Introduction: Rethinking Subjectivity in Film

André Bazin’s objectivist postulate is well-known: cinema is a production of objective moving images because, as a temporal achievement of photography, it is automatic or mechanic. However, from this standpoint, what are we to think of an assertion such as “Godard’s comeback to subjectivity occurred only in the mid to late 1970s through his video work with Miéville”? ¹ Does it mean that Godard lost touch with cinema when he came back to subjectivity? In other words, can we consider that some films are more cinematographic than others? This reminds me of Eleanor Rosch’s brilliant expression about retrievers being “more doggy” than other dogs. ² As a sociologist, she empirically analyzes American representations of dogs in an anti-essentialist theoretical context (under the protection of Wittgenstein), while Bazin’s postulate is deliberately essentialist. Strictly defining cinema by the objective power of the “impassible lens,” ³ Bazin follows the oversimplified definition of objectivity as the lack of subjectivity (which matches the equally oversimplified definition of subjectivity as the lack of objectivity): “All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence.” ⁴