The End of Cinema – A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age

Jérôme Garcin, ed., Nouvelles Mythologies (2007).

See in particular Patrice Flichy, L’Innovation technique (1995) and, more recently, L’Imaginaire d’Internet (2005).

Musso, “La ‘révolution numérique,’” 13.

This at least is how InnoviSCOP interprets the work of Michael L. Tushman and Philip Anderson, “Technological Discontinuities and Organizational Environments,” Administrative Science Quarterly 31, no. 3 (September 1986): 439–65.

Entry for “technological rupture” published by InnoviSCOP on its website. Our emphasis.

Ibid.

See Michel Serres, Petite Poucette (2012).

Laurent Sorbier, “Introduction: Quand la révolution numérique n’est plus virtuelle … ,” Esprit, May 2006, p. 123.

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (1994 [1964]), 7.

Nicholas Negroponte, Being Digital (1995).

Sorbier, “Quand la révolution numérique n’est plus virtuelle,” 123.

Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (1987 [1980]).

Michel Serres, Atlas (1994).

Manuel Castells, La galaxie Internet (2002).

Sorbier, “Quand la révolution numérique n’est plus virtuelle,” 122.

Musso, “La ‘révolution numérique,’” 13.

By spectactor (with an additional c) we mean a spectator who actively participates in an audiovisual medium with an interactive dimension. In a strong sense, we might say that spectators are actors in the “spectacle” or monstration they coconstruct. See also Réjean Dumouchel, “Le spectacteur et le contactile,” Cinémas 1, no. 3 (Spring1991): 38–60.

At this point in our discussion we might mention the widespread distinction that exists in French today between médium and média. Apart from the original distinction based on number as found in Latin and observed in English (media being the plural of medium)—French today makes a rather subtle distinction between médium and média, one that while it has no equivalent in English, seems to us quite indicative of the need to rethink the position of cinema in the digital context. By the term médium French means a kind of language (the médium is what is found “between,” media scholars remind us) or, if one prefers, a material (technological in the present instance) and semiotic apparatus that can sometimes make possible artistic expression. The French word médium thus makes it possible to bring out the material and techno-linguistic part of the media process alone. For its part, the French word média refers to a an institutionalized system of communication (entertainment, industry,  venue, trades, etc.). Naturally these two levels overlap and interpenetrate. In keeping with usage in English, we will not maintain the possibility of making this nuance in the translation of this volume, limiting ourselves to the classical pairing of a medium and several media.