The Social Imaginary of Telephony: Fictional Dispositives in Albert Robida’s Le Vingtième Siècle and the Archeology of “Talking Cinema”

Abstract

What I propose to do here, within a perspective involving both epistemology and the archaeology of media, is to approach "talking cinema" through the examination of discourses produced in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, that is, almost fifty years prior to the generalization of talkies and the institutionalization of practices related to sound in the domain of cinema. 2 Beyond this specific medium, I will examine the series of machines of audiovisual representation, one of whose many actualizations was "talking cinema" (which is why quotation marks are fitting here, with regard to "cinema" as well as "talking"). Among the many inventions from which various experimentations with "talking cinema" may be said to derive, I will emphasize the technique of telephony. Indeed, its study presents the advantage of encompassing a number of auditive or audiovisual dispositives that are often much more difficult to reduce to their place in the genealogy of (institutionalized) cinema than viewing dispositives. On a methodological level, de-centering the point of view is precisely what appears productive to me, as the discussion of the place given to the voice within various audio(visual) dispositives constitutes the theoretical horizon of my observations. 3 1 Translator's note: the French expression "cinéma parlant" (literally, "talking cinema") is usually translated as "sound cinema" in English, but given the focus of this chapter and the existence of the term "talkies" in English, it is translated as "talking cinema" here. 2 The attention given to "talkies before (the institutionalization of) talkies" should be placed in the context of recent research on "the archaeology" of the pairing between moving images and synchronized sound. On this point, see Edouard Arnoldy, Pour une histoire culturelle du cinéma. Au-devant de "scènes filmées", de "films chantants et parlants" et de comédies musicales (Liège: Céfal, 2004) as well as the contributions published in Le Muet a la parole. Cinéma et performance à l'aube du XXe siècle, Giusy Pisano and Valérie Pozner, eds. (Paris: AFRHC, 2005). 3 This reflection, one dimension of which is being considered here, started in other places, in particular in Du bonimenteur à la voix-over. Voix-attraction et voix-narration au cinéma (Lausanne: Antipodes, 2007); and in "The lecturer, the image, the machine and the audio-spectator. The voice as a component part of audiovisual dispositives" and "On the particular status of the human voice. Tomorrow's Eve and the cultural series of talking machines," both published in Cinema Beyond Film: Media Epistemology in the Modern Era

Body, Telephone, Voice: Black Christmas (1974) and Monstrous Cinema

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