(nostalgia) : Round two

I'm sorry to be a bit late in posting this, but like many others in the class, I would like to talk about Frampton. It was interesting, to me, watching (nostalgia) for the second time, having watched (and loved!) it last semester. For one, I already knew that the voiceover was referring to the following image, and so I experienced suspense rather than confusion. Knowing how this bizarre semi-narrative structure worked, I immediately had to focus to remember what Frampton was saying, knowing that it would apply to what I would see next. There is therefore a sort of forced agency on behalf of the viewer, as (s)he must remember and memorize, listen and watch, despite (or because of?) the strangely divided temporality of audio and image. To me, it is as if one's interior is invaded in this process: we listen to ourselves recounting the past audio, but must also listen to the new information coming in, and at the same time watch the visual while imagining the coming image. This is an exaggeration of the usual experience of cinema, it seems, for a spectator must constantly combine her/his exterior knowledge (the set of experiences every viewer brings into the theater) and that gleaned from the diegesis, even while taking in what is currently being presented, and through all of this somehow aligning the visual and audio aspects of the film into one narrative. The complexity of the experience is foregrounded, and knowing that I would be doing all this allowed me to think about the implications of the process even as I engaged in it.

Even the second time around, the actual visual of the crumbling photo remained intensely captivating, as the photograph is reduced to a strange, organic form (much like the traces of decay on the celluloid in Decasia)-- almost as if a new form is born out of the destruction of the image. One thing that has always fascinated me about this film is the urgent sense of the "here and now" of the visual, as opposed to the distance created by the voiceover's calm description of the picture to come. We watch the death of the photograph--a visual at once sad and morbidly fascinating, natural and oddly unnatural--and know that it could only be filmed once. There is a sense of urgency in watching this death, as the monotonous voice continues at its same speed, but each photograph dies differently, its existence obliterated. The audio that had described it is ("long") past, and now even the physical remnant of it is gone. This, of course, brings to mind various discussions of the nature of photography and cinema, with their attempts at immortality at odds with their physicality. It also reminds me of Bazin's "Death Every Afternoon" article that we read last semester, and with regards to these topics (and what the audio itself discusses!) I could say much more.

Lastly, one thing I am interested in is how people responded to the actual experience of reading Frampton's short chapter. For me, I suppose I wasn't surprised by his tone, both conversational and (to me) vaguely pompous or overdramatic, nor his roundabout method of approaching his topic. I definitely appreciated certain points: his discussion of "film" vs. "cinema," as someone else noted, the idea of "infinite cinema" as the source of all still photographs, and cinema as "the Last Machine." I did wonder if the idea of "the cinematic apparatus" was around yet, because as he described the cinematic 'machine,' I kept waiting for that word to appear. In any case, I'm interested in hearing how people responded to his short essay, and how it relates to (nostalgia) itself...