The simultaneously eye- and ear-occupying intensity of the film medium, the monumental size of its images, the speed at which its images demand to be viewed, its capacity above all other art forms to render or simulate reality virtually in toto, to make it tangible to the senses– in short, the medium’s capacity to overwhelm– downright predestine it for a narcotized, that is, an anti-reflexivereception. In contrast to literature and the fine arts, even the morally conscious and responsible depiction of acts of violence is bound to move into controversy. The moving image
requires other criteria than the still image – from the image’s viewer as well as its producers: The still image generally shows an action’s result, whereas the film shows the action itself. The picture usually appeals to a viewer’s solidarity with the victim, while film often puts the viewer in the position of the perpetrator. (Upon, say, looking at Picasso’s Guernica, we see the suffering of the victims frozen for us to behold for all eternity. By virtue of the time allowed for becoming conscious of and contemplating the represented subject, our path towards solidarity with them is portrayed without any moral stumbling blocks. With the carnage in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now supported by Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries,” we are riding along in the helicopter, firing on the Vietnamese scattering in panic below us, and we do it without a guilty conscience because we – at least in the moment of the action – do not become aware of this role.) This guiltless complicity is also that to which violence in film owes its all-overpowering presence. The surrogate action banishes the terror of reality; a mythical narrative mode and an aestheticizing mode of representation allow a safe release of our own fears and desires. The hero on the screen transcends the helplessness and power-lessness of the viewer with his accomplishments.
As we all know, the cinema is celebrating 100 years of existence this year. For more than half of this time period, it was the sole ruler in the realm of moving pictures, a period during which it tried to develop a grammar intended to enable this completely new organ of speech to speak in its own terms. Two devices, the camera and the tape recorder, offered the possibility of reflecting and simulating an almost complete impression of reality. The reports of the incredible effect of the new medium are well known and range from the panic of the Parisian audience with regardto Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat by the Lumière Brothers to the terrified reactions of South American jungle inhabitants upon their first confrontation with film projections half a century later.
For the viewer, the boundary between real existence and image was difficult to establish from the beginning, which is precisely why the medium won a great deal of its fascination. The oscillation between the disconcerting feeling of being present at a real event and the emotional security of seeing only the image of an artificially created or a found reality was what enabled the emergence of the genre described above.
The scene changed with the appearance of television. The documentary element entered the foreground. (In the cinema, it had become – at least with regard to its acceptance by viewers – a marginal area shortly after its inception.) The speed by which electronic media conveyed and disseminated information led to a shift in viewing habits. The impact of the impression exerted by the larger-than-life image on the screen during a single trip to the movies was matched and then eclipsed by the sheer mass of impressions and their permanent presence in the living room.
Building on the dramaturgical and aesthetic forms of the cinema, television changed precisely these forms by permanently deploying them.
The cinema tried to counter the overwhelming omnipresence of the electronic media by intensifying its own means, which television – as much as it was technically able – then immediately integrated into its system again. The compulsion to trump one another led to the permanent paroxysm of attempted intensity and, thus, indirectly to the further blurring of the boundary between reality and image as well.
requires other criteria than the still image – from the image’s viewer as well as its producers: The still image generally shows an action’s result, whereas the film shows the action itself. The picture usually appeals to a viewer’s solidarity with the victim, while film often puts the viewer in the position of the perpetrator. (Upon, say, looking at Picasso’s Guernica, we see the suffering of the victims frozen for us to behold for all eternity. By virtue of the time allowed for becoming conscious of and contemplating the represented subject, our path towards solidarity with them is portrayed without any moral stumbling blocks. With the carnage in Coppola’s Apocalypse Now supported by Wagner’s “The Ride of the Valkyries,” we are riding along in the helicopter, firing on the Vietnamese scattering in panic below us, and we do it without a guilty conscience because we – at least in the moment of the action – do not become aware of this role.) This guiltless complicity is also that to which violence in film owes its all-overpowering presence. The surrogate action banishes the terror of reality; a mythical narrative mode and an aestheticizing mode of representation allow a safe release of our own fears and desires. The hero on the screen transcends the helplessness and power-lessness of the viewer with his accomplishments.
As we all know, the cinema is celebrating 100 years of existence this year. For more than half of this time period, it was the sole ruler in the realm of moving pictures, a period during which it tried to develop a grammar intended to enable this completely new organ of speech to speak in its own terms. Two devices, the camera and the tape recorder, offered the possibility of reflecting and simulating an almost complete impression of reality. The reports of the incredible effect of the new medium are well known and range from the panic of the Parisian audience with regardto Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat by the Lumière Brothers to the terrified reactions of South American jungle inhabitants upon their first confrontation with film projections half a century later.
For the viewer, the boundary between real existence and image was difficult to establish from the beginning, which is precisely why the medium won a great deal of its fascination. The oscillation between the disconcerting feeling of being present at a real event and the emotional security of seeing only the image of an artificially created or a found reality was what enabled the emergence of the genre described above.
The scene changed with the appearance of television. The documentary element entered the foreground. (In the cinema, it had become – at least with regard to its acceptance by viewers – a marginal area shortly after its inception.) The speed by which electronic media conveyed and disseminated information led to a shift in viewing habits. The impact of the impression exerted by the larger-than-life image on the screen during a single trip to the movies was matched and then eclipsed by the sheer mass of impressions and their permanent presence in the living room.
Building on the dramaturgical and aesthetic forms of the cinema, television changed precisely these forms by permanently deploying them.
The cinema tried to counter the overwhelming omnipresence of the electronic media by intensifying its own means, which television – as much as it was technically able – then immediately integrated into its system again. The compulsion to trump one another led to the permanent paroxysm of attempted intensity and, thus, indirectly to the further blurring of the boundary between reality and image as well.
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