Does Film Weaken Spectator Consciousness?

by R.D. Boyd and S.K. Wertz

The role of spectator is crucial for an actor, for there are "no actors without spectators."1 At times the success of the actor depends upon the role taken by the spectator. Thornton Wilder's "Our Town" depends upon an active, creative, involved audience. Other artists expect their audience to be passive, almost unconscious. Whether the medium of creativity is film or the printed page, examples of both dependencies abound. The focus of this essay is on a classic piece in the literature about film. In the Theory of Film, Siegfried Kracauer provides us with a mesmerizing printed discussion of film.2 In this essay we wish to examine his reasoning that is in a self-contained argument by analogy. Since Kracauer does not use or mention the argument thereafter, we feel that we can isolate the argument from its context and deal with it as it stands. After an extended analysis of the argument, we will relate some of the points to the literature on film. The following analogical argument is our focus.