Dissertation Abstract
Cinema, Language, Reality:
Digitization And The Challenge To Film
Theory
by
Degree: Ph.D.
Year: 2004
Pages: 00323
Institution:
Advisor: Adviser William Straw
Source: DAI, 66, no. 01A (2004): p. 8
Standard
No: ISBN: 0-612-98256-4
Digital cinema has provoked a strong response over
the last decade, not only from the movie-going public, but also from film
theorists. It has re-opened basic theoretical questions about cinematic
representations of and reference to reality.
This
thesis begins with a critical review of the vast theoretical literature dealing
with the digitization of the cinema. Most theorists have come to the conclusion
that the cinema is dead because digitization has severed the ties between what
we see on the screen and real life. At root, this conclusion is derived from a
structuralist, nominalist position prevalent in contemporary film theory.
I argue,
instead, that film theory needs to re-address the complex issue of the
relationship between image and reality, rather than simply accepting the
traditional view. In so doing, I follow Stanley Cavell's call for a more
thorough consideration of realist traditions in film theory, the premise of
which is an unquestioned relationship between representation and reality.
The
complexity and subtlety of that relationship has been addressed most
systematically and fruitfully by Charles Saunders Peirce. Indeed, many
structuralist theorists have made reference to Peirce in response to the
shortcomings of a semiologically inflected film theory. In the second step of
my argument, however, I show that structuralist theory has produced misleading
conclusions, since a Peircian semiotics is incommensurable with the
structuralist position. In fact, this implicit conflict has led theorists to
doubt the real in the digital cinema, rather than investigating the logically
necessary continuity of reality and representation, regardless of its
technological kind.
SUBJECT(S)
Descriptor: CINEMA
Accession
No: AAINQ98256
Provider: OCLC
Database: Dissertations