# Medium Specificity ![rw-book-cover](https://readwise-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/media/uploaded_book_covers/profile_1188016/Tx_xoOzZnBe2mZZpgwVDhkGYfmcKNvaOdxF_MH1qrXc-cove_qhDyIZW.png) ## Metadata - Author: [[Noël Carroll]] - Full Title: Medium Specificity - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: The concept of medium specificity in film theory emphasizes how a film should utilize its unique characteristics to achieve excellence. Some theorists argue that understanding and harnessing the specific properties of the cinematic medium is essential for evaluating and enfranchising film as an autonomous art form. However, there are ongoing debates about the relevance and limitations of medium specificity in contemporary film evaluation and artistic enfranchisement. - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/172897119 - Source File: Medium Specificity by Noël Carroll.pdf ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > Throughout film history, some critics have used the notion of the medium specificity, which they sometimes referred to as the *cinematic*, as a measure of filmic achievement. A film was good if it exploited the unique properties of the medium; a film was defective to the extent that it was uncinematic—that it failed to take advantage of the potentials of film as film. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrfrh3kef0dhgrmapq8pr8h)) > The first challenge involved showing that film could be an art in the face of the argument that, due to its photographic provenance, cinema was naught but the slavish, mechanical recording or repro- duction of reality, thereby providing no opportunity for creativity, expression, and/or formal invention—that is, the very hallmarks of artistry. Film theorists, like the philosopher Hugo Münsterberg, countered these arguments by main- taining, for example, that cinema, through its physical structuring devices—like the close-up and parallel editing—was mind-like and, therefore, capable of > expressive effects and imaginative manipulation. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrfx9v83kph0q5hgbtwb6gs)) > However, even if cinema could deliver art to its audiences, was it an art form in its own right or merely theater in a can—that is, a film can? In ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrfxpsfe803xc99ywpy3s49)) > To suppose that there was an autonomous art of film separate and apart from the artistic plays they contained would be like mistaking the potato chip package for the potato chips. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrg2kftarqsw4g8qvctjbdr)) > [The pertinent effects here—such as the representations of fast-moving action over great distances—moreover, were not only putative effects that no other artistic medium could deliver as expeditiously, they were also the best effects available by means of cinema as well. Cinema was enfranchised as an autonomous art form via medium specificity thinking because there was some- thing it could do that either other art forms could not do or that cinema could do much better. Thus, cinema had something to add to the system of the arts (a.k.a. the artistic division of labor) and, hence, deserved to be acknowledged as an autonomous art form.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/172897119/#bookmark31)1 But also since these effects represented what cin- ema did best of all the things it did, these effects were ones that *cinema artists qua cinema artists* were advised to aspire to, since these effects were the very best cinematic effects at which one could aim. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrg7fbc7q0q4bm80yqm2qwz)) > effects often called *cinematic*—are regarded as positive achievements of film art, while those that do not recruit cinematic ends, perhaps by traffick- ing in theatrical effects, are to be regarded with disapproval qua cinematic art. On this view, the theatrical set design and acting of Lars von Trier’s *Dogville* comes off badly even though these choices were perfectly suited to realizing his purpose: to portray American society as governed by implacably oppressive *roles* for which theater functioned as a symbol. As V.F. Perkins and David Sorfa have observed in their talk in the Film-Philosophy Conference in Oxford in 2015, medium specificity criticism has traditionally imposed an agenda or set of standards dictating what artists should do. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrgas78c63pes2esf410e4m)) > For, although the preceding two assessments make reference to the material medium, they are not examples of medium specificity thinking, properly so- called, as it has been handed down in the tradition of film theory *because* these appraisals are local, applying to the effectiveness or defectiveness of the use of the medium relative to the specific filmmakers’ aims. Indeed, the preceding example of using the wrong film stock for nighttime filming, though it refers to the medium, seems grounded in common sense rather than an application of the medium specificity theory or, for that matter, any *theory*. Furthermore, note that the preceding examples cannot be generalized to all motion pictures because not all motion pictures have the same aims or purposes. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrgd3rbx10p10w95exw2hfx)) > Some of the most challenging problems that the medium specificity theories face involve their approaches to critical appraisal. The first problem is that such theories do not seem to accord neatly with how we actually assess achievement with respect to the history of the motion picture. Consider the Oceana Roll sequence in Chaplin’s *The Gold Rush*. The Tramp, in order to entertain some lady friends, takes two dinner rolls and attaches them to two forks, proceeding then to execute an exquisite mime of a dance—the rolls serving as feet and the forks as legs. It is pantomime pure and simple. Arguably, Chaplin could have done it to equal effect on a stage. For all intents and purposes, it could have been a *mere* recording of a stage performance. No special features of the motion picture medium like editing or depth of field are in evidence. Thus, it should deserve a fairly low grade from the medium specificity proponent, if not being counted as outright defective—a failure of film as film. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrgrgtdmy8cg80q3w76crgs)) > One problem with this proposal is it makes it sound as though being true to the medium or being pure is good for its own sake or intrinsically good. But that would appear to contradict or, at least, misconstrue the very idea of what it is to be a medium—that is, *a means*. A medium, in other words, is instrumentally valuable, if it is valuable at all. By fetishizing being true to the medium for its own sake, the advocate of medium specificity theorist appears to have lost sight of the very thing a medium is. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrgv3cb0sndw94fzq0n46np)) > Moreover, there are many more examples than merely this one from Chaplin. For instance, myriad hack TV directors have produced work that is thought to conform more strictly to the alleged dictates of the medium than did Marcel Pagnol, but few, if any, have produced a masterpiece as moving as his film *Césare*. Furthermore, it should be obvious that things a medium does better than other media are not destined to be excellent. Computer-generated imaging (CGI), considered as a material medium, stages battles between superheroes and behemoths bent on conquering Earth better than other media, notably theater and maybe even photographically based cinema. But the effect is uni- formly tiresome rather than excellent as proven by the last 20 minutes of most Marvel blockbusters when our heroes hurl large objects, like trucks, trains, and buildings at the monsters, and the monsters return gargantuan fire with > monotonous regularity and ineffectuality ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrgwzk9dnjepys1y6hftznm)) > Although the case against medium specificity may seem formidable, three lead- ing philosophers of art—Berys Gaut, Dominic McIver Lopes, and Ted Nannicelli—have recently come to its defense. One strategy that these philoso- phers share is an expanded notion of what constitutes the nature of the medium under discussion. Specifically, they think of the medium as comprised not only of material elements—such as the stuff from which moving images are made and the instrumentalities through which that stuff is articulated—but also of practices ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrh1zgbfakwtypxccqfa2v3)) > One might characterize their conception of the medium as > praxeological as distinct from the traditional view of the nature of the medium, which we might call *material*[. This raises the question, as we will see, of whether these contemporary philosophers are really defending anything worth really calling a medium specificity theory or whether they have changed the subject in a way that is ultimately uninteresting.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/172897119/#bookmark28)[3](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/172897119/#bookmark28) ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrh2gjxpnaryjwwm7vqffee)) > • Some correct artistic evaluations of artworks refer to distinctive proper- ties of the medium in which these artworks occur. > • Correct explanations of some of the artistic properties of artworks refer to distinctive properties of the medium in which these artworks occur. > • For a medium to constitute an art form, it must instantiate artistic properties that are distinct from those that are instantiated by other media ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrh3ktsz85jrhjzpk3ax21p)) > Likewise, Gaut is probably right that *some* artistic properties of film are con- nected explanatorily to the medium, especially when it is expanded praxeologi- cally. Disjunctive editing explains the surrealistic, artistic properties of the films by Buñuel and Dali. But Gaut’s qualification of the thesis is not a very daring claim when one considers that film also shares many artistic properties with theater and painting. Such a view is too underwhelming to claim lineage from theorists like Arnheim or Bazin ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrh7kktgdw5xp6cnprk5cmg)) > Gaut’s various concrete attempts to individuate cinema seem to me to fail. At one point, he claims that the moving image is unique to cinema. But if “cin- ema” is being used here in its conventional sense, this sounds false, since shadow puppetry, video games, flip books, various optical toys like the zoe- trope not to mention broadcast TV, and video all involve moving images. Moving imagery is not a sufficient condition for cinema. Nor does it seem that moving imagery is a medium in the normal sense, since moving images are realizable by so many different means of implementation. Is it a medium in Gaut’s sense, one composed of shadow puppetry and so on? That seems improbable since the moving image would not seem to be composed of a coherent set of *practices*. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrhfrjwx78cn7fhzy9sa51x)) > In a number of cases, Gaut’s suggestions about what differentiates cinema from theater are off the mark. Considerations of space do not allow a review of all of them. But here is a sample of unsuccessful contrasts. He cites editing as unique to cinema, but if the editing in question involves the juxtaposition of scenes and/or images, theater can do it by means of lighting. Gaut cites rack focus as another contrast, yet the effect can be secured via scrims and lighting. Pace Gaut, the appearance of camera movement can be aped and functionally approximated by a revolving stage as in *Les Miz*[. Nor is the close-up effect impossible to approximate in theater. One way involves the use of spotlights and, as Susan Sontag pointed out, magnifying mirrors have been deployed to simulate close-ups in theater (Sontag](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/172897119/#bookmark29) 1969). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrhhbn4nya9wvj6j0za23vh)) > [Recently, the philosopher of television Ted Nannicelli has explicitly endorsed the practice-oriented or praxeological conception of the medium advanced by Gaut especially.](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/172897119/#bookmark32)5 Since Nannicelli’s approach is perhaps the most developed application of this revisionist viewpoint so far, it is useful to examine it in some detail. > [Nannicelli asserts that “A medium is something like a cluster of relatively, stable coherent practices of making something in a particular vehicular medium [where a ‘vehicular medium’ is a set of particular materials – a.k.a. a traditional medium]” (Nannicelli](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/172897119/#bookmark24) 2017, p. 63). ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrhmgm2kg6vm7r67g3cyab5)) > I am not an advocate of the traditional version of the idea of medium specificity, nor am I in favor of making a great deal of the notion of the medium for purposes of evaluation or even indi- viduation. Nevertheless, I do think that if one wants to advance a defense of medium specificity, one needs to employ the notions of medium specificity and the medium as they are traditionally used in order to avoid changing the subject ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrhp54emrreq345qbgh8y14)) > What Nannicelli seems to have done in setting up his distinction between film and television has been to contrast certain typical kinds of contemporary movies with the kind of television series, like *Better Call Saul*, that exemplify the so-called present Golden Age of television. At best, this would be to mis- take certain selected period-specific trends for an ontological distinction ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrht7v14enycjwemmxhnejn)) > Crucial for our purposes, here is that something is a work of a certain art kind—say cinematic art—only if it is the *product* [of an M-centered practice— that is to say a medium-centered-appreciative practice—a practice that focuses appreciation upon the distinctive properties derived from manipulating the physical and/or symbolic resources of the medium. An example of what Lopes has in mind here, derived from his writing on photography, is the use of pho- tography to bracket the object in front of the camera from its natural context and reframe it, in a way that enables us to see the object afresh (Lopes](https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/172897119/#bookmark22) 2003). To appreciate a work of photographic art on Lopes’ view is, among other things, to attend to its unique medium profile, its capacity, for instance, to defamiliarize things by, so to speak, lifting them out of space and time for > decontextualized scrutiny. Thus, we are able to see the strenuous exertion that the runner expends as she strains toward the finish line in a photograph, reveal- ing something to us that we would have missed in the haze of activity on film ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrj713p5g9gb1gkvkzacp5z)) > In his work on developing this framework for exploring the individual arts, he has not said that much about evaluation. However, he does tend to be emphasizing that the value that individual arts, like photography and paintings, have as or *qua* photography and paintings. Does he think that this is the only or primary way that art kinds have value—in virtue of the kinds of appreciation that attend to the medium profiles of the art form? If so, that would appear to return us to the problem of fetishizing purity over excellence. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hxrjce2w3f7hkg1q5sfxfwwz))