What Is Cinema?
What comes to mind when we conceptualize Cinema? We might think of the movies - the darkened auditorium and the experience of sitting in the audience to watch a story. We might think of the more technical or formal elements of film - the projector, the lights, the screen as a window into a different world by way of the camera. For me, Cinema is more an idea; a spectral universe that is inseparable from our own, functioning as both a part of as well as a reflection of the "real-world".
I imagine the idea of Cinema to be like two mirrors facing each other - one being the image beyond the screen, the other being the human spectator. Cinema is what is found between those reflected surfaces and is a product of both our interaction (physical, emotional, psychological) with the image as well as the image's interaction with us. In this way, Cinema is a boundless entity continuously building off it's own original light source. The real becomes lost as merely a single plane amongst an ever-expansive world of unreal representations.
When we place ourselves as the subject between the mirrors it is impossible to tell who is spectator and who is image. Outstretched before us we see ourselves looking back, yes. But we also see ourselves not looking, our backs turned away. Thus we are also looked upon by the images behind us. We are all at once the spectator and the spectacle, the observer and the observed. This is where the questions of viewership materialize: Who does the looking? Is the act of looking what makes something real or unreal? At what point does the image become reality? Can the true audience even be defined? These questions are largely unanswerable but allow us to think about Cinema in relation to multiple intersections: art and artifact, fiction and history, intentionality and spontaneity.
If the boundaries between the real and cinematic are undefinable, immaterial, and independent of audience, then perhaps Cinema is more than just an idea, but a space that exists always. A pedestal for contemplation of any subject. A potential for endless representations. The camera is merely a human invention for us to access this potential. All that is truly needed for Cinema to exist is light.
Alternative Theory:
I have chosen to present my alternative theory in the form of a parody music video. The idea from my paper that the video aims to convey is Eugenie Brinkema’s interrogation of phenomenology and notion that cinema itself is the location of affect, not just the spectator. In my final paper, I side with Sarah Cooper who feels discussions of the soul are noticeably absent from film theory. The song “What Was I Made For?” from the Barbie movie is very much the emotional apex of the film in which an inanimate object is gifted a soul and interestingly plays after a character in the film is commanded to “feel”. Parody when presented as an art form rather than mere comedic mockery allows for the hyperbolic emphasis of an idea that already exists in the original piece. I have changed it to “Who Was I Made For?” as the song represents a reflection from cinema itself as a sentient being working out a new theory of cinematic identification whereby spectator and cinema can understand each other as beings with souls of their own. I think the music video is a good format to illustrate this point, as there is clear emotional resonance in the images despite a lack of narrative. Thus the music video suspends reliance on narrative and even dips into more avant-garde representations to show how identification with moving images is possible through a theoretical soul connection.
