Fischer, Beckman, Gunning

I like the way Gunning frames early cinema in its relation to the avant-garde. The Dadaists
etc. were intent on rejecting the belief that art functions in an autonomous realm without a
connection to politics. Consequently, the filmic medium provided the early avant-garde with an
opportunity to subvert this Kantian notion of disinterested contemplation that had dominated
discussions of aesthetics within the academy. Especially given the novelty of the medium in
the early 20th century, it is difficult to engage with film in the disinterested fashion one might
approach a 17th century painting. In this sense, I think Gunning’s cinema of attractions is a
particularly good term -- early cinema “establish[es] contact with the audience” in an active
sense rather than maintaining the critical distance that is seen in narrative film (Gunning, 57).

But obviously films status as a revolutionary tool is more complicated than that. While Benjamin
identified mass art as integral to the loss of aura, film’s relationship to ideology is truthfully
much more complicated. Rather than supporting some sort of ideological fantasy through
narrative, I think the other two readings present an interesting view on how early non-narrative
film might also support normative gender categories

As Fischer identifies, early “trick” films place the female body either as an object that is
controlled through the use of magic (the substation trick) by a male magician or as the location
of power that needs to be negated or destroyed. After some cheap shots at psychoanalysis,
Fischer wonders why this misogynistic tradition of magical theatre was so easily adopted to the
screen. In his analysis of the formal features of early film, Gunning provides the answer. As
compared with the multiple, rapidly edited shots that characterize narrative film, the single point
of view in early cinema promotes identification with the frame of the spectacle rather than the
diegetic space.

This process of identification with the spectacle provides the best link to the criticism provided
by Fischer and Beckman of the representation of the vanishing woman. Although Fischer is a
significantly better writer, I think that Beckman provides the deeper (although often tenuous)
account of how the vanishing woman comes to represent an increasing sovereign attempt to
control the body, especially the female body. Examining the clear biopolitical implications of
Malthus, Beckman shows how the notion of an economic surplus of female bodies manifests
itself in Victorian discourse and art. Although Fischer suggests that the image of a female
magician might be understood subversively, I tend to agree with Beckman that this idea of
surplus women is overdetermined and a signifier of the increasing intervention of juridical power
at the level of the body.