Paracinema and Frampton

Walley's discussion of paracinematic practice is important in its undercutting of the supposed 'filmic' essentiality of cinema. I particularly enjoyed thinking through the distinction between 'film' and 'cinema,' two terms that are more often than not used interchangeably. Walley notes that avant-garde artists of the 60s and 70s used paracinema as a method of accessing the "conceptual dimensions of cinema" (28) and thus subverting the limits of "pure film." I think that this is correct, in that it is through the relationship between cinema and conceptual art that Walley lays out that we see the true potential of non-medium cinema.

Walley argues that Frampton's Magellan represents an engagement with the anxiety over the limits of "pure film," (and as such takes up, to some extent, the same project as paracinema) although I have to admit, I have large misgivings about Frampton's project. Frampton's work remains, in my mind, an overly essentialist, overly bombastic view of the metahistory of cinema. Frampton wants to see his work as the "chemistry of dirt" rather than of cobalt, but I wonder what he has done to earn it. Because, at the heart of the matter, is the question of how one 'earns' a place within any artistic canon. Zryd notes that Frampton was concerned with the question of who would become film's Homer, as if the entire thrust of filmic practice was meant to lead to the coronation of a 'perfect' practitioner. If Zryd is willing to give Frampton some leeway (by allowing for 'irony,' a term that I have a hard time truly locating within artistic practice anyway), I don't know that I want to. It feels as if Frampton wants to push himself to the forefront of the 'who is film's Homer' discussion in his attempts to singlehandedly work through the history of cinematic practice, allowing himself a level of control/power over this history that would let him rise to the top.

I was also a bit disappointed in the importance in Frampton's work of the 'conditions of the medium' with which he is working. Zryd quotes Carroll in saying that Frampton sees as essentially filmic the qualities of framing, photographic illusionism, and narrative. Without even touching the question of whether or not it is appropriate to posit anything as inherently filmic, I believe that the qualities Frampton is concerned with shut himself off from the paracinematic practice described by Walley. Where would McCall's work fall in Frampton's metahistory? If Frampton is interested in questions of power and authority (in his attempt to engage with Foucauldian theory), perhaps he should be more willing to take into account his own position in hierarchies of power. Dismissing the qualities of paracinematic works (light, time) in choosing his own essentially filmic qualities, Frampton turns his back on an important segment of artistic practice and deems it not worthy of inclusion in his metahistory.