Back to Bazin
19
Finally, although Bordwell dismisses Bazin’s ontology he does so, it appears,
primarily because the scope of artifacts it dehneates is too narrow to admit modes
such as animation. Bordwell, therefore, does not explicitly repudiate Bazin’s
contention that the essence and teleology of film is the “fossilization” of experience.
However, since for obvious reasons this function does not characterize all of the
practices and artifacts subsumed under the institution that is cinema, its vahdity as
a definition of filmicity is called into question. At least two theoretical solutions
seem to present themselves at this stage. The first, a moderate one, is to concede to
Bordwell’s objections to Bazin’s theory, but nevertheless claim that it does in fact
constitute the essence and purpose of photographic film, if not that of animated or
digitalized film. More radical is the second solution to the conundrum, which would
be to insist that since only photographically based film fulfils the premises of Bazin’s
ontology, non-photographic forms cannot have the property of filmicity per se.
Given that they are part of the institution of cinema, they may be regarded as an
adjunct species of text that is related to films proper but without partaking of their
essential quality.
Though it might appear so, it is not from a desire to stigmatize animated and
computer-generated films as being of a lesser order than photographic film that I
undertake an analysis such as the above. The essentialist assumption mainly provides
a theoretical tool with which more pressing issues may be addressed, not the least
important of which is the consistent neglect of Bazin’s theory of memory,
preservation and commemoration of the past as film’s central objective. When
confronted with questions that involve the purpose of filmicity, Bazin’s thesis has
tended to take a backseat to notions of representation, aesthetics and entertainment.*'^
From Rudolf Amheim’s assertion that “Art begins where mechanical reproduction
leaves o ff’ (57) to the current immersion in digital imagery, the commemorative
purpose of film - what Barthes refers to as photography’s “power of authentication”
(89)'® - has been largely ignored even despite the efforts of critics and theorists
hke Bazin and Kracauer.
Filmic manipulation is not a phenomenon that began with CGI,'^ but there is
a vital difference between the manipulated effects of the pre-digital image and the
computer-generated image. Trick effects, various forms of pyrotechnical wizardry
and the routine form of arranging the mise-en-scene which occurs in all feature
films involve what Barthes sees as “a modification of the reahty itself’ (1984,21).
As opposed to this kind of manipulation, the space of CGI is entirely in the realm
of simulation; what it manipulates is not profilmic reality itself but rather our
consciousness of the relation between an event and its representation. David
Hockney is among those apprehensive and skeptical of the increasing circulation
of digital images and their penetration into the domain of photography proper,
fearing that they will destroy the legitimacy of photographs as reflections of the