Remediation in Film (and Digital Photography)

I thought Remediation: Understanding New Media (Bolter & Grusin), laid a good foundation for talking about new media, being that this was the first reading for class that really could address more modern forms of media. Of course, it’s easy to see that media at it’s very core is basically the same through history, whether it is the technology of writing or the world wide web. I chose to focus on read about two of my interests: digital photography and film. I will focus on the film chapter, as I felt that my concluding thoughts on film were similar to digital photography.

Bolter & Grusin cite film theorist Gunning who explained an audience view with a sense of immediacy and being aware of it at the same time. They call it the “duality of looking at and looking through.” Another duality they explain, is that there exists a cinema of attractions and a cinema of narratives. They say the cinema of attractions was what existed at first in the movies and the cinema of narrative was what came about second with the development of Hollywood-cinema. The cinema of attractions did show things in real time and the audience enjoyed them for the reason that they were amazed at the dual hypermediacy and immediacy they experienced when watching real events on the screen. I would extend that this is the same idea that news programs use and how television primarily started out as. That same fascination with watching real world events yet being aware of the medium of the screen is presenting the event to you in the safety of your living room has now developed into the other mediums we get news form like the internet.

There is also a duality in watching narrative film, since the audience understands that they are not watching real people and that it is “just a movie.” I think this book was written a little before “reality television” really took off. But the same thing applies to reality TV -- the programs are set-up to be real people, behaving and talking without scripts and without interference, or so they say. But let’s give the producers the benefit of the doubt and say that these programs are unscripted, does that mean there aren’t other ways the show is mediated? Well the people on the show, the “real people” were chosen for certain reasons (that they were good looking or really types of personalities that would cause drama) and they are put into situations that are set up to have certain outcomes. So the shows blatantly claiming to be reality are very much hypermediated. And I think most people watching recognize this so again there is that duality of immediacy and hypermediacy. The same argument is made for digital photography, as the viewer experiences a sense of immediacy at the same time as recognizing the influence of the medium. That duality exists in both mediums.

So will movies (or digital photography) become more hypermediate or immediate? Can film ever reach full realism/immediacy? I don’t think so, because of many issues with the medium itself. In a broad sense, if we’re talking about narrative film (which for this reading I think so) then film tells a story, either set in the past or the future. FIlm can try to set its story in the “present-day” but because of the medium itself, there can be no accurate way to present “real-time” stories. Otherwise it would just be a play again, and not film, and the good thing about film (as opposed to plays and the theater) and the authors touched on this, is that film can cut and not show everything that happens in real time. Audiences have been trained through watching hours and hours of movies and they don’t want to see things in real time for very long. The average shot-length of a movie is mere seconds for a reason. As for the past and future, a there are so many details that can be overlooked (purposely or not) when making films about the past, it’s impossible to not have some historical inaccuracies. And who’s to say what the future will be exactly? So there is no immediacy there. The same goes with digital photography as a photo can only capture something of the past, something that has already occurred, so really there is no potential for total immediacy in a photo, only a perception of realism.

As B&G showed, there is a duality in remediation between hypermediacy and immediacy. I like their dichotomy explanation, that immediacy can only exist because hypermediacy exists, and vice versa. This argument could be remediated about any subject. We define things by their opposite. I am a redhead because I am not a brunette. I am tall because I am not short. If everyone was the same height, there would be no “short” and “tall.” You have to look at the context of something to understand what it is, basically. This is true for movies as well as other mediums of media.

One thing I think the authors could have also addressed, is the cultural attitude and bias of the public towards certain kinds of remediations. For example, in literature remediation is commonly accepted and often praised. Shakespeare wrote very little “original” work; in fact I believe he only wrote 2 plays that did not come from an older source in literature or storytelling. Yet Shakespeare unquestionably contributed to literature and language in ways that was profound. For the average person, questions of his originality are just mostly looked over.

Then again with cinema, because it is a widely seen medium and popular with the masses, public opinion is very common. FIlm is constantly remediating literature, video games, previously made films, radio programs, etc etc. When a film is based on a book - I’ll stick with fiction lit for right now - it is understandable, based on the way the medium of film works, that it will inevitably leave something out from the novel, much like a film about the past will always have some historical inaccuracies. To me, each step that a medium takes in remediating a given subject is a step towards increased hypermediacy, as much as the medium wants to show immediacy, yet there can never be just one or the other. To reiterate B&G, neither can exist without the other.

Whoa...harry potter?