of conflict and irresolution within film studies. With its emphasis on nonhuman agencies, systems theory calls for reappraisal of the significance of the human to the cinema apparatus—a significance long assumed to be simply a given. With its claim that the reasoning adduced by an “observer” is never in fact the logic of the “observed,” systems theory has major implications for thinking about the role of narrative in film and film theory. And with its stress on contingency, systems theory can be seen to upset the terms of debates within the field about cultural and technological determinism, and to provide further grounding for recent work on contingency and cinematic time. Chapter one examines a defining staple of early cinema, the chase film, as a quintessential example of the construction of movement, in the evolution of film editing, via a chain of interlinked segments that relay—and tend to abrogate—human figures. ii Chapter two focuses on a film conceived by Rube Goldberg at the transition from silent to sound cinema, with particular attention to how the coming of sound complicates the visual relays characteristic of silent slapstick’s gag structures. Chapter three examines the dynamism of the long take in classical and post-classical cinema, emphasizing the gradual and incremental disclosure of elements by the camera and revealing the cinema recording process itself as a type of Goldbergian contraption. The last chapter reflects on the “computerization” of film and media, showing that systems theory provides a useful avenue to thinking about the continuity between analog and digital cinema due in part to an unusual but rich and suggestive conception of the notion of “medium.” iii © Copyright by Thomas Schur, 2013 All Rights Reserved iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: System, Relay, and the Chase Film in Early Cinema ......................................23 The Narrative of Shock and the “Modernity Thesis” ............................................23 Early Cinema Revised ............................................................................................31 The Chase Film and the Relay System: Rescued from an Eagle’s Nest ................43 Beyond Narrative ...................................................................................................63 Chapter 2: Rube Goldberg and the Relays of Slapstick .....................................................77 Slapstick in Theory ................................................................................................77 Rube Goldberg, Laughter, and Relay ....................................................................85 Object-Oriented Ontology and the Cinematic Object ..........................................100 Goldberg on Film: Soup to Nuts ..........................................................................122 Chapter 3: The Long Take and Systems Theory .............................................................139 System, Relay, and the Long Take ......................................................................143 System, Structure, and Narrative .........................................................................153 Rethinking the Long Take through Systems Theory ...........................................171 Observing Long Takes .........................................................................................182 Chapter 4: Cinema, New Media, and Systems Theory ....................................................212 Computer and System ..........................................................................................221 New Media and Systems Theory .........................................................................228 The Question of Digital Cinema ..........................................................................241 Works Consulted ..............................................................................................................256 v 1 Introduction Film theory is replete with references to systems: the textual system, studio system, star system, camera system, projector system, sound system, Technicolor system, language system, ideological system, narrator system, classical Hollywood system, genre system, stylistic system, sign system, Hitchcockian/Sirkian systems, narrative system, suture system, and so on. This profusion indicates the profound importance of systems to cinema; yet no theory has emerged to provide a cohesive explanation of how cinema, taken as a whole, operates as a system. In this dissertation, I propose a general theory of cinema as a system to address the lack of a model that would bring together functional aspects of a cinema system (what cinema “does”), on the one hand, and structural aspects of a cinema system (how cinema is organized), on the other. It is precisely this sort of conjunction that escapes the systems-as-concepts listed above, because they are all too individually separate and distinct; in this sense, they are more like subsystems. A general systems theory of cinema, however—by gathering together such specialized subsystems into a relational matrix—would have a significant conceptual advantage. Among other things, it could help to shift reference points from familiar recourses to ontology—“What is cinema?”—to less familiar questions of epistemology: How do we or can we know what cinema is (and what if we can’t)? My dissertation proposes a systems theory of cinema deriving largely from the work of Niklas Luhmann, and argues that the cinema system operates principally as a relay. Here, too, there are precedents in film theory, in the notion of the “relay of looks” often said to be a basis of cinematic construction. In this project, the argument that 2 cinema is a relay is based in part on observation of the literal workings of film technologies. A relay system is a type of machine that emerged from the field of “control” engineering in the late 1800s, as industrialization moved from the factory into spheres of everyday life. The term originates earlier in the history of industrialization, where a “relay system” was a process of moving night workers into position to replace day workers, to prevent loss of labor and to maintain expanded production—as discussed at length in Marx’s Capital. Building from this origin, relay systems became machines designed to move raw materials along various kinds of conduits, from assembly line mechanisms to heating systems and toasters. Based on the model of the perpetual motion machine from the Renaissance forward, they were designed to keep entropy in check during the process of conveying “input” through the system until it emerged as “output.” The technologies of cinema are relay systems in this literal sense. Cameras and projectors move film through their respective mechanical systems. A celluloid strip shuttles through the camera to record a series of still images. The strip is then run through a film processor that transfers the images to a projectable filmstrip. This filmstrip is then threaded through a projector that, when set at a specified rate, transmutes the series of still images into an appearance of motion. Thus, a relay of a filmstrip generates a relay of still images, in tandem with a relay that takes place between the object of a camera lens and a strip of raw film. The still images are relayed from a projector to a screen, and from the screen to a spectator. While these aspects of cinema as relay are implied everywhere in film studies, they have yet to be treated as such in an explicit and sustained manner. My dissertation considers these literal relays mainly as springboards of other manifestations of relay in cinema. For example, relays obtain among shots, sequences, 3 onscreen elements in relation to one another, films and narratives, narrative and style. But what brings these many and diverse relays into