Videographic Cinema: An Archaeology of Electronic Images and Imaginaries

227 Pages·2020·5.541 MB·English

by  Jonathan Rozenkranz

Videographic Cinema
thinking|media
Series Editors
Bernd Herzogenrath
Patricia Pisters
Videographic Cinema
An Archaeology of Electronic
Images and Imaginaries
Jonathan Rozenkrantz
BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC
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First published in the United States of America 2020
Copyright © Jonathan Rozenkrantz, 2020
For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. viii constitute an extension of
this copyright page.
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Cover image © Paolo Sanfilippo
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Rozenkranz, Jonathan, author.
Title: Videographic cinema: an archaeology of electronic images and
imaginaries / Jonathan Rozenkranz.
Description: New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. | Series: Thinking media |
Includes bibliographical references, filmography, and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020013007 | ISBN 9781501362422 (hardback) |
ISBN 9781501362408 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501362415 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Video recording–Aesthetics. | Video recordings in motion
pictures. | Cinematography–History.
Classification: LCC TR850 .R675 2020 | DDC 777–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013007
ISBN: HB: 978-1-5013-6242-2
ePDF: 978-1-5013-6240-8
eBook: 978-1-5013-6241-5
Series: Thinking Media
Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Conditions
Condition 1: What is videographic cinema? 3
Condition 2: Archaeology how? 16
Media archaeology as the study of media conditions 17
Media archaeology as the study of media images
and imaginaries 21
Media archaeology as historiography theorized/theory
historicized 26
Where is video/when is video? 29
Mapping and tracking videographic cinema 35
Part One Emergence
1 Futurity effects: The emergence of videographic cinema 41
A credible reference to a possible future: Defining the
futurity effect 44
Roll bars and roller skates: Challenges of capturing video on film 46
A pioneer and his predecessor: Live television as condition
for videographic cinema 49
Entering the electronic labyrinth: The video utopia estranged 55
Flickering faces and multiplied figures: Two videographic
futurity effects 58
2 Canned life: Imagining reality TV 65
The deadly threat of live TV: A Face in the Crowd as
intermedia warfare 66
Live loops and canned laughter: TV tools for demagoguery
and deception 69
vi Contents
The ‘social experiment’ as televised spectacle: The canned life
of The Model Couple 78
Reality as infomercial: The social engineering of ideal consumers 82
The host as collaborator and the terrorist as clown: TV’s
‘nihilism of neutralization’ 85
Canned death: Roddy’s TV-eye in Death Watch 87
3 Autopticon: Video therapy and/as surveillance 93
Panopticism, synopticism, autopticism: Three functions
of modern surveillance 95
The emergence of video surveillance: CCTV before 1970 96
Paving the way for Dr Phil: American dreams of synoptic
psychiatry 99
‘An historical breakthrough’: Discovering the autoptic function 100
Interpersonal process recall: The therapist as interrogator 102
Self-acceptance – self-correction: Two poles (and a Scottish
poem) 104
The psychopathology of private life: Transparency as social
imperative 106
Autopticon and on (and on): The screen is the prison
of the body 107
Part Two Remanence
4 Mnemopticon: Creative treatment of psychic reality 113
The emergence of the videographic psyche: The therapist as artist 114
Imaginary flashbacks and revelations: Video ‘dreams’ in
Viva la muerte 121
From cybernetic acupuncture to Sufi meditation: The artist as
therapist 128
Mnemopticon 79: Memory monitors in Anti-Clock 130
5 Vilified videophiles: Nightmares of video’s home invasion 137
The rise and fall of home video: From highbrow promise to
‘Boston Strangler’ 138
Long live the canned flesh: Alive on tape in Videodrome 141
Contents vii
Patrick, Otis, Benny, and us: Shell children of the video
revolution 144
Treating erasure anxieties: From Family Viewing to
The Fourth Kind 146
Mnemopticon 97: Capturing nightmares of home invasion 150
6 Arrière-Garde: Videographic cinema as media archaeology 155
From culture industry to retrospectacle: The coming
of millennial time 156
Kung Fury gets the VCR treatment: Technical failure as
cinematic retrospectacle 159
Reframing the Arrière-Garde: Media archaeology as artistic
method 163
Archival ambiguities: The uses and abuses of U-matic in No 165
Sisyphus caught on S-VHS: The existential horror of
The Private Investigators 173
Arrière-Garde as ‘postmodernism of resistance’, or
fighting a lost cause 180
Conclusion: An archaeology of videographic cinema 183
Bibliography 189
Index 205
Acknowledgements
To spend half a decade exploring what constitutes the object of one’s passion
is a rare privilege. For having had it, I am infinitely grateful. This book would
not have been possible without the intellectual and financial support of the
Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University. Trond Lundemo and
Malin Wahlberg, words cannot express how much you have meant for the
intellectual adventure leading up to my getting to write these pages. You have
been true sources of inspiration on my path towards becoming a scholar.
I am also grateful to all the other brilliant colleagues who engaged with
my research over the years: John Sundholm, Doron Galili, Malte Hagener,
Guido Kirsten and Kristoffer Noheden provided invaluable input on the
work in progress, as did Jan Olsson, Marina Dahlquist, Ina Blom, Lars Gustaf
Andersson, Staffan Ericson and Patricia Pisters. In 2016, Patricia invited me
to spend the spring as a visiting scholar at the University of Amsterdam, a
spring that ended up lasting the whole summer since I just could not leave
my new home – a city that saw the pieces of the research for this book
starting to fall into place. I particularly want to thank Patricia and Bernd
Herzogenrath who, as editors of the Thinking Media series, eventually made
the publication of this book possible. Thank you also to Katie Gallof and Erin
Duffy at Bloomsbury for guiding me through the whole process.
In addition to the ones already mentioned, a number of vibrant
intellectual milieux have been essential for the development of the ideas
that constitute this book. Concordia University in Montreal co-funded my
participation in a one-week media archaeology workshop organized by
Darren Wershler, Jussi Parikka and Lori Emerson. The workshop presented
me with some of the sharpest minds that I have had the privilege to think
media with. FilmForum in Gorizia has been a yearly feast of food for
thought and drinks for the spirit, thanks to the superhuman organizing
skills of Diego Cavallotti, Simone Dotto and others. Key parts of this book
were first presented there, their transformation into chapters thus fuelled
by feedback from Simone Venturini, Pepita Hesselberth, Jan Distelmeyer
and others. And two film and media studies conferences organized by
Ágnes Pethö and others at Sapientia University in Cluj-Napoca have also
been of great value, not least thanks to Susan Felleman who engaged with
this project at its earliest stages with an enthusiasm and intellectual edge
that provided me with fuel for years.
Marta Mund and Oscar Rozenkrantz, my dear, dear parents. All words
fade in the light of our feedback loops of love. Thank you for a life of
Acknowledgements ix
sharing ideas and aesthetic experiences, but most of all, thank you for the
unfaltering support without which I would not have made it to where I am
today. I dedicate this book to my beloved parents and to my best friend
Adam H. Norén – a life-long source of love, laughs, original ideas and great
inspiration. We took a leap from those swings in kindergarten and we’ll land
in the rocking chairs of the retirement home.