The Cinema
Effect
by Sean Cubit
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2004
464 pp., illus. 48 b/w. Trade, $39.95
ISBN: 0-262-03312-7.
Reviewed by Yvonne Spielmann
Braunschweig School of Art, Germany
spielmann@medien-peb.uni-siegen.de
Another Cubitt. After the publication
of two volumes on video that discuss aspects
of medium and culture (Timeshift
1991, Videography, 1993), Cubitt's
critical preoccupation with the phenomena
of flow, change, and instability also
drives the discussion of digital media
and networked communication with regard
to the organization of knowledge, power,
and spatial relations on a global scale
in the monograph Digital Aesthetics
(1998). There, he identifies cartography
as the paradigm of realism in contrast
to perspective as the paradigm of special
effect (perspectivial vision is synthetic)
that is essentially spatial because it
organizes in space. (Cubitt coins the
term 'spatial effect'). More recently,
in the comprehensive survey of simulation
theories (Simulation and Social Theory,
2001), Cubitt once more stresses in a
historical view the building of concepts
and the manufacture of thinking processes
that in the interplay with social and
economic factors merge into clustered
terms such as 'simulation' (here again,
the synthetic characteristics are foregrounded).
And finally, the (up to now) masterpiece
is out: a book about The Cinema Effect
that takes in previous reflections on
the instability and flow in the emergence
of media instead of identifying interruption
and defining normative patterns.
Departing from still commonly held theoretical
positions according to which cinema is
roughly dividedthat is, realism
(starting with the brothers Lumière)
and magic (starting with the stop-trick
by Georges Méliès)Cubitt
is interested in the magic flow of effects
that constitute cinema on the whole: as
a visual effect of motion on the temporal
raster of the 'pixel', as an effect that
through the differentiation of the 'cut'
constructs objects in spatial and temporal
relations, and as a special effect that
grounds in animation and connotes meaning,
transformation, and metamorphosis through
the 'vector' which marks the transition
from "being" of the object (cut) to becoming
'synthetic'. Lucidly, the argument of
the book develops from the beginning of
the medium where Cubitt describes three
positions, namely Lumière, Méliès,
and Cohl, that together contribute to
the formation of the cinema effect. In
the first and basic chapter Cubitt builds
an argument for viewing cinema as an 'object'
on the scrutiny of the phenomena of motion,
spatial object, and transformation that
are placed in terms of pixel, cut, and
vector.
The first, the 'pixel' describes the moment
of movement as the first 'magic' effect
of cinema. This constitutes an aesthetics
of astonishment and instigates the 'birth'
of cinema as special effect. This moment
in the history of cinema, as the author
stresses, 'documents' not 'life' (la
vie) but 'liveliness' (le vif)
and is shared by the social activity of
the modern 'flaneur' (around 1895) and
is also paralleled in the new concept
of life that is divided up into work and
leisure time. Thus, in understanding cinema
as magic, special effect is, first of
all, exemplified in the work of the brothers
Lumière who serve as main authority
to Cubitt's statement that cinema does
not represent time but originates it.
Finally, cinema does not represent 'reality',
and it is not the temporal structure that
automatically and necessarily leads into
the narrative. On the contrary, as the
thorough (and for the non-expert easy
to follow) discussion of theories on early
cinema convincingly concludes, Lumiérès'
cinema is misregarded under the category
of 'documentary', because it shows the
magical transformation from life to liveliness:
therein lies the magic, the speciality
of cinema.
The second category that Cubitt introduces
in order to liberate cinema from the dogma
of realism and narrative is the 'cut'
that develops with the interruption of
movement through Méliès'
invention of stop-trick. In line with
the previous argument that the cinematic
events relate to the real but (with regard
to its material condition) consist of
discrete and fragmented elements, Cubitt's
secondary discussion of the cinema as
the universe of the 'synthetic' unfolds
how Méliès' technique of
stop-motion distinguishes objects from
their movement. Méliès,
thereby, constitutes the possibility of
cinematic third dimension: cinema as a
spatial effect. Logically, what follows
in the third, the 'vector' section, is
another argument for the synthetic characteristics
of cinema that Cubitt identifies in the
early animation films of Emile Cohl (around
1908). Clearly, here film is not narrative,
not illusion of continuous flow, but fragmentation.
All of this, 'pixel', 'cut', and 'vector'
point to the cinematic way to spatialize
looking. Here, Cubitt relates to Jacques
Aumont's theories of painting, photography,
and film where Aumont anchors the invention
of cinema in the 'mobilization of gaze'.
As Cubitt concludes: "At some point in
the near future when historians recognize
that the photochemical cinema is a brief
interlude in the history of the animated
image, representation will become, like
narrative, a subcode of interpretation
rather than an essence of motion pictures"
(p. 97). This view of cinema maintains
the importance of a material theory of
film "against narrativity". However, the
point being, animation film is not a sub-category
of cinema, but its essence that determines
the grounding principles for the development
of any cinematic magic, a magic that involves
the construction of movement from discrete
entities and the perception of moving
images, a magic that encompasses the extension
of temporal and spatial features, and
through its potential of the spatial map
beats off any scholarly notion of cinema
representing realityand, finally,
a magic that is open to the production
of meaning. Cubitt stresses, in particular,
the positive aspect of the 'vector' principle
of 'becoming' (which means open-ended
and mobile relationships between 'subject,
object, and world'), because in a world
where everything turns into spectacle
and data, where everything is ruled by
laws of commodity, the work of art "must
be positive". One challenge, clearly lies
in the affirmation of the reality of cinema
as magic: "The vector does not tell us
what to expect: it requires us to think"
(p. 85).
In light of this idea, the critical and
political stance against narrative and
realism implies an avant-garde position
towards corporate cinema that has taken
over since the implementation of copyright
laws. This produces the apparatus of a
narrative according to the laws of commodity
that are highlighted in normative Hollywood
cinema. Consequently, in the following
two chapters ("Normative Cinema" and "Post
Cinema"), Cubitt discusses the stabilization
of cinema that subordinates magic to narrative.
Strikingly, Eisenstein's montage of effects
marks the transition from total cinema
to the aesthetics and norms of totality
in so-called classical film that forms
the paradigm of 'spectacle' in the 1930's
and 1940's. While the cinema of spectacle
exposes temporality, it removes from the
magic and cinematic effect. The task of
media theory here is to understand 'why
and wherefore' the 'commodity fetishism'
has driven the production of cinema for
a hundred years. Because Cubitt argues
for a stronger consideration of the mutual,
but problematic relations between the
'cinematic object' and its audience that
at the same time drives and is driven
by this practice of mediation; naturally
the following chapter searches for points
of resisting the 'total' cinema. These
possibilities are identified where cinema
turns away from the paradigm of reality
(temporal) and reinvestigates the early
miracle and magic effect through stress
on the 'spatialization of time'. But differently
from the early days of the medium, the
period of "post cinema", as Cubitt puts
it, departs from normative aesthetics
and the elitism of the 'sublime'; it bears
the potential of 'becoming' democratic
where it follows the understanding of
'beauty', which is inside the world and
"confronts ugliness: sickness, squalor,
brutality: things that can be changed"
(p. 10).
Logically, the idea of change is linked
to the notion of flow that is initially
identified in the principle of the vector
because it connotates 'becoming'. But,
in "post cinema", the explorative naivity
and pioneer spirits of early cinema are
gone and cinema has to struggle harder
to connect to its magic. Even in mainstream
films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden
Dragon and The Matrix, Cubitt
finds roots and traces of the "instability
of the vector", effects that "hover between
reality and unreality" (p. 350) and that
are open to ethnic issues as well, such
as effects of orientalism that enter cinema.
What counts here is not that Hollywood
simply incorporates and swallows the 'other'
under its 'old' paradigm of realism but
that differently Cubitt finds unstable
relations, unstable oscillation between
antagonistic principles (realism and simulation)
in open-ended spaces of the cinematic
universe of the 'synthetic.' This constitutes
another era of 'cosmopolitan film'.
As its leading metaphor the new book starts
with Christian Metz' s statement that
"in some sense all cinema is a special
effect." What Cubitt means by the phrase,
expresses a counter-argument against a
narrow understanding of film's relations
to (physical) reality. "To the extent
that all cinema is a special effect,"
as Cubitt previously explained in Digital
Aesthetics: "The effects film is the
cinema of cinema, the cinema of a disavowal
become affirmation in an astounded moment."
From the conclusion that film as a commodity
inherits from perspective and painting
the transformation of three- into two-dimensionality
and the transformation of the temporal
into the (static/spatial) spectacle, we
can draw a line to the understanding of
cinema as another 'effect'. The concern
in The Cinema Effect, then, is
to underline the construction of a cinematic
reality of its own 'language' that functions
as the mediator between the viewing subject
andwhat Cubitt is interested
inthe 'object of cinema'.
The medium of film has always played a
major role in Cubitt's reflection on electronic
and digital media when he focuses on the
interplay of technological, economic,
social, and political factors (in short,
relationships of power, knowledge, and
aesthetics) that drives the emergence,
constitution, and institutionalization
of a new mediums and, thereby, sets the
frame for the unfolding of the 'object'
(and the specificitiy) of the medium in
temporal and spatial termsan
'object', however, that is subject to
change and not a stable (timeless) category.
In the book, The Cinema Effect,
Sean Cubitt pursues the effects that cinema
produces in relation to reality from the
the perspective of the digital media and
traces back the roots and conceptual history
of terms such as "pixel, cut, and vector"
that are commonly used in contemporary
media language. The idea is to discuss
the 'object' of cinema as a conglomeration
and amalgamation of cinematic effects
that are responsable for a 'moving image'.
And these effects, as they express in
pixel, cut, and vector, are further discussed
as they establish digital aesthetics,
because, for example, the openness of
the vector includes the 'subjective role'
of the indivudal who engages in an authorship
type of interrelations with the computer.
Plus, the notion of transformation and
metamorphosisin short, all
the ephemeral presentations that cinema
inherits (because it is an 'effect' of
'reality' of its own rule and not a simple
'reality effect')make the
connection to the human-machine relations
that we deal with in the computer age.
Where Cubitt states, "The vector is the
art of curiosity" (p. 85), the focus easily
extends into the discussion of European
"oneiric film" that in the manner of science
fiction deals with the results of the
atomic and post-nuclear catastrophies
that the Hollywood cinema passes forward.
Throughout the book, Cubitt 'searches'
for traces of cinema that maintain and
revitalize its magic against totalitarian
and corporate cinema. The reader, then,
is not surprised that points of resistance
that highlight instability, fragmentation,
and spatial effects for the most part
are located in the realm of science fiction,
where magic is near.