Advent of spectatorship; A quick look on the introduction of photograph and motion pictures in the late nineteenth

The glory of late nineteenth century in introducing new media has been notably remarked. The
power of new electrical technologies to affect people’s private and public lives altered the
common ways of communication and social interactions. The causes and consequences of these
novel communicative technologies have been widely discussed by scholars. Marvin posits that
“central to all the good things that new technologies of communication would accomplish was
the building of better, usually construed to mean more open and democratically accessible,
communities”. (1988: 65) On the other hand, she points to consequences of these electrical
communications by which families, courtships, class identities, and other arenas of interaction
suddenly became strange, with consequences that were tirelessly spun out in electrical literature.
(ibid: 64) For me, among all late- nineteenth- century new forms of media, the introduction of
the recorded image (photography at first and then cinema in the form of moving images) with
plenty of novel promises had the greatest impacts on both private and public spheres at that
period.
Photograph – Beginning of spectatorship
Sontag believes that photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and
what we have a right to observe (1977:3). Her crucial view point over photography makes her
argue that photographs, instead of just recordings reality, have become the norm for the way
things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality, and of realism. (ibid: 87) Gunning
also blames photography for its seeming uncanny resemblance to its subject and the apparently
automatic nature of its production. He argues that photograph allowed a re-animation of the
ontological instability of all mimetic representation. (2003:49) More strictly speaking, Sontag
concludes that one never can understand anything from a photograph, neither gain ethical nor
political knowledge. (1977:23-4)
All these argumentations and criticisms give rise to one question, what was the reason for all
these pessimistic viewpoints, or what kinds of opportunities and threats did the photography
bring to the actual societies? One possible answer might point to Sontag observation of
photograph as a useful tool of modern states in surveillance and control of their increasingly
mobile populations.” (1997: 5) She believes that photography has mainly become a social rite, a
defense against anxiety, and a tool of power. (ibid: 8) Marvin expresses a very similar
argumentation regarding electric communication which was presented as a herald of democracy
and as a superior means for controlling masses, criminals, primitives, servants, and whatever
other under classes might need restraint.(1988: 100) Gunning considers the photograph and
motion picture (and also phonograph) “as technical responses to the ultimate limit to human life,
morality.” (2003: 48) One can conclude that the essential concern, or even dread, regarding
photography was that this new medium may replace with the reality. Sontag, simply points out this threat: “reality has been interpreted through the reports given by images” (1977:153) But what actually happened was that this controversial medium got improved and introduced a new form of on-move media which brought new anxieties and hopes to people.
Cinema –New resumption of spectacle
Photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow (Marvin 1997:17). So one can claim that the early idea of cinema was aroused by a flow of photographs. Sontag also believes that the very form of film is a set of photographs which freezes moments in a life or a society- in a process or a flow (1977). Friedberg defines the moving image as expansion of the photography’s virtuality by adding mobility. (2003:343)
In questioning the actual nature of cinema, Gunning argues that the potential of this new art rather than imitating the movement of the nature was a “matter of making images seen”. In his article titled “the cinema of attractions” with offering the specific features which were dominant in early cinema productions and led to creating of this so called cinema of attraction, he defines cinema as a way of presenting a series of views to an audience with a strong illusory power. (1990:56-7) Gunning summarizes that the cinema of attractions “directly solicits spectator attention, inciting visual curiosity, and supplying pleasure through an exciting spectacle of a unique event”. (1990:57) He points out the main aspects of early cinema (such as exhibitionism and eroticism) as the way cinema manage to attract and establish contact with the audience. (Gunning 1990)
As it has been mentioned in the above historians’ works regarding the early technology of this medium, cinema gained a unique opportunity to attract the majority of people with enthusiasm and to fascinate them by amusing movements, narrations, spectacle and sensation. (Gunning 1990, Friedman 2003) Notable amount of criticisms target cinema, simply because of this feature and they were continued to the advent of television.
To summarize, the emergence of new media introduced relatively sudden and largely unanticipated possibilities of mixing heterogeneous social world, a useful opportunity for some, a dreadful intrusion for others. These new media took social risks by permitting outsiders to cross boundaries of race, gender, and class without penalty. (Marvin 1997:107-8) Photography with its uncanny (in Gunning terms) and its pseudo- real (in Sontag terms) features, and cinema as the continuation and improved version of photography in the form of so called “motion pictures” both challenged the very notion of reality, and in a greater respect, altered plenty of customary norms and formulated social interaction; or as Marvin puts it these new technologies repackaged human experience and multiplied it for many presentations labored to enhance the largest, most dramatically public of messages. (1997:152)
Reference
Gunning, Tom (1990) “The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant Garde” in Elsaesser, Thomas (ed) Early Cinema: Space-Frame-Narrative, London: British Film Institute
Marvin, Carolyn. 1990, When Old Technologies Were New : Thinking about Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century.Cary, NC, USA: Oxford University Press
Sontag, Susan, 1977, On photography, New York, Picador
Thorburn, David and Jenkins, Henry (2003) Rethinking Media Change, Cambridge, The MIT Press