The Role of the Frame

One of the points I found intriguing in Mary Anne Doane’s “The Indexical and Concept of Medium Specificity” was her point about the frame. She writes that the frame is the “cinematic equivalent of the ‘this,’” and that when something is framed, different expectations about the aesthetics of what is in the frame are created (140). This is interesting when thought about our discussion of “what is art?” and whether and/or when photography can be (or came to be) classified as art. Or alternatively, what sort of photos qualify as art. However, she isn’t saying that frame equals art, just that a frame makes the viewer feel that they should be judging the subject of the frame by artistic standards. This could be used (and I’m sure it has been, although I can’t think of any specific examples right now) to ironic effect, like when someone frames something that is generally not considered “art,” like a piece of trash, or a popular culture artifact. It plays with the meaning of art and what it means to frame something at all. And I think that the frame doesn’t necessarily have to be a frame per say, but more the viewing environment. For example, with Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, he took a urinal and signed it. Because it was then shown in museums, the signifying locations of art, it became art. The museum acted as the frame, saying “look at this (as art)”- the second definition for the index.

As Doane says, the photographic/cinematic frame “coordinates and necessitates the dialectic of Peirce’s two, seemingly incompatible, definitions of the index, as trace and deixis. The frame directs the spectator to look here, now, while the trace reconfirms that something exists to be looked at” (140). Considering that before we had only talked about the first definition of index, the one with the physical relationship to its referent, I found this interesting, because although they are different I can understand both definitions as indices. For photography, the image of the photo that depicts the object that “has been” but still “exists now” is a clear index with the actual object that it is picturing- the light from that object has touched the chemicals, creating a tangible impression. That is the trace. The frame is what also makes it deixis. The mere presence of the frame tells viewers that the photo is present now, it is important, look at it. It reconciles the schism between past and present inherent in the photograph and brings the photo as an object fully into the here and now, even if the actual object in the photo is forever stuck in that in-between dimension.