Unsettled Spectatorship: On Anxiety and the Elusive Love of Cinema

Abstract

In her 1995 essay “The Decay of Cinema,” Susan Sontag famously declares the end not of cinema but of cinephilia. Without cinephilia, without a committed love of cinema as a “distinctively” and “quintessentially modern” art form, the future of cinema itself is cast in doubt. And cinephilia, Sontag asserts, is dead. At the root of the problem, Sontag writes, is both the growth of homeviewing technologies (VHS tapes, DVDs, etc.) and the film industry’s increasing dependence on Hollywood blockbusters, which together spell an inevitable degradation not only of cinematic quality but of meaningful cinematic experience as well. Although Sontag ends the essay on a seemingly optimistic note, with a call for reinventing “cinelove” as the means to “resurrect” a dying cinema, her larger argument is clear: the mode of experience defined as cinephilia can no longer be sustained, and this is an unmistakable symptom of a culture in decline. In this way, Sontag’s argument both reflects and extends the traditional view of cinephilia. Yet “The Decay of Cinema” also marks the moment in which this view starts to be challenged. Indeed, since its publication, Sontag’s essay has been an important reference point for film scholars invested in revising—and reviving—cinephilia, in imagining a new and inclusive cinephilia that rejects the elitism expressed Kenneth Berger