© Francesco Casetti, Back to the Motherland: The Film Theater in the Post-Media Age
Key-note speech at the Screen Conference, University of Glasgow, July 5
th
2009
http://www.FrancescoCasetti.net
Francesco Casetti
Back to the Motherland: The Film Theater in the Post-Media Age
Key-note speech at the Screen Conference, University of Glasgow, July 5
th
2009
Anna and Nicole made arrangements to meet each other at the movies. Unexpectedly, they end up
at different theaters: Anna to watch Vivre sa vie by Jean Luc Godard, and Nicole to watch The
Adjuster by Atom Egoyan. The former contacts the latter with an SMS from her cell phone; and the
latter receives the text and responds. In the Godard film that Anna is watching, the protagonist,
Nana, has just entered a cinema where Dreyer’s La passion de Jeanne d’Arc is being shown.
Another spectator sits next to Nana, more interested in her than in the movie. At the same moment,
in the film that Nicole is watching, the protagonist, Hera, is in a film theatre and is approached by a
man. Nana continues to watch La passion de Jeanne d’Arc: a monk played by Antonin Artaud
aggressively interrogates Jeanne, who replies; Nana is moved to tears. Anna, instead, who sees
these same images within Godard’s film, is struck by the beauty of Antonin Artaud: she records the
scene with the camera on her cell phone and sends it to Nicole, who then finds herself following a
second film, in addition to the one she paid to see. As the word “mort” is pronounced in the film that
Nicole is watching on her cell, the scene of a great bonfire from The Adjuster flashes across the
screen.
Artaud Double Bill,
1
by Atom Egoyan, is a film which in three minutes creates a fit
construction of interlinking elements. There are two present-day spectators, Anna and Nicole, who
are sitting in two separate theaters, but who participate in each others film-going experience. There
are two films, Vivre sa vie and The Adjuster, quite different one from another, but which both make
reference to what is happening in front of a screen. In Vivre sa vie, Nana, a 1960’s spectator of La
passion de Jeanne d’Arc, is touched by the story she is watching. Anna, a present-day spectator
who sees the same film through Nana’s eyes, reacts differently. Nevertheless, the events of each
film reference and complete each other (the sexual aggression, the bonfire). Moreover, there is the
cell phone screen which extends the cinematic screen by capturing and transmitting it. And there
are the words, in the SMS text, which describe what the two friends are watching.
2
These
I would like to thank Sara Sampietro for her observations and suggestions.
1 This is an episode in the film Chacun son cinéma ou Ce petit coup au coeur quand la lumière s'éteint et que
le film commence (France, 2007). Produce by the Festival of Cannes, it is a film directed by thirty-six different
directors, from Théo Anghelopoulos to Zhan Yimou.
2 Beyond the fact that Egoyan is the author of Artaud Double Bill and one of the two films that the two
spectators go to see, The Adjuster, and the fact that Nicole, the spectator of Egoyan’s film, also acts in that
film.
© Francesco Casetti, Back to the Motherland: The Film Theater in the Post-Media Age
Key-note speech at the Screen Conference, University of Glasgow, July 5
th
2009
http://www.FrancescoCasetti.net
2
interlinking elements – underlined by a set of explicitly related names, Anna, Nana, Jeanne
3
… –
create a sensation of dizziness: the world seems to vacillate, and we risk getting lost in it. But from
the series of situations that reflect each other reciprocally, there emerges some precise indications
of what it might mean to see a film in a movie theater nowadays.
Let’s follow the triangle composed of Anna, Nana and Nicole, attentive to the divergences
that seem to establish themselves between Anna and Nana, spectators of the same film though on
different levels and in different epochs, and to the convergences that seem to come about between
Anna and Nicole, spectators of different films, but anxious to establish common ground.
The first trait that strikes us is that if Nana, in Godard’s film, watches Dreyer’s film only,
Anna, in Egoyan’s film, finds herself in front of a more complex object. First of all, she sees
Godard’s film, and inside of that, Dreyer’s: she is the spectator of a double set of images. She sees
La passion de Jean d’Arc by Dreyer, but she also sees Nana who is watching the same images:
she is the spectator of an act of vision). Furthermore, she sees something in Godard’s film—Nana
approached by another spectator—which also takes place in the film being watched by her friend,
and is perhaps experienced by her friend, as well: she is the spectator of a story that has an ulterior
development. Finally, Anna watches a movie and simultaneously sends and reads messages on
her cell phone: she is both spectator and reader. Nicole, her alter-ego, finds herself in an
analogous position: she too sees her film and the clip of Dreyer’s that Anna sends to her; she too
sees things seen by others and things that complete others (the bonfire that overlaps Jeanne’s
death sentence); and she too sees and reads.
The fact is that Nana, on the one hand, and Anna and Nicole, on the other, measure
themselves by two different objects. The word “film” does not mean the same thing to them. For
Nana, it is a single and well-defined work: it is “this” film, and not another, to enjoy directly and on
its own. For Anna and Nicole, however, film is a discourse that hosts other discourses, that
collaborates with other discourses, and that generates other discourses. It is “this” film, as it could
also be a different movie to encounter, perhaps thanks to someone else’s mediation. It is a series of
images that pushes one to write an SMS which reflects what one is watching. It is also a set of
events that is taken up again or is completed in other films, or perhaps, in life. And it is a catalogue
of generic situations (the orgy, the bonfire) easily made into a completely personal album of images
(for instance, for Anna, the close-up of Artaud). In essence, if Nana, the traditional spectator, still
confronts a text, then the two modern spectators confront a hypertext
4
with its various components,
its links and its expansions. Better yet, what Anna and Nicole face is a network of social discourses,
3
I am indebt with Carol Jacobs, who has extensively worked on the “anagrams” in this film, not only on the
side of the female characters (let’s also notice that Anna, the spectator of Godard’s film, shares the name of
the film’s actress, Anna Karina), but also on the side of the film director, starting from the “Ego” inscribed in his
name (which eventually echoes the “Je” of Jean – “Je” and An”.. – of Jean Luc Godard).
4 For discussion on hypertexts see the classic works by George Landow, in particular: Hypertext 2.0
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); and Hypertext 3.0: Critical Theory and New Media in an
Era of Globalization (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006).
© Francesco Casetti, Back to the Motherland: The Film Theater in the Post-Media Age
Key-note speech at the Screen Conference, University of Glasgow, July 5
th
2009
http://www.FrancescoCasetti.net
3
which aligns and embeds different occurrences, genres, regimes, and within which the film, in the
strict sense of the word, can play a relevant, but certainly not exclusive, role.
5
The second trait involves not the object of the spectators’ vision, but its modality. Nana
directs her interest completely towards the film she is seeing: she is literally “all eyes.” Anna,
instead, displays a more articulated attitude: she follows the film, but in the meantime she concerns
herself with finding out where her friend ended up, she writes what she feels as she watches Vivre
sa vie, she isolates a detail of the film, she captures it on her cell phone, she displays her passion
for the cinema, etc. In essence, while Nana centralizes her sight, Anna decentralizes it.
This decentralization has something in common with the distracted perception that
Benjamin attributed to the cinema, and which, after Benjamin, was attributed to television.
6
Here
we are at the opposite extreme from that contemplation which the old work of art seemed to
demand, and we are closer to a more casual, less involved engagement, which contemporary
media ask us to develop. In this sense, using the respective terms of John Ellis and Stanley Cavell,
we can say that Anna and Nicole do not reserve for the cinema a gaze in the strict sense, but rather
glances
7
, and they do not commit themselves to a viewing, but rather to a kind of monitoring.
8
In
doing so, however, the two women do not withhold their attention: rather they direct it towards a
plurality of objects and practices. They follow the story, but they abandon some of the details; they
pay attention to the film, but also to their cell phones; they react to the images, but also to that
which is around them. Therefore, truth be told, they are not “distracted”: they simply multiply their
centers of attention; they pass from one source to another; and they modulate their gaze. In a
word, they activate a multitasking form of attention.
9
In doing so, they stop short of “re-sacralizing”
the film in front of them (which is what Nana does, who rouses herself to contemplate that world
which opens up before her eyes). They look at it just as they would look at any one of many objects
they come across in their lifeworld, an object to pick up now and put down later.
A third trait: Nana not only concentrates on the film she is watching, she immerges herself
in it. Through an explicit play of identifications and projections, the protagonist of Vivre sa vie
“penetrates” the story recounted by Dreyer to the point of feeling a part of it. The consequence of
5 For more on the network of social discourses, see: Francesco Casetti, “Cinema, letteratura e circuito dei
discorsi sociali,” Cinema e letteratura: percorsi di confine, ed. I. Perniola (Venice: Marsilio, 2002) 21-31; and
“Adaptations and Mis-adaptations: Film, Literature, and Social discourses,“ A Companion to Literature and
Film, eds. R. Stam, A. Raengo (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005): 81-91.
6
For distracted perception, see: Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological
Reproducibility: Third Version,” Selected Writings 1938-1940, vol. IV, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W.
Jennings (Cambridge & London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2003) 251-282. (“L’œuvre d’art à
l’époque de sa reproduction mécanisée.” Zeischrift für Sozialforschung, I, 1936).
7
John Ellis formulated the gaze/glance opposition in: Visibile Fictions (London, Routledge, 1982). For more
on the debated surrounding it, see: Maria Grazia Fanchi, Spettatore (Milan: Il Castoro, 2005) 38 ff.
8
Stanley Cavell proposes the viewing/monitoring opposition in: “The Fact of Television,” Daedalus, Fall 1982;
reprinted in Cavell on Film (Albany, SUNY Press, 2005) 59-85.
9
In this sense we may say that between the gaze and the glance, Anna and Nicole activate “a third viewing
style,” that of the “multicentered…attentive but at the same time divided watching.” For more on the
multicentered gaze see: Maria Grazie Fanchi, Spettatori (Milan: Il Castoro, 2005) 43 ff.
© Francesco Casetti, Back to the Motherland: The Film Theater in the Post-Media Age
Key-note speech at the Screen Conference, University of Glasgow, July 5
th
2009
http://www.FrancescoCasetti.net
4
this is catharsis. We see it in the tears that streak down her face as she reads the intertitle “Mort”:
Nana sees her own destiny in that of Joan of Arc; she cries for herself as she cries for la pucelle.
Anna, instead, remains on the surface of what she sees: she grasps the details that interest her,
isolating the rest, and she sends them to her friend. In essence, instead of immersing herself in the
film, she slides over it, wave after wave, accomplishing a kind of surfing. Any kind of catharsis is
therefore avoided: Anna neither identifies with nor projects herself onto Jeanne or Nana; she
remains herself, distant and distinct from the characters in front of her.
10
If anything, she
experiences an aesthetic realization: she is struck by the beauty of Antonin Artaud. However, this
is an epidermic reaction, in the sense that it causes a sensation, not meaning. Therefore, it keeps
at a distance a true identification with that which is shown. In essence, Anna watches, but that
which she sees does not pertain to her.
In this regard, using Roland Barthes expression, we can say that Anna is a spectator who
does not succeed in “gluing” herself to the screen.
11
She does not enter into the diegetic world of
the film: at most, she crosses it. She does not take part in the story: at most she takes a part of it.
Furthermore, the circumstances do not help her: her friend’s absence is weighing on her mind, and
the need to contact her is distracting. Anna, to continue using Barthes’ terms, does not even
manage to “take off,” and therefore to profit from the situation in which she finds herself in order to
add to the charm of the theater to the charm of the movie: she remains “unstuck” from both. The
consequence is a loss of the rituality of vision, the lack of which is evidence of the occasional,
provisional and irregular nature of vision. To watch a film becomes an adventure without a firm
foundation.
The fourth trait concerns the movie theater, which I have mentioned above. Nana seeks a
kind of refuge in the cinema: she enters it in order to isolate herself from the external world, to
escape from her daily routine. In doing so, she falls into a trap: by watching Dreyer’s film, she
discovers that she too is destined to die. However, this illumination is allowed her exactly because
she momentarily distanced herself from her universe: only a completely “other” character, such as
Jeanne, can make her understand what awaits her. Anna, on the other hand, entered the theater in
order to spend some time with her friend: cinema is not an alternative, but a continuation of her
daily world. Therefore, when she realizes that her friend has not joined her she immediately puts
herself in contact with Nicole: exactly because the movie theater is a prolongation of the outside
world, it is also a locale from which one can get in touch with others. It is not surprising then, that
that which appears on the screen can migrate elsewhere: in fact, the close-up of Artaud, captured
10 On cinematic catharsis and on its capitulation, see the perceptive observations of Gabriele Pedullà: In piena
luce. I nuovi spettatori e il sistema delle arti (Milan: Bompiani, 2008) 219ff. Pedullà takes up and develops
further Stanley Cavell’s important intuition in “The Avoidance of Love: A Reading of King Lear,” Must We
Mean What We Say? A Book of Essays (New York: Cambridge University Press, 267-353).
11 Roland Barthes, “Leaving the Movie Theater.” The Rustle of Language (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986) 345-
349 (“En sortant du cinéma,” Communications 23, 1975, 104-7).
© Francesco Casetti, Back to the Motherland: The Film Theater in the Post-Media Age
Key-note speech at the Screen Conference, University of Glasgow, July 5
th
2009
http://www.FrancescoCasetti.net
5
by Anna, ends up on Nicole’s cell phone; the sexual aggression alluded to in Vivre sa vie takes
place also in The Adjuster; and the fire to which Jeanne is condemned spreads in the film seen by
Nicole. However, none of these correspondences turns out to be decisive. While Jeanne’s death
sentence revealed to Nana the meaning of her life, these echoes appear to Anna and Nicole as
mere cues to consider. They are splinters of an imaginary at everyone’s disposal, linked to one
another by a chain which is more random than mysterious.
In other words, Nana’s movie theater is a heterotopic place in the classic sense of the
word:
12
it is a fenced-in space, which offers a “catwalk” towards another world, from which we can
draw resources for our world. The theater of Anna and Nicole, instead, plays out differently: it lacks
a true fence, being a space that belongs to the everyday world; even though there are openings on
universes different from that in which we live, we are never called upon to cross any true thresholds
beyond which we could discover ourselves; the elements with which we confront ourselves
represent possible events, not interpretations of our condition; and finally these elements are
accessible to many other spectators, no matter the film they are watching. In essence, Nana’s
theater circumscribes an audience that rediscovers on the screen the essence of its own life, thanks
to a representation which seems far-removed from reality. Anna’s and Nicole’s theater holds
together a dispersed audience, more similar to a television audience or to the participants in a
social network—an audience that engages with images which do not necessarily function as
revelations, but which can be accessed even at a distance, and the significance of which may be
gathered at any point along the network of spectators.
Let’s summarize these initial findings. We are dealing with a text as opposed to a hypertext
or to a network of social discourses; a centralized gaze as opposed to a decentralized glance; the
possibility of immersing oneself in the story as opposed to remaining on the surface; experiencing
catharsis as opposed to an activity more similar to bricolage; a closed space that circumscribes a
public as opposed to a more open space, which functions like a junction of an ideal network; the
representation of a world fully “other,” which, however, speaks to the “real” world as opposed to the
representation of a “possible” world, which can locate its realization anywhere. Artaud Double Bill
delineates a precise field: triangulating Nana, Anna and Nicole, it reminds us what it was to watch a
film in the past, and what it has become in the present. So what full lesson can we draw from the
portrait offered to us by Egoyan?
Let us start by saying that Nana, Anna and Nicole are not dealing with what is usually
called “reception.” As much as this term has been consecrated in the field of Film Studies, it seems
quite inappropriate. None of the three spectators “receives” the images and sounds: if anything,
they “live” them, that is, they measure themselves against them, they react to them, they insert
12
On heterotopy see the fundamental text by Michel Foucault: “Of Other Spaces,” Diacritics 16 (Spring 1986):
22-7 (“Des espaces autres. Conférence au Cercle d'études architecturales, 14 mars 1967),” Architecture,
Mouvement, Continuité, no. 5 (October 1984) 46-49).
© Francesco Casetti, Back to the Motherland: The Film Theater in the Post-Media Age
Key-note speech at the Screen Conference, University of Glasgow, July 5
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2009
http://www.FrancescoCasetti.net
6
them in their own frameworks, they seek to appropriate them, etc. Therefore, instead of reception, I
would like to speak about filmic experience: the people in front of the screen are surprised and
taken by that which is presented to their eyes (and ears), and at the same time, reflexively, they try
to recognize these stimuli and their effects to the point of assuming the role of spectator.
However, Nana, Anna and Nicole also tell us that the roles of the filmic experience have
changed profoundly since the 1960s. We shall momentarily abandon Egoyan’s film, and look more
generally at the field of spectatorship. If anything is clear, it is that we have reached the end of a
model which has been dominate for a long time: the model which thought of the spectator as
“attending” a film. To attend means to place ourselves in front of something which does not
necessarily depend on us, but of which we find ourselves to be the witnesses. What is important is
to be present at an event, and to open our eyes to it, both in order to be able to accept it, as with a
gift, and to be able to acquire it, as with a conquest.
13
Today, this model is no longer very relevant:
watching a film involves ever more frequently a direct intervention by the spectators, who find
themselves having to literally direct what they have in front of them, the environment in which they
move, and even their very selves.
Spectators intervene, for example, by choosing the instrument on which to watch the film:
this can be a traditional apparatus—film, projector, screen—but it can also be a DVD-player, a mp3player
or a personal computer. Also, spectators may modulate the times and places of viewing: a
movie may be watched in its entirety, but also in fragments; we may delay its conclusion, or chose
the main scenes. Spectators can also intervene by taking into account the situation in which they
find themselves: a film can serve to satisfy a desire for spectacle, but it can also simply kill time
during a trip or capture the curiosity of a web surfer. Above all, interventions can redefine the film: it
can be an object of vision, but also a collectable, a cult object,
14
or something to be manipulated or
exchanged through file-sharing programs. The presence of options where once there was standard
practice, the necessity of establishing the rules of the game where they were once implicit, the
strong connection with one’s own world where once there was a separation, and finally, the
widening of perspective where once the field was bounded: these are all elements that testify to
how much the framework has changed.
15
If traditional spectators once modeled themselves on
films, spectators now model films, or remodel them onto themselves, thanks to a combination of
13
Stanley Cavell sums up this condition when, for example, he observes that at the movie theater, “we wish to
see … the world itself,” and at the same time, “we are wishing for the condition of seeing as such.” Stanley
Cavell, The World Viewed. Enlarged Edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979) 101-2.
14
Concerning contemporary practices of collecting and of cult, see: Barbara Klinger, “The Contemporary
Cinephile: Film Collecting in the Post Video Era,” Hollywood Spectatorship. Changing Perceptions of Cinema
Audiences, Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby, eds. (BFI: London, 2001) 131-51.
15 According to Marigrazia Fanchi, an ample space of negotiation has opened up to the new spectators: they
find themselves first having to draw themselves a mediatic cartography, then having to assign roles and
functions to the various platforms, and finally having to perform a demiurgic action on the device, defining its
times, modes and the situation in which it is to be used. See: Mariagrazia Fanchi, “L’esperienza della visione,”
E’ tutto un altro film. Più coraggio e più idée per il cinema italiano, Francesco Casetti & Severino Salvemini,
eds. (Milan: Egea, 2007) 90.
© Francesco Casetti, Back to the Motherland: The Film Theater in the Post-Media Age
Key-note speech at the Screen Conference, University of Glasgow, July 5
th
2009
http://www.FrancescoCasetti.net
7
precise practices which invest the object, the modalities and the conditions of vision. The effect is
that the spectators become the protagonists of the game: active protagonists. They are no longer
asked to be present at a projection with eyes wide open; instead, they act. Attendance has ceded
the field to performance.
16
Among the practices involved in watching a film, some may seem traditional if they were
not also angled in a new direction. For example, we continue to engage in a sensory doing, but the
boundaries of this doing have been appreciably expanded. In addition to sight, we increasingly find
ourselves involving our other senses: hearing (to see a movie is to enter into a sonorous
environment); and also touch (in order to watch a movie on a DVD-player or a personal computer,
one must intervene with one’s own hand).
17
Similarly, we continue to engage in a cognitive doing,
which allows us to interpret that which we see; however, this decenters us, so to speak. More than
“understanding” a film, spectators find themselves either “exploring” at the source of that which they
find in front of them in order to best orient themselves (I am thinking, for instance, of the need to
determine the genre of the film that one is watching, which used to be taken for granted, but which
is now always more uncertain); or, afterward, storing up elements for future film viewing, perhaps
more selective in nature (as, for instance, when one extracts from a DVD the “mother scenes”
which produced the most enjoyment in the viewer). The same goes for the emotional doing. Films
have always touched their spectators.
18
Today, however, affective components connected to the
watching of a film seem to acquire an abnormal weight: on the one hand, one increasingly goes to
the movies in order to be amazed by special effects; on the other hand, the presence of particularly
intense scenes can interrupt the plot and form film blocks or fragments.
However, the performance also and most importantly involves new levels of doing. For
example, there is a technological doing, where access to the film is not direct, but is mediated by a
device which the spectator must activate (such is the case with VHS, DVD, a home theater, etc.), or
by a device through which the spectator chooses what to watch and how to watch it (video on
demand, MySky, etc.). In either case, a specific competence is required in order to complete a
series of operations on the device.
19
There is also a relevant relational doing, which comes into
play especially outside the movie theater, where spectators watch films by themselves, and are
16
The term “performance” is used by Timothy Corrigan in A Cinema Without Walls. Movies and Culture after
Vietnam (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1991). Here, however, I attempt to give a different
extension and different content to the term.
17 For more on the synesthetic involvement of the spectator, see: Alain J.J. Cohen, “Virtual Hollywood and the
Genealogy of its Hyper-Spectator,” Hollywood Spectatorship: Changing Perceptions of Cinema Audiences,
Melvyn Stokes & Richard Maltby, eds. (BFI: London, 2001) 131-51.
18 For more on the emotional dimension, see: Carl Plantinga, Greg M. Smith, eds., Passionate Views
(Baltimore Johns Hopkins University, 1999). And for a different perspective, see: M. Brütsch, et al., eds.,
Kinogefühle. Emotionalität und Film (Marburg: Schüren, 2005).
19 For more on this type of doing, see: Francesco Casetti & Maria Grazie Franchi, eds., Terre incognite
(Florence: Carocci, 2006). On the spectators’ capacity to free themselves from the logic of distribution and the
logic of selection of content imposed by technological devices, see: Francesca Pasquali, I nuovi media.
Tecnologie e discorsi sociali (Rome: Carocci, 2003) 108-114.
© Francesco Casetti, Back to the Motherland: The Film Theater in the Post-Media Age
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2009
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8
often motivated to construct a group with which to share their own experience. From this is born a
system of contacts which accompanies movie watching, be it via a telephone call or a message on
Twitter. There is also a relevant expressive doing: while the experience of watching certain cult
films, such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show or Star Wars, has often been accompanied by
dressing in costume, today self-display is also celebrated via a spectator’s blog post or a message
on a social network, in which one recounts one’s personal reactions to what one is seeing or has
seen.
20
Finally, there is a textual doing, determined by the fact that spectators increasingly enjoy
the possibility of manipulating a film, not only in the sense of “adjusting” it to one’s own vision (as
when one maintains or changes the video format of a display: for example, choosing to watch a film
in high or low definition, etc.), but also in the sense of express intervention (as happens with the reedited
and dubbed film clips that populate YouTube).
21
In this brief description of the new spectator, we have inevitably slid out of the movie
theater and into other spaces, encountering other devices and leading us to surpass the very
confines of vision. To see a film is no longer a localized activity, and it is no longer just a scopic
activity. It is a doing that leaps beyond the presence of a big screen, and that goes beyond the
mere opening of one’s eyes. It is now interesting to note how the most innovative aspects of the
new spectatorship seem to arise from practices developed outside the theater and outside the strict
confines of vision, especially closer to the three new screens which dominate the media landscape,
respectively television, computer and cell phone. Let us take, for example, the act of exploration,
which responds to a need for orientation more than for comprehension. There is no doubt that this
rises from contact with television with its many channels that we browse with our remote control,
looking for what we want. Let’s also consider the act of storing, which leads us to put in reserve
particularly interesting portions of films. Its origin is undoubtedly to be found in certain fan
practices: thanks to image-capturing devices, such as the video recorder, fans can construct and
exchange highly personalized “image albums.”
22
Let us equally consider emotional doing, which
revolves around a strong intensification of “feeling.” Its background may be found in the presence of
20 For more on self-construction on blogs, see: Guido Di Fraia, Blog-grafie. Identità narrative in rete (Milan:
Guerini e assoc., 2007); and Jan Schmidt, “Blogging Practices: An Analytical Framework,” Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication 12.4, 2007: 1409-1407. Concerning the processes of identity
construction on social networks, see: Dahnah Boyd, “L’invasione dei Social Network: Spazi pubblici, privati o
altro?,” Link 7 (2008); and Sonia Livingstone, “Taking Risky Opportunities in Youthful Content Creation:
Teenagers’ Use of Social Networking Sites for Intimacy, Privacy and Self-Expression,” New Media & Society
10.3, 2008: 393-411; and Barbara Scifo, “Prácticas y rituals de consumo de la telefonia móvil multimedia entre
jóvenes italianos,” Sociedad móvil. Tecnología, identidad y cultura, Juan Miguel Aguado-Terrón and
Inmaculada José Martínez-Martínez, eds. (Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva, 2008) 239-263.
21 For more on the public’s textual doing, see: Nick Abercrombie and Brian Longhurst, Audiences. A
Sociological Theory of Performance and Imagination (London: Sage, 1998). Concerning the manipulative
action of the public, Alvin Toffler’s description of the prosumer may still be of interest: Alvin Toffler, The Third
Wave (New York: Bantam, 1980).
22 For more on fan activity—not limited to the accumulation of clips, but involving the actual reconstruction of
the cult object—see Henry Jenkins classic study: Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture
(New York & London: Routledge, 1992).
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Key-note speech at the Screen Conference, University of Glasgow, July 5
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2009
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9
an enormous quantity of stimuli both in the world of media and in the urban environment. These
are stimuli, which, on the one hand, ask us to refine our tuning, and on the other hand also force us
into a kind of isolation from the world, with the effect in both cases of definitively forcing us out of
the traditional dimension of the sublime. As for the ability of choosing what one wants to see, this
takes us back, for example, to the public’s growing capacity to move strategically online, in search
of more salient content and information, while the diffusion of mobile platforms, which allow for
watching anywhere and anytime, strengthens the public’s ability to liberate itself from the
obligations imposed by programming.
23
The act of manipulation, which allows spectators to
intervene in the means of their own vision, is born from the use of devices like the home theater,
which require continuous regulation and maintenance. Relational doing, which involves spectators’
construction of their own groups, is born, instead, of the progressive growth of social networks.
These social networks also feed into the act of expression, which leads to the construction and
exposition of oneself: it is on YouTube that social subjects have experienced in depth the pleasure
of the self-narration and the possibility of “marketing” themselves. Finally, textual doing is
undoubtedly nourished by the possibility of capturing what one sees and relocating it to one’s own
computer thanks to low-cost programs. In essence, today’s filmic spectators find their gym and
their school outside of the movie theater. These new spectators now seem to be formed far from
the cinema and its canonical spaces.
And yet … If it is true that we now become film spectators by searching for the cinema in
places where it has never been, it is also true that spectators find themselves on the deepest level
exactly where cinema has longest dwelled. The practices we have discussed above, whose
birthplace is to be found in other environments and in proximity to other media, are quick to flow into
the movie theater and to redraw the traditional forms of the filmic experience. They are the signs of
a spectatorship which has now migrated elsewhere, and which returns to the place where the film
watching had assumed its constituent traits. Back to the Motherland: partially on a wave of
nostalgia, but more importantly in order to offer a lesson learned in the meantime.
This is exactly what Artaud Double Bill tells us with great precision by showing us two
modern-day spectators, who, despite their apparently anomalous behavior, are actually watching
movies in movie theaters. However, the picture can be enlarged. Just imagine the groups of
spectators that meet up at the cinema after an intense exchange of emails or telephone calls,
worthy of a social network; or the vibrating of numerous cell phones in silent-mode during the
movie, which maintain contact with the outside world; or the increasingly frequent distribution upon
23 See: John Urry, Sociology beyond Societies: Mobilities for the Twenty-First Century (New York & London:
Routledge, 2000); and Mimi Scheller and John Urry, “The New Mobilities Paradigm,” Environment and
Planning 38.2 (2006). For an exhaustive treatment of the concept of mobility in the Italian context, see:
Barbara Scifo, Culture mobili. Ricerche sull’adozione giovanile della telefonia cellulare, (Milan: Vita e
Pensiero, 2005); and Giovanna Mascheroni, Le comunità viaggianti. Società reticolare e mobile dei viaggiatori
indipendenti (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2007).
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th
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10
entering the theater of reviews and commentaries, almost as part of an effort to create a multimedia
product. Or consider the continuation of the movie in the form of post-film discussions, while one
eats a pizza together with others with whom one has just watched the film; or the purchase of a
DVD of a movie that one has just seen, to be watched repeatedly at home. Although it is true that
extra-filmic and extra-theater practices are emerging, it is also true that these new practices are
promptly reinserted within the context of the theater, and thus renew the traits of the filmic
experience. Consequently, watching a film becomes a performance even within the temple of
attendance.
I will use the term re-relocation for this return to the Motherland, in order to signify a double
movement: the departure from the movie theater in search of new environments and devices
(relocation); and the return to the theater enriched by a new patrimony accumulated in the
meantime (re-relocation). I would also add that this double movement highlights the emergence of
a complex game board. There are not just the new environments and devices toward which the
cinema converges, enriching and transforming the vision experience. Neither is there just the
movie theater to which the cinema returns, bringing with it new vision practices. There are also new
environment and devices that attempt, as much as possible, to conserve the traits of traditional film
watching (this is the case of the home theater, in which spectators watch a film seated on a couch,
with the lights dimmed and silence enforced, essentially recreating punctiliously the most traditional
viewing experience). And there is also the theater that refuses new modes of vision in order to
conserve, as much as possible, the traditional film watching environment (as happens particularly
during “ceremonial” situations, such as a festival, a debut or a film series aimed at true cinephiles,
during which the spectator is invited to see a film and nothing else). Relocation may be innovative
(aimed toward new environments and devices), or conservative (in environments and devices that
recreate the traditional experience). And beyond re-relocation (a return to the theater which renews
the modes of vision), there is also a non-relocation (cinema in a movie theater which closes its
doors to every possibly innovation).
Let’s focus on the case we were examining. Why return to the Motherland, with new
acquisitions in tow? It seems to me that there are at least four good reasons at the heart of rerelocation,
which respond to some profound exigencies.
The first reason concerns a “need for territoriality.” To see a film has always involved—and
continues to involve—a question of place: a “where” to see, in addition to a “what” to see. Now
these new modes of vision only offer the spectator an “existential bubble” in which to burrow oneself
(I am thinking of the train passengers who watch films on a portable device, isolating themselves
from their immediate context by putting on headphones and ignoring all that is going on around
them). It is a fragile and precarious bubble, easily broken by the least disturbance (a conductor
who asks for the ticket or the arrival of the train at a station). Instead, the movie theater provides a
more solid territory, better defined and protected. In particular, the theater continues to be
© Francesco Casetti, Back to the Motherland: The Film Theater in the Post-Media Age
Key-note speech at the Screen Conference, University of Glasgow, July 5
th
2009
http://www.FrancescoCasetti.net
11
associated with the idea of a “living space”: a space in which to dwell together with others (a roof for
the community); a space in which one finds oneself immersed in a communal imaginary (in
Heidegger’s terms, the language that hosts us). A place both physical and symbolic, the movie
theater is that abode which cinema and its spectators continue to search out.
The second reason highlights a “need for domestication.” Relocation undoubtedly
introduces a change: minimal in the case of conservative relocation; greater in the case of
innovative relocation. In both cases a challenge is created to traditional modes, which risk not so
much extinction as loss of recognition as integral elements of filmic vision. Re-relocation, the return
to the movie theater, serves to ensure that such novelties are literally “incorporated” into an
experience that explicitly maintains its roots. Flowing back into a “typical” space, these novelties
appear both “acceptable” and “familiar,” practicable and customary. Thus, vision as performance—
as distant as it may seem from tradition—receives full recognition, in both senses of the word: it is
accepted as an appropriate mode to watch a film (recognition as legitimization); and it is held up as
an example that anyone can follow (recognition as identification).
Thirdly, the return to the Motherland highlights a “need for institution.” Watching a film on
new devices like the computer and in new environments like an urban space brings our vision
closer to other activities hosted by the same apparatus such as listening to the radio, surfing the
internet, downloading files, etc. It also brings the film closer to other products hosted on the same
screen: touristic documentaries, advertising, YouTube clips, re-dubbed and re-edited films in file
sharing networks, etc. We inevitably slip away from the realm of cinema and onto the terrain of
media in general, and from the field of film to the terrain of audio-visual products. This twofold
passage is the consequence of convergence:
24
old apparatus (including the cinematic apparatus,
tied to screen/projector/film) are disintegrated in favor of multifunctional platforms (among them the
three new screens, television, computer and cell phone); and old products tied to a single medium
(including the fictional feature film) are disintegrated in favor of a rich array of multiplatform and
crossover products, etc. (the film that is seen in the theatre, the director’s cut that is collected, the
clip that is downloaded onto a cell phone, etc.). Now, in the age of convergence it can seem like a
desperate enterprise to hold in place the confines of the cinema and the profile of a film. Rerelocation
assures us that the medium we have long enjoyed with affection continues to possess its
24
On convergence, see Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, New York:
New York University Press, 2006. On “digital”, see Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital, Knopt: New York,
1995; Roger Fidler, Mediamorphosis: Understanding New Media, Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge, 1997; Tony
Feldman, An Introduction to Digital Media, London: Routledge, 1997. On convergence and new products, see
Simone Murray, “Brand Loyalties: Rethinking Content Within Gobal Corporate Media”, in «Media, Culture and
Society», 27 (3), 2005, p. 415-35 e a Ivan D. Askwith, Television 2.0: Reconceptualizing TV as an
Engagement Medium, Thesis, Master of Science in Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 2007, (http://cms.mit.edu/research/tese/IvanAswith2007). On convergence and new strategies of
consumption, see Will Brooker, Deborah Jermyn (eds), The Audience Studies Reader, London: Routledge,
2003, pp. 323-325.
© Francesco Casetti, Back to the Motherland: The Film Theater in the Post-Media Age
Key-note speech at the Screen Conference, University of Glasgow, July 5
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2009
http://www.FrancescoCasetti.net
12
place and identity. It tells us that whatever may happen, the cinema will continue to exist, and exist
as cinema.
Finally, the return to the Motherland highlights a “need for experience.” This is the most
delicate of the four points, but also the most decisive. Migration toward new environments and
devices presents a double risk: on the one hand, as mentioned above, this migration dissolves the
filmic experience into a more general media experience; on the other hand, it forces this experience
onto mandatory tracks, which impose themselves especially in the case of strongly predetermined
technologies, either because of the way in which a certain device functions or because of the way in
which the user utilizes the device.
25
In the first case, film watching loses its uniqueness, and with it
its strength; in the second, it loses its unpredictability, and therefore its freedom. Re-relocation
supplies a remedy to this situation. It offers environmental conditions which strengthen vision: the
big screen, which dominates the spectators, interrogates them, instead of docilely obeying their
commands as does the display of a cell phone or computer. It requires an attitude that restores
freedom to vision: the need to change place in order to see a film, instead of receiving it on a
display (this is re-relocation), allows spectators to make more precise and exacting choices. The
cinematic experience thus recovers a precise and personal sense.
We can think even more radically: a bit of attendance can substantiate an experience that
performance often promises but cannot deliver. When the watching of a film is intertwined with a
doing, it seems to place spectators at the center of the game, but this centrality—and this game—
risk appearing illusory. On the one hand, this doing takes spectators back to everyday practices,
and therefore may be tinged by indifference: for instance, the computer, which can offer up a film
just as it could anything else. On the other hand, this doing absorbs the spectators to such a point
that they non longer have space to face that which they find in front of them, and therefore to see
what they are confronting: for example, file sharing, the end of which sometimes seems to be
limited to the mere exchange of material; or remixing, which often serves only to demonstrate one’s
virtuosity. In these situations, what can really surprise or grab hold of the spectators? And how do
they reacquire consciousness of themselves and of what they find in front of them? In essence, do
they really live an experience—an experience which in order to be worthy of the name requires
amazement and recognition? With attendance, spectators still measured themselves against a
world—on the screen and around the screen—capable of both interrogation and formulation of
answers. From attendance result the sense of an unforeseen encounter, and simultaneously, the
possibility of mastering that which is encountered. On the new devices, however, amazement is
replaced by self-satisfaction and recognition of skill. There is no surprise, rather there is selfcongratulation;
there is no awareness, rather there is virtuosity. Spectators do, but their doing often
appears to be an end in itself. The return to the Motherland, as much as it brings with it new ways
25 On contemporary media’s channeling of experience, see the perceptive analysis of Pietro Montani:
Bioestetica (Florence: Carocci, 2007).
© Francesco Casetti, Back to the Motherland: The Film Theater in the Post-Media Age
Key-note speech at the Screen Conference, University of Glasgow, July 5
th
2009
http://www.FrancescoCasetti.net
13
of watching, seems to restitute the conditions necessary for amazement and recognition to once
again take effect. In the theater, a film continues to seem like an event against which one can
measure oneself, and from which one can rediscover one’s surroundings. Think of how there, more
than elsewhere, a film is not reduced to something ordinary or habitual—it conserves a certain
noteworthiness with respect to the everyday. Or think of how it obligates one to take steps in order
to meet it—leave the house, buy a ticket, mix with the crowd—which give importance to that which
one is doing. Or how it makes one share it with others, as a sort of small privilege. Or how it both
imposes a rhythm and lets us take part in a rite.
26
In the theater, more than elsewhere, a film is an
event: and in this sense it becomes a small enigma that provokes the spectators, as it restitutes a
consciousness of self and of one’s surroundings. The result is that, no matter how much one’s
vision is intertwined with a doing—and therefore is now far from a simple confrontation with an
object—it can recuperate the sense of an experience. Something returns to surprise and take hold
of the spectators; and they, in turn, make space for an awareness. In this sense, we may well say
that, thanks to re-relocation, attendance has left us a legacy—we spoke before of gift and
conquest—which fills the lacunae left by performance. To see a film risks neither becoming a
narcissistic exercise nor an indifferent task.
Indeed, an event: the persistence of a surprise and of a recognition; the resistance against
narcissism and indifference. Re-relocation, overlapping attendance and performance, intertwining
tradition and innovation, opens itself better than any other gesture to an experiential dimension.
This dimension of experience is really what is at stake; and cinema will survive as long as it is able
to maintain it.
Translation by Daniel Leisawitz
-
26 On this theme, it is interesting to note the parallel tendency of the television public to go physically to the
place where tv footage is being shot, and to participate on the ground in big events involving single programs
on channels (for example, the “MTV Day” event). For more on this, see: Nick Couldry, “The View from Inside
the “Simulacrum”: Visitors’ Tales from the Set of Coronation Street,” Leisure Studies 17.2 (1998): 94-107; and
Matthew Hills, “Cult Geographis: Between the ‘Textual’ and the ‘Spatial,’” Fan Cultures (London: Routledge,
2003). See also: Anna Sfardini, Reality Tv: Pubblici, fan, protagonisti, performer (Milan: Unicopli, 2009).