The synchronizing function of
language made this movement (such as working, going from one
place to another, from one person to another) socially relevant.
Our movement in language descriptions (do this, go there, meet
so-and-so) is an abstraction. Our movement recorded on film is
the re-concretized abstraction. This explains the role of filmed
images for teaching people how to carry out certain operations,
for educating, or for indoctrinating them, or for acquainting
them with things and actions never experienced directly. It also
explains why, once efficiency criteria become important, film no
longer addresses the individual, or small groups; rather, it
addresses audiences at the only scale at which it can still be
economically justified. The industry called Hollywood (and its
various copies around the world) is based on an equation of
efficiency that keys in the globality of the world, of
illiteracy, and of the distribution network already in place. On
an investment in a film of over $100 million, five continents
of viewers are needed, and this is still no guarantee of breaking
even. It is not at all clear whether Dreamworks, the offspring
of the affair between Hollywood and the computer industry, will
eventually create its own distribution channels on the global
digital network.
The temptation to ask whether the language of moving images made
literacy superfluous, or whether illiteracy created the need for
film, and the risk of falling prey to a simplifying
cause-and-effect explanation should not prevent us from
acknowledging that there are many relations among the factors
involved.
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