The Replacement of the Theatre

The advancement of the film will eventually lend to an experience more versatile than theatre production could ever achieve. The artistic capabilities of a film has lend itself to a new form of abbreviated story telling for the masses that photography never has been able to capture. The technology that allows for the creation of the film allows for greater mobility and realism to replace the theatre production. Streaming images in a way that recreates the view of the world serves as a less artistic recreation an individual photograph. Given the time restriction from viewing the world through a secondary recreation, the film forces an individual to feel limited of their own existence through the monotonous points of the reproduction. By editing a stream of film, a narrative can be told to capture a story or a set of emotions similar to a photograph except as versatile as a novel.

 In Tom Gunning’s essay, An Aesthetic of Astonshment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous Spectator, he comments on the first film as a means of departing from the standard theatre yet having to appeal to an audience used to a three dimensional form of entertainment. Gunning argues that “while such a transformation would be quite capable of causing a physical or verbal reflection the viewer, one remains aware that the film is merely a projection. The authenticity of the production must still capture a viewer in a way that can create an illusionary experience on par with the existing artistic dimensions. American culture in the early 20^th century eventually relied so heavily on the escapist qualities of a film that theatre would be unable to match the potential to reproduce at the same pace as a film.