Early cinema’s touch(able) screens: From Uncle Josh to Ali Barbouyou
2012; Amsterdam University Press; Volume: 1; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5117/necsus2012.2.stra
ISSN2215-1222
Autores Tópico(s)Cinema and Media Studies
ResumoReturn of the rube?Last spring a 'magic moment' happened at an afternoon screening of Martin Scorsese's 3D film Hugo (2011).When the end credits were scrolling across the huge screen-wall and the audience was leaving the auditorium, a little girl ran to the front.At first a bit hesitant, she reached up and touched the screen.Then she ran to her father who was waiting for her back at the entrance.Is this the 'return of the rube in the digital age', Malte Hagener wondered when he posted the anecdote on Facebook? 1 Why did this little girl want to touch the screen?Was it indeed to find out 'the location of the images', as Hagener suggests?Some while ago, I started to touch film screens -or rather, I made some attempts in an old-fashioned movie theatre where the screens actually hang too high for an easy reach.I would wait until the end of the credits before walking to the front and then, very furtively, jump up in order to touch.More often than not I would turn on my heels before reaching the front and walk away.The reason I imposed this awkward exercise on myself should not be found in (contemporary) 3D but rather in the so-called rube films of early cinema -and, more directly, in the discussion that followed a talk I gave about those films last January in Vienna.There, someone observed that she had never felt the urge to touch a screen in a movie theatre.Why would you indeed want to do so?How many film spectators have ever touched a theatrical film screen in their life?I then realised I had never done so myself and decided this had to change.I needed to become a rube.
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