Volume 13, Issue 26 (12-2023)
mth 2023, 13(26): 19-31 |
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Parvanehpour M. (2023). The Presence of Lessing's Laocoon Tradition in the Two Writings of Rudolf Arnheim and Erwin Panofsky on Cinema. mth. 13(26), 19-31. doi:10.61186/mth.13.26.19
URL: http://mth.aui.ac.ir/article-1-1986-en.html
URL: http://mth.aui.ac.ir/article-1-1986-en.html
Assistant professor in Advanced Research Institute of Arts affiliated with the Iranian Academy of Art, Tehran, Iran. , parvanehpourmajid@gmail.com
Abstract: (660 Views)
Relying on comparative aesthetics this paper aims to show the perspective of two of the early theorists of cinema, in two separate writings of each of them, regarding the subject matter of medium specificity. One of these writings is Arnheim's "New Laocoon", which is final chapter of his book Film as Art and the other is the article "Style and Medium in Moving Pictures" the final version of which Panofsky published in the 1950s after several revisions. The focal question of this paper concerns the effect that Lessing's Laocoon have had on Arnheim and Panofsky's approach to the discussion of media specificity to further see how each of these two thinkers reached different results by using the Laocoonian tradition of comparing arts. Arnheim's focus on the formal aspects of cinema as a modernist art leads him to consider silent cinema as the ultimate form of art cinema and to give importance to aspects that, ironically, are not so important in Panofsky's eyes. Due to his attention to the popular aspect of cinema, Panofsky focuses on the content and meaning instead of the formal features and therefore, despite Arnheim, while emphasizing the specificity of medium in cinema, tries to highlight other aspects of the cinema for his purpose. The final achievement of this paper would be to show the different results of two theoretical thoughts with a single concern about cinema. Both thinkers, while comparing cinema and theater in the framework of Lessing's thinking, reach contradictory conclusions. The approach of this research is comparative aesthetics and it is conducted in the framework of that ontology which governs the theories known as the theories of the classical period of cinema.
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