Cinema: new cultural hegemony

In The global screenGilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy designate cinema as the reference show in a globalized world. They describe it as the matrix from which societies think and project themselves. And to support this proposal, they say that all other types of screen, from television to video surveillance via the Internet, filter reality according to the prism of the seventh art. Recalling that the latter is down among cultural practices, in any case for the plant attendance, they intend to demonstrate that “ Its global influence increases, establishing itself as cinematography of the world, vision of the world made of the combination of the great spectacle, celebrities and entertainment ». Glamor and Star System as emblematic styles of contemporary hypermodernity.

The book sweeps away the history of cinema, mass art, cosmopolitan and planetary vision from its origins. He insisted on the staggering craze that aroused, immediately and all over the world, “ The dream factory ». The authors connect this enthusiasm to the cultural revolution that the realism of cinematographic expression operates. A realism that induces “ an eclipse of the distance (Daniel Bell), and signs the passage from a culture of contemplation to a culture centered on sensation. Cinema films embody this “ open work Finely described by Umberto Eco, a work whose ambiguity, indeterminacy gives way to interpretation. Finally, another reason for this success, the stories draw their inspiration from the pangs of individualism: loneliness, incommunicability, silence, couple, freedom, violence …

But what concerns above all the two authors is the association between hypermodernity, the declination of all excesses, and today’s cinema. They depict three processes. First, an all -round overflow: always more spectacular images, always more movements, always more explorations of subjects Border Line (Sex, violence, dividing on the roads, etc.), always more characters destroy (Monsters, perverts …), always more plans, always more sounds and music, more and more movies. Then, a formal complexification: the audacity upsets the codes of the story, the aesthetic canons are renewed, diversify, hybridize ; The narration can escape from the simplicity of classical cinema, the story is destructive, the unit of action shatters, the accessory elements of the story can take over the central thread of history. Finally, self -referentiality: this cinema is deployed by drawing from the sedimentation of cinematographic references, uses second degree and parody, multiplies recycling, humor, offset reinterpretations. In a word, accumulate the signs and the effects of meaning which promote the distance from the spectator.

These aspects “ build a freed filmography of past standards », A hypercinema which stands out as the lighthouse, the norm for world films. This contemporary cinema is not just Hollywood superproductions still cited, it presents, in fact, a multiple face. In today’s cinematography, the cleavages between art and industry, between author cinema and commercial cinema fade … then stand out three types of works: a research cinema (example: the Sundance Festival) ; Productions with high spectacle targeting a global audience (often without ambition, sitting on large budgets), and “ author films that are refined and sophisticated ». In addition, in parallel with films that overcome in extravagance and excess, flourish works “ often vectors of cultural affirmation for small states or for emerging nations ». In these films in particular, in general funded by state systems, and also mobilizing funds from heterogeneous geographic sources, identities are mixed, cross -borrowing abound, and emerges a culture of the image “ deterritorialized or transcultural ».

Starting from the observation that the documentary broadcast in the dining room has become particularly popular, the authors operate in the relationships between cinema and capturing reality. The documentary is a path to find your way around the world at a time of disappearance of major historical visions and ideologies. He authorizes a return to “ Immediate realities “, Captured through” Human rights, extended to earth rights ». It allows you to find a reassuring, humanist universe, perhaps endangered (for example the legendary school of the small village of Aveyron de Be and have), but whose camera claims to continue. Another talent for the documentary: his demystification strength, his ability to denounce lies, to unbolt “ The Cave of Illusions ». They finally note his ability to follow the meanders of the intimate, to draw all the parties of psychic culture (films on children, love disorders) or hedonist pleasures. And the authors conclude: “ We must consider the coronation of the documentary as one of the figures of the advance of the democratic imagination working to reduce the hierarchical inscriptions of dissimilarity among men ».

Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy finally signal how much cinematographic fiction, drawing from its renewed codes and aesthetics, expresses the anxieties and questions of liberal technical society: the drifts of technoscience, ecological disasters, social violence, the rise of delinquency linked to exclusion, marginality, the question of human rights, national identity, etc. Braking up new mythologies on which the spectator is based to think of society or negotiating with it, this cinema manifests rather pessimism or in any case doubts, even deep fears, on the march of the world.

Started at the start on the parable of hypercinema, the authors move away considerably and end up following the composite maze of contemporary cinema. This is more diverse and more subtle than excessive shows, formatted around extreme violence and sex that Hollywood produces: films that provide the economic base of American cinema. This trip shows the multiplicity and intensity of creativity of the writers and directors who draw from the evolution of companies, while acting on them, according to this circular relationship described by Edgar Morin in The spirit of time : “ This double movement of the imaginary mimicking reality, and of reality taking the colors of the imagination ». In the end, the affirmation on the matrix role of hypercinema deserves to be nuanced in the very light of the exploration led by Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Serroy.

In search of cinema mainstream which is deployed via the globalization of the economy and consumption, the authors sometimes forget how much the cinematographic works have a cultural and territorial anchoring. Admittedly, no cultural purity exists in a world of exchanges, and mixing and reciprocal loans are at work in a globalized culture ; Admittedly, the national character of the works sometimes deserves discussion in an economic activity which uses capital of heterogeneous origins and which, almost always, brings together for the same project authors, directors and actors of very diverse horizons. And yet, the films plunge their roots into geographic and societal identities. Often they “ express »A particular society. For example, American blockblusters, on the one hand, and Indian blockblusters, on the other, first embody, by their bill, their narrative structures, their favorite subjects, regional mythologies.

The thesis on hypercinema is also weakened against television, despite the demonstration efforts initiated by the authors. Aimed at staging daily banality, “ Folle of the Logis », In many of its programs (with the exception of varieties), radically moves away from chic and shocking aesthetics promoted by Hollywood. It takes a surge imagination to detect in the neglected wave of weather presenters or animators of debate, or even reality TV, the glamorous aesthetics of stars. Television operates according to a principle of refraction of the public, somehow instills a cult of ordinary man, and dismisses the principle of sublimation and mystery. On television, there are “ stars And not stars asserts Serge Daney. The presenters and journalists, far from being draped in a veil of inaccessibility, play in the register of proximity and conviviality: they offer themselves as mediators between the universe of the small screen and the public. Looking at the spectator straight in the eyes, they warn him that there is something “ TRUE », Authenticated in what they are stating. Quite the opposite of the enigmatic image of the stars of the seventh art. The latter more and more often descend from their pedestal and invest the popular arena, the time of a television advertising spot – Ah ! Depardieu tasting barilla pasta… – or a TV movie, proving a contamination of cinema by television bonhomie. It is clear: in the field of images, the register “ Glamor, luxury and voluptuousness Is in fighting with a register of accomplice representation of the common world, that of coolof “ nonsense », Of intimate.

The thesis of hypercinema also has trouble applying to the Internet, a kingdom of self -expression and the stolen image, therefore not very licked. The worship of the amateur, the culture of the sharing of experiences between ordinary individuals pose a rupture with the artistic affirmation of the “ cinema ». It is the same with the fervor for free, in opposition to the economy of Casino which characterizes the seventh art.

In total, the idea of ​​a focal length “ movie theater Who would impose his hegemony is quite forced. However, the intellectual route proposed in this book is attractive and pointing the coronation of “ the cinema spirit », The authors often touch just. From the suburban young people to political leaders, the spectacular staging of oneself (“ branchitude »Dress, black glasses and stylized body movements) is popular. In fact, the trace of the sophisticated is radiant in fashion, in particular in the advertisements of stars brands, in luxury offered as democratic low water. On this ground, Gilles Lipovetsky and Jean Faith find their thread, and convince us of the influence of hypercinéma. Glamor descends in social life by the torrent of advertising present everywhere and nourishing source of all screens. This is the real alliance, the secret pact of our societies: the Hollywood apotheosis and the globalized business business.