Blog Entry #4-Significance of Motion Picture to Late 19th Century Culture

The late nineteenth century is certainly an amazing period of accelerated technological innovation rivaling that of the industrial revolution. Through our class, research, and reflection I have come to appreciate the myriad conveniences of my daily life; many of which came into existence during this period. Of particular interest in the class of late are the invention of the motion camera and, consequently, the motion picture. In order to understand the significance of these innovations, we have been looking at how they worked culturally, that is, there significance and influence within the cultural context of late nineteenth century America.

McLuhan’s “Medium is the Message” concept is immediately brought to bear on the situation. In a time where one’s senses were, quite literally, private affairs, the motion camera served as a public organ, a visual timestamp now allowing personal experiences to be viewed by all with eyes of their own. As in the past, new views of life have always fascinated people of the day. In the eighteenth century, the dissemination of the mirror proved awe-inspiring in the minds of people who had never seen their reflection before. Like the mirror, the motion camera worked culturally in the sense that it allowed people a new and different perspective of life by enabling people to physically capture moments in time, process them, and share them on a level of intimacy never before imagined. What one saw was no longer one’s own. No longer was it necessary for you to go to an event and see it, rather the event could be brought to you. For the first time, time itself could be rewound, replayed, stopped, and modified.

This motion camera, this ocular extension, essentially created a schism in society; permanently separating time and place, past and present, public and private by extending the visual faculty to quite literally an omnipresent level. Certainly many consequences, positive and negative, have followed from the physical device that is the motion camera. However, it is the medium itself, its non-neutral significance to civilization that is in fact the message. For in extending the visual faculties of humans to such a limit, the motion camera brought humans closer to the nature and power rivaling that of their perception of god.