The Lecturer and the Attraction, Schemes and Mind Maps of Art

Download The Lecturer and the Attraction and more Schemes and Mind Maps Art in PDF only on Docsity! The Lecturer and the Attraction Germain Lacasse “Come here! Come here! Ladies and gentlemen, come to see the most surprising and exciting fairground attraction, the cinematograph.” Such was the commen- tary of dozens, if not of hundreds of barkers (bonisseurs) in front of theaters where the first “animated photographs” were presented all over the globe circa . They invited passers-by to come to experience a “state of shock.” This expression is appropriate to portray the first film spectator because the views represented the quintessence of what art historians have named the distraction, which characterized modernity, and that cinema historians have named “cin- ema of attractions.” Still, the ambivalence of the “cinema of attractions” notion has to be stressed: narratives and shows have always consisted of attractions, surprises, which had been invented by the circus well before cinema. The cinematograph, unlike a sword swallower or a gladiator, was a technological attraction. The cinemato- graph is in itself an attraction, a characteristic that is later transferred to films, which will progressively become more narrative than “attractive.” The views then became an attraction, but the cinematograph had been mediated, that is presented, introduced, announced, and familiarized by the speakers and the lecturers who had played, in fact, the narration’s role before its integration into films. Beyond this encounter, the lecturer was also the encounter’s mediator be- tween tradition and modernity, between the traditional arts and the cinemato- graphic technique. He softens the shock of the attraction and the modern, and at the same time accustoms the audience to this state of shock, that the movie about to be presented will cause, and that facilitates technical and cultural hege- mony of some nations. So the lecturer is the “proof of attraction,” but also the “voice of attraction”: by the lecturer’s mouth the cinematograph speaks; this new and virtual world attracts the spectator in itself for the duration of a pro- gram. It is a hypnotic trance, like those presided over by a priest or a shaman, but this time the catalyst is a machine to which a person’s voice is given. The question of the lecturer’s commentary will be discussed here as a proof, then as a mediator of the attraction, and finally as a witness of the transition between a world of human attraction to the mechanized attraction, and of the conceptual implications of this transformation. The Commentary as a Proof of the Attraction In this discussion, I will speak about the cinema of attractions as it has been defined by Tom Gunning in  in “Early American Film,” in which he comes back to this very notion and its appositeness by bringing together insights from a number of works on early cinema. Gunning reminds us in this article that his notion is based on Eisenstein’s concept, which he considers equivalent to the sensible experience of modernity as described by early th-century art histo- rians Siegfried Kracauer and Walter Benjamin: an experience made of shocks, surprises, encounters with new and disparate things, fragmented, an experience that Benjamin referred to by the word “distraction.” The cinema of attractions relates to this experience by its aggressive address to the spectator and its con- tent made of elements of shock and surprise: trick films, train travels, novelties, and exoticism. Furthermore, these elements are presented in accordance with the same mode of experience as that of urban life: surprise, discontinuity, and rapidity. In a manner of speaking, the lecturer is the proof of the attraction, and conse- quently of the relevance of the “cinema of attractions” as a concept. How and why can one consider this role as a proof? The first screenings are performed by lecturers, or at least by lecturers who introduce the show (and by journal entries that prepare what is coming next). The barker calls upon spectators to see the novelty, the surprise, and the lecturer presents, explains, and comments on the attraction. He is there both to amplify the shock and to attenuate: he informs the spectator that he will see something unexpected, which will be surprising, dis- turbing, even frightening. So this predictable shock is anticipated, expected, but less surprising than if the spectator were not prepared at all. The lecturer stimulates and praises the entertainment and the attraction by introducing them to soften the shock, but then he amplifies the surprise. So, the lecturer can be considered as an entry-exit process. Besides, the lecturer was generally situated at the theater’s entrance, telling what would be experienced inside as well as what had been experienced by spectators who were leaving the place. However, if the movie was the main attraction, it had to be emphasized, and for this reason the lecturer was indispensable. For the spectator unfamiliar with the story, it was impossible to understand Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Edwin Porter, ), and the lecturer’s commentary was almost essential to indicate and to accentuate the attractions: who is the character on the left, why does he move forward, what does he want? The history of the lecturer asserts the assumption of the commentary as a proof of the attraction. The speech function presents, explains, and connects. Its presence corresponds to that of the cinema of attractions. Its decline then coin- 182 The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded an attempt to examine and control the attraction, to demonstrate the existence and strength of the attraction, but also to present its discursive and narrative strength. The Commentary as a Mediator of the Attraction If by his presence and intervention he demonstrates the existence of the attrac- tion, the lecturer can also be portrayed as a mediator of the attraction, that is, the person who is able to disseminate this unusual form, to arouse and maintain the interest in its favor, and to prepare and negotiate its encounter with the audience. The word mediator has to be understood as an ambiguous position where the subject can make choices, indicate directions, and activate operations. The mediator lecturer can “manipulate” the audience because it is often “his own” audience. He recognizes the spectators and knows what they can appreci- ate as an effect (surprise, shock, discovery) or affect (fear, worry, anxiety). If he does not always recognize the audience, at least he knows his art, he knows what he can do and what he can experiment with as effect or affect. He can sometimes be unaware of the precise outcome of the experience, but he knows its possibilities and can expect what happens next. He is a showman, and his art consists of preparing and amplifying the spectacular, and to ritualize it as a particular effect. He was first the mediator of the transition between the magic lantern and the cinematograph: the lantern was an attraction that sometimes stimulated move- ment. The attractive characteristic of the cinematograph consists in a more so- phisticated simulation of the movement, the “animated photography” meaning photography with movement added. The lantern’s speaker who acquired a ci- nematograph certainly changed his commentary: whereas before his commen- tary consisted of still images, he will now probably announce the images’move- ment, and change his explanation according to this new characteristic. Richard Crangle supports a different opinion according to which the commentary of the lanterns and that of the animated views were quite different practices, educa- tional versus recreational. Although this observation is accurate in general, it neglects the numerous attractions used by the lanternists, many of whom be- came projectionists. Some will even become theorists of projection and even- tually emphasizes the projector’s abilities as attraction. Cecil Hepworth in Eng- land and G.-Michel Coissac in France are two notable examples. For that matter, the lecturer’s history is the history of this mediation, or of the emergence of cinema that gradually becomes “auto-mediated”: the lecturer first presents the invention and attraction; he then uses the views as attractions in his The Lecturer and the Attraction 185 magic lantern animated show; finally, he is “thrown” out by the movie he “swallowed.” Although Gunning has questioned the generalization of this three-phase story, the lecturer’s existence can appropriately be assimilated to the history of mediation of animated views. Besides, this story softens the strength of attraction and theory based on it, since the lecturer’s role was to prepare the surprise and distraction. However, as said earlier, the organized lecture confirms that it took place, and therefore that it happened. Yet Gunning was the first to notice this important relation between the film lecturer and the attraction. In his well-known article “An Aesthetic of Astonish- ment,” he insists on the fact that “[l]ike a fairground barker, [the film lecturer] builds an atmosphere of expectation, a pronounced curiosity leavened with an- xiety as he stresses the novelty and astonishing properties which the attraction about to be revealed will possess.” Gunning gives as examples the projections presented by Albert E. Smith that were introduced and provided by a commen- tary during which Stuart Blackton was doing everything he could to dramatize the projection and film’s effect. Gunning goes beyond this description to explain that “it expresses an attitude in which astonishment and knowledge perform a vertiginous dance” in accordance with the aesthetic of distraction theorized by Benjamin. Thus, the notion of attraction is related to a cognitive operation and corre- sponds to another interesting theoretical development, “l’image-attraction” (the attraction image), proposed by Livio Belloï. Belloï considers his designation more accurate than previous theories of attraction because it makes the notion of attraction more specified and therefore less general as well as more rele- vant. Indeed, the notion of attraction image corresponds better to the transi- tion of magic lantern to cinematograph because it shows what is most distinc- tively attractive and what constitutes the spectacular element in films. Belloï cites different examples, such as the “vue attentatoire” (assailing view). The Lumière’s and Biograph’s trains are as many projectiles launched towards the target-spectators that are used to flabbergast them with disappearing rather than appearing locomotives, thus showing the assailing view as a fiction that reveals the reality of the image as an interlocutor. These attraction images are often accompanied by a spoken commentary, a prime example being the “Hale’s Tours,” of which the lecturer’s interpretation is a fact that is often and even now ignored. If one believes in the effect of attraction (the spectator’s interest in a maximal distractive experience), how to explain the presence of this “he who explains” here? Without a doubt it is useful to go back to what has been previously considered: he softens the effect of the shock by introducing it, but he then amplifies it while integrating it in a perfor- mance that focuses on the exacerbation of the spectacular and distractive. Here the train operator with an abundant speech echoes the mediator discussed be- 186 The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded fore: he invites the travelers to board, to take their seats, and announces the tour’s stops. But when travelers approach a destination, they hear declarations and exclamations that arouse and stimulate their reactions. The lecturer’s role ends and is even disqualified from the moment the movie and the cinema become phenomena that are known, accepted, and legitimized. Indeed, the critical or aesthetic discourses attack the lecturer, and successfully eject him from the institution in many countries. In a way, the mediating role of the lecturer served the transition from the pre-industrial stage as a crisis to the institutional stage where cinema has become an accepted and normalized prac- tice, as Denis Simard defines it in “De la nouveauté du cinéma des premiers temps.” The lecturer has been somewhat useful for the spoken institution, un- fixed, and unregulated by written rules; he was the first practitioner who served to fasten the attraction to existent practices. After his disappearance, the attrac- tion remains, but is now integrated into familiar practices whose device is as- similated to the point that it has become unconscious and implicit. The attrac- tion is now included in a narrative, it is inscribed in a temporal and spatial development, it is an element of an expansion, it expresses modernity, but a modernity actually mastered as an experience where the surprise has become the usual instead of the unusual. The Commentary as a Mediator of Modernity Beyond his mediating role of the attraction, the lecturer has been the mediator of the transition between tradition and modernity. As demonstrated by Gun- ning, the notion of attraction refers very well to modernity as portrayed by his- torians mentioned earlier (Benjamin, Kracauer) and others like Georg Simmel. Mediator of this (violent) transition, the lecturer is therefore both proof and wit- ness of the attraction: a proof, because his presence shows the necessity of an introducing and negotiating authority, that comes to attenuate the violence of the shock, and at the same time causes this shock and in a way justifies it; a witness, because his profession sees the rapid development between the sur- prise caused by the cinematograph and the posterior interest for narrative cin- ema including the attractions. The cinematograph served the consolidation of scientific and materialist knowledge of the world, offering the spectator a narrative build-up by the re- production of the real. Cinematograph images are the product of a knowledge that is not metaphysical nor empirical, but physical and objective. A train can be called to mind by speech and text, but thanks to the camera and the projector it can be copied and shown. The showing has become a technical operation The Lecturer and the Attraction 187 amusing. When he wants to live an experience less rapid, he turns off projectors and listens to the voices. Translated by Julie Beaulieu (with Frank Runcie) Notes . The words used to refer to the film lecturer can be confusing. In French, bonisseur (barker) generally refers to the person advertising in front of theaters, bonimenteur (film lecturer) refers to the person commenting on the screenings, improvising film commentary, and conférencier (speaker) refers to the person giving a well-prepared lecture with scholarly explanations. . Tom Gunning, “Early American Film,” The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, ed. John Hill and Pamela Church Gibson (Oxford: Oxford UP, ) -. This article con- stitutes one of the most complete and brilliant synthesis published on the cinema of attractions. . Gunning, “Early American Film” . . André Gaudreault, Cinema delle origini. O della “cinematografia-attrazione” (Milano: Il Castoro, ). See also his contribution in this volume. . André Gaudreault and Nicolas Dulac, “Head or Tails: The Emergence of a New Cultural Series, from the Phenakisticope to the Cinematograph,” Invisible Culture. An Electronic Journal for Visual Culture () http://www.rochester.edu/in_visible_ culture/Issue_/dulac_gaudreault.html. See also their contribution in this volume which is a revised version of “Head or Tails.” . Here I use effect to indicate the cognitive aspect of the impression produced and affect to point out the emotive or physiological aspects. . Richard Crangle, “Next Slide Please: The Lantern Lecture in Britain -,” The Sounds of Early Cinema, ed. Richard Abel and Rick Altman (Bloomington: Indiana UP, ) -. . Cecil M. Hepworth, Came the Dawn. Memories of a Film Pioneer (London: Phoenix House, ); G.-Michel Coissac, Manuel pratique du conférencier-projectionniste (Paris: La Bonne Presse, ). . On these three stages, see my book Le bonimenteur de vues animées. Le cinéma muet entre tradition et modernité (Québec/Paris: Nota Bene/Méridiens-Klincksieck, ). . Tom Gunning, “The Scene of Speaking Two Decades of Discovering the Film Lec- turer,” Iris  (Spring ): -. Gunning challenges my conclusions on the lec- turer as a means of resistance for local cultures. . Tom Gunning, “An Aesthetic of Astonishment. Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator,” Art and Text  (Spring ): . . Gunning, “An Aesthetic of Astonishment” . . Livio Belloï, Le regard retourné. Aspects du cinéma des premiers temps (Québec/Paris: Nota Bene/Méridiens Klincksieck, ) . 190 The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded . The “assailing view” refers to the movie that seems to stress and threaten the spec- tator: the train rushing in the audience, the cowboy who is shooting at him, or any form of “attack.” . Belloï . . Charles Berg, “The Human Voice and the Silent Cinema,” Journal of Popular Film . (): . . Denis Simard, “De la nouveauté du cinéma des premiers temps,” Le cinéma en his- toire. Institutions cinématographiques, réception filmique et reconstitution historique, ed. André Gaudreault, Germain Lacasse and Isabelle Raynauld (Paris/Québec: Méri- diens Klincksieck/Nota Bene, ) -. In this article Simard depicts GRAFICS works. . Roland Cosandey, André Gaudreault and Tom Gunning, eds., Une invention du dia- ble. Cinéma des premiers temps et religion, Actes du er congrès de Domitor (Sainte-Foy/ Lausanne: Presses de l’Université Laval/Payot, ). . Lillian Gish, Dorothy and Lillian Gish (New York: Scribner’s, ) . Gish attributes this discourse to D.W. Griffith, but it was announced by many other silent cinema propagandists. . Natasha Durovicova, “Introduction,” Cinéma et Cie  (Spring ): . . Based on Jonathan Crary’s work, Gunning in “Early American Film” reasserts this observation, criticizing Bordwell’s opinion that wants to soften the novelty of the modern experience. The Lecturer and the Attraction 191