8 - Narrative: Historiographic Technique and Cinematographic Spirit
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 November 2020
Summary
Abstract
In a close analysis of pre-cinematographic and early cinematographic techniques, this chapter discusses the analogies between film and (historicist) historiography. For both, narration always means to relate the events of the real world to those of the possible world, to some imaginary events which might have been the sources or consequences of the real events. Cinema and history are deeply interconnected approaches, it turns out, to fill the gaps of sense-making which opened up in the process of modernization. This finally implies that, with the advent of electronic and digital media, such as television and the computer, not only narration, but also history as we know it, is put into question.
Keywords: philosophy of media, media history, historiography, memory, Modernity
When my father's father's father had a difficult task to accomplish, he went to a certain place in the forest, lit a fire, and immersed himself in a silent prayer. And what he had to do was done. When my father’s father was confronted with the same task, he went to the same place in the forest and said: ‘We no longer know how to light the fire, but we still know the prayer.’ And what he had to do was done. Later, when my father had the same task to accomplish, he too went into the forest and said: ‘We no longer know how to light the fire, we no longer know the mysteries of the prayer, but we still know the exact place in the forest where it occurred, and that should do.’ And that did do. But when I was faced with the same task, I stayed at home and said: ‘We no longer know how to light the fire, we no longer know the prayers, we don't even know the place in the forest, but we do know how to tell the story.’ ‒ Jean-Luc Godard
Media
The concept of the medium must be used carefully. If everything is a medium, then a medium is nothing; the concept's power to discern and therefore its meaning are lost. However, this is precisely what is about to happen; we have already entered the era of pan-medialism, in which everything can and will be defined as a medium and everything can and will be theoretically justified as a medium.
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- Thinking Through Television , pp. 145 - 170Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2019