Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2013
Summary
Film theory, revolving as it does around a time-based medium, might be seen to be eminently suited to the development of discussion around temporal flow and change in relation to its particular objects. Temporality has consistently posed problems for critical theory, however. As Elizabeth Grosz has written,
time is perhaps the most enigmatic, the most paradoxical, elusive and ‘unreal’ of any form of material existence … time is neither fully ‘present’, a thing in itself, nor is it a pure abstraction, a metaphysical assumption that can be ignored in everyday practice.
Overwhelming us with its ‘pervasive force’, she continues, ‘we prefer that it evaporates into what we can comprehend or more directly control’, into, that is, discrete units of analysis that can be compared to one another, like shots on a film strip. According to Sarah Cardwell, dominant paradigms in film theory have in the past excluded temporal matters from discussion:
the predominance of semiotics and the related notion of film as a ‘language’ or representational system comparable with that of verbal language guided scholars away from phenomenological and ontological questions (such as those concerning film's unique ‘temporality’) that are considered ‘medium specific’ or ‘medium essentialist.’
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- Information
- Temporality and Film Analysis , pp. 1 - 12Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2012