does film history need a crisis

8/19/2019 Does Film History Need a Crisis

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Does

Film

History

Need a

Crisis?

by

Robert Sklar

At a conference

in the

1980s,

sponsored by

the American Historical

Association,

that

brought

film

historians

together

with scholars of

U.S.

history,

one of the

latter

commented

privately

hat

he found some of the former rather

"whigish."'

This

was

not a

Harry

Potterism

avant la

lettre;

rather,

t was a reference that most historians

would

easily recognize.

The

term derives

from

a small

polemical

book,

The

Whig

Interpretation of

History,

by

British historian

Herbert

Butterfield,

published

in

1931.

Butterfield defined the

object

of

his

critique

as "the

tendency

in

many

histo-

rians ... to

praise

revolutions

provided they

have been

successful,

to

emphasise

certain

principles

of

progress

in the

past

and to

produce

a

story

which is the

ratifi-

cation

if

not the

glorification

of the

present."2

Butterfield's

viewpoint

has had

a

remarkably ong

run

in

general historiography;

s

recently

as

2002,

it was described

as

"historiographicalorthodoxy."3

However,

the historian

at

the conference

was

not

directing

his remarkat an

interpretation

that

treated

cinema's

past

as a

story

of

progress; by

the

1980s,

an

antiteleological

stance had become a cinema studies

axiom.

Instead,

what seemed

"whigish"

n

this

person's

estimation

was an account

of

revolutionary

success,

progress,

and the ratification

(if

not the

glorification)

offered

by

film

historians of their own

historiographic

achievements.

Shortly

after

the

conference,

I

recounted this

anecdote

to

a class

in film

histo-

riography,

and offered some additional

perspectives.

Film

historians,

I

suggested,

had not

yet fully

recognized

that the

practice

of

historiography

s

fundamentally

dialogic.

Historical discourse

is

constantly being

transformed

through

historians'

commentaries

and

critiques

on the work of

other

past

and

present

historians.

The

historian,

as Michel de

Certeau

puts

it,

"effaces error....

The

territory

that

he

occupies

is

acquired through

a

diagnosis

of the

false. ....

His

work is oriented

toward

the

negative."4

Present-day

film historians had

excelled in

detecting

what

they

regarded

as error

in

their

predecessors

and had

staked out

significant

new

territories

in

historical

interpretation.

What

was

naturally

difficult to

accept,

how-

ever,

was that the

inherent

dialogism

of their

discipline

would in

turn

subject

their

work to

critique.

The

transformationof

historiography

would

continue,

I

suggested

to the

class,

and

in

several

decades' time

emerging

film

historians

would ask

new

questions

about

the

past

and debate

new

perspectives

that

were

likely

to be sub-

stantially

different from

those that

scholars of the

1980s had

valorized.

Film

histo-

riography

almost

certainly

would have moved on to territories

as

yet

uncharted.

Several

decades

have now

passed

since

those incidents. Has

my prediction

been

borne out? A

fence-sitting

answer would have to be

yes

and no. If

my

own

thoughts

to the

class had drawn

implicitly

on

Thomas Kuhn's

model of

paradigm

134

Cinema

Journal

44,

No.

1,

Fall 2004

-1M

IPN.



change,

which

posited

anomaly

and

crisis as

engines

of

scholarly upheaval,

then

no

major

crisis in film

historiography

has

developed

in those

years

in a manner

that Kuhn insisted

was "a

necessary

precondition

for the

emergence

of

novel

theories."5

A

more

pertinent

framework from which to

challenge

a

whigish

viewpoint

might

have come from Paul

Veyne,

who declared that "there is no

progress

in

historical

synthesis.... History

does not

progress,

but

widens,

which

means that

it

does not lose backward he terrain that it

conquers

forward. So

it

would

be snob-

bish to take

into account

only

the

pioneering

zones of

historiography."6 mphasiz-

ing

that

"history

s

fundamentally

erudition,"

Veyne proposed

that historicalworks

that

displayed

such erudition would remain

contemporary

even as

theories

of his-

tory

waxed and waned.7

Veyne's

quoted

remarks

appear

n

a

chapter

titled

"Length-

ening

the

Questionnaire,"

which

is

another

way

of

stating

his

notion that

history

does not

progress

but widens.

Several

questions

concerning present-day

film

historiography emerge

from

these brief

introductory

emarks.

First,

drawing

on

Veyne,

what constitutes

"length-

ening

the

questionnaire"

n film

history,

and how has

the

discipline

"widened"

n

recent decades?

Second,

not

entirely

jettisoning

Kuhn,

are there

currently any

elements of "crisis" rom which new

theories

about

cinema

history

might gener-

ate?

Finally, suggesting

a

possible synthesis

of these two

contrasting

viewpoints,

might lengthening

the

questionnaire

bring

about a

transformation

n film

histori-

ography

without the conflict and

struggle

that the

presupposition

of crisis seems

to demand?

Film

historiographymay possess

its own internal

dynamics

of

change,

but it is

also

intertwined with

parallel

discourses

in

society

and

culture that

help

to

shape

it. Two salient contextual

developments might

be

mentioned,

with

additional

trands

growing

out

from

each.

First,

within

the academic

setting, globalization

has

made

a

major

theoretical

impact

in

cultural

studies,

which in

turn reflects

new

condi-

tions

in

the world

economy,

population

movements,

control and dissemination of

arts and

ideas,

and conflicts over territories and

ideologies,

to

name

only

a few.

Second,

in

the narrower realm of

media,

the

phenomenal

development

of

digital

technology

in

production

and exhibition

inevitably

has

generated

fresh

thinking

about

prior technologies,

while at the same time

creating

new venues for deliver-

ing

knowledge

and ideas about

film

history.

Globalization is

hardly

a new

concept

for

film

history.

The medium's techni-

cal standardization and

rapid

worldwide

proliferation

in

its earliest

years

have

been

interrogated

within

the frame

of

colonialism and

imperialism,

as well

as

with

reference to

strategies

of world trade dissimilar

in

few

ways

from contem-

porary

concerns. Yet the term's

ubiquity

in

recent

years

has

helped

focus the

attention of

film

historians on the interrelations of the

global

and the

national,

on

cinema

practices

and

representations

developed

in

sometimes

competitive,

of-

ten

unequal,

structures of

power

and ideas. Emblematic recent studies include

such works as

Richard

Abel's The Red

Rooster Scare:

Making

Cinema

American,

1900-1910,

which

traces a

nationalistic

response

to French

producers'

domi-

nance of

early

U.S.

exhibition;

Nick

Deocampo's

Cine:

Spanish

Influences

on

Cinema

Journal

44,

No.

1,

Fall

2004

135



Early

Cinema

in

the

Philippines,

inaugurating

a

multivolume

project

on

the his-

tory

of

Philippine

film

culture

in

its

colonial and

national

settings;

and Alison

Griffiths'sWondrous

Difference:

Cinema,

Anthropology,

and

Turn-of-the-Century

Visual

Culture,

which

brings

a

multidisciplinaryglobal

perspective

to the

emer-

gence

of

ethnographic

films.8

In

contrast,

digital

technology

is

perhaps

too recent a

development

to have

generated

new

questions

for

historiography

except

in brief and

provisional

form.

Mark Williams

suggests

that "media

history

and

historiography

are

crucially

im-

portant"

o

understanding

the

present

and future

of the

contemporary

media en-

vironmentand

calls for a criticalrevitalization f

apparatus

heory.9

Similarly,

arious

new-media

scholars cite the

significance

of

history

and

historiography

and echo

Veyne

in

acknowledging,

n

Sean Cubitt's

words,

"whathas been achieved

to

date,

even

as we contest the

premises, principles,

and,

increasingly

of

late,

the

objects

that constitute"

the media studies

field;

the volume's

particular

revisionary

ocus

is

on

concepts

of narrative.10

entered on

pre-

and

early

cinema,

Mary

Ann

Doane

in

The

Emergence

of

Cinematic Time devotes

her final

chapter

to "the relations

between

the

nineteenth-/early twentieth-century epistemology

of

contingency

and

contemporaryprocesses

of

digital

and televisual

imaging.""l

All the works of

film

history

cited so far are concerned with

early

cinema.

This

leads

to the

question why

that

particular

era remains a dominant site

for historio-

graphic

innovation.

Are there

comparable

studies

for later

periods

of cinema

his-

tory

that either

explore globalization

or

revisit

such fundamental

concepts

as

the

cinematic

apparatus

or film

narrative?One

representative

work that demonstrates

the

widening

of

film

history,

in

Veyne's

terms,

is

James

Naremore's More than

Night.

Naremore

emphasizes

the "liminal

spaces"

that his

subject,

film

noir,

occu-

pies,

in

a

global-or

at least a

transatlantic-sense,

in

its

relation to artistic move-

ments and

conventions and within

industrial

practices.

Naremore also

emphasizes

film

noir's

liminality

between white

protagonists

and audiences

and "a

variety

of

'others'

.

. .

sexually

independent

women, homosexuals, Asians,

Latins,

and black

people."'2

Naremore's

list

of

"others"

may require

some

revision,

but it

serves

to

encapsulate perhaps

the

major

trend

in film

historiography

beyond

the

early

cin-

ema era:

the

"lengthening

of the

questionnaire"

o recover

suppressed

histories of

marginalized

or

excluded

subjects

defined

by

race,

gender,

or sexual orientation.

Studies

on

women,

gays

and

lesbians,

and

people

of

color-an

incomplete

list-have

occupied

a central

place

in film

history

similar to work

on

early

cinema.

There

are far too

many

titles than

can be

acknowledged

in

this

limited

space,

but

one

might

cite as

exemplary

the

multiple

perspectives

on the

African American

filmmakerOscar Micheaux

n

works

by

Pearl

Bowser

and Louise

Spence;

Bowser,

Jane

Gaines,

and

Charles

Musser,

as editors and

curators;

and

J.

Ronald

Green.'3

Earlier

I

raised

the

question

whether this form of

historiographic

"widening"

ould

produce

or

constitute a transformation

of

film

history,

without

crisis,

conflict,

or

struggle.

In a

way,

it has; new work in film

history

necessarily

has to take such

materials and

viewpoints

into

account. Yet what remains

lacking

is

a discourse

on

metahistoriographicperspectives

that

might pull

together multiple

strands

and

reorient the field.

136

Cinema

Journal

44,

No.

1,

Fall

2004



Perhaps

hat

is an

impractical

goal;fragmentation

onditions

film

historiography

along

with

many

other

aspects

of

contemporary

ntellectual life. But there are

spe-

cific

aspects

to the film

history

field that

shape

this lack.

One

is the as

yet

not

fully

tested

capacity

of cinema

historiography

o

participate

n

the broadersocial and cul-

tural discoursesof

other

disciplines

and

subject

areas;

he

examples

of

globalization

and

digital

echnology,

cited

above,

only

partially espond

to this

issue,

since

they

are

as intrinsic

o

the cinema field as

they

are

separate

from it.

James Hay

addressesthis

concern

in

critiquing

the

notion

of

a discrete "cinematic

subject";

he

suggests

that

the

vitality

of

historiography

n

early

cinema

might

have

come

about

through

a

par-

ticular

necessity

to consider

film

relationally

outside its own domain.14

A

second

aspect

is an

incomplete acknowledgment

of the need for

dialogue

as fundamental to the

emergence

of new

historiographic perspectives.

Confer-

ences and

journals

in

cinema

studies tend to valorize

separate,

distinct

mono-

graphic

contributions,

to the

general

neglect

of

commentary

and debate.

They

need to do more to foster

metahistoriographic

nterventions and useful

exchanges

of views. It is not

yet

clear whether a

relatively

seamless

Veyne

model

of

change

will

prevail

in film

historiography

or

whether a

Kuhnian-style

crisis

is

required

to

generate

fresh ideas. But no more than

in the

1980s,

this

is not the

time for

whigish

self-satisfaction

about

film

historiography.

It

is the nature

of the

subject

that there

will

never be such

a time.

Notes

1.

Conference

papers,

along

with

other

materials,

were

published

n

John

E.

O'Connor,

ed.,

Image

as

Artifact:

The Historical

Analysis

of

Film and Television

(Malabar,

Fla.:

Robert

E.

Krieger,

990).

2. Herbert

Butterfield,

The

Whig

Interpretation

of

History

(London:

G.

Bell,

1931),

v.

3. Annabel

Patterson,

Nobody's

Perfect:

A New

Whig

Interpretation

of

History

(New

Haven:Yale

University

ress,2002),

1.

4.

Michel de

Certeau,

"History:

Science

and

Fiction,"

n

Certeau,

Heterologies:

Discourse

on the

Other,

rans.BrianMassumi

(Minneapolis:

niversity

f Minnesota

ress,1986),

200-201.

5.

Thomas

S.

Kuhn,

The

Structure

of

Scientific

Revolutions

(Chicago:

University

of

Chi-

cago

Press, 1962),

77.

6. Paul

Veyne, Writing

History: Essays

on

Epistemology,

trans.

Mina

Moore-Rinvolucri

(Middletown,

Conn.:

WesleyanUniversity

ress,1984),

228.

7. Ibid.

8. Richard

Abel,

The

Red

Rooster Scare:

Making

Cinema

American,

1900-1910

(Berke-

ley:

University

f California

ress, 1999);

Nick

Deocampo,

Cine:

Spanish

nfluences

on

Early

Cinema in the

Philippines

(Quezon

City:

National Commission

for the Cul-

ture

and the

Arts,

2003);

and Alison

Griffiths,

Wondrous

Difference:

Cinema,

Anthro-

pology,

and

Turn-of-the-Century

Visual

Culture

(New

York:Columbia

University

Press,

2002).

9. Mark

Williams,

Real-Time

Fairy

Tales:Cinema

Prefiguring igitalAnxiety,"

n

Anna

Everett and

John

T.

Caldwell,

eds.,

New Media:

Theoriesand Practices

of

Digitextuality

(New

York:

Routledge,

2003),

160.

10. Sean

Cubitt,

"Spreadsheets,

Site

Maps,

and Search

Engines: Why

Narrative

Is Mar-

ginal

to Multimedia

and Networked

Communication,

and

Why Marginality

Is

More

Cinema

Journal

44,

No.

1,

Fall

2004 137



Vital

than

Universality,"

n

Martin Rieser and Andrea

Zapp,

eds.,

New Screen Media:

Cinema/Art/Narrative

(London:

BFI

Publishing,

2002),

3.

11.

Mary

Ann

Doane,

The

Emergence

of

Cinematic

Time:

Modernity,

Contingency,

the

Archive

(Cambridge:

Harvard

University

Press,

2002),

29.

12. James

Naremore,

More

than

Night:

Film Noir in Its Contexts

(Berkeley:

University

of

CaliforniaPress, 1998), 220.

13.

Pearl Bowser and Louise

Spence, Writing

Himself

into

History:

Oscar

Micheaux,

His

Silent

Films,

and His Audiences

(New

Brunswick,

N.J.: Rutgers University

Press,

2000;

Bowser,

Jane

Gaines,

and

Charles

Musser, eds.,

and

curators,

Oscar Micheaux and

His

Circle:

African-American

Filmmaking

and

Race

Cinema

of

the Silent

Era

(Bloomington:

Indiana

University

Press, 2001);

and

J.

Ronald

Green,

Straight

Lick: The Cinema

of

Oscar Micheaux

(Bloomington:

Indiana

University

Press,

2000).

14.

James

Hay,

"PiecingTogether

What

Remains

of the

Cinematic

City,"

n

David B.

Clarke,

ed.,

The Cinematic

City

(London:

Routledge,

1997),

212.

Hay

writes:

What concerns me ...

is

the

tendency

to see

film

practices (or

other

practices

with

which it

is

seen to have a historical

relation)

as

discrete,

albeit

changing,

unities

and

as

a discrete set of relations

producing

a

"cinematic

subject"

rather than un-

derstanding

film

as

practiced

among

different social

sites,

always

n

relation to other

sites,

and

engaged by

social

subjects

who

move

among

sites and whose

mobility,

access

to,

and investment

in

cinema conditions

is

conditioned

by

these

relations

among

sites.

To

shift

strategies

in

this

way

would involve not

only decentering

film

as an

object

of

study

but also

focusing

instead

on how film

practice

occurs from and

through particular

sites-of

reemphasizing

the site of

film

practice

as a

spatial

is-

sue or

problematic.

"Collaborative

Research,

Doc?"

Donald

Crafton

The

classic

Warner Bros.

cartoon The

Big

Snooze

(1946)

shows Elmer Fudd

get-

ting

fed

up

with the

interminable chase after

Bugs Bunny

and

tearing up

his

"contwact

with

Mr.

Warner." The

implications

of

Elmer's

breaking up

the act

slowly

sink

in

for

Bugs.

"But, Doc,

we're like Abbott and Costello.

Damon

and

Runyon "

Even

toons see the value of

collaboration. But not

very many

scholars of

film

and media studies do.

I

began

thinking

of

this

during

a

series of e-mail

exchanges

with Prof.

X,

who

is

working

on

a book that

overlaps

with

my

current

project.

I

don't recall who

contacted whom

first,

but

X

learned

of

my

interest and

generously

sent

me

a

draft

of a

chapter

in

progress.

I

was able to

make some small

suggestions

for

further

sources and to

reflect

on

some

of

the

arguments.

In

turn,

X's

scholarship

opened

up

new resources and

interpretations

for me.

Furthermore,

during

the

exchange,

we

discovered that we have

another

unexpected overlap

in

research.

I

shared

my

research

notes;

he

followed

up

at his

local

archive;

we

both learned

something

we

did not know.

Serendipity

ensued.

Vital

than

Universality,"

n

Martin Rieser and Andrea

Zapp,

eds.,

New Screen Media:

Cinema/Art/Narrative

(London:

BFI

Publishing,

2002),

3.

11.

Mary

Ann

Doane,

The

Emergence

of

Cinematic

Time:

Modernity,

Contingency,

the

Archive

(Cambridge:

Harvard

University

Press,

2002),

29.

12. James

Naremore,

More

than

Night:

Film Noir in Its Contexts

(Berkeley:

University

of

CaliforniaPress, 1998), 220.

13.

Pearl Bowser and Louise

Spence, Writing

Himself

into

History:

Oscar

Micheaux,

His

Silent

Films,

and His Audiences

(New

Brunswick,

N.J.: Rutgers University

Press,

2000;

Bowser,

Jane

Gaines,

and

Charles

Musser, eds.,

and

curators,

Oscar Micheaux and

His

Circle:

African-American

Filmmaking

and

Race

Cinema

of

the Silent

Era

(Bloomington:

Indiana

University

Press, 2001);

and

J.

Ronald

Green,

Straight

Lick: The Cinema

of

Oscar Micheaux

(Bloomington:

Indiana

University

Press,

2000).

14.

James

Hay,

"PiecingTogether

What

Remains

of the

Cinematic

City,"

n

David B.

Clarke,

ed.,

The Cinematic

City

(London:

Routledge,

1997),

212.

Hay

writes:

What concerns me ...

is

the

tendency

to see

film

practices (or

other

practices

with

which it

is

seen to have a historical

relation)

as

discrete,

albeit

changing,

unities

and

as

a discrete set of relations

producing

a

"cinematic

subject"

rather than un-

derstanding

film

as

practiced

among

different social

sites,

always

n

relation to other

sites,

and

engaged by

social

subjects

who

move

among

sites and whose

mobility,

access

to,

and investment

in

cinema conditions

is

conditioned

by

these

relations

among

sites.

To

shift

strategies

in

this

way

would involve not

only decentering

film

as an

object

of

study

but also

focusing

instead

on how film

practice

occurs from and

through particular

sites-of

reemphasizing

the site of

film

practice

as a

spatial

is-

sue or

problematic.

"Collaborative

Research,

Doc?"

Donald

Crafton

The

classic

Warner Bros.

cartoon The

Big

Snooze

(1946)

shows Elmer Fudd

get-

ting

fed

up

with the

interminable chase after

Bugs Bunny

and

tearing up

his

"contwact

with

Mr.

Warner." The

implications

of

Elmer's

breaking up

the act

slowly

sink

in

for

Bugs.

"But, Doc,

we're like Abbott and Costello.

Damon

and

Runyon "

Even

toons see the value of

collaboration. But not

very many

scholars of

film

and media studies do.

I

began

thinking

of

this

during

a

series of e-mail

exchanges

with Prof.

X,

who

is

working

on

a book that

overlaps

with

my

current

project.

I

don't recall who

contacted whom

first,

but

X

learned

of

my

interest and

generously

sent

me

a

draft

of a

chapter

in

progress.

I

was able to

make some small

suggestions

for

further

sources and to

reflect

on

some

of

the

arguments.

In

turn,

X's

scholarship

opened

up

new resources and

interpretations

for me.

Furthermore,

during

the

exchange,

we

discovered that we have

another

unexpected overlap

in

research.

I

shared

my

research

notes;

he

followed

up

at his

local

archive;

we

both learned

something

we

did not know.

Serendipity

ensued.

138

Cinema

Journal

44,

No.

1,

Fall 2004

38

Cinema

Journal

44,

No.

1,

Fall 2004

does film history need a crisis

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