chris@sloth.bc.ca (Chris Brougham) (06/25/91)
Ideology and Cinema Sound Technology - Part 4
Chris Brougham 1991
Conclusion
A discussion of ideology and cinema sound technology cannot be
wholly considered without an examination of actual socio-historical
material. Comolli quite correctly has addressed the economic aspect of
cinema, and Doane has also contributed with the examination of the
practices and design features of technologies that produce soundtracks.
However, by identifying purely economic factors or the effacing ability
of the Quattrocento perspective as the location of cinema technology's
ideology, context becomes reduced to a non-issue. It would seem that
this is the result of film theories developed along the lines of
Althusserian structuralist Marxism and the psychoanalysis of Lacan that
reduce the complexity of cinema to identifiable structures which exclude
the indeterminacy of the perceiving audience and empirical historical
data. Not wishing to rely on problematic and ahistorical formalist
arguments to identify ideological articulations, this paper has tried to
examine two sound technologies which, considered in Doane's sense, are
ideological, but when reconsidered within their actual socio-historical
context may be seen as promoting or inhibiting an ideology of
"professionalism." In the preceding analysis of Nagra and Dolby, it was
suggested that Nagra technology helped to challenge the dominance of
professionalism and that Dolby helped to strengthen it. This paper has
employed a concept of ideology that focuses less on structural or formal
configurations of cinema sound technology and more on actual usage
within specific historical circumstances. However, the emphasis on
context must not be construed as a lapse into historical relativism and
the resulting claim that technology is neutral. Indeed, the
technologies of cinema soundtrack production do map out certain
boundaries in which the filmmaker must work; however, the boundaries are
drawn in more than formal or economic terms and also include aesthetic
and ideological components, such as professionalism.
The technologies of Nagra and Dolby each were developed to
satisfy a perceived lack in film production, and their introduction to a
greater or lesser degree affected cinema practice. Since the
ideological implications are examined on the historical and social plane
of Hollywood standardization and professionalism rather than the
theoretical plane of bourgeois ideology, it was suggested that
ideological propensities and differences between the technologies were
in evidence. This piecemeal approach, although less elegant than the
theoretical approach, has the advantage of identifying possible
differences in technologies rather than casting all sound production
that follows a realist model into the bourgeois ideological camp. It is
also important to note that emphasizing context has the advantage of
accounting for change. Although Nagra technology might have originally
allowed independent filmmakers access to affordable means of film sound
production, more affordable recent technologies, such as crystal sync
compact cassette recording, challenge the Nagra system much the same way
Nagra challenged optical recording.
In conclusion, a critical examination is needed in areas such as
the methodology and critical vocabulary of film theory to avoid over
generalization and equivocation. This paper has attempted to apply such
an examination to the concept of ideology and film technology --
specifically sound technology -- and in so doing has, hopefully,
contributed to a materialist project of inquiry. Other concepts, such
as suture, and methodologies, such as psychoanalysis, also need to be
examined within the context of ideology. And finally, even in the
postmodern age of Baudrillard, an aesthetic theory that does not
discount realism as a mere bourgeois ideological articulation should be
offered since, to paraphrase Frederick Jameson, the referent has not
disappeared, it has merely gone underground.
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--
chris brougham
chris@sloth.bc.ca