Science + Technology + Society + Cinema
It should be easy to assess the STS aspect of cinema as it certainly ticks all the boxes for science, technology, and society. Filmmaking is a discipline – or at least it was eventually considered as one, being the youngest of the art forms, when the art of cinema was taken seriously (instituting the study of craft in the academe). Film is a technological invention and remains to be one as innovations are constantly made in the medium (coming of sound and color). And finally, if I may say, cinema moves society – economically, spiritually, culturally, and politically. Being a film student in such a university had led me to the conclusion that cinema implicates all disciplines. You name it! From different philosophies, abstracts, and ideologies, to sciences of all sorts, cinema becomes a significant, if not the most important, medium to “represent” them. It is said that cinema is the culmination of all the arts, I wish to agree but I am not writing to glorify cinema per se because that would spoil the challenge…or I may just do so.
I would like to pursue a career in cinema. To ask what kind is to limit the possibilities of what can be. I wish to create a film. I want to write. I like the idea of producing a craft so magical that it lives through time and space. Well, cinema is technically a spatial and temporal art, unlike the others. But more than the form, it is what it can contain that makes it essential and universal. The only limitation of its contents is imagination. But imagination is almost always grounded in reality, or is it?
Cinema has been implicating reality since its inception. The form opened innumerable discourses across different disciplines for the potentialities of the medium. Psychology is applied in characters as it is used in literature; physics is utilized for realism as it is used in architecture; chemistry for the development of film stock (before) as it is used in painting and photography; biology can be represented through animation; math and logic in every step of production. These are only some notable instances that prove the all-encompassing attributes of cinema. It cannot be overstated as it is true (unless falsified by any science). Filmmaking is not just the “art” that is deemed “arbitrary”; filmmaking is an art that makes science looks cool. Nature documentaries show the abundance of Earth. Sci-fi films gather people to love or hate science and technology – depending on whether they are set on dystopia or eutopia. Film productions provide thousands of jobs and employ different kinds of workers – from engineers to animal trainers. Cinema boosts the local economy, creates pop culture, and acts as a mass communication tool. Cinema saves history, counters or supports fascism, and ignites or hinders emancipation.
Of course, this does not mean that cinema is capable of such things alone. As cinema is attached to its material conditions, it flourishes and collapses as STS does. As warfare destroy infrastructures, cinema is devastated – the industry, theaters, and livelihood. As the economy recedes, cinema production declines. As the government policies suppress, cinema censors itself. Just like any other industry, cinema faces upheavals that challenge its existence. But cinema persists. With technological innovation – the advent of TVs which threatened cinema, and now the pervasiveness of digital technology, cinema has managed to reconfigure its identity and get adopted by the changing forms. Cinema is not limited anymore in theaters; the TV allows home viewing, and now cinema is everywhere – primarily on our hands.
Cinema was for entertainment, surely, but the medium serves many purposes. It was used for propaganda in the wartimes. It was turned into a commodity. It has become a cultural artifact of nations. Cinema is being used for education. Representation is what cinema is. It mimics. It replicates. It even constructs its own reality. Cinema materializes what is thought and spoken – both the imagined, fictive, and impractical, and the true, factual, and real – as it captures life, and by the virtue of technology, may even relive it (as virtual realities like holograms are now being employed and might be the future of cinema, or at least that is one angle).
To claim that cinema, as a communication tool, aids in teaching, documenting, and demonstrating science and technology auditorily and visually is to simply answer the question of what it can contribute to the development of the latter two. But I wish to rephrase and invert the question as this paper essentially proves what science and technology can contribute to cinema.
02 January 2021
I would like to pursue a career in cinema. To ask what kind is to limit the possibilities of what can be. I wish to create a film. I want to write. I like the idea of producing a craft so magical that it lives through time and space. Well, cinema is technically a spatial and temporal art, unlike the others. But more than the form, it is what it can contain that makes it essential and universal. The only limitation of its contents is imagination. But imagination is almost always grounded in reality, or is it?
Cinema has been implicating reality since its inception. The form opened innumerable discourses across different disciplines for the potentialities of the medium. Psychology is applied in characters as it is used in literature; physics is utilized for realism as it is used in architecture; chemistry for the development of film stock (before) as it is used in painting and photography; biology can be represented through animation; math and logic in every step of production. These are only some notable instances that prove the all-encompassing attributes of cinema. It cannot be overstated as it is true (unless falsified by any science). Filmmaking is not just the “art” that is deemed “arbitrary”; filmmaking is an art that makes science looks cool. Nature documentaries show the abundance of Earth. Sci-fi films gather people to love or hate science and technology – depending on whether they are set on dystopia or eutopia. Film productions provide thousands of jobs and employ different kinds of workers – from engineers to animal trainers. Cinema boosts the local economy, creates pop culture, and acts as a mass communication tool. Cinema saves history, counters or supports fascism, and ignites or hinders emancipation.
Of course, this does not mean that cinema is capable of such things alone. As cinema is attached to its material conditions, it flourishes and collapses as STS does. As warfare destroy infrastructures, cinema is devastated – the industry, theaters, and livelihood. As the economy recedes, cinema production declines. As the government policies suppress, cinema censors itself. Just like any other industry, cinema faces upheavals that challenge its existence. But cinema persists. With technological innovation – the advent of TVs which threatened cinema, and now the pervasiveness of digital technology, cinema has managed to reconfigure its identity and get adopted by the changing forms. Cinema is not limited anymore in theaters; the TV allows home viewing, and now cinema is everywhere – primarily on our hands.
Cinema was for entertainment, surely, but the medium serves many purposes. It was used for propaganda in the wartimes. It was turned into a commodity. It has become a cultural artifact of nations. Cinema is being used for education. Representation is what cinema is. It mimics. It replicates. It even constructs its own reality. Cinema materializes what is thought and spoken – both the imagined, fictive, and impractical, and the true, factual, and real – as it captures life, and by the virtue of technology, may even relive it (as virtual realities like holograms are now being employed and might be the future of cinema, or at least that is one angle).
To claim that cinema, as a communication tool, aids in teaching, documenting, and demonstrating science and technology auditorily and visually is to simply answer the question of what it can contribute to the development of the latter two. But I wish to rephrase and invert the question as this paper essentially proves what science and technology can contribute to cinema.
02 January 2021
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