Arcade To Cinema

TO U l
THE PASSAGE FROM ARCADE T O CINEMA
Our taverns and our n~erropolitan strcets, our offices and

furr~ished rooms, our railroad stations and our factories appeared to have 11slockcd up hopclcsly. Then came the film and burst t l ~ i s prison-world asunder hy the dynamite of rllc tenth of a second, so rhat now, i n the midst o f its far-flung ruins and dcl>ris, rue rnlr,t[ynnd a d u t n t t r r o r ~ ~ ~ g o
traue1ling.
WALTPI
.ENJW*IIN,'"The
Work of Arr in the
Age of Mechanical Ileproducrion"
'
In this well-traveled passngc f r o ~ rhis now-canonical essay on modernity, ~ "'She Work o f Arr in the Age o f Mecl~anicalReproduction," Benjamin offen a hyperbolic image o f the changcq wrought by the explosive advcnr o f "tltc film." W i r h a weight o f near-biblical drama, the film is poised to relcasc dcspandenr captives from the "prison-world" o f nineteenth-ccnruty architcctt~ral space. For Benjamin, "the dynamite of rhe tenrh of a second" sent a temporal chsrgc that rorc nr rhe slratial materials o f modernity: i t s brickworks, pavements, window glass, and iron ginlers were "burst astlndcr." The film was privileged as the agent ofthis rupture, an cpisten~ological TNT. And i n irs wake, the fldncr~r remained, left with a different yet "calm and advent~~rata" o f "travelling." way The above "passage" is cmbeddcd i n a discussion o f the close-up, followed by the frequently cited maxim:
Will, rhe close-up, space cxpandr; with slaw motion, movctncnr is exrcndcd. The enlargement of a mapshot doer nor render more precix what ill m y case war visihle, rbouglr unclcrn it reveals cnrirrly nor,firmn~ioiotlr f r l w ~ r b j ~ ~ r ' o (emphasis added)
Benjamin was attempting to assess the various cultural &em of photography and the cinema, of mechanical reproduction and the loss of aura, the impact of an "~mconsciousoptics." Grtainly other mmmentama on film had noted the fonnal signifiana of d ~ cinematic transformations of magc nilication (the close-up) and t m p r a l distention (slow motion). Jcan Epstein, for cxamplc, anticipated Benjamin's rhetoric in h writings in the i nrly 1920s. T o Epstein, rhe dose-up was "the soul of the cinema." an essential mmponcnt of cinematic spaificity, photogenie.' And to Epstein, slow motion brought a "new range to dramaturgy. Its power of laying bate the emotions of dramatic enlargement."' Bela Balew found equally significant physiognomic revelations in the n m cinmatic nope of the close-up.' The writings and film practice of Epsain. Delluc, Dulac, Balizs. Venov, and Clair both argued for and dunonstrated the formal speciticities of the cinematic medium. But unlike t h a t o t h a theorists, Benjamin would note the more profound exponents of the alterations of space and time made possible by mechanical rrproducti6n: the m'dchanges produced by spatial prolifemtion and i a metonymic aspen. repepability mu time. "Even the most pe&t repmducrion of a work of an," Benjamin would write in "Work ofArt," "is lacking in one elunent: i n p e n c e in timeandpucr. its unique a i s t e n a at the p h w h e r c it happens to be" (emphasis addcd).l The absent "presence" of a mechanically-reproduced work of art was what Benjamin began m theorizeas "aan." the mystified quality of authenticity of the original that was lost in the age of mechanical reproduction? . Benjamin was ittenrive m the spatial alterations produced by mechanical repnAuction (in m a s dirnilbution and Iits flipside, Imas reception): but heal so speculated on the rccc~nfigered nparalitier tlIS mechanical reproter duction allows.' To this m i return. will , ..... * . . Ibc "Work ot Nt. may, perhaps the most cclebntcd of Benjamin's posthumous career, contains his most sustained discussion of film. Situated in the larger contar of Benjamin's work (the m y was drafred in January and Pebruaty of 1935). "Work of A d was written while he was "in the midst of" his ambitious and never-to-bc-mmplcted utopian project to analyre the "hr-flung ruins and debris" of the ninctccnrh a n t u q : the Pwgm-Wmk, study of the Rris arcada." a Benjamin took the "pasmgzs" as a succinct imnntiation of the fngmentary nature of modernity-its hodgepodge ammulation, its uncanny
juxrapositions, its "thcater of purchasu"and, above all, its curious temporality. The pennge (and here it is important to retain the wordpmagb not arcade) war an architmural monument to time and its passing. Bcnjamin was drawn to the remains of the nineteenth century as a collector, ragpicker, hricola~r its rubble. (''the rags, the refuse: I will not describe of but rather exhibit them."") Adorno describes Bcnjamin's method:
Hi prcfermce in tk Amadn for m l l rh*bby obi- like dwt and is a complement of this technique, dram as it it to mything nbaf h a ,lippal h u g 6 dn m n m t i e ~ r o n c r p ~ w lor rto things which have been esteemed n ~ t m trivial hy the prevailing spirit FOI it to have left any traces other lhan thmi of hasty judgement." (cmphasir added)
And tells us: hewn d m " m the purified f m n or obsolete clcmcnta of civiliution, to everything ia ir devoid of domestic viraliry no lcs imistibly than is the mllecmt to huilr or to the plant in the herbarium. Small glpr balls containing a landrope upon which snow fell when shmk wae among his favorite objjn." The glas enclosed maw acne, a souvenir like the one Kanc ch~tchu on his deathbed at the beginning of Citiun Krnr, serves as a symptomatic clue to Benjamin's unfinished project. "What was sold in the Passages were souvenirs [Andenken]." wrote Benjamin. "The [Andenken] was the form of thc commodity in the Passage."" Anknkrn translates as souvenir, but also as memory; memory was the commodity-faish retailed in the arcade, a "world in miniature."" Thc Panagrn-wrk was to be a mmpilation of such shards of memory, "a literary montage," an arrangement of texts that formed a monumenral dialectic. As a p i c a of textual archimtun like Kanei "never-finished, already decaying, pleasure-palace." the unassembled convoluts of the P q e n - t u m C formed a rambling Xanadu of monuments and ~ p h e m c n . ' ~ ic space The passage was a fitting paradigm for all of moder made possihk by the reant advances of iron and glass arcnmnure, the arcade was lined wirh luxuq i t m s producal in the economies of the nmly
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T H E PASSAGE F R O M A R C A D E T O C I N E M A
49
industrialized textile trade. Has, umbrellas, gloves. and cloth mantles were displayed in shop windows and vitrines a if they were antiquated ohjms s in a natural history museum. The pasage was not a museum or a wareItouse, but a sales spaa where the purchase w s a transaction endowed with a nar-philosophic signifiance. Commoditi< ;formed into sottvenirs, memory-residueof thc alrady passt. T h e Par~fm-wkoaupiedBenjamin unttl n~s ocarh in 1940. l o traces r left to posthumousspulation, i t s material) roughly ass' ctnhled. its cvidcna scattered, the Pasagen-rurrk makes us, a Susan Buck-Morss has written, s "detectives against our will."" For the structure of this massive work. Benjamin appnled to the con+ of dialmics.'e His methodwas to collm fragments, to construct dialectical images (dialcktircbc Ri&) as a montage of opposites." ("Dialektik im Stillstand--as ist die Quintcsscm der Mmhode."'o) to carry h montn~grprinriplrow hntoq That is, to build up the imm large structures out of the smallerr pruiscly fashioned strucmnl dements. Indeed, to detect the crystal of the total m t in the analysis of the simple, individual moment." (emphmir added)
remains of Benjamin's Pmm@n-&not a building left in ruins, hut a film never ~ m p l c t e d . ~ If seen thmttgh the lens of criticism of Adorno and the ZritschriJFflir Sodafinrhung, Benjaminw s chargedwith the epithet of Marxist condema nation-being "ttndialectial." criticizing Benjatnin's assumption that culture simply "reflects" i o economic base, Adorno wrote: "Your dialectic lacks one thing: mediation."" Although Adorno was critical of Benjamin during his life, in his introduction to the posthumouslypublislted Srhdfitn in 1 5 , he wrote more sympathetically of BenjaminS intentions: 95
...
H mrmtly dled the image of his philwphy didutical: dte plan lar the e hook Parivr Pmrapn envisagcr u much a panorama of didcaical images u their rhmry. The concept of a dirlcnical image was meant objmivcly, not prychologially: the presentation of thr modm ru at one thr nnu. thr aIr<dy past and thr rwr-,amwar to h v k e n the workk central pl ae heme and central dialminl image." (emphasis adde1)
% m
Benjamin's method was almost cinematic, as if ach quotation were a a shot, "single in meaning and neutral in content." until it w s placed in juxnpositioni2I thought of in this my, the Pmagm-wkis like another f pmj4t mawdirof the twentieth century, equal in its gtandioac aspirations, destined conversely to remain incomplete. Eisennein's plans for a film of Capital, sketched in nom fmm 1927 m 1918, contained, a Annette Micltcls son has argued, "the most radical of aesthetic syntheses": a film of Karl Marx's Dm Kapital"with its formal side dedicated to J~yce."~' Although Benjamin gives no avowed indication of fatuiliadty with Einstein's "dialectic approach to film form."*' it is a if the Pnangen-udw s an equally s a radial acsthmicsyntbesis: a m t devoted to the commodity-fetish, with the "formal side" dedicated to the principles of Eise~tsteinian montage. E i n stein's ambitions for "inrellcctual montage" were to produce films that "will and whose "substance will be the screening have to do with of.. a RgriJf[concept. i d a : is tempting to consider a more portentous. and perhaps m c : analogy for the fragmentary ,
The Pasap-As "central dialectical image" w, a Adorno incisively s diagnosed, modernity's itnique superimposition of "the new and the already past and the met-same." The passages instantiated this dialectic in mna~horic literal terms. T h e sitnultaoeityof this temporal triad-"the and new, rhc already past and the ever-same3'-will remain a key component of my description of pwtmodern temporality. I n May 1935, just a Benjamin finished the expos6 "Paris-Die Hauptss tadt dcsXIX Jahrht~ndms," Ite dacribcd his plans for the "Arcades" hook i n a letter to his friend Gershom Schokm. The project would focus, be declared, on "the unfoldingof a handed-downconcept. the fetish character of comm0dities."~9Benjamin intended to read the commodity-objects on display in the faded arcades a substructoral symptoms of the flaws of s the supcrstrtrritre. The commodities that appeared in the passages had a fortuiroits and random arrangement, like the chance enwnnter of the umbrella and sewing machine which fueled Sortalism." ("Dec Vater d s e Surrealismuswar Dada, seine Mutter war cine Passage, [The father of surmlism w s Dada, the ntothcr w s a passage.]"") Benjamin wanted to read a a these material fragmenn as a residue of a "dream world" readable not s o much by the psychoanalyst, a the dialectician: s
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10
THE P A S S A G E F R O M A R C A D E TO CINEMA
THE PASSAGE FROM A R C A D E T O
CINEMA I 1
F m n ~ epoclx sprin~ nrcndcs nndrhr intcrion, tltl rxhibition hdtknndrhr this rhr diovnms,. T h y an the rrridtzts of0 Awn rmrU Thr utilirarion of dreamelcmenrs in waking is tlnc textbook crrmple ofdirlccticrl ihoughr. Hence dialectical thought is the agent of hirroricrl awakening. F.very epoch not only dmms the nexr, bur whilc dreaming impels it towrrd wakefulness." (emphasis a d d )
And,
as Rolf Ticdemann writes:
Benjamin wanted to procced similarly with the reprcrcnratianof history, by treating the nineteenth centwry world of objmrr as i f i t were a world of drcsn,ed objects."
I n a co~nplexcalculus o f analogies, Benjamin described the arcades as stocked with the dream residt~e f an epoch long i n slumber. The con>o modity-fetish-umbrellas and dolls and millinery-were like museu~ii rclicc that instatitiatcd the dialectical iniagc o f the new and the "already past" and became, in convergent syntltesis, the "evcr-same."
THE COMMOOITY-EXPERIENCE Bcnjanlin's plan to showcase tlle mmmodity-
fctisli was, o f cot~rse,directly derived from the "mystical qualities" that Man: rrics to describe i n his section on "The Fetishism o f the Commodity and its Sccrer."" l'llc commodity is, finr of all, an external object, a rhing which through its qtcaliriet satisfies httman needs ofwhatever kind. The nltttre of rhca n d r . whether they arise, for enmplc.fmm the i~a,~mr/, r thc intagiwation n k no o ms diffexnn" (emphasis added) Marx began Dm Kapirnl(1867) with an exacting descriptiott of the trans1 formation o f a 1 object with use-value into its double, a "commodity" with an cxchangc-value. Tltc commodity i s a sncial construction, not found i n nature, but an object invested with a special value derived, not from its "use" but fmm in relation to other objects i n t l e ~narketplace.'~ "fetis11its
R...I.
d . Rnonrn,. lWll
Rotqnph0 A M F.. + .& C
character" is based on an intnngiblc attribute: the markct-value of the desires i t ofFcrs to satisfy.
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53
Man's descriptive and n~atetialin acmtmt o f the changes i n the ninetcenth-centuty tnarketplace was also atttlned to the subjective projections of need. The mystically enigmatic feature o f the commodity was that i t could replace necd with desire. I n i h t o r i n o Surplw Valtrrr. M a n wrote f about the type o f mmmodity that leaves "no rangihle rault" and answers an "aesthetic need": P . namplc, the rcrvia rend& to me by a ringer sltirfiu my atshtic nerd; o but what Ienjoy exists only in an action inreparahlc from the singer himscl6 and as roon a Itis labour, the singing, comcr to an end, my enjoymolt is also s cmq Ienjoy the activity itself-its rcverbcrationon my car. lYmerovicts, Iikt rlt mtrtmoditin robid I m y b nKOIav or may no4 IIIn nmeUaIy.. or buy, e an y rhq n m C rmrictr ruhich only yield tnjoymmt. But this mnkr no d~&mct to ~ rhdr mnomir rhnmtttz" (emphasisadded)
Here, M a n was describingthe pleasures given by a scrvicc (such as a donor or a lawyer) rather than a good. Yet the service described liere is inseparable from the person dclivcring the service (in this case, the singer h i m d f l . T o ratatc this formulation in Benjaminian terms, as an effect o f mechanical reproduction. thc service becomes separable (abbrbnr) from the person delivering the service; and the mmmodifiation o f the service changes markedly. I n "Work of Art," Benjan~in discusses the film actor i n precisely d~cse terms. The separation o f the actor from his or her "reflected image" (da~ Spiqrlbikfl is, according m Henjamin, raponsible for the "culr of the movie star" which replam the actor with the "phony spell o f rhe commodity" V;ruligm Zkubcr i h r n Warcncharaktd But now the reflected image has bmme separable, transpotable. And where i s it transported?Bcfotc the public. N m r for a moment does the z m n -r m e to bc conscious of this ha. While facing the umcra he knows that t~ltimately will f a a the public, thc consumen who mnrtitutc the he mrkn.. Thefilm mpondr to rhr &riding o rhr awn with an arr$n'aI f 6uiY.wp o I '~nonnliryUouar'dt studio. The culr o f the movie star, f & the forrercd by the money of the film indultry, preserves nor the unique aura of the penon hut the "spell of the pnsonality," rhe phony spell of a commodity.* (emphasis added)
I n the exa~nple Man's singer, radio and recording techniques rendered of the p r m c c o f thc person providing rho sewicc unnecessary. Songs muld k recorded and the recording co~tld bmadcast: either way, the singer is be ahwnt as tbe service o f singing is rcnded. Hence. i n the age o f tnechanical reproduction, r m i m rrplncr gwdr as rommodirics And heca~mse such an aesthetic "service" can be rendered mechanically, the commodity-a recording, for examplc-returns to the status o f a good, the product o f an absent service. Tltm goods, with the mysterious qualities o f the commodity's "fctish-character," offer mmmodi~xperirnrcl that satisfy, as Ma= wo~tld have it, the imaeination, not the stomach. " Adorno wot~ld remark on thesc same feattmres i n his writing on the radio and the gramophone: "In the aesthetic form of technological reproduction, these objccts no longer possess their traditional reality."'* To Adorno, records--like phomgraphs-become artifacrs or, eclioing his description o f B c ~ ~ j a r n iFdvored snow scene. "herbaria of artificial life." I n an essay that nl prefigures Benjamin's discussion o f "aura" i n the "Work o f Art" essay, Adorno writes:
Thmagh the phonograph mod, rim<gains n new approach to music. It b not t time i n which mwk /MP/K)U, nor b h the rime whirh rnttsic h mom~(mtnta/im mwtrr o i t s 'i#. "Iti s titfie ar mn<cnre, enduring in by f 'Illere i s no douhc that, u music is rcmnored by the mute music. phonograph record from the realm of live pmdt ~m imperative the of anirtic activity and beco,na petrified, it abso , in this process of petrifiarian, the very life that would athcmise vanrn. r nc dead art rercna the ephemeral and perishing rrr ar the only one dive. Therein may lie the phonograph rccord's most profound junificati~n.'~ (emphnrir addd)
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..
For Man, the key aspects o f modernity were the dramatic changes i n consciousnur brought about by industrialized space and t i m c t h e "annihilation o f space by time" a he famously put it. Tbc pl~omiograph s record. like other newly formncd 'bmmodity-cxpcricmtces" facilitated a converse transformation: the annihilation o f time. The r a n g o f visual phantasms offcred by "show business" exltibirioncthe phnntasmagoria, diorama.
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T H E PASSAGE FROM A R C A D E
TO CINEMA
THE PASSAGE
FROM A R C A D E
TO CINEMA
5s
panorama, even the legitimate theater-must be measured a early illustras tions of commodity-cxperienccsthat the public woldd purchase." These acrivities pmvidcd an intangible object-an r+n'cnrc-tl~at only ournsionally offcrcd souvenirs. I n Grundrinr, Man described how leisure time transforms sabjcctivity: Free rim-which indedn leisure rime as well as time for higher anivitinnan~rally rmn$m a q n t rvho enjoy h inro n diffmtpmon, and it is this diffcmrrt penon who then enters the dircrr proms afpmductian." (emphasis added)
I n this regard, the effects of the commodificationof leisureexperience alters the process of production, producing workers who n n t e a new market. desirous of leisure. That almost oxymoronic formalation, "enrertainment industry" (or even "culture industry"), suggests a similar paradox of the "leisure-worker" whose labor produces nonprnductive leisure experiences that deny work.') Marx also described how transportation changed the perception of goods-transported food lost in regional association, its "aura."" Although Marx did nor fully detail how the ttansfor~nations produced by the changitig modes of transportation and mechanical reproduction helped change the mmmodity-as-object into the mmmodity-as-upericnce, Schivclhuseh has derailed that transformations in his consideration of the railway journ y" Train travel, Schivclb~~sch e. argues. turned humans into parcels who could ship thcmsclva to a destination, reversing, in a sense, our pcrception of what the commodity is: h mmrlrr bmrrncs thr objm (the pard). The cxpcricncc of transit changes the tvelcr. Transportation alters the commodity, but i t also beco~ncs commodity itself-the train ticket. a min wrote about the commodity in a marketplace that Mar h the rise of indastrialiration and early capitalist m n w c o omies, the height of "modernity." In a "post-indusnial society."" incrcv ingly based on s e r v i m rather than go&, the "labor theory ofvaf~~e" oFfcrs a decreasingly accurate explanation for the commodity. l'l~orstein Vcblen, author of The T h y o the Leimrt CLw (1899). f cxpandcd Man's analysis of const~mption and leisure. and added a genclered analysis of the role of "conspicuous"-viwlb cvident-leisure and conn~mption. Veblm's model-which a n a l p . the wnsumi~lg hahie of
the wealthy hourgcois-was. a Romlind Williams has argaed. "becoming s obsolete at the moment he enunciated ir."" To Vcblcn, "conspicuous leisure" w s p a i d with "conspic~~ous a consumption" as n~arkcrs a "leisure of class." But Veblen's account aaumcd the millconfiguration of ho~~ahold comprised of man and wife, where the l~ousewifc engaged in "vicarioas" leisure and "vicarious" cotaamption. The wife ma the "ceremonial ,mnsumcr of goods" and, to Vcblcn. "still quite unmistakably remains his [the hasband's] chattel in theory: for the habitual rendering of vicariotrs leisure and consumption is the abiding mark of rhc unfrcc scwanr."" Leisured women who mnspicuously spent their husband's money functioned only a a "chief ornament," wliosc consuming behaviors were only a further s visible sign of a man's social power. Man's t nod el for the consumer was male; Veblcn, even though he considererl the female as consumer, s w in a her only asign of her husband's wealrh. She remaincda social hieroglyphan ideogrammatic. almost pictographic c11aracter-atriangulated inscription like the commodity itself. Although Vehlen's model for consomptiot~ women entered the work force, i t gives importance of women as consumers and suggars the grounding for the eventual shilr from women buying for the hoesehold (as an indirect reflcction of men's desires) to women buying for themselves. Cansumption, which to Vcblcn appeared "vicarioas," w s a mode of social practice that a e n a d but could also transform social position. If the commodity w s a a social hiemglyph, shopping--as a selcction of one object among othcrsalso provided a ncw experience of social changes in the nature of the commodity were positions of consumer de~in.~' Shoppingar Philo~ophiral p L t i o n The shopper enacts the social relaS tions b e e n things, and must wad the social hiemglyphs of the commodity on display. "Markcring" mans simply buying items in the marketplace, "stocking up." "Shopping," on the other hand, i s a more leisurely examination of the goods; its behaviors a n niore directly determined by desire than need. To shop: a a verh. it implies choice, empowerment in s the relation bmvccn looking and having. the act of buying a a willfill s choice. To shop i s to muse in the contemplative mode, an activity that combines diversion, self-gratification, expertise, and physical activity.
THE P A S S A G E F R O M A R C A D E T O C I N E M A
the speculative gaze of the shopper was an insttumentalization of the mobilkd (but not uimull) ga7r to a consumer et~d. The modes of distracted observation of the fldncur and fldnet~se became the prototype for the shopper, a social character who was nor afraid of the markctplace (agoraphohia), and who k a m e agorapbilic lnstcad.'0 Shopping must take place in a space that allows contemplation: the arcades and department stores that allawed "looking." without huying, were adequate to such a desire. The arcade was the "forerunner of the department store," as Rcnjamin contin~~ously reminds u. Until the arcade, shopping and s" leisurely iospmion had b e n possible for food, but oat for textile goods and luxury items. As Mam SO nten~ivcly illtlstrated, the marketplace i n capitalist countria went through dramatic changes in the nineteenth century. The mass production of goods and high volumes of consumers demanded ncw sales o~~tlcts patterns of consumption changed in and response to new rerailing techniques. But the marketplace also changed because of the presence of the female consumer. Lower prices, fixed prices, cnrrC libre, and sales promotions produced new shopping behaviors and were part of the construction of ncw consumer desires. New wmmoditics werc creatcd-ho~uchold goods, fabrics, clothing, furniture, applianceand they were marketed with a calculated viscral appeal. As Dorothy Davis desuibes the consequences of such visualized speculation: The sight of dl sorrs of other items, ornaments, pictures, mirmn. aspidistras, would suggat ideas they had never rhought of,tempt them to a d i w r s i ~ o f mi-luxuries, duate them in rhe pl-ncat manna imaginable into mntisg r higher standard of 1iving.u
It was a newfonnd privilege for a woman to perform this calculation, if not a omfound power. Nowhere i s the historical conflation of political indc pendencc and economic independence more cmphatic-and ultimately more atrifying-than in Elizabeth Cady Stanton's 1854 rally cry for women's "right to buy," declaring and daring that women should "GO OU'I' A N D BUY."" For Stanton, the liberation ofwomcn from their husbands' tyranny involved freeing their right to buy withont his approval. The flaneuse-as-shopper may have had a ncw mobility in the public sphere and may have bccn enthralled with the illusion of power in consumer choice. but these f r d o m s were only posaible at n price. Power wu obtainablconly through a triangulated relation with a commodity-"fetish."
ha in other tens,
Tourism: Pncknging the "Mobiliud" Gner Just as shoppi~~g a contemwas plativc upcriencc that relied on a mohilircd gwr, new forms of pachgcd trawl werc equally reliant on a mobiliml ga7r and marketed the traveling npcriencc as a commodity. For Americans and Britains of a certain generarion and class! the "Grand i b u ? was considered a necessary part of one's education. 1\11 of Europe was a museum to be travetscd with Bac dckers, narrativimd itineraries that organized cxpcrience, The wncept of "grand roar" with its stayoverr i n Grand Hotels- each with t heir lifts, ballrooms. mites, and pools- -offered the tourist a preplanned narrative of s n changed i~ the mid-ninetecnrh space. But just a patterns of cons~~n~ptio n century and were no longer determined solely by class privilege, patterns of travcl also changed markedly. While the "lady traveler" was an adveoturous corollary of upper-class privilege, in the mid-ninetenth century the packaged tour began to offer the freedo~nsof travcl to middle-class
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women.^
Thomas Cook, the firat British entrepreneur of the packaged tour. became the master codesetter of middle-class rourism. (Cook, who began organizing touts i n 1841, was active in the temperance movcment--proposing the tour a a substitute for alcohol.") The tonrist industry successs fi~lly marketed an organircd n~obility, arrayed ~rcarranged "sighrs" in narrative sequence. The guidebook served a texn~al s captions to othcmise visual "sights." This commoditircd comhination of voyeurism (ligl~~ecing) and narrative grew in parallel with the industries of telegraphy, photography, and the cinema. The suhjcctive cffcceca on the to~lrist not unlike those of the cinema are spectator. Tourism prodaces an escape from boundaries, i t legitimates the transgrcssion of one's static, stable. or fixed location. The tourist simultaneously embodies both a position of presence and akncc, of here and elsewhere, of avowing one's curiosity and disavowing one's daily life.% Roland Bartha pinpointedthese paradoxa o f touristic experience. Dining on a train, Bartlla contends in "Dining Car," imparts the philosophy "that the trawler should consume at rhevcry heart ofhis joerncy everything constitutively opposed by the journey." Rartbn is describing the paradoxideffectofa "transparted immobility'~wl~erc itself impartsa psychic travcl stasis. I n the railway dining car, Barthes describes how "each constraint seems to produce its contrary frcedorn, each gesture is a denial of i t s original limits."
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THE PASSAGE F R O M A R C A D E TO C I N E M A
T H E PASSAGE FROM ARCADE TO
CINEMA
59
Thus each time matt cossrntcrs his dirplrcrmernr, it is to give i t tltc ssperrtruaarc o f a hoasc; each rime 1%" rlerrchcs himself from the ground, hc requires its goarrntce: all nrrr oftrnd k t v f i r r h r i r p l rhr voy illruian o f i,nmobiIip: in the panic 2nd pleasure o f tmnrplrnt~tian, Caok sells rlre ryccraclc of a stability." (crnphnrir added)
And as Dean MacCanncll effectively denionstrates i n his The Tnrirkt: A Nm 7'beoty o the Leisirnre Clm, touristic cxpcricnccs were a "new species f o f wmmoditics" designed to provide "staged authenticity."" The organ i r a l spectatorship o f tourism-packaging this transported itnmobiliry in a historical dcvclopment a narrative o f "staged aurIienticiry"-followc~l
similar to that of tlic panorama, diorama and cinema where, as t l ~ c ga7r becnmc more "virtually" mobile, the spectator bcatnc anore pliysically in~nobilr. Tourism relied on a more physically mobilc subject, whose cxperiertces wcrc prcplaancd. n ~ t c ~ ~ l t a ractivities that relied on such forms t al o f organized spectatorship flourished intcrdepcndcotly of t h o x reliant o n history of nincteetirl~the virtual gaze. As Altick dcscribcs i n l i i s rctnarl~ablc ccntery catertainmncnrs, Thr Sl~nrusf I.o,rdntt: o
Innovations as Thomar Cook's lint gtlidrd tours of the continent in rRss, had markrdly increased the dcsire to go ahroad. For rhox who werc ahle to do so, now thrr more of the nations's wealth war trickling down r l ~ r o t ~the~ g l middle clm, 2nd cheap tranrpon and moderrly priced hotels werc making conrincntrl toering for many a genaine posrihiliry rather illan a hopelcs dram. Loudoni p,rornmnr rowd n nppoirt-tul,~tttmfor the ml thing." (cmphasir add&)
RE: CONSTRUCTION-THE tion."
PUBLIC INTERIORKHE PRIVATE EXTERIOR
"Collstt~~c-
wrote nenjamin i n "Paris-Capital
o f the Ninctcenth Ccntt~ry."
"occopics the role of the n~hro~iscioos." we now consider the activities As the that tnnsfor~ncd mobility o f the gnrc (activities srsch as shopping and tourism) io parallel with tllc devclopnicmit o f arcliitcctural spaccs that encouraged st~cli mobility (the arcade, the department storc, the cxliibirion hall) it will beconic rcatlily apparent that iron and glass atchirccti~rc was a primary fzcror i n thc alteration o f ninctccnt11-cctitury public life."'
THE PASSAGEFROM ARCADE T O CINEMA
61
shop windows were well-established features of sales stratcgy. In 1900, the year that L. Prank 13aum wrote The W i e n r d o Oz, he also published a f treatise "11 window display entitled The An o f D e r o r a t i n ~ Ilry Good W i n dorur." In it, he describes a variety of techniques for catching the eyes of passing window-shoppers and turning them into absorbed spectators. How can a witidow sell goods? Bypkcing them bcfi,r tire public in ruth a
tnannrr rhnt thr ob~ctwr a daiyefir them and mtem rile store to makc t i ~ e l)N prrmhn~e.Once iin tlze customer may see other rhings she wants, and no matter how m~tch pcmhascr ttnder these conditior,~the crrdir ofthe rnlr rhc ~ ~ Ito the ruindoru." (emphasis added) O , ~ ~
One of Bauni's recommended techniques was what he called an "illusion window" that would be "sure to arouse the curiosity of the observer."" A window display called "the vanishing lady" used a live female model who, at intervals, would disappear into a drapery-covered pedestal and reappear with a new hat, gloves, or shawl, Female mannequins, posed in staticseduction, were women made safe under glass, lilcc animals in the zoo. The devartmetit store window
W
helped creare the demands for whidr they catered wirh their cverchat~ging windows and shop displays.. . . Long before the cinana or broadcasting existed, the departtrlcnt stores were helpisg to mould the tastes of rhe rising rniddle class.aQ
Baum's conception of the show window seems to bear a clcar a~~alogy the cinema screen. A tableau is framed and as it is placed behind glass it is tr~ade itraccessible. From the middle of thc ni~letcenth century, as if in a l~istorical relay of looks, the shop window succeeded the mirror a s s site of idetltity consrn~ction, then-gradually-tbe and shop wil~dow diswas placed and incorporated by the cinema screen. Cinematic spectation, a further instrumentdization of this consumer gaze, produced paradoxical effects on the newfound social mobility of the RBneose. The analogy henveen tlie shop window aud the cinema screen has been suggested by a range of film historians and theorists. Charles k k e r t , Jeanne Nleo, Mary Ann Doane, and Jane Gaines have all invoked "windowshopping" as an apt paradigm for film spectatorship.8' 'Window-shopto
66
67
ping" implics a mode of consumer contemplation; a spec~tlativeregard to the mix-en-sdne of the display window without the commitment to enter the store or to make a pui-chm. Cinema spccntonhip relics OII an equally distanced contemplation: a tableau, framed and inaccessible, not behind glass, but on the scrccn. Seen in the c o n t a t of the following architectural and social history. cinematic spcctatorship can be described as emerging fmm the social and psychic transformations that the arcades-and the consequent mobility of flBncric--produced.
THE MOBILIZED GAZE:
The ThCgtre Franqais and the I'hCittre du I'alais Royal were at either end of the Palais Royal. In addition to t h n e human theaters, Franqois Dominique Seraphin, a tnakcr of automatons, opet~eda shadow tltcater in the Palais. Theitre Scraphin displayed shadow plays activated by clockworks, not human hands. In 1786, a half-sosken "circus" was built in the middle of the ganlen with
an enormous colonnaded inrcrior, lit fmm above by derwrary windows and a g l a d roof, and terminated by ipsidal arcades, it war used for t p ~ a c l c and r
w 0 u
TOWARD THE W R N A L Thc Arcade The arcades (or passages) reorganized pt~bliclife in Paris between the revolution of 1789 and World War I. Unlike eighteenth-centuty L o t ~ d o n - a that had the Pall Mall and the Strand as broad opcncity air shopping streets, streets whcrc one muld stroll and gaze into shops at a leisurely, undisrurhed paccwalking in pre-Maussmann Paris was difficult due to narrow streets and the lack of sidwlks." The arcade compensated for this lack: it provided a public interior for srrolling. In Paris, the Palais Royal was commercially dmloped in the 1780s into a covcred arcade of shops (it was soon refcrrcd to as the Palais Marchand). The Palais was a public gathering place; the mmmunards organized hcrc and the foment of the Revolution began in the shelter of Paris's fiat arcade. As a visitor to Paris in 1789 wrorc:
I.
cntcrrainnleat, balls and
The arcade create1 an endosed tnarketplacc whcrc consumption itself became the spectacle." Johann Priedrich Geist, in his definitive study, The Arrndc Hilmry o a f Rt~iMingqpe, establishes a generic architcctunl form: a glass-covered p a r sagcway that connccts IWO busy srrccts, lined on both sides with shops, closed stores with glass fmnrs. The arcade served as the organizing force of retail trade; it wa? a public space on private p r o p ~ r t y The arcade eased .~ traffic, protected the consumer from wcather, and was accessible only ro pedestrians. Geist lists wven characteristics of the arcade: access to interior of a block public space on private property symmetrical street space skylit splcc rystem of access form of organized retail t n d c space of transition
One could spend an entire life, even the longat, in the Pdris Royal, and a. in m enchanting drum. dying. say '"I have sccn and known all.'"'
z.
3.
4.
5.
Wlten, in January 1790, utopianisr Charlu Fourier and his brother-in-law the gourmand. Rrillat-Savarin, visited Paris thcy were struck by the Palais: You think p u are entering a fairy palace. You find everything yau could wish far rhcrc-syct~clcs, majestic buildings, pramenadw. fashions!' Ral7ac described an adjacent arcade, the Galeric d'odcans in Imt Illusio~n (1839) as a "greenhouse without flowers." "a disrepunhle bazaar." and a "lnvd hangar" containing a full spectrum from luxury to poverty, fmm
6.
7.
dandies to thieves, ladies of fashion to prostin~tu."
This last d~aracrcristic,the space of transition, is what makes arcadu, in a more pltilosophical sense, temporally-marked spaces--depots for arrival and deparmrc. Geist places the arcade historically between the palace gallery and the railway station."
68
Between 1800 and 1830, seventeen arcades opened in Paris. The arcade wasa co,rtrolled world fill1 ofluxttry gomb, sheltering one from the miseries of the street, from images of urban poverty. And yet from their beginnings, constructed and marthe arcades contained other images, the co~nmodities keted to expand lipon the mobililed gaze of the flaneur. T h e major arcades o f Paris, Passage des Panorama (rEoo), Galtrie Viviem~e (1826), GalCrieVCro-Dodat (1826), Gal4rieColbcrt (1826). Passage I.'Opera (1821-IXZ~), and Passage Choiseul (182~-1827) were conlplete by 1830; Passages Verdeau (1846) and Jouffroy (1847) followed. But the arcade form proliferated in other cities, as if it were tile mark of capitalist commerce and trade. Irt London, the Burlington Arcade was built in 1819, the Royal Opera Arcade in 1818; in Brussels, Galbries Royale St. Httbert was built in 1847 and GalCrie Bortier in 1848. In Milan, the grandiose Galleria Vittorio Enianuele I1 was built in 1865; the Kaisergalerie in Berlin was built in 1873. In the UnitedSrates, the Cleveland Arcade rose in 1889. In Moscow, the New Trade Halls, GUM, was completed in 1893. Moreover as the nineteenth century ended, arcades were built in cities from Mdbourne to Moscow, Athens to Zagreb, Johannesburg to Singapore. Louis Aragon's 1926 novel, Paris Pealant, formed a vivid textual record of fldnerie through tbe streets and arcades of Paris; his prose beco~nesa surrealist Baedeker to the marvelous, a disquisition on the found objects and ssdden thoi~ghts produced in the experience of the everyday. For Aragon, arcades ("which are rather disturbingly named pastdgeI, as thot~gh no one had the right to linger for snore than an instant in those sunless corridors") are dle "secret repositories of several modern myths . . the true sarictuaries of the cult of the ephemeral." Aragon rued the "giant rodent" of Haussmannization which would "inexorably gas11 open the thicket whose twin arcades run through the Passage rle I'Opera" producinga "complete upheaval of the established fashions of casual strolling and prostitution" and thus "mod$ tlie ways of thought of a whole district, perhaps of a whole world."'@ Like Battdclaire, Arago~i transfixed by the presence of wotnen in rhis ww public space:
In the changing light of the arudcs, a light ranging from the brigl~rnesof the tomb to the shadow of sensual pleasure, deliciotrs girls cse be seen servirtg both culrs with provocative movement of tbe hips and the sharp upward curl of a smile.
70
T H E PASSAGE F R O M A R C A D E TO C I N E M A
THE PASSAGE F R O M ARCADE TO CINEMA
71
1 1 the pasage: 1
ro ~ n a n y p m l r urollm ofullhinh
...varying ages and degrees of beauty,
often vulgar, and i n a scnx already deptecia~cd, but women, truly women, a d palpably womm. ~n a t thc expense of all the ocher quditics of their
bodies and wdr: so many women, i n leagt~e with these arudcr they scroll along." (emphasis added) These are prostitutes, whose "charming multiplicity o f apparatiur and provocations" and "infinin desire m please" were a fixture in the dank hetcrosocial spaces o f the passages. Aragon prefers these "strcavalkef' or femmc puhliqua to the more gentile b m m c honnCtcs in Luxembourg Gardens: Ancient whom, set pims, mechanical dummies, Iam glad that you arc so much part of the scenery hen: you arc still vivid rays of light compared with thouc matriarchs one encounters in the public parks?'
llcnjanmin w s nor an ecstatic, hut the ccrtacies of rmlutionnry utopias and the setrcalirtic in~~ncrsion rhc ~~nco~lseious to him. ro to speak, keys it) were for opcning ofhis own world. far wlliclt he war rccking rltop.ctl,er clircrenr. strict, and diaciplinnl forms of cxprcuion. lauis Aragon's 1.r P ~ J I dr~Pnrir I (7hr Peafan, o Pans, 19261 gave him t l ~ e f dnisive inn1,rtsr for his projected study of the I'aris Arudcs front wl~ouc drafw. he mad to me in those first wc." ek.'
Aragon's novel offered a p o m r b l example o f t l ~ passage as a public interior e transformed into an imaginary realm. I n front o f a shop window, Aragon has an oceanic vision: Iwas monished to SCC that its window wu bathed in a greenidt, almmr submarine light. ..The whole ocean in the Pasage dc I'Opera. The anRoatcd gently like seaweed.. Inotiml a human form was swimming among the various l m l s of the window display?'
..
The human form was, o f course, female, a woman "who was naked down
to a very low waistline, consisted o f a sheath of steel or scales or possibly rose penls." The arcades were dearly spaces in which the fllncur flourished. But for the male observer i n these public spaces, the fldne~~se often t ~ o was niote than a nunncqttin, a fixture in window display. The Angon novel gave Benjamin the "decisive impetus" for his project on the Paris nrcadcs. When Benjamin met Gershotn Scholcm i n I'aris i n 1927, Scholem recalls: Benjamin n d those pcriodicrls in which Aragon and nreron proclrinld things that coincided somewhere with his own deeperr uperiences..
..
Bcnjan~iti nor the otily cosmopolitan Gcrnian to feel the l~ln the was of arcade. For Frant. Hessel and Siegfried Kracat~er passage was a deterthe minant feature o f n ~ o d e r t ~ urban life; i t s effects on s~~hjectivity a p e and rience were profound. In Hessel's Spnzirrrn it? Berlin (r9z7)-a key text on urban strollingthe streets o f Rerli~t provide niaemonic cues for Hcssel to recall his childhood." To Hesscl, city streets, if used properly, could p r o d u ~ c traffic o f a memories. Hasel's prose on strolling (Spntirrcttgehen) emphasizes the simple pleasures (Gent@) of fldncrie rather than tlie analytical aspects that Benjamin woold later champi011 as "the dialectic o f fldacric." Hasel advothat cated strolling as a leisure acriviry, s~~ggcstitig thc orbanitc take "minivacations o f the everyday" by walking short distances instud of waiting for a train or a tram?< Hessel was Rcnjamin's guide to the stncts o f Paris when, in March 1926, Benjamin traveled tn Paris to work wit11 H m e l on a joint translation o f I'must's RmemBranreof 77n'ngsPmr. For two Germati writers in the French capital, thc translation o f the Pmt~st text firmished a complex crucible for the tcxtualization of metnory. I n their collaborative cxcunions, the Paris streets and arcades recalled the Berlin streets of their childhood, formed a telling translation o f mernory and the past. For Benjamin, the 1 26 visit 9. with Hessel was a madelcine to his first visit to Paris i n 1913. Paris was the "Capital of the Nineteenth Cct~tury."and itsstreets were its time machines, transporting Benjatniti hack to his childhood in nostalgic fldneric for a Berlin expericnccd as a "theater of purcltascs" or a "cavern o f connnodities.'"" In her biographical renie~nbrancc Benjamin, I of lannah Arcndt has described how, for Bcnjatnin, tlie transit from llerlin m Paris was "taatamount to a trip i n time-nor frotn one country to another, bur from the wcntictli century back to the niticrccnrh."~' For both Rcnjamin atid I-lcsscl, city streets served as a m n m o n i c system, hringing imagcs of rhc past into the present. what Benjamin dramatically
72
THE
PASSAGE
FROM ARCADE TO CINEMA
THE PASSAGE
FROM ARCADE
TO CINEMA
73
prnno~~nccd "telescoping tlic pasr into the pmcnt."w Hesscl's effort to as reclaim the lost "art of strolling" was presented as a rcsisrancc to the pace o f modern whan lifc, a nostalgia for the anhurried past. When Bcnjan~in reviewed Hescl's Spnzitrcn in nrrlin in 1929, his review essay, "Die W i d crkchr des Plancnrs" initiated a description o f the public interiors inhabited by the RAncur.'m Benjamin would repeat this description in each of his subsequent mentions o f fllncrie: "the newspaper kiosks his library, the was benches his hcdmom."'o' l'l~c flane~~r a "street person" at home i n the public realm o f urbanity. Unlike Hessel, Rcnjamin found. i n the perceptive style of flbnerie, an analytic and spcalative gale. For Benjamin, the relation b c m e n the arcade and street was onc o f the relation b e w e n the interior and exterior. The arcade offered a sheltered retreat from the exterior chaos o f the stren and provided a public interior, a separate arena for p b l i c social lifc. Benjamin g ~ ~ o t e d illustratnl glide an to Paris i n each rcworked version o f his discusion o f the arcades: "'The arcades, a rather recent invention of industrial luxury," so says ail illustrl~ed guide lo Paris of 1852. ''am glass-cmrcd. marble prndcd pasrgewnyr through cn~ire complaa of houses whose proprietorshave con~hined such qccuirions. Both sides of r h m passrgcwrys, which arc for lighted from above. arc lincd wirh the most elegant sliops, ra that such nn nrc~dc a city, u r n rn wrld, in miniarnn"'o* (emphasis d d d ) is The arcadc presented this "world in miniature," a "grand poPn~c I'Ctalde a spatial verse of visual display. I n Berlin, the Kaisagnleric (which opennl i n 1873 and war named after marked the beginning o f the "GrUndenrit" that m d n l Kaiser Wilhelm I) at the endof the World War 1 . Crhe K a i i r g a l e r i e w danoyed by Allied 1 bombing in 1941.) Modeled after the Galerics Royalc St. Hubert (1847) in Brusrels and the Gallcria Vittorio limanr~ele (1867) in Milan, the Kais11 crgalerie marked Berlin as a capitalist ciry, and i t cxcmplifial impcrial taste for foreign Ir~xurics. n it, a Vicnnuc-style cafe gave in patrons a taste for I t V i n i u s c cotnbimtionsof coffee and cram. 'The lirst ha1 i u Bcrlio, the L Pranzbischc Bar, provided a public gathering spot for ntcn o f elegant means. Across from the cafe, a post office with writing rooms full ofesvclopes and stamps, provided (within the passage) a center for commi~nication foreign and domestic,
I n 1888, the World-Panoptikon opened in the Kaisergaleric. Described
by Gcist, t l ~ e panopricon was a "liotcli-lmnh of dioramas, panoramas, facsimile, molded rclrlicas of scenery, patriotic soovenirs, and all kinds o f cinc~~iatogmphic attractions and apparatas."'" By the end o f the cenalry, when rlic et~tertaismentdisrrict-with its tourist shops and prostitutcscstsblid~ed itself along Friedrichstrape, rlic panopticon "tried to retain its clientele wirh lilms, stcrcoscopcs. and arntnsemmt park rides" including an amrisrmenr, like Hale's Tours, i n w h i d ~ "passenger" sat itr a simr~lated a train compartment, with the noise and vihration o f railway travel, and watched scenes of the Riviera pass hy the window.'" Hessel described rlic "mild confusion" and "damp chill" he felt upoti entering the Kaisergaleric, wliich by the 1920s had become a strangely empry nnlscum of the past. ("So many store fmntr, display windws, and so fnv people." writes Hcsscl.'S 111a piece written for the fcuilleton section o f the Frn~~kfLmr Zcihr~~fi "Abschierl von dcr Lindenpassage," Kracauer described the "wilml extravagance" (ruchtn &mbmt) of the dccaying Lindenpassage:
glrss mof and deckcd'our in tnarble. the former the vestibule of a department store. The shopa s t i l l sads arc rhc standawl fare; the world Pasorama has been ovcin~cn lac film and the A~taroinicll ~y Muxusn h long ceaxd to be u a famed attrartiun."'
w
sf
Bur nm, pawage exist, bu
Thearndc wasarctreat from the publicsphere which conoined the flotsam of claily lifc and "sheltered the rcjected and the refingees. a collection of things which were not suitable for dressing up the facade."'% Thew transient discarded objccrs: satisfy physiul needs, the desire ICitrl for imngcs, just z they appear in one's r day<lrlresms.Both things, cxtreonc clowncr* and gmr distance, give way before the hourpis public sphere which cannot tolerrrc then, awl rcrrcrt into the ~ l a d twilight of rhc pnsmgcway, where rhey flourish i s in r swamp. In d fnr, a apnrqr. !N I tl~mt~ghfirt ah. rlnplnrr tulftw. n in no nthtr, rhc ; I r
journey, t drparr~refimtI,r rrnr into the dism~r, h mn btper~royed: boay atrd
inrnp 6rcemt u n i t ~ d (en,phasb added) '~
74
THE PASSAGE FROM ARCADE T O CINEMA
Kracauer contcmplatd this form o f travd-the distant brought ncarand found i t a "clever coincidence that the entrance to the Linden arcade was flanked by two travel oflias.""0 But the passage offered a different form o f travel. The trips to which ship models snd advertirrmcnts all you haw nnhing in common anymore with the trips one used to take in the pawage . bourgmir aistence h s taken over travel for is own purposes.. dcgnding them inm amuscmcntr [Zmtmt,u~pttl."'
When you think about like museums:
it,
department stores arc kind of
ANDY WARHOL
..
..
I n the Kaisergalcric, the Welt-Panorama: dangle that for which we long in front of us and quicWy snatches away ~ h c hmiliar. nx dilt~nm the t~ngibk m body+ thr rphmrmldi~unct jar b a tiny Imp. Whenever Ivisited the world hnaratnn ss a child I myself felt nr fna~spomdtoajna~p(act."' (emphasis added)
...
.. .
! i
A
For Kracaucr, the passrge"critidza( the bourgeoisworld through the bourgeois world, a critique which beset every passerby'' and was both "the product o f a time and an intimation o f in dediue." Kracauer concludes his brief piece with the ringing question: W u sallte nach cine Parrage in cincr GerrllKhaft die sdbu nur cine hurgc
ist?
[What would k the ntnningof r p-ge than a purrge?)
in a miery which i s itself no more
The pasage, with in Welt-Panorama and travel agencies, negotiated transport, marketed ephemera, satisfied the desire for images, but also the desire for movement, transition. I n the arcltitectural passpge, the mobilized gau found i t s virtual analog.
The Dqartmcnt Smrr

Marshall Field's is an exposition in itself. description of 1893 Chicago Exhibition
The department store as a building type emerged a a corollary to the s dramatic changes in urban retailing between 1840 and 1870. As a consc quence o f the mass production o f standardi7. goods. singlyavned, crahoriented shops were displaced by mugain dt nouvrautir. When Aristide Boucicaut opened his Paris magasin Bon March6 i n 1872, he made changes in merchandisingwhich, i n the co~npetitivc rerail market, either put his competitors out of business or made them follow his lead. Bouciaut is credited with establishing fixed prices, marking the price directly on the item. and reduciag prices because of the higher sales volume and rapid turnover of stock. 'The policy of cntrb libre also encouraged entry without the obligation o f purchase, and scrvcd to stimulate impttlrr sales. Due to his success, Boucicaut expanded his shop to a giant new buildbg that was L built beoveen 1869 and 1887 (designed by the arcl~itccts C. Boilean and Gustav Eiffcl, the engineer). The n m Bon Marcl~f took a whole city block: its continuous exterior shop windows, interior light wells, galleries, 2nd grand staircases were designed to encourage consumption."' The department store was a multistory srructure located in a central urban business district near public transport. The dcvclopment o f public transit (streetcars, busa, underground railways) assisted the mobilization of shoppen to these stores. Organircd to carry a great variety o f mcrchandix, a heterogct~ous assortment of products i n separate "departmam"from ready-to-wear to home h t r n i s h i n ~ t h e departmcnt srorc's single management provided antralized scrvices for publicity, accounting, and dclivcw. The department store poxd a n m design objective: the display and sale o f a high volume of mass-produced pods to large numbers o f consumers. . As Siegfried G i d i o n points out:
To be fit for such a putpore, a department score-like a library stack mom or mrkcc hall-must a 6 1 a dear vim of the articles it contains, a maximum of
light, and ample facilirier Tor communication."'
76
THE PASSAGE FROM
ARCADE T O CINEMA
THE
PASSAGE FROM A R C A D E T O CINEMA
77
Henri 1-?brousrc's designs for the reading room o f tlte Ribliothcqt~c Nationale (IRIR-1868) t e a l rixtecn cast-iron pillars and provirlccl a dccp vartltcd spacc, a double-navcd reeding room tllxt was st~pporrcdby the wrooght-iron framework of the roof. The design o f the Ribliatheq~~c Nsrion*lc i n Paris rcscn~blcs sr~hrcqoent the design for depnrt~ncnt storcs: stack rooms ( n i q m i n ret~rmf) and four stories with an atrium o f grid walkways (passerellrr), all under onc glass rooE And it was under this vatrltcd sky o f I'aris, i n the Bihliothcqrne Nationale, that Benjamin planned and workcd on his I'n~sagcn-1Ve1.h: I:or, looking down from the arcades in rlte reading room of rbc Paris National over Library, tlte painrrd summer sky rtre~clnnl rhrm irr dreamy, lighrlcss
~cili~~."'
The relation bcwccn the reading room and the library stack, which offers rl~c rcader a clear vicw o f the arriclcs in stock, becznlc a spatial model for the dcparttncnt storc, where the consumer also l ~ a d clcar view o f the a commwlitics on display. 'The sltoppcr, likc the library rcadcr, was on a mission for knowledge, o n ~ p l r r i n g relations bctwecn the social hicrothe glyphs o f goods on displny. Doilcau and Eiffcl's B o t ~ March6 used passerelles, aerial iron bridges to connect thc rerics o f coum cnch covered with a glass skylight. The pnssercllcs allowed the consumcr an :~niqrteovcrvinv of goods on display. The glass roof i l l u ~ n i n a t d interior space, a wiarcr-garden for comn~odirics the o f all varicries. I n addition, t l ~ e similarities between thc lnlueuln and the department and connlmers i n the nincreentl~ century. storc were apparent to arcl~itccrs The Magasin d t ~ Louvre (which opcncd in 1859 was n magasin dc aouwautCs with mass-prodoced objects for sale. I t s namesake, the Muse6 du I.or~vrc, displayed objccts with "ar~ra" whicli were not for anything but tctnporary crpcrienrial consr~mption."" The department store differed from its marker predccrssor, rhe ba~aar. The bazaar, a vaulted brick building, oftet~ with a dome, was a standard feature i n the Islamic ciry. Structores likc the warcl~ouscatal the grccnhouse, which afforded storage and the possibility o f display, provided architectural precedents for t h e department storc."' I n Space, 77111c, nndArchi-
70
THE PASSAGE FROM A R C A D E TO CINEMA
79
trcnm, G i ~ l i o n mmpates the department store with other large iron and gW StNCtUrCS: I S
The dcpamcnt store h.a no equally large fomunner in the past. In rhis mspm it i s like the market halls, railway smrionr, and uhihition buildingof the nineteenthmrury. and the objm i t s e w is the same: rhr rnpidhandlinx ofbulinm arnrnvi#im inwlvin~huge o d ofpde~lrianr."' (emphasis added) n Giedion foumi a national architectun11difirence between French and Amelrican depart, nlent stores: the Amcrican store followed fmm tile wareh hous, rypc, whet1as the Frcnt: store inch~ded "perforated" interior space. c a .. . . . . : Railroad-the Grand I n Philadelphia, a freight depot tor the 19ennsylvania Depot (1876)-was a storage space until John ('"lhe customer is always tight") Wanamakct came up with the i d a to transform the capaciousspace into a dry goods smre. Wanamaker built a lifesize replica of Rue de la Paix in his nore as "a consolation for Americans who could not go to Patis.""9 In Paris, the Boilcau and EiRd building's elegant iron and glass central atrium, with vmicai proportions stretched toward a glass skylight, was the model for Zola's "cathedral of modern commerce." While the flsnn~se entered the grand magasins aS the F m dh capital, woman shoppers poured into "dcpartmcnt stores" in NCW Ynrk (Macy's), 89, 0. Philadelphia Wanamakcr's), Chicago (Marshall Picld.S an0 wndon (SelI fridges. Harrods). I n Germany, the combination of store design with enotmons plate-glass windows, pslighting, lifts, pneumatic tuba, and mcrchandising changes-national names, multiple shops, departmentstransformed this "cathedral of modern wmmcrn" inm a transitional space for new modes of perception and apaience. With the dcpartment smre amc the need for moving shoppen through this commercial machine, drawing them m the merchandise beyond the first floor.'" The smre i d f with in elevators, ventilating systems, electric lights, telephones, bathrooms. lounges, mraurants, post offices, and dclivcry services encouraged lingering in a puhlic space, legitimiud a new form 7 description of loiteringthrough its asociationwith consu~nptinn.'~'~ 1 % ' ~ of the store as "selling machine" captures the retailing tactic of this new kind of store: to move merchandise quickly, to increase stock turnover, to dl more. Elevators (and then escalators) m o d customers m the upper
- .-
selling floors and efktively mobilized the shopper's g: the mm~ncrdal machine."' Bmuse the department store relied on its nonsellingservices ( s mraui c rants, lounges, hairdrcsscrs, and s forth) to supply steady customers, the o more practice of ~ho~~inghccame important than individual sales. As Susan Porn scribes the sheltered realms of mnst~mption, buying w s a ncing psychic well-bei~~g" the department store was and a"m~ a "setting designed to break down her reristance m spending money."'= T h e dcpartment store was a semipublic space designed for th consumer. The mobilized gaze was the mode of the shopper, wl tracted speculation mcasurcd desire against purchase. Kracaucr "shopgirl" as an cxcmplum of the absorbed cinema spectator in h . Shopgirls Go to the Movies" ("Die kleinen hdcnm2dcheo gehcn ins Kino" [1927]).For Kracauer, the movies offeredthe working clan shop girl a new form of visual distraction.'" The cinema theatre transformed the shopper's mobiliied gau to its virtual extension. Shifts in urban population, the expansion of public transportation and new retailingtcchoiqucs have been cansisrent sociocwnomic determinants to cinema spectatorship. I n the United States, as the population shifted to the suburbs after World War 1 , as the automobile displaced public mns1 pottation, and as m~hurban shopping malls replaced urban downtowns, patterns of film exhibition and reception also changed m follow suit."'
,.,.
The World hhibirion

World exhibitions were plam ofpilgrimage m thrfirirh Gmmodiy (they) glorified the exchange-value of commodities. They created a framework in which their value d e d into the background. Thy opened up a phantasn which prop&
v dirw~rd c
...
(emphasis ad,
Benjamin described the 1867 Paris Exhibition as a "phantasmagorin or cap? ia was an a 6 wrd: not 0sly did-it italist cultnte." I
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THE P A S S A G E F R O M ARCADE T O C I N E M A
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refer to the illi~sionisticscreen entertainments that man~hctured phanto~lls projected light, but it co~~tains~ e word izgorin for the marketr l root place. The World Exhihition wns a mont~mental for the conflalinn o f site the ~ n o b i l i d g a r e f shopping and rn~trissn o with rile virfrmlgazc of the /nu-rcrl. As a witness to the 1931at111 1937 Paris expositions, Denjamin also diag~loscdthe twisted remponlity o f tl~cse exhibitions, vivid cxampla o f "rclescoping the past througli the present.""' 'I'hc "World Exhibition" imported i n army o f products from around the world, but convenely it also gave the visitor an opporr~~tlity make a to virtual tour o f faraway countria. FIIII o f c o l o ~ ~ iexhibits and industrial al displays, the exl~ibition also provided an outstanding justificarion for new architectore. Even though display bazaars o f nationally nlanufact~~red objcctr had bccotnc national pastinlea (Prance sponsored such 'events i n 1791, 1801, 1802, 1806, 1891, 1813, 1827, 1834, 1839, and 184$), the Grcaf Exhibition o f I.ondon in 1851 licrnlded the "Industry b f A l l Nations," invitcatalog to ing conlpctiror nations to display their wares. As the i l l ~ ~ s t n t e d the exhibition asserted with a tone o f imperialist pride:
0 1 of 11
Other nrtions Ihwe devised means for rhe display and cncaurngcmcnr of their
W P
awn arcs and n~awhctarcr: but ir has h e n rnervetl for England to provide an arrnr for rhe exl~ihi~ion rhe indtnstrirl trit~~nplts 11tc whole world. She of of
has off.ercd an hospirrhle ittvitation ro mrmunding narionr lo hring the choicert prodnctr of their indtstry to her capital, and there to cnrcr inla a n anricablc compcrition wirh nch other and with ltcrrelf."' the Tour d' Eiffel (Eiffel and Boileau) and GalCrie dcs Machines (Dntert). Outrage over the raw iron suffold and its offensc to the Paris skyline reached a Rashpoint i n the famed pt~blic petition--signed by writcri including Guy dc Maupassant and Alcxandrc Dumas--which dcchrcd the tower a "clisgracc.. an inkblot.. the hatch11sl~adow f rhar odious column o of rivcted sl~eetinetal.""~ nut even though the Eiffcl Tower ruplttrcd rhc Paris skics wirh this wrought-iron spire, ir offered its visitors a spcctacalar new vista of urban spacc. ' l l c clevaror ascension o f the rower was one o f the exposition's main attractions; the gnre was mobilized to a new vantage. The acrial view of R r i s from rhc TOII~ d'Eiffcl was previously available only to hnlloonists. I'rom this lufq!p~~tre//t, all o f Paris unfolded like a grand mngasia."
Tlle list o f exhihitions i n the l ~ i n e t c e ~ccntury-Lnndon in 185r; I'aris ltl~ Expositions i n 1855. 1867, 1878. 1889, 2nd 1900; thc World C o l a m b i a ~ ~ Exposition i n Chicago i n 1893; the Pan hncrican Exposition in Buffalo in 1901--.demonstrates that by the end of the c e ~ l t ~ ~ t y , bccon~e arabi llad as lislied form o f touristic display. The cxhibirion also d e h ~ ~ t c d devices and mccl~anical rides rhnt ~rniqucly "mobi1i.d" the p7r: the (seven feet per second) elcwror ascensio~t the of Eiffcl Tower i n 1889, the "Ferris Whel" and the kinrto~coptin Chicago i n 1893, the moving wolkwny (rrotfoir rorliz,,f) i n thc 1900 Paris Exposition. Like the departmcnr store, exliibition arcl~itect~~rc preset~red new design objectives anrl iron and glass arcl~itectt~re answcrc~l needs. 'I'he 1889 I'aris its 1;xposirion introdrtccd two srriking cxamples o f engi~lecring architccturc:
..
8 1
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THE PASSAGE F R O M
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83
'The 1887 exposition contained a "Rue de Cairc" and a Swiss village constr~~ctcd scc~tographic in simulation. Bur i n the 1700 exposition, there were more "atrractiotis" that attenlpted to recreate geographical regions or ltistorical periods, to bring both distant spaces and distant times to the center of Paris: a "Tour de Monde" recreated Africa, Sooth Amcrica, and h i a with dioramas and plasnr reproductions; a small Swiss village; a village ill Andalusia (at the time of the Moors); and a proto-theme park of "Vieux Paris" whic11 recreated medieval Paris, replete with strolling actors i n costume. The "Quai dcs Nations"-a row o f national pavilions o f the most powcrfbl nations-was designed with cad, building i n indigenous style, lined up facing the Seine.'3' The visitor tollred a virtual past and traveled to virtual distant locales. The 1900 exposition also had a few more ayparatical touring devices exhibitions. One o f rlie nnv features was a privately funded than previot~s novelty, the trottoir toulant (a moving sidewalk with three speeds). O n this sidewalk, 3.5 kilometerso f moving track transported spectators through the exhibits and exhibition grounds a i f they were goods on a conveyer belt. s In the Russian exhibit, visitors could board seventy-foot-long train carriages-with dining room, smoking roon~s,bedrooms-and take a "virtual" trip on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. Cosporlsored by Compagnie lnternationale des Wagon-Lits Cook, this "virtual" tour would condense the fourtcen-day trip henveen Moscow and Peking into forty-five minotes. Scenes from Moscow Station, the Caucasus, and Siberia rolled past the windows on long canvases moving i n one direction on an endless belt. I n LC globe crlrrre, a seaatctl visitor could voyage to outer space by watching rolling painted canvas. The Lumittc Drothers presented the 7narPorama. Spectators sat on a platform shaped like a ship's hull, which simulated the racking o f the ocean a they viewed ciwPrnargraphtac~lnlitk,of sea voyage s a to Nice, the Riviera, Naples, and Venice. Rut perhaps the most dramatic mechanism to niobilize a virtual gaze was the cindoramn. A device engineered by Raottl Grimoin-Sanson. the cinforania had spectators stand 011 an elevated plarform made up like the basket o f a balloon. This siniulated vista provided a 360-degree panoramic view. With ten 7omm projectors i n rough synchronization, the cintorama displayed lilnts taken from an airborne balloon. As Grimoin-Sanson recalls:
84
THE PASSAGE F R O M A R C A D E T O
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THE PASSAGE FROM ARCADE TO CINEMA
85
The sensation w;u extraordinary and many of the spccnmn experienced the samc vertigo given by a real nscent. The animatd view of Paris, hemecn the
flow of traffic and pedatriaw who look up at the sky, canrtiNtes a new senation."'
?!
a
l l ~ cinema projectors were put into reverse for the balloon descent. The e cinbrama (and the later Hale's Tours) provided "virtual" travel without the danger or the expense.'" 'I'he 1900 exposition was i n the center o f Paris. A miniature world wu construcrcd on 350 acres; from the entrance gate at Place dc la Conmrdc to the Galcrie des Machinw-at the furthest end o f Champs de mar^.'^ Not to miss the commercial opportunity, many o f the Parisian dcpanment stores had pavilions. The dcpanment store was, afrer all, a singly-owned exposition. Whether or not this exposition was a sucnsr was debated for years."' But a tltc century ended. a new m t u r y began with other forms s of m m entcttaisment. The mobilized gaze o f the shopper, the toitrist, thc cincma-goer flourished i n nmfonnd virtual ways. Many of these exhibitions remain etched i n historical memory because of filmed "panw-onmas of exhibition sights. Musser records that Ediion executive l a m a White visited the Paris Exposition in the summer o f I F and, i n addition to recording rite cvent, he purchased a panning head for his camera tripod. O n this trip White filmed PanoramaofPhcede L'Oprm, Panorama o Etpi 7bmr, and Panorama o Pa& Exposition, J b m the f f Seine.'" Filmed "panoramas" pmduced a paradoxicaldfect. The moving camcra cncotnpasscd a 1x0-degree to 36o.degrcc circumference, expandingthe confi~les f a theatrical proscenium. But at the same time this incrtascd scope o was reduced to the confine o f a framed image. White's Panorama ofrht Etfii T o w was a slow vertical pan, emphasizing thc upward thrust o f the f iron spike. Panomma o PLtn & L'Optra returned to the site o f Gcorges MClih's apocryphal 1896 dimvcty o f the substitution trick. As anecdote has it. MClihwas filmingat the Plaadc L'Opera when his camerapmmed. When hc recommenad filming, an omnibus that had been i n the carlicr shot had driven on and a hearse had aken im place."' The historical significance of thc MClih incident has bcen magnified to signify the turn from s verisimilitude i n film history-MCliks a tltc "fathcr" o f cinematic trickery,
using temporal cllipm to transform real tinle into a tnagical film rime. Wherns MCIihs's trick films relied on stttdio setting (MCli8s reconstructed the floorplan o f the Theatre Robert-Hondin-complete with pulleys and trapdoors-in his studio i n Montreuil), the panoramic film did not. Although i t may have aimed for spatial verisimilitude, the panoramic film produced a mobilirrd panoramic ga7r that was confined to the window frame o f the film screen. I n 1901, FAwin S. Porter took the fluid-panning tripod to the Buffalo f Exposition and filmed his remarkable Cimthr Pan o Elcmc Towtr and The I'nnorama o E~phnadt Nighr. (The 18x9 Paris Exposition was the f ar first to use electricity, but there are no lilms o f it.) I n the daytimepanoratna Ciratiar Pan ofEiemic T o w ( f i l n ~ e d August 14, lgor), Porter made a 280degree lcft-m-right pan of the exposition grounds. Like Zola's photographs ofwomcn on the trottoir roitlant at the 1900 Paris Exposition, Porter's film providn remarkable doct~mentariono f the heterosocial flancrie o f fairgocrs. M e n in boater hats stroll with other nlen, sonre arm-in-arm with women; women stmll arm-in-arm, and, at the very end o f Porter's pan, we see a woman walkingalouc. The strollers either walk at cross-movement to the snlooth panning of the camera, or a Few remain stationary and look s directly at the cantera a it glides past. Ncvcrthelcss, women move as fluidly through this exposition space as men, and the supple camera pan increases the effect o f a unfettered hetcmsocial Tam. I n The Pn~orama offip&na& at Night (filmed on November 1 , 1901). 1 the camcra is placed i n a more distant position and as it pans (also left to right) acron the esplanade, the buildings are seen only a outlines o f glits tering electric light. If there arc men and women on a nocturnal stroll, i t is too dark to see them. The camera traces a sight both eerie and beautiful and provides a remarkable m o r d of the exhibition's transformation into a cinematic phantasmagoria?ja In Tnm Gunning's rerms, early filmmaking relied on this exhibitionist relation to thc spectator; this "cinema o f attractions" was closer to the bold visual display o f the fairground attraction than i t was to a storytelling
~~~
T attractions di rpcctaor nttenrion, inciting visual cunostry, ann supplying pleasure mroagn nn crciting rptaclunique event, whether fictional or docuntennry, that is of interest in inclf."'
e6
Gunning argues rhat this form o f spectacle display did not disappear when narrative Gltn becanle more do~ninant(around 19071, but "ratl~ergoes s underground, both into certain avant-garde practices and a a colnponenr of narrative films" into a "Coney Island of the avant-garde, whose never dominant but always seaset1 currenr can be traced from MfliCs rllrough Keaton, through
Un Chien Andalorr and Jack Stnitll."'"
Ry emphasizing
the fairgrnund and exhibitionist roots of early cinema, Gunning challenges theories of specratonhip which rely instead on a more voyeuristic relation to an enclosed dicgetic universe. Stressing that early cinema exhibition was itself an attnction, Gunning reads close-ups i n early films such a Phoros
graphinga Female Crook (1904) not in a teleological lhistory o f conventions o f narrativc, but instcad as "pore cxhibirionism." Gunning's "cinema o f
artncrions" i s not quire coequal with the mobile virtual gaxc that 1 am o f early cinema histori further describing, but his rcco~~ceptualiratio~~ undcrlincs the con~posent pleasures u f the cinema screcn a a mobile diss play window.
ThcA~nurcnrenr Park
Like the exhibition, the amusement park was a pub-
but lic site for distraction and cntertai~~ment, i t offered mare participatory plnsurcs, bodily excitements. Its boanlwalks, moving walkways, scenic railways, carousels. roller coasters, and Ferris wheels mobilized nor just the gazc but the entire hody.'12 As Kathy Peiss has den>onstratcdi n hcr study o f working women and leist~ren t a r - o f h e - c e n t ~ r y i New York, the atnuselncnt park was also an unprecedcntcd licterosocial space, allowing nnv puhlic pleasures for working-class urban women. And tliese "amuremcnts" were, above all, cheap.'" For tlie price of admission there were onaccusromed exrravaganccs, compensatory freedoms. Am~~sement parks offered a range o f virtual mobiliriea: from the imaginary journeys that gave the tllrill o f the foreign to the recnactlnents (tcnemenr fires, naval battlcs) wliich created the excitement o f danger and the edification o f a history lesson. I n Dreamland (which William H. Reynold opened i n 1904 and which burned down i n 19111, for example, one could visit Venice and Switzerbnd and witness the "Fall of Po~npei"and "The Creation." l'hc park had a 37s-foot tower modeled after the Giralda rower in Scville."' I n I.sna I'ark. one c o ~ ~stroll through an Ecki~novillage, a German village, a Delhi ld marketplace, and tllcn visit an imaginary location on "A Trip to the
T H E PASSAGE PROM A R C A D E T O C I N E M A
89
c n
Moon," or "A Trip m the North Pole." This meant thar each "park" contained a pastiche of styles."' Tllc amusement park may have performed. as John Kasson argues, a parody of ~rrban experience, turning the jumbled subjecrivitinof urban life inro bodily enacrmesrs. Coney Island. writes Kasson. "appmred to have insrimrionalizmi the carnival spirir for a culture that lacked a carnival tradiri~n.""~And a popular attractions like tile "Hornan Whirlpool" (at s Steeplccl~ase Park) and "The Tickler" (at h ~ n a Park) demonstrarcd, one of rhe thrills of these rides was to literally throw the interaction between men and women off balance or to whirl gender role inro a centripetal fren7.y. As Stccplcchase Park's "Blow-1-lole~l'hearer" illastrated, i t i addition to bodily agitation, these attractions often turned rhe prorocols of gender mlcs into a spectacle of parody and display.'" Thomas Edison's cameramen made early scenic rccords of Coney lsland (Shooring the Rapids i n Luna Purk [1po3], Ratmn Slidr and General Kcw o f Luna Park [1903j and in the same month, Porter integrated narrative comedy with Coney's scenic background in RttbeundMundyat Coney Island"' Films of amusement parks sewed the dual purpose of a virtual to~tr for rlrov who w ~ ~nor visit them and a an advertisement for the latest rides l d s and attractions for rltosc who would. Some historians have blamed rhc decline of the amusement park on the rise of the rnovies as a morr successful illusion, a more virtual (les weather dependent) public entertainment: "Once upon a time Coney Island was the grearest amusement rnort i n the world. The radio and movics killed it. The movies killed illusion.""' Grninly, the sucmr o f Disneyland, Disney World, the Universal Studio roun, and the M G M theme park is tesrimonv to more than iusr rhe economic interderrcndence of the two uperiences. When Disneylandopened i n 1915, i t s "Trip to the Moon" was a cinematic evolution of the Coney lsland attraction; "Tomorrowland" waq a fi~mrized elaboration on the "Vieox Paris" of the 1900 exhibition."'
FROMTHEARCADETO THECINEMA
As argued i n rhc last chapter, protociocmaric illusions such a the panorama and the diorama introducedavirtual mobils ity that was both spatial-bringing the counrry to rhc town dweller-and temporal-transporting the past to the prccent. The virtual tours that these new devices presenred were, i n a sense, apparatical extensions of the spatial fldnerie through the arcades Nor all o f these "di<tractions" were located i n
or near an arcade, bur many of thetn were. I n Paris, the I'aeagc dcs Panoranlas was, as we saw, lit by the same skyligl~t that illt~minatedIC II panorama itself. T l ~ e ThCatrc SCraphin, sire of marionerre theater, shadow plays, and phantasmagorias, was first located in the arcade of the Palais Royal and movml, in 1878, to a location in the PassageJouffroy. The Galerie Vivien~~~-consrructed in Paris ill rRz3--contai11cclrhe cormoranla, an 183% invention of Ahhe Ganara which reproduced lanclscapes in reliefwith magnifying mirrors."' The MusCc Grcvin, rhe wax-figure ~nttserlrn modeled after Madame Tassa~~ds London, opened in 1882 in rhe Passage Jot6 in froy."' The Musk Grevia was the site of the first Paris performances of legerdemain hy another soon-to-&-famed illusionisr, Gcorges MCliCs. These architectoral passages, as much sires for depart~~rc desrinarions as themselves, became depots for the tes~poral roaristn produced by a mobilizcd and virtual gaze. Benjamin's vision of modernity-the new, the already obsolescenr, rhe ever-samcfound its meraphoric ctnboditnenr in the passage and in thcsc new apparatical nponents that produced a spatial and rcmporal pfisragc. J~tsrs the deparrmenr store followed the arcade, the a Pwage dcs Panorama led ro the MusCc Grevin--and, eventually, ro the cinema. I n Ocrohcr 1891. monrhs after reading I I Wells's utopian novcl The -G. . Time Machine, the British inventor R.W. Pal11applied for a patent for a "novel form o f exhibition" in which "spectaron have presented to their view scenes which arc s u p p o d to occur in the f i t r ~ ~or past, while they rc are given the sensation of voyaging II~OII a macl~incthrough time."'" Wells's science fantasy of time travel found literal embodiment in the recently perfcned machine of illusion-the cinemaric apparat~~s. Unlike earlier scietiu fictions (in Loais-SCbastien Mcrcier's Mdmoirtsdr 1 2440 [t770]. a Parisian travels in a dream to 2440; in Washington % Irving's Rip Van Winkk [18zol. the characrcr sleeps for twenry years; in Mward Bellamy's 18RR novcl Looking Buckruurd, i t i s character Julian West enters "niesnieric sleep" in a subrcmncan sleeping cliamber and wakcs up in rhc year rooo)-in 11. G. Wells's novcl. rhc Time Traveller er~rus the htrure on a machinr."' The Time Machine fictionalized an intricately crafted mechanism thar could transport in pasengcr inro rhc future or the past at the rare of a minutea year; the pull of the lever in oncdirection w o ~ ~ l d ycsrer~lays," "gain in thc other one cot~ld "accumalatc to~norrows":
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91
"It is my plan for a machine to tnvel through timc. . . .This lever, bcins p m e d owr, sends the machine gliding inlo the K I I ~ I Cand this other revem the motion. This saddle rcprnents the scat of a time tmrller.. Upon that madtiae," uid the Timc Travcllcr. holding the lamp dart. "I intend to aplorc time.""'
..
endinlled with a childlike female who he must leave soon after he discovers the cannibalistic mnsquences of master and slave class differentiation between rhc Eloi and tlte Morlock. The rime machine assures Itis return to liis prcscnt. O n this return, the perceptual sensations of time travel arc reversed:
Whcn I set our, before my vclociry was very high, Mrs. Watchnt had walked a c m the mom. travelling, as it smned to me, like a rocket. A I rrrunrrd, I s pruudagaitt ~cmss mintrtr tuhm rhr t r w n r d tlw Lbom#to~.Aut not" L r that e q notiorioa a p p d to bt thr txao i n m e of1~rpmio.l onn.'" (emphasis
Upon the "saddle" of this carriage wrought of nickel, brass, ivory, and mck crystal, Wells's unnamcd narrator-the Time Travellcr-szts out on a journey through timc.
1 the starting lever with both hands, and I d m r hrcath, set my m n t off with a thud. Tne lamatory got hazy and m n t dark. Mrs. Watchett came in and wnlkrd, apparently wirhout ming me. towrdr the garden door. I m p p it took her n minrttc or s m t r a m t h pbe, but to me s l m r d to o h $60~1 MOII the mom like a mtker. I pressed the lever over m its atreme position. The night came like the tt~rning of a lamp, and in anothu out moment came to-morrow. 'lhc laboratory grnv faint and hay, then hinter and ever faintcr. To-mormw night came black, then day again, night again, day again, faster and fvtcr still." (emphasis added)
W
added) 111 1926, film historian Terry Ramsaye trscs these ovo sations from the novel to draw the direct rclarion between Wells's conception of a "time machine" and the hcliavior of a film. (Ramsaye wrote to Wells to inquire about the "motion-pict~~re root" for his time machine but Wells was "anable to remember tlie details."'" The coincidence beomen Wells's novel (published in 1899 and Paul's patent application (Octohcr 24,1895) causes Ramsaye to e n t h w over the "Wells-Paul idea": "It sought to liberate the spectator Frotn the instant of Now. . . It was a plan m give the spmamr possusion, 011 q u a 1 terms, of Was and T o l3e along with IS."'^' like the cinforntna and other devices that combined projection lanterns, scenic setting, and platform devices to simulate motion, tbe "mechanism" in the Paul patent was a platform on which spectators face an opening onto a screen. The platform was to be suspended by crank., which provided a "general rocking motion." A current of air blown over the spectators was "intcndcd to represent to spectators tlie means of propulsion." Paul's patent application described a mechanism that was arranged like thediorama, with spectators seated on a platform that would "create the impression of travelling":
As his motion through timc acceleram. the Time Traveller compares the
sensation to the bodily movunent of an amusement park ride: I'm afraid I unnot convey the peculiar ~nsations timc travelling. They arc of acenivrly u n p h n t . 7 mis a / i r l n l M C I ~ likt :ha one /wu upon a Y swinhh4-of.e he.+& hadloq motion!'" (emphasis added) He procccds at "over a year a minute." in a "kind of hysterical exhilaration." The Time Traveller doesn't uplain the mahanism of his Time Machine but instead regales his friend Pilby and o t h a doubtful cohortstlte Psychologist, the Provincial Mayor, the Mcdiul Man, and the Vcly Yoiing Man-with his adventurn in "futurity." T h e bulk of Wclk's novel is a description of the year 801701 where a gentle pcoplc. the Eloi, live in the apparent "msc and security" of a postconsctnterist world where "tlte shop, the advertisement. traffic, all that mmmcrcc which constitutes the body of our world, was gone.""' Following the mixed conventions of gothic romance and utopian novel, Wells's Time Traveller hecotnes
Afiu h e starting of the mechanism, and r suitahlc priod havingelrpsed, rcprsenting, say a certain namber of CCnturin, during which the platforms may k in daAness, or in alternations of drrkncs and dim lighr. the mechanism may be slowed and a pause made at a given epoch, on which the scene upon the screen will come grndually into view of the rpmtatars, increasing in sir*: and disrinctness from a small vista.
THE PASSAGE F R O M A R C A D E T O C I N E M A
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TO U l

THE PASSAGE FROM ARCADE T O CINEMA

Our taverns and our n~erropolitan strcets, our offices and

Work of Arr in the

Age of Mechanical Ileproducrion"

THE PASSAGE FROM A R C A D E T O

as Rolf Ticdemann writes:

Rotqnph0 A M F.. + .& C

T H E PASSAGE FROM ARCADE TO

RE: CONSTRUCTION-THE tion."

PUBLIC INTERIORKHE PRIVATE EXTERIOR

wrote nenjamin i n "Paris-Capital

o f the Ninctcenth Ccntt~ry."

THE PASSAGEFROM ARCADE T O CINEMA

cntcrrainnleat, balls and

dandies to thieves, ladies of fashion to prostin~tu."

THE PASSAGE F R O M ARCADE TO CINEMA

...varying ages and degrees of beauty,

FROM ARCADE TO CINEMA

I n 1888, the World-Panoptikon opened in the Kaisergaleric. Described

Bur nm, pawage exist, bu

inrnp 6rcemt u n i t ~ d (en,phasb added) '~

THE PASSAGE FROM ARCADE T O CINEMA

When you think about like museums:

department stores arc kind of

[What would k the ntnningof r p-ge than a purrge?)

in a miery which i s itself no more

The Dqartmcnt Smrr

THE PASSAGE FROM

PASSAGE FROM A R C A D E T O CINEMA

THE PASSAGE FROM A R C A D E TO CINEMA

The World hhibirion

TH PASSAGE FROM ARCADE T O CINEMA

THE PASSAGE FROM ARCADE TO CINEMA

Un Chien Andalorr and Jack Stnitll."'"

Like the exhibition, the amusement park was a pub-

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