2012/01/01 by Isolde Standish · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Japanese History and Culture #Italian Fascism and Post-war Society #Foucault, Power, and Ethics
paper · doi:10.1386/jjkc.4.1.3_1
openalex publication_date 2012/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
This article argues that through the privileging functions of camera lenses both fragmenting and highlighting, and through the formal processes of camera movement and editing, cinema is the material manifestation of an aesthetics of the ephemeral of modernity par excellence, being characterized by the time—space separation of modernity and the accompanying reflexive ‘ordering and reordering’ of knowledge. Therefore, following Anthony Giddens’ sociological understanding of the ‘consequences of modernity’, this article seeks to theorize the emergent technology of cinema, the techniques of its use and the resultant aesthetic of the ‘ephemeral’ at the historical juncture when it was exported from the United States and Europe to the non-western world with particular reference to Japan and the serious shōshimingeki/lower-middle classes films directed by Ozu Yasujirō- in the mid-1930s.