ABSTRACT
In the history of cinema the notion of film shock has become almost synonymous with early Soviet montage. The idea of film as a kind of shock therapy was developed by Sergei Eisenstein with his somewhat radical concept of “cinema fist.” The imaginary images of the film shock and the perception of them is indiscernible. All of this implies that the film shock effect becomes a kind of virtual spectacle—a purely contemplative and essentially dematerialized spiritual affair. The effective film shock forces us out and away from the traditional representationalist position trapped in realism to a position invested with the power to liberate the human eye from the world. The notion of efficacy works well with Charles Taylor’s criticism of the correspondence theory of truth. What he basically argues is that since a theory about social practice is itself social, it inevitably changes its object of study in some way.
