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Download fileThe cinema of exposure: spiritualist exposés, technology, and the dispositif of early cinema
journal contribution
posted on 2015-11-16, 13:48 authored by Simone NataleThis article addresses the relationship between early cinema and the tradition of spiritualist exposés. The latter were spectacular shows performed by stage magicians in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, which aimed to debunk the tricks employed by spiritualist mediums in their séances. Drawing on the theoretical framework of the dispositif, this article shows how early cinema renewed and reinterpreted the tradition of the exposés. Focusing in particular on Hugo Münsterberg’s work, moreover, it addresses the connections between early film theory and psychological studies that debunked the illusions performed in spiritualist séances and stage magic. In the conclusion, the article proposes to employ the concept of “cinema of exposure” in order to address how early cinema invited spectators to acknowledge their own perceptual delusion.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Published in
Recherches sémiotiquesVolume
31Issue
1-2-3Pages
113 - 113Citation
NATALE, S., 2011. The cinema of exposure: spiritualist exposés, technology, and the dispositif of early cinema. Recherches sémiotiques, 31 (1-2-3), pp. 113 - 129.Publisher
© Association canadienne de sémiotique / Canadian Semiotic AssociationVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
2011Notes
This article is reproduced with permission from the publisher.ISSN
0229-8651eISSN
1923-9920Publisher version
Language
- en