Corporeality in Early Cinema: Viscera, Skin, and Physical Form
What did it mean to "work" in the motion-picture industry during its first decades? And what were... more What did it mean to "work" in the motion-picture industry during its first decades? And what were the risks associated with film labor? From the outset, the laboring body proved central to the cinematic experience, both on-screen and off. One of the most visible workers was the actor, the performing body duly registered by a newly minted medium predicated on indexicality. Discussions of early screen acting often noted the arduous nature of film performance, especially in "body genres" such as slapstick comedy or the numerous variants of early action films.1 The thrill of "body genres" that required scenes of physical mayhem to stage comedic threats or that showcased spectacular feats of physical daring was reinforced by "real" stories about film stars who leaped from trains, fell off bridges, and cozied up to wild animals in the name of screen acting. Aside from the pleasurable spectacle of danger, the visceral appeal of actors at risk was enhanced by their flagrant disregard for social conventions predicated on bodily propriety. Indeed, filmmaking's perilous physicality-its comic pratfalls and daring stunts-helped define early film's excitement and appeal even as it tied certain genres and performers to working-class identity and culture. Strategies to manage and contain these different dangers helped define the parameters of the industry's uplift movement from 1907 to 1915, perhaps most clearly in the promotion of cinema's educational potential and in the gentrification of exhibition spaces and social practices.2 The discourse of danger, then, broadly encompasses the film industry's development-from the moral dangers of screen content to the licentious temptations of darkened theaters, and from the financial risks of film producing to the very real dangers of flammable nitrate. Danger as a fantasy and as a material effect establishes a narrative logic for the film industry, placing risk management at the center of its industrial expansion in the form of problems to be resolved and surmounted by filmmakers, reformers, and bureaucrats alike. Danger also made good copy. A 1915 cartoon for Motion Picture Magazine depicts a hapless would-be hero whose misguided attempt to
Olga Printzlau was a prolific writer who began her career as an artist, but turned to screenwriti... more Olga Printzlau was a prolific writer who began her career as an artist, but turned to screenwriting after becoming interested in the "literary possibilities" of film. By 1920 she was credited with having written 352 produced scenarios ("Olga Printzlau to Write" 183). During the twenties she was sought after for her skill in adapting popular stories and novels to the screen, most notably F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned (1922) and Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (1924). But by the late 1920s Printzlau's attention seems to have turned more to her theatre work, and her film career dwindles significantly after 1930, with no known screen credits after 1933.
Studying Hollywood Luci Marzola (moderator): In the earliest days of film studies, historians oft... more Studying Hollywood Luci Marzola (moderator): In the earliest days of film studies, historians often had little more to work with than oral histories, incomplete collections of periodicals, and, sometimes, the films themselves. But it could be argued that film historians these days are often presented with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to access to archival materials from the Margaret Herrick Library to the Warner Bros. Archive to the Media History Digital Library—just to name a few. With this improved access both through digital sources and through the increased availability of motion picture collections at archives and libraries, what are the sources that we are still looking for? What issues of access and availability do you see affecting historians of the future? Are there any potential dangers in the proliferation of archival research? Kate Fortmueller: The increased digital availability of archival materials has been great for research and teaching alike. I remember scrolling through the microfiche of Photoplay and other fan publications at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library to find articles featuring Edith Head for a seminar paper in grad school. When I finally revisited that research last year, the Media History Digital Library was an invaluable resource that helped me reexamine a lot of sources. 1 As researchers, we all have limited time and money, and digital archives help economize. In general, however, the sources that are digitally available don't always offer me much clarity into power struggles/differentials, how industry decisions get made, or how workers navigate the challenges of a creative industry. A tremendous portion of my recent research has been searching for As part of this issue on " The System Beyond the Studios, " I sought not only to give scholars an opportunity to publish work that looks at specific cases reassessing the history of Hollywood, but I also wanted to look more broadly at the state of the field of American film history. As such, I assembled a roundtable of scholars who have been studying Hollywood through myriad lenses for most of their careers. I wanted to know, from their perspective, what were the current and future threads to be taken up in the study of this central topic in cinema and media studies. The roundtable discussion focuses on innovative methods, sources, and approaches that give us new insights into the study of Hollywood. Stamp all participated while I moderated the conversation. It was conducted via email and Google docs in the fall of 2017. Each participant began by writing a brief response to a broad question on one topic – research, methodology, pedagogy, or the meaning of 'Hollywood.' These responses were then culled together and given follow up questions which were all placed in a Google drive folder. Over the course of two months, the participants added responses, provocations, and questions on each of the threads, while I added follow up questions to guide the discussion. When seen as a whole, this roundtable creates a snapshot of where the field of Hollywood history is at this moment. It is a moment rife with possibilities as more lenses are brought into film history and more and more archives become accessible or digitized. Yet it is also a moment in which we feel ever more responsible both in our research and in our teaching to make the lessons of the past resonant with the present and into the future.
During the 1910s, film trade journals and fan magazines documented cinema's expanding economic an... more During the 1910s, film trade journals and fan magazines documented cinema's expanding economic and cultural significance, celebrating actors, studios and motion pictures with evangelical enthusiasm. These journals also inadvertently archived the film industry's growing pains, allowing us to trace both the growth of celebrity culture and the motion pictures' industrial formation. Central to this formative period was the relentless discourse of uplift, which focused on ways to assert cinema's cultural legitimacy yet at the same time highlighted the industry's own perception of its precarious social standing. This article examines the use of editorial cartoons in fan and trade journals to track the cultural aspirations of the film industry. This article traces how cartoon commentary deployed the visual signifiers of class and social status to assert cinema's cultural legitimacy.
ENG:
Corporeality in Early Cinema inspires a heightened awareness of the ways in which early fil... more ENG: Corporeality in Early Cinema inspires a heightened awareness of the ways in which early film culture, and screen praxes overall are inherently embodied. Contributors argue that on- and offscreen (and in affiliated media and technological constellations), the body consists of flesh and nerves and is not just an abstract spectator or statistical audience entity. Audience responses from arousal to disgust, from identification to detachment, offer us a means to understand what spectators have always taken away from their cinematic experience. Through theoretical approaches and case studies, scholars offer a variety of models for stimulating historical research on corporeality and cinema by exploring the matrix of screened bodies, machine-made scaffolding, and their connections to the physical bodies in front of the screen.
FR: Ce livre consacré aux liens entre le cinéma des premiers temps et le corps révèle combien la culture cinématographique émergente, et toutes les pratiques de l’écran autour de 1900, étaient fondamentalement « incarnées ». Les contributeurs arguent que sur et autour de l’écran (ainsi que dans tous les médias et constellations technologiques associées), les corps ne renvoyaient pas simplement à un spectateur abstrait ou à un public collectif d’ordre statistique : ils étaient bel et bien faits de chair et d’os. Allant de l’excitation au dégoût, de l’identification au détachement, les réactions du premier public de cinéma nous offrent un moyen de comprendre ce que les spectateurs ont toujours retiré de leur expérience filmique. Cet ouvrage propose de nombreux modèles, tant théoriques qu’analytiques, pour servir la recherche historique sur cette présence du corps au cinéma, en explorant les corps filmés, le seuil de leur mécanisation, et leurs connexions aux corps physiques devant l’écran.
Corporeality in Early Cinema: Viscera, Skin, and Physical Form
What did it mean to "work" in the motion-picture industry during its first decades? And what were... more What did it mean to "work" in the motion-picture industry during its first decades? And what were the risks associated with film labor? From the outset, the laboring body proved central to the cinematic experience, both on-screen and off. One of the most visible workers was the actor, the performing body duly registered by a newly minted medium predicated on indexicality. Discussions of early screen acting often noted the arduous nature of film performance, especially in "body genres" such as slapstick comedy or the numerous variants of early action films.1 The thrill of "body genres" that required scenes of physical mayhem to stage comedic threats or that showcased spectacular feats of physical daring was reinforced by "real" stories about film stars who leaped from trains, fell off bridges, and cozied up to wild animals in the name of screen acting. Aside from the pleasurable spectacle of danger, the visceral appeal of actors at risk was enhanced by their flagrant disregard for social conventions predicated on bodily propriety. Indeed, filmmaking's perilous physicality-its comic pratfalls and daring stunts-helped define early film's excitement and appeal even as it tied certain genres and performers to working-class identity and culture. Strategies to manage and contain these different dangers helped define the parameters of the industry's uplift movement from 1907 to 1915, perhaps most clearly in the promotion of cinema's educational potential and in the gentrification of exhibition spaces and social practices.2 The discourse of danger, then, broadly encompasses the film industry's development-from the moral dangers of screen content to the licentious temptations of darkened theaters, and from the financial risks of film producing to the very real dangers of flammable nitrate. Danger as a fantasy and as a material effect establishes a narrative logic for the film industry, placing risk management at the center of its industrial expansion in the form of problems to be resolved and surmounted by filmmakers, reformers, and bureaucrats alike. Danger also made good copy. A 1915 cartoon for Motion Picture Magazine depicts a hapless would-be hero whose misguided attempt to
Olga Printzlau was a prolific writer who began her career as an artist, but turned to screenwriti... more Olga Printzlau was a prolific writer who began her career as an artist, but turned to screenwriting after becoming interested in the "literary possibilities" of film. By 1920 she was credited with having written 352 produced scenarios ("Olga Printzlau to Write" 183). During the twenties she was sought after for her skill in adapting popular stories and novels to the screen, most notably F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and the Damned (1922) and Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (1924). But by the late 1920s Printzlau's attention seems to have turned more to her theatre work, and her film career dwindles significantly after 1930, with no known screen credits after 1933.
Studying Hollywood Luci Marzola (moderator): In the earliest days of film studies, historians oft... more Studying Hollywood Luci Marzola (moderator): In the earliest days of film studies, historians often had little more to work with than oral histories, incomplete collections of periodicals, and, sometimes, the films themselves. But it could be argued that film historians these days are often presented with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to access to archival materials from the Margaret Herrick Library to the Warner Bros. Archive to the Media History Digital Library—just to name a few. With this improved access both through digital sources and through the increased availability of motion picture collections at archives and libraries, what are the sources that we are still looking for? What issues of access and availability do you see affecting historians of the future? Are there any potential dangers in the proliferation of archival research? Kate Fortmueller: The increased digital availability of archival materials has been great for research and teaching alike. I remember scrolling through the microfiche of Photoplay and other fan publications at the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library to find articles featuring Edith Head for a seminar paper in grad school. When I finally revisited that research last year, the Media History Digital Library was an invaluable resource that helped me reexamine a lot of sources. 1 As researchers, we all have limited time and money, and digital archives help economize. In general, however, the sources that are digitally available don't always offer me much clarity into power struggles/differentials, how industry decisions get made, or how workers navigate the challenges of a creative industry. A tremendous portion of my recent research has been searching for As part of this issue on " The System Beyond the Studios, " I sought not only to give scholars an opportunity to publish work that looks at specific cases reassessing the history of Hollywood, but I also wanted to look more broadly at the state of the field of American film history. As such, I assembled a roundtable of scholars who have been studying Hollywood through myriad lenses for most of their careers. I wanted to know, from their perspective, what were the current and future threads to be taken up in the study of this central topic in cinema and media studies. The roundtable discussion focuses on innovative methods, sources, and approaches that give us new insights into the study of Hollywood. Stamp all participated while I moderated the conversation. It was conducted via email and Google docs in the fall of 2017. Each participant began by writing a brief response to a broad question on one topic – research, methodology, pedagogy, or the meaning of 'Hollywood.' These responses were then culled together and given follow up questions which were all placed in a Google drive folder. Over the course of two months, the participants added responses, provocations, and questions on each of the threads, while I added follow up questions to guide the discussion. When seen as a whole, this roundtable creates a snapshot of where the field of Hollywood history is at this moment. It is a moment rife with possibilities as more lenses are brought into film history and more and more archives become accessible or digitized. Yet it is also a moment in which we feel ever more responsible both in our research and in our teaching to make the lessons of the past resonant with the present and into the future.
During the 1910s, film trade journals and fan magazines documented cinema's expanding economic an... more During the 1910s, film trade journals and fan magazines documented cinema's expanding economic and cultural significance, celebrating actors, studios and motion pictures with evangelical enthusiasm. These journals also inadvertently archived the film industry's growing pains, allowing us to trace both the growth of celebrity culture and the motion pictures' industrial formation. Central to this formative period was the relentless discourse of uplift, which focused on ways to assert cinema's cultural legitimacy yet at the same time highlighted the industry's own perception of its precarious social standing. This article examines the use of editorial cartoons in fan and trade journals to track the cultural aspirations of the film industry. This article traces how cartoon commentary deployed the visual signifiers of class and social status to assert cinema's cultural legitimacy.
ENG:
Corporeality in Early Cinema inspires a heightened awareness of the ways in which early fil... more ENG: Corporeality in Early Cinema inspires a heightened awareness of the ways in which early film culture, and screen praxes overall are inherently embodied. Contributors argue that on- and offscreen (and in affiliated media and technological constellations), the body consists of flesh and nerves and is not just an abstract spectator or statistical audience entity. Audience responses from arousal to disgust, from identification to detachment, offer us a means to understand what spectators have always taken away from their cinematic experience. Through theoretical approaches and case studies, scholars offer a variety of models for stimulating historical research on corporeality and cinema by exploring the matrix of screened bodies, machine-made scaffolding, and their connections to the physical bodies in front of the screen.
FR: Ce livre consacré aux liens entre le cinéma des premiers temps et le corps révèle combien la culture cinématographique émergente, et toutes les pratiques de l’écran autour de 1900, étaient fondamentalement « incarnées ». Les contributeurs arguent que sur et autour de l’écran (ainsi que dans tous les médias et constellations technologiques associées), les corps ne renvoyaient pas simplement à un spectateur abstrait ou à un public collectif d’ordre statistique : ils étaient bel et bien faits de chair et d’os. Allant de l’excitation au dégoût, de l’identification au détachement, les réactions du premier public de cinéma nous offrent un moyen de comprendre ce que les spectateurs ont toujours retiré de leur expérience filmique. Cet ouvrage propose de nombreux modèles, tant théoriques qu’analytiques, pour servir la recherche historique sur cette présence du corps au cinéma, en explorant les corps filmés, le seuil de leur mécanisation, et leurs connexions aux corps physiques devant l’écran.
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Corporeality in Early Cinema inspires a heightened awareness of the ways in which early film culture, and screen praxes overall are inherently embodied. Contributors argue that on- and offscreen (and in affiliated media and technological constellations), the body consists of flesh and nerves and is not just an abstract spectator or statistical audience entity.
Audience responses from arousal to disgust, from identification to detachment, offer us a means to understand what spectators have always taken away from their cinematic experience. Through theoretical approaches and case studies, scholars offer a variety of models for stimulating historical research on corporeality and cinema by exploring the matrix of screened bodies, machine-made scaffolding, and their connections to the physical bodies in front of the screen.
FR:
Ce livre consacré aux liens entre le cinéma des premiers temps et le corps révèle combien la culture cinématographique émergente, et toutes les pratiques de l’écran autour de 1900, étaient fondamentalement « incarnées ». Les contributeurs arguent que sur et autour de l’écran (ainsi que dans tous les médias et constellations technologiques associées), les corps ne renvoyaient pas simplement à un spectateur abstrait ou à un public collectif d’ordre statistique : ils étaient bel et bien faits de chair et d’os. Allant de l’excitation au dégoût, de l’identification au détachement, les réactions du premier public de cinéma nous offrent un moyen de comprendre ce que les spectateurs ont toujours retiré de leur expérience filmique.
Cet ouvrage propose de nombreux modèles, tant théoriques qu’analytiques, pour servir la recherche historique sur cette présence du corps au cinéma, en explorant les corps filmés, le seuil de leur mécanisation, et leurs connexions aux corps physiques devant l’écran.
Corporeality in Early Cinema inspires a heightened awareness of the ways in which early film culture, and screen praxes overall are inherently embodied. Contributors argue that on- and offscreen (and in affiliated media and technological constellations), the body consists of flesh and nerves and is not just an abstract spectator or statistical audience entity.
Audience responses from arousal to disgust, from identification to detachment, offer us a means to understand what spectators have always taken away from their cinematic experience. Through theoretical approaches and case studies, scholars offer a variety of models for stimulating historical research on corporeality and cinema by exploring the matrix of screened bodies, machine-made scaffolding, and their connections to the physical bodies in front of the screen.
FR:
Ce livre consacré aux liens entre le cinéma des premiers temps et le corps révèle combien la culture cinématographique émergente, et toutes les pratiques de l’écran autour de 1900, étaient fondamentalement « incarnées ». Les contributeurs arguent que sur et autour de l’écran (ainsi que dans tous les médias et constellations technologiques associées), les corps ne renvoyaient pas simplement à un spectateur abstrait ou à un public collectif d’ordre statistique : ils étaient bel et bien faits de chair et d’os. Allant de l’excitation au dégoût, de l’identification au détachement, les réactions du premier public de cinéma nous offrent un moyen de comprendre ce que les spectateurs ont toujours retiré de leur expérience filmique.
Cet ouvrage propose de nombreux modèles, tant théoriques qu’analytiques, pour servir la recherche historique sur cette présence du corps au cinéma, en explorant les corps filmés, le seuil de leur mécanisation, et leurs connexions aux corps physiques devant l’écran.