Cinematic Chair

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Revisiting the apparatus: the theatre
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chair and cinematic spectatorship
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.. JOCELYN SZCZEPANIAK-GILLECE
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.. Almost without fail we sit in a chair when we attend the cinema. Despite
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.. its pervasiveness within the theatre, the humble chair remains
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overlooked, its impact on the cinemagoing experience unaddressed.
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What can this unassuming object reveal about the relationships between
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.. film, architectural space and spectatorship? Both within and without the
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.. movie theatre, the seeming simplicity of the chair bears profound
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.. implications for the body of the seated individual, reflecting architectural
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.. historian Galen Cranz’s assertion that ‘we design [chairs]; but once built,
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1 Galen Cranz, The Chair: Rethinking ..
.. they shape us’.1 The chair was and is a confluence of discourses and
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Culture, Body and Design (New .. possibilities for its occupant: it is a point of status and authority, suggests
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York, NY: W. W. Norton, 2000), ..
p. 15.
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inertia or vulnerability, encourages complacency and laziness, or impels
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its occupant to sit straighter. Thrones, the most recognizable example of a
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.. chair’s iconography, have enjoyed ancient associations with power, but
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.. the chair form has been repeatedly engaged for its commemorative,
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.. memorial and emblematic attributes; indeed, few pieces of furniture have
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2 Clare Graham, ‘Introduction’, in ..
.. borne quite as much weight – physical or symbolic – as the chair.2
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Ceremonial and Commemorative ..
.. Strange, then, that such a loaded object remains undertheorized in the
Chairs in Great Britain (London: ..
Victoria & Albert Museum, 1994).
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.. cinema. Yet to examine the legacy of theatre chairs is to untangle the
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relationships between cinema, physicality, efficiency and film’s ties to
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passivity; this inconspicuous thing encloses an entire history of cinematic
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bodies and, in turn, a shadow history of spectatorship. For the length of
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.. the film, spectatorial body and repeated chair mimic one another’s
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.. motionless forms ad infinitum, huddled in the auditorium’s liminal
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.. darkness, seated under the projector’s dusty glow.
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253 Screen 57:3 Autumn 2016

© The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Screen. All rights reserved
doi:10.1093/screen/hjw030
Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/screen/article-abstract/57/3/253/2223408 by Uniwersytet Jagiellonski Biblioteka Medyczna - Collegium Medicum user on 24 June 2019
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From the late 1920s to the 1950s, classical cinema’s multiplicity of
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aesthetic, formal, reception and architectural discourses resulted in the
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.. emergence of a new spectator. Among myriad other factors, changes in
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.. seating arrangements, new interests in sightlines, and mechanized chair
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.. designs helped to define the conditions of this altered spectatorship; not
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.. only was the movie theatre now distinct from the opera and the stage, so
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.. too was the modern theatre chair an object conceptually discrete from the
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.. palace-era chair. My aim in this essay is less to document transformations
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in chair design than to analyze the discourses through which the chair
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was newly understood to function as part of a larger cinematic and
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.. spectatorial machinery. In short, I seek to understand how the chair
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.. became an emblem of the new modern spectatorship and a repository
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.. for its bodily rhetoric of efficiency, silence and stillness.
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.. The chair and its stabilizing impact on the spectator’s body propose a
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.. potential recoupment of apparatus theory’s urgency on behalf of material
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.. history. Recent scholarship has signaled a return of the dispositif in light
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of new materialisms, phenomenological readings of collective theatrical
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spectatorship, and digitality. For scholars such as Julian Hanich and
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Gabriele Pedulla, unraveling the implications of individuated digital
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.. viewing obliges a theoretical and historical reconsideration of passive/
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3 Gabriele Pedulla, In Broad ..
.. active and discrete/group spectatorship in auditoria.3 In this sense, Jean-
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Daylight: Movies and Spectators ..
.. Louis Baudry’s theory of the apparatus bears significance for the current
After the Cinema, trans. Patricia ..
Gaborik (London: Verso, 2012), and
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.. transitional moment. Revisiting the apparatus is not only increasingly
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Julian Hanich, ‘Watching a film ..
.. essential in the digital age but also in accounting for film exhibition and
with others: towards a theory of
..
..
...
auditorium space. Such histories offer insight into trends in film theory as
collective spectatorship’, Screen, ..
vol. 55, no. 3 (2014), pp. 338–59. ..
..
well as material evidence for cinephilic spectatorial modes rooted in
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.. attention, stillness and immersion; the chair, in other words, has played a
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.. quiet and sidelined role as unrecognized aid to the basic cinematographic
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.. apparatus, harbinger of the machine age and instrument of cinephilia.
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.. The ideology of the apparatus depends on idealizations of vision,
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.. position and image indebted to western easel painting and perspective.
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.. Likewise the architecture of the theatre, and specifically the
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manufactured chair, attempts a materialization of idealized vision in its
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spectators: a universalized perception hinging on all viewers looking
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forward, seated in the same position, sharing as close to the same image
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.. as possible in terms of both camera eye and screen angle. While Baudry
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.. never fully included components of theatre architecture in the structure of
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.. the basic cinematographic apparatus, its effects echo the chair’s influence
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.. on immersive spectatorship. The apparatus hinges on continuity, and ‘the
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.. darkened room and the screen [...] already present privileged conditions
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4 Jean-Lous Baudry, ‘Ideological ..
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of effectiveness’ that prepare the viewer for cinematic suturing.4 Yet
effects of the basic ..
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Baudry, generally speaking, locates the apparatus in the identifications
cinematographic apparatus’, trans. ..
Alan Williams, Film Quarterly, vol. ..
..
between camera and subject; the space around the viewer is merely an
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28, no. 2 (1974–75), p. 44. .. accessory. Such accessories, however, share a long history of invisible
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.. work – work that, for Baudry, is necessary for maintaining the cinematic
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.. illusion.
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254 Screen 57:3 Autumn 2016 Jocelyn Szczepaniak-Gillece Revisiting the apparatus: the theatre chair and cinematic spectatorship
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For Pedulla, the fundamental issue with the apparatus is that, unlike
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the viewers chained to the walls in Plato’s cave, spectators choose to
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.. attend the cinema. While the dark-cube movie theatre relies on ‘induced
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.. passivity’ to instruct the audience, the enforcement of physical stillness
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.. in turn demands not only greater mental action but deeper empathetic
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5 Pedulla, In Broad Daylight, p. 105. ..
.. reaction.5 Pedulla’s spectator, like Baudry’s, is dwarfed by the image,
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.. but voluntarily so – in other words, she is the immersed and engaged
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.. cinephile. Immobility, then, begs for a new set of theoretical interventions,
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such as those recently proposed by Jane Gaines, Thomas Elsaesser,
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Frank Kessler and Will Straw, that uncover interaction between apparatus
6 See Recherches Semiotiques/
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.. theory and material histories.6 In Gaines’s view, apparatus theory’s
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Semiotic Inquiry, vol. 31, nos 1/2/ ..
.. seemingly teleological remission and rebirth can be traced through a
3 (2011), ‘Cinéma & Technologie’/ ..
.. semantic change from the philosophical French dispositif to the
‘Cinema & Technology’. ..
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7 Jane Gaines, ‘The inevitability of ..
.. technological English ‘apparatus’.7 This artificial transformation led in
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teleology: from le dispositif to .. part to a widespread assumption of what James Lastra describes as the
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apparatus theory to dispositifs ..
plural’, Recherches Semiotiques/
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.. ‘somewhat reductive’ nature of apparatus theory’s uniform impact.8 For
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Elsaesser, a historiography of apparatus theory acts as an inspiration for
3 (2011), pp. 45–58. ..
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media archaeologies while also raising productive questions around the
8 James Lastra, Sound Technology
and American Cinema:
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problems Baudry et al. purported to solve.9 If, as Elsaesser suggests,
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Perception, Representation, .. ‘theory is often the funeral of practice’, then apparatus theory’s genesis
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Modernity (New York, NY: .. in the 1970s implies a concurrent dying out of the entranced cinematic
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Columbia University Press, 2000), ..
.. spectator – one who was shaped not only by attention to the closed filmic
p. 136. ..
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9 Thomas Elsaesser, ‘What is left ..
.. system but also by enmeshment in theatrical surroundings.10
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of the cinematic apparatus, or .. If many have criticized the universality of apparatus theory’s spectator,
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why we should retain (and return ..
to) it’, Recherches Semiotiques/
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perhaps some of the blame should be shifted to certain architects and
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designers of the movie theatre. Baudry insisted that differences between
3 (2011), pp. 33–44. ..
.. frames ‘must be effaced as differences’; automated assembly-line theatre
10 Ibid., p. 35. ..
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.. chairs fill a similar purpose, in that they seek an effacement of the
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11 Baudry, ‘Ideological effects’, ..
.. differences between spectators.11 Thus the quotidian chair enables a
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p. 42. ..
.. reconsideration of the apparatus as material and historical. Now we are
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.. past screen theory’s heyday, the growing importance of socially grounded
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.. notions of the spectator has aided English-language theory’s sloughing off
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12 Will Straw, ‘Pulling apart the ..
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of the apparatus.12 As spectatorship became much more a product of the
apparatus’, Recherches ..
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viewer’s identity, interrogation of the moment of screen encounter faded.
Semiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry, vol. ..
31, nos 1/2/3 (2011), pp. 59–73. ..
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But what if seats encouraged bodies to shed their stable identities in
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.. service of momentary encounter? In other words, can we think of
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.. apparatus theory’s repeatedly cited failures – its erasure of difference, its
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.. maintenance of a universal subject separate from an individual body – as
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.. historically grounded in the goals of the movie theatre’s structure? Is the
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.. disappearance of the apparatus in favour of the socially grounded spectator
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a product, in part, of the movement from the theatre chair to the sofa?
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The chair is a model for both mid-century exhibition’s and cinephilia’s
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‘correct’ way to watch: in interchangeable rows with upright bodies and
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.. indistinguishable limbs, heads forward and eyes on the screen, properly
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.. embedded within the cinematic experience. Perhaps the cinephile
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.. disparages watching films at home or on a laptop not solely because of
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.. the light leaks or the poor sound or the encroachment of the domestic
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sphere, but because we sit there on soft, yielding objects to which our
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bodies need not conform, need not become one machine among others.
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.. We are sprawling and domesticated individuals, far from the fantasy of a
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.. sedated audience jointly enraptured before the screen. In the theatre we
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.. allow the chair partially to dictate our experience, to gain some
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.. semblance of mastery over our physical shape. But the chair in the theatre
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.. is distinct from the home chair also by virtue of its status as technological
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.. object, frequently considered in relation to mechanisms for crowd control
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and movement. Chairs have been objects of interest and debate in the
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theatre since the nascence of the palace era, and recognized for their
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.. importance in creating both atmosphere and bodily support. Particularly
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.. from the invention of specific mechanisms in the 1930s onwards, modern
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.. theatrical chairs have pushed back, moved forward, tilted up and rocked
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.. to encourage better vision, better comfort and more efficient audience
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.. flow. The theatre chair not only sits us properly and firmly, but tells us
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.. how and when to move in the theatre.
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One point calls for clarification: the spectator conceived by the theatre
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designer, whether enraptured by the screen or by the multitude of
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decorative features that surround it, operates, like Baudry’s subject, in the
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.. realm of the ideal. Doubtless few cinemagoers ever considered
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.. themselves interchangeable with those seated around them. Yet this
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.. linkage of idealized beings (Baudry’s ‘transcendent subjects’) reaffirms
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.. the tie between the apparatus theorists of the 1970s and many earlier
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.. theatrical architects and designers: both considered the film and its
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theatre a place of universality. In 1927 John Barry and Epes Sargent told
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theatre managers that ‘the architect has mastered the psychology of the
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.. movie-goer’, reiterating the common cry that cinema offers enrichment
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.. for one and all: ‘Here is a shrine of democracy where there are no
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13 John F. Barry and Epes W. ..
.. privileged patrons’.13 In its ideal state, such a theatre made manifest
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Sargent, Building Theatre ..
.. universal audience desires to escape everyday life, to enjoy a shared
Patronage: Management and ..
Merchandising (1927), reprinted
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.. status and, by implication, to be held in as passive a state as possible. Of
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in Gregory Waller (ed.), ..
.. course the standard American theatre in the late 1920s hardly eliminated
Moviegoing in America: A
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privilege in favour of pure democracy; segregation and, to a lesser
Sourcebook in the History of Film ..
Exhibition (Malden, MA: ..
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degree, the enforcement of multiple social codes kept such ideals in firm
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Blackwell, 2002), p. 110. ..
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check. Rather than provide insight into audience experience, Barry and
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.. Sargent’s platitudes exemplify the tones of idealism and utopianism that
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.. permeated much exhibition rhetoric from the late 1920s throughout the
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.. mid-century – tones that implied an idealized attentive spectator and the
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.. chair in which such an upstanding modern viewer should properly sit.
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.. This utopian occupant of the theatre chair was a product not only of
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movie exhibition but of the modern chair itself, which reiterated
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modernist concepts of uplift, therapeutics, universality and efficiency. In
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the modern era, chair and man reflect one another, performing a
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.. symbiotic elevation of design and human into the harmonious glories of
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.. the machine age. By the middle of the nineteenth century, designs for an
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.. adjustable chair began to infiltrate the American furniture industry in
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.. keeping with new research into relaxation through constant bodily
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14 Siegfried Giedion, Mechanization ..
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recalibration.14 Taylorist scientific management encouraged the study
Takes Command: A Contribution ..
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of labour-oriented sitting posture in the late nineteenth and early
to Anonymous History (New York, ..
NY: Oxford University Press, .. twentieth centuries from the perspective of both comfort and assembly-
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1948), pp. 400–06.
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.. line production.15 By the late 1940s, new research into ergonomics led
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15 Adrian Forty, Objects of Desire: .. Swedish chair researcher Bengt Akerblom to declare that the chair’s
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Design and Society from ..
.. therapeutic potential rested on the sitter’s ability to shift his body: ‘A
Wedgwood to IBM (New York, ..
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NY: Pantheon, 1986), pp. 129–32. ..
.. good chair is, thus, one in which one can alternate between various
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16 Bengt Akerblom, Standing and ..
.. resting positions’.16 A modern chair, therefore, should provide consistent
Sitting Posture, with Special ...
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support for its occupant and also allow for tiny movements; it should
Reference to the Construction of ..
Chairs (Stockholm: A. B. Nordiska ..
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accommodate every form of person and be mass producible. Similar
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Bokhandeln, 1948), p. 153. .. attention to organicism, posture and appropriate use dictated much
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.. modern chair design at the mid-century. According to the Werkbund,
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.. much like Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and ‘machines for living’, chairs
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.. should be ‘machines for sitting’, serving as wide a public as possible
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.. through low cost, interchangeability and functionality related to physical
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17 See, for example, Edgar ..
.. position.17 Akin to Akerblom’s observations, modernist chairs suggested
Kaufmann, Jr, What Is Modern ...
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purity of design, mind and health. In ‘Furniture for sitting’, Adolf Loos
Interior Design? (New York, NY: ..
Museum of Modern Art, 1953), ..
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argued that chairs should serve the ‘most perfect man’ and reflect his
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p. 7. ..
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beauty: reduced to its fundamental attributes of health and reproduction
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.. with no extraneous impracticalities, upstanding in both civility and
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18 Adolf Loos, ‘Furniture for sitting’, ..
.. posture.18 Loos’s argument would find reflection in the 1930s American
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in Spoken Into the Void, 1897– ..
.. theatre chair and its placement, where exhibitors sought harmony not
1900 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, ..
1982), p. 29.
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.. only between machine and body but between chairs, minds and
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.. spectators’ eyes, fixed upon the screen.
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In a 1932 polemic published in Motion Picture Herald, American
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architect and champion of the modern movie theatre Ben Schlanger
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.. demanded radical reconsideration of chairs and seating patterns in cinema
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.. auditoria, where the position of the eye required far greater consideration
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.. than it ever had in the stage theatre. At great disservice to the movie
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.. industry, he claimed, exhibitors and architects alike were ignoring a crucial
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.. aspect of film’s translation of everyday sensory experience. Where normal
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.. vision employed a delicate process of foreshortening and convergence, film
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flattened three-dimensional perspective onto a two-dimensional surface.
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Similarly, while audiences compensated visually for cinema’s collapse of
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depth and viewing angles, the relatively random seating of spectators based
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.. predominantly on stage auditoria rather than film projection resulted in
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.. distortion, discomfort and distraction. To solve this conundrum, Schlanger
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.. argued, theatre chairs should be positioned according to subtended viewing
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.. angles based on screen size and placement. Immediate chair and seating
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.. pattern restructuring would move the industry forward and distinguish
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functional modern theatres from allegedly wasteful movie palaces by way
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of their superior bodily and therefore optical conditions:
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.. If the position of the human eye is not favorable, a very undesirable
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.. distortion of the forms and backgrounds being viewed takes place.
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This distortion is especially annoying when the form being observed
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on the screen is already transformed into a sharp perspective through
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the medium of the camera eye. A view taken in sharp perspective in
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motion picture work is one of the most forceful and effective boasts of
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the art of the motion picture. Now to get the full benefit of a great art
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.. like the motion picture, the problem of the position of the patron’s eye
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.. while he is viewing the screen looms up as of great prominence [...]
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.. Motion pictures are being exhibited under a serious handicap in
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.. theatres built for stage entertainment. When will the motion picture
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.. industry as a whole respect its own product sufficiently to insure
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19 Ben Schlanger, ‘Vision in the ..
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effective delivery of their efforts to the patron?19
motion picture theatre’, ‘Better ..
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Theatres’ section of Motion ..
.. Ensuring effective delivery implied the implementation of many
Picture Herald, 30 July 1932, p. 9. ..
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.. theatrical transformations, including removing the proscenium arch and
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.. stage, reducing screen masking and enlarging the screen. Particularly
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urgent in this case, however, was the scientific calibration of seating
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patterns to facilitate proper viewing angles. To manipulate the audiences’
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eyes effectively, exhibition standards needed to adhere stringently to
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... modern chair design and seating plans. Access to the pathway to perfect
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.. cinematic vision hinged on recasting the chair as an integral meeting
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.. point between body and eye: the locus of spectatorship’s form was vision
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.. by way of the audiences’ folded and seated shapes. In this ideal theatre, a
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.. multitude of cloned chairs – and spectators – spoke to a thread of
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efficiency and mechanized repeatability finding expression in a post-
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movie palace, modern exhibition space.
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For Schlanger the theatre chair sought to materialize the elusive
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spectator developed between gazer and gazed at; it taught of
... physicalized perception and spectatorial construction. Yet the corollary to
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.. Schlanger’s rows of attentive spectators positioned in industrially
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.. constructed seats is the chair as a sign of discomfort, or as manager of
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.. unpleasant sensation. Contemporary physiological evidence for the ill
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effects of excessive sitting blames chairs for poor circulation, atrophy
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20 Marilyn Moffat and Steve ..
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and Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome, also known as ‘moviegoers sign’.20
Vickery, The American Physical ..
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Chairs were thus not only beholden to trends in design philosophy but
Therapy Association Book of Body ..
Repair and Maintenance (New
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enfolded within themselves an odd structural paradigm, being built both
York, NY: Holt Paperbacks, 1999), ... to comfort and to emulate the human body. For this reason the mid-
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p. 97. ..
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.. century theatre chair resonates with Elaine Scarry’s reasoning that the
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.. chair, like most artefacts, is a projection of the skeletal body. All such
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.. meaning-making objects transform what is typically private into
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something communally accessible, through which we might attempt to
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share one another’s interiority. In our construction of such objects, Scarry
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observes, we strive to make the inanimate world feel as we do, ‘as
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knowledgeable about human pain as if it were itself animate and in
21 Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: ...
.. pain’.21 The chair is therefore ‘mimetic of sentient awareness [...] the
The Making and Unmaking of the ..
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.. materialized structure of a perception [...] sentient awareness materialized
World (New York, NY: Oxford ..
University Press, 1985), pp. 286–
..
.. into a freestanding design’, the shape of ‘perceived-pain-wished-gone’.22
..
87 (emphasis in original). ..
.. Not only, then, does the chair perform symbolic acts, it makes elusive
22 Ibid., p. 290. ..
..
..
consciousness into a solid and recognizable form. Scarry’s investment in
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..
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the materialization of sentience – how the artefact embodies perception
...
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and awareness, how it emerges as a point of interaction between object
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and subject – hints at both 1970s apparatus theory’s ideological subject
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.. construction and phenomenological film theory’s development of ‘film
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.. bodies’. Apparatus theory’s argument for a unified, single spectator
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.. regardless of particularities of position in turn resonates deeply with the
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.. theatre chair, where interest in interchangeability similarly sought out
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.. rows of identically positioned watchers. Bridging both semiotic and
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.. phenomenological film theory, Francesco Casetti describes the spectator
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subject position as developed through the text’s constitution of
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an ‘enunciatee’, made ‘manifest in the text through a series of
23 Francesco Casetti, Inside the
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.. figurativizations’.23 Film and viewer together develop the role of
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Gaze (Bloomington, IN: Indiana ..
.. ‘spectator’ – one available within the theatre, during projection, accessible
University Press, 1998), p. 45. ..
.. via the bodies of text and watcher, akin to Vivian Sobchack’s ‘film
..
..
24 See Vivian Sobchack, The ..
.. body’.24 And the chair’s shape conjures both Scarry’s artefactual status
..
Address of the Eye: A ..
.. and Casetti’s spectatorial mode.
Phenomenology of Film ..
Experience (Princeton, NJ:
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.. If Scarry’s ‘perceived-pain-wished-gone’ delineates the chair’s
...
Princeton University Press, 1991). ..
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meaning in general, it is just one of many discourses relating to the
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movie theatre chair. Today’s state-of-the-art multiplex boasts
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increasingly large and cushioned seats with multiple cup-holders and
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.. adjustable rocking backs, arranged on a stadium incline for better
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.. sightlines. Such accessories and careful positioning speak, however, of a
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.. legacy stretching back to mid-century cinemas just after the transition to
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.. sound. The internal mechanisms, positions and purpose of the theatrical
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.. chair reveal a history of cinematic exhibition that has repeatedly
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associated posture with eye fixation. Such forms of instructive interior
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technology taught spectators the ‘right’ way to watch films, and continue
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.. to inform our understandings of cinephilia, the narcotic effects of cinema,
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.. and the idealization of passivity that still haunts the edges of film
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.. spectatorship.
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.. Classical film theory, such as that proposed by Béla Balazs and Jean
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.. Epstein, insists that contemplation in the theatre depends upon the
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.. spectator’s position, which should particularly encourage identification,
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stillness and silence; the chair reflects this spectatorship of inactive
25 See Béla Balazs, Theory of the
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mimesis, cradling its occupier into a folded imitation of itself.25 For
Film: Character and Growth of a ..
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André Bazin one major difference between cinema and stage theatre is
New Art, trans. Edith Bone (New ..
York. NY: Dover Publications, .. film’s creation of a massed spectatorship:
..
1970), and Jean Epstein,
..
..
‘Magnification’, trans. Stuart
..
..
A member of a film audience tends to identify himself with the film’s
..
Liebman, in Richard Abel (ed.), ..
..
hero by a psychological process, the result of which is to turn the
French Film Theory and Criticism: ..
..
..
audience into a ‘mass’ and to render emotion uniform [...] The cinema
A History/Anthology, Volume I,
1907–1929 (Princeton, NJ:
..
..
..
calms the spectator, the theater excites him.26
Princeton University Press, 1988). ...
..
26 André Bazin, ‘Theater and cinema ..
..
Where the cinema enacts an assembly line of equalized spectators created
..
– Part II’, in What is Cinema? ..
..
through its formal elements and its apparatus, including its spatial
Volume II (rev. edn), trans. Hugh ..
.. environment, the theatre encourages individualized reaction. In turn,
Gray (Berkeley, CA: University of ..
.. Alison Griffiths’s history of the ‘immersive view’ in alternative
California Press, 2004), p. 99. ..
..
.. spectatorships – mostly those differing from Bazin’s classical theatrical
..
..
.. structures – begins with the soaring vaults of the French Gothic
...
27 See Alison Griffiths, Shivers ..
..
cathedral.27 Prior to the Reformation, most mediaeval attendees stood in
Down Your Spine: Cinema, ..
..
..
or walked around the kinds of Gothic cathedrals that Griffiths links to
Museums and the Immersive ..
View (New York, NY: Columbia .. nontraditional immersive exhibition sites. Benches for laity began to
..
..
University Press, 2008). .. appear in British churches in the fourteenth century, while pews for the
..
28 Graham, Ceremonial and ..
.. wealthy emerged in the late mediaeval period.28 After the Reformation
..
Commemorative Chairs, p. 17. ..
.. and an ensuing centralization of mass around the sermon, pews in both
..
..
.. Catholic and Protestant European churches aided in organizing
..
..
.. congregations and sustaining their attention for a significant amount of
...
29 For an in-depth description of the ..
..
time.29 For Catholics the act of worship required a litany of
transformation of European ..
..
..
intercessionary figures and objects: priests, icons, stained glass windows,
Christian structures, see for ..
example, Nigel Yates, Liturgical .. relics. Chief among these was the environment of the church itself, and
..
..
Space: Christian Worship and .. its pairing of heavenly ceilings with earthbound floors, walls and
..
Church Buildings (Aldershot: ..
.. benches; spiritual contemplation was therefore enmeshed with bodily
Ashgate, 2008). ..
.. positioning, the faithful in silent, repeated rows that guided their spines
..
..
..
.. into upright structures, their knees onto wooden slats or their hands into
..
..
.. folded prayer on the smooth curve of the pew in front. Focalized
...
..
..
attention on the sermon while sitting and spiritual projection through
..
..
..
prayer while kneeling were both engrained into the interior decoration
..
..
..
and design of the church. Following Griffiths’s interpretation of the
..
.. Gothic cathedral’s lineage as folding into sites such as panoramas and
..
.. museum displays, the stilled spectatorial site of the standard movie
..
..
.. theatre resonates with post-Reformation churches and their congregations
..
..
..
.. who stand, kneel and sit in orderly rows, according to proscriptions from
..
..
.. both sermon and architectural form.
..
..
...
Just as churchgoing developed into a directed audience experience, the
..
..
..
theatre chair and consequent seating plans have shaped an avenue of
..
.. ideal cinephilic spectatorship by shaping the audiences’ bodies in the
..
..
.. seats. Such melding of cinema and church sites and their shared
..
.. traditions of bodily regulatory space and mental/spiritual experience has
..
..
.. long been a tenet of film theory. In a 1927 essay for the National Board
..
..
..
.. of Review Magazine, Seymour Stern dreamt of cinema’s ability to realize
..
..
.. its full status as a ‘religious’ art that ‘permits the projection of the ego of
..
..
...
its spectator into its form’, achievable only with focalization on the
..
..
..
screen and, in an anticipation of later stadium seating, ‘a marked
30 Seymour Stern, ‘An aesthetic of
..
..
..
elevation between each row of seats’.30 For Stern, making the cinema a
the cinema house: a statement of ..
.. ‘religious’ art required spatial markers of religiosity. Religion’s
the principles which constitute ..
.. combination of focused attention and specific positioning could act as a
the philosophy and the format of ..
..
the ideal film theatre’, reprinted .. model for the realization of film’s possibilities. To encourage the out-of-
..
..
in Spectator, vol. 18, no. 2 (1998), ..
.. body experience that connection to a deity brings, one must be seated in
pp. 28–30. ..
..
.. the proper location, the proper position, the proper vessel. In telling the
..
..
...
viewer to be calm, to be as unmoving as possible while seated, and to
..
..
..
walk between rows without disturbing others, the chair is one of
..
..
..
spectatorship’s mythic objects, alongside the screen, the camera and the
..
.. projector.
..
.. A reconsideration of the chair’s spectatorial properties similarly
..
..
.. uncovers its tranquilizing effects. While film might seem the ultimate
..
..
..
...
..
..
instrument of modern narcosis, the chair is its instrument of supplication
..
..
..
that acts as film’s anaesthesia. In the theatre, darkness paired with a
..
.. single beam of light is the most familiar anaesthetic, yet darkness and
..
..
.. light force the eye to focus, while the chair drugs the body into rest.
..
.. Susan Buck-Morss associates the intoxications of cinema and other
..
..
.. phantasmagoria, both of which ‘assume the position of objective fact’ by
..
..
..
.. virtue of communal experience, with multiple narcotics of modernity:
..
31 Susan Buck-Morss, ‘Aesthetics ..
.. drugs such as opium and ether, electroshock, hypnosis and anaesthesia.31
and anaesthetics: Walter ...
..
..
For Buck-Morss, Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk constituted the late
Benjamin’s Artwork essay recon- ..
sidered’, October, no. 62 (1992), ..
..
nineteenth-century attempt at a total phantasmagoric environment, over-
..
p. 23. .. whelming the spectator’s senses with a variety of artistic impressions in
..
..
.. order to freeze her into place. In Wagner’s Festspielhaus in Bayreuth,
..
.. built in 1876 yet a lasting inspiration for later American cinematic space,
..
..
.. stiff wooden seats and a lack of aisles to divide the rows prompted Mark
..
..
..
.. Twain to describe the audience waiting for and watching the opera as
..
..
.. seated in
...
..
..
.. fixed and reverential attention [...] The funereal rustling of dresses and
..
..
.. the low buzz of conversation began to die swiftly down, and presently
..
..
.. not the ghost of a sound was left [...] You detect no movement in the
..
..
..
solid mass of heads and shoulders. You seem to sit with the dead in
..
32 Mark Twain, ‘Mark Twain at ..
..
the gloom of a tomb.32
Bayreuth/At the shrine of St ..
..
Wagner’, Chicago Daily Tribune, ..
.. Influenced by aesthetic theories of empathy, the Festspielhaus
..
6 December 1891. ..
.. encouraged a spectatorship that appeared deathly partly because of its
..
..
...
insistence on psychic projection through bodily regulation. Empathy
..
..
..
demanded a ‘feeling into’ the art object on display for the sake of
33 See Robert Vischer, ‘On the
..
.. communal psychic projection.33
..
optical sense of form: a ..
.. Wagner’s system of seating would later be integrated into American
contribution to aesthetics’ (1873), ..
.. film presentation practice with the ‘continental’ seating plan, named for
reprinted in Empathy, Form and ..
..
Space: Problems in German .. its usage throughout Europe. By removing the centre aisle to create a
..
..
Aesthetics, 1873–1893 (Los ..
.. continuous row with aisles only to the right and left of the orchestra
Angeles, CA: The Getty Center for ..
the History of Art, 1993), p. 92.
..
.. seating, the continental plan provided access to the best seats in the house
..
..
...
– those directly in the middle – and, as in the Festspielhaus, discouraged
..
..
..
standing or mingling during the presentation. Although four inches more
..
..
..
per row were needed to modify most existing theatres in the early 1930s,
..
.. the continental plan’s major benefits allegedly included ‘greater comfort
..
.. for the patron’, ‘superior exhibition’, easier illumination along side walls
..
..
.. out of the line of vision for patrons, and the elimination of ‘wasteful
..
..
.. aisles’ which would ‘no longer cut a swath through the best seating areas
..
..
..
.. in the house’; some also argued that the continental plan’s more efficient
..
34 Ben Schlanger, ‘Applying the ..
...
audience traffic would create a safer environment in case of fire.34 In this
‘continental plan’ to American ..
..
..
sense, idealized visual contemplation intertwined with physical position;
theatre seating’, ‘Better Theatres’ ..
section of Motion Picture Herald, ..
..
perfect seeing depended not just on optical conditions but also on bodily
..
2 May 1936, pp. 8–9. .. form.
..
.. Although the continental plan did not take root in the American movie
..
..
.. theatre until the 1950s, when it was popularized primarily by the second
..
..
..
...
..
..
wave of cinephilia and its specialized art houses, the question of how
35 See Ben Schlanger, ‘Continental
..
..
..
chairs should operate and be positioned was a relatively early concern.35
seating crosses the Atlantic’, ..
.. While early nickelodeons in exhibition’s first decade offered little more
‘Better Theatres’ section of ..
..
Motion Picture Herald, 3 .. than a modified screening room with basic wooden chairs or benches,
..
December 1949, pp. 27–41. .. their rapid expansion soon led to some owners spending up to $1.50 per
..
..
36 Douglas Gomery, Shared ..
.. chair for opera-style seats.36 This was in keeping with exhibition’s move
..
Pleasures: A History of Movie ..
.. toward luxurious environments in order to increase the attendance of
Presentation in the United States ..
(Madison, WI: University of
..
.. middle- and upper-class patrons, who would eventually be courted in
...
Wisconsin, 1992), pp. 19–20. ..
..
earnest by movie palace owners.37 During the palace era, which peaked
37 Ibid., p. 29. ..
..
..
in the mid 1920s, theatre chains like Balaban & Katz drastically increased
..
.. the number of available chairs by a factor of ten or more – their Uptown
..
..
.. Theatre in Chicago boasted over five thousand seats compared to a
..
38 Ibid., p. 48. ..
.. nickelodeon’s typical hundred or so.38 Yet while palaces such as the
..
.. Uptown ostensibly offered perfect views of the screen, those seated at the
..
..
..
.. ends of the rows tended to experience image distortion, while the ‘best
..
..
.. seats’ were often ticketed at higher prices; both movie and live
...
..
..
performance showings in the same auditorium similarly meant that
..
..
..
theatrical architecture had to be flexible and not focused solely on ‘perfect’
39 Ibid., p. 55.
..
..
..
film viewing.39 Balaban & Katz, like many palace owners, fixated on an
..
.. image of opulence rather than on the screen. In their fantasy of affluence
..
.. concurrent with a desire to attract middle- and higher-class patronage,
..
..
.. seating plans mimicked external class distinctions rather than promoting a
..
..
..
.. uniformity of vision. Chairs in the palace signified the comforts of money
..
..
.. and therefore demanded a posturing display of wealth.
..
..
...
By the early 1930s, chairs and seating patterns were no longer merely
..
..
..
a function of luxury and customer satisfaction but objects to be
..
.. understood in terms of their effects on visual distortion and optics; eye
..
..
.. strain in particular was a consistent problem in earlier exhibition, and
..
.. could in part result from poor seating and concurrent bodily
..
..
40 See Ben Schlanger, ‘Modern ..
.. adjustments.40 The right kind of comfortable chair – one that, according
..
seating and chair maintenance’, ..
.. to an American Seating Company advertisement from 1936, ‘caress[ed]
Motion Picture Herald, 4 June
..
.. the body’ – made for optimized viewing conditions both in terms of
..
1932, pp. 16–42. ..
...
reducing eye strain and maintaining a passive and cradled spectator.41 In
41 American Seating Company ..
..
..
the mid 1930s, then, theatre chairs ideally offered comfort to entice
advertisement, ‘Better Theatres’ ..
..
Depression-era audiences into the theatre, but also manipulated spectators
..
7 March 1936, p. 23. .. into proper viewing positions. Slumping or bending forward disrupted
..
.. the body’s imitation of the chair’s form and had an impact on viewing
..
..
.. angles. Regulation of the spectator’s body, it was argued, could structure
..
..
.. posture and eliminate distortion, two issues of increasing urgency in the
..
..
..
.. wake of the movie palace’s decline and the rise of the architecturally
..
..
...
efficient theatre.
..
..
..
American theatres in the 1930s transformed stylistically, sonically and
..
..
..
phenomenologically from a ‘second period’ as a massive ornamental
42 Amir H. Ameri, ‘The architecture
..
.. palace to a ‘third period’ as an intimate black box.42 While the transition
..
of the illusive distance’, Screen, ..
.. to a less decorated auditorium resulted partly from Depression-era
vol. 54, no. 4 (2013), p. 450. ..
.. economics, much theatrical transformation of the 1930s – and thus the
..
..
..
...
..
..
notion of what exhibition tended to consider an ideal spectator – can be
..
..
..
attributed to the arrival of sound. Amir H. Ameri argues that while the
..
.. new modern theatres were not necessarily designed for perfected
..
..
.. acoustics, their streamlined design was both stylistically and
..
43 Ibid., pp. 439–62. ..
.. experientially distinct from the grandeur of the movie palace.43 While
..
.. style has been the most commonly cited differentiation, the relationship
..
..
..
.. between space, vision and sound in the new, smaller theatre resulted in a
..
44 Ibid., p. 441. ..
.. more profound phenomenological transformation.44 In light of film’s new
...
..
..
sonic ‘hereness’ as opposed to its former silent ‘thereness’, distance
..
..
..
between spectator and screen was purposely eroded through modern
..
.. touches such as horizontal wall decorations and downlighting that
..
..
.. replaced exotically themed ornamentation and chandeliers. While these
..
.. attempts were naturally conducted with an ideal spectator in mind,
..
..
.. curiously the advent of sound film did result in an audience behavioural
..
..
..
.. transformation where ‘the talking audience for silent pictures became a
..
45 Robert Sklar, Movie-Made ..
.. silent audience for talking pictures’, as Robert Sklar writes.45 Sound,
America: A Cultural History of ...
..
..
therefore, paved the way for both a new modern theatrical architecture
American Movies (New York, NY: ..
Vintage, 1975), p. 153. ..
..
and an integrated passive spectator reminiscent of Baudry.
..
..
..
In addition to economics and the emergence of sound technology, the
..
.. post-palace functional and intimate filmic space was informed by interest
..
.. in the efficacy of attention, directed vision and a proper film viewing
..
..
.. indebted to the talkies and their concurrent model of cinephilic
..
..
..
.. spectatorship. Such trends found expression in both the style and purpose
..
..
.. of the movie house, where modernist design heralded an aesthetic of the
..
..
...
machine, of efficiency and of holistic attention. George Schutz, the longtime
..
..
..
editor of Motion Picture Herald’s ‘Better Theatres’ section, argued in
..
.. 1928 for the more extensive use of Art Moderne and its use of ‘design
..
..
.. based on the simple line’ that could express the psychological purpose of
..
46 George Schutz, ‘Modernizing the .. the room. Like cinema itself, ‘Art Moderne is the child of the Machine’,
..
..
interior’, ‘Better Theatres’ section ..
.. a form particularly relevant for a population told ‘more and more every
of Exhibitors’ Herald and Moving ..
Picture World, 7 July 1928,
..
.. day that we are machines ourselves, a part, like the steel machines, of
..
pp. 13–27. ..
.. another, merely bigger machine’.46 Later that year Schutz reinforced the
..
..
...
movies’ connection to the industrial world and mechanization. Movies
47 George Schutz, ‘Modernistic art, ..
its significance to America and ..
..
are a thoroughly modern art, and there is ‘a natural affinity between
..
the photoplay’, ‘Better Theatres’ ..
..
modernistic art and the photoplay theatre which, it would seem, the
section of Exhibitors’ Herald and ..
.. architect and the exhibitor cannot ignore’.47 In this sense, modern design’s
Moving Picture World, 27 ..
.. purity of form was another tool for exhibition’s rhetoric of uplift – for
October 1928, p. 38. See also ..
..
John W. Root and Wallace Rice, .. Schutz it shared an affinity not only with modern film but with the modern
..
..
‘The Taj Mahal, Mr Coolidge and ..
.. theatre, where viewers could be reduced to their components of shape,
the motion picture’, ‘Better ..
Theatres’ section of Exhibitors’
..
.. eye and ear, metaphorical machines elevated through efficiency to a higher
..
Herald and Moving Picture ..
...
cinematic experience. Schutz’s editorial influence would help propel the
World, 24 November 1928, ..
..
..
movement towards black box theatres throughout the 1930s.
pp. 7–9, and Thomas E. ..
Tallmadge, ‘The screen, a new ..
..
Exhibitors increasingly realized that this thoroughly modern art of film
..
art, should pave the way to a .. required an accordingly modern approach to its display, and that it should
..
new architecture’, ‘Better ..
.. be shown under the most precise conditions possible to maximize its
Theatres’ section of Exhibitors’ ..
.. effects. In their view the movie palace, with stage theatre as its defining
Herald and Moving Picture ..
..
World, 17 March 1928, p. 9. .. antecedent, sinned not only in terms of its visual excess but also its
...
..
..
inability to provide a scientifically calibrated approach to seeing. This is
..
..
..
not to say that palace designers entirely ignored the benefits of good
..
.. sightlines, but rather that new voices in exhibition, led often by Schutz
..
..
.. and Schlanger, accused the palaces of sacrificing visual acuity for the
..
.. sake of embellishment. In addition, during the Depression
..
..
.. multithousand-seat palaces seemed to be examples of conspicuous
..
..
..
.. consumption; worse, their substantial size frequently resulted in
..
..
.. wasted space, unfilled by eager consumers. As Lary May describes, the
...
..
..
stock market crash of 1929 brought calls for a revolution in cinematic
..
..
..
architecture, as the lavish displays of the palaces suggested to a poverty-
48 Lary May, The Big Tomorrow:
..
.. stricken public the terrible fall from grace of rampant capitalism.48
..
Hollywood and the Politics of the ..
.. Palaces were no longer interchangeable with exhibition, nor was their
American Way (Chicago, IL: ..
.. immensity a necessary apparatus for showing a film. In 1931 the editors of
University of Chicago, 2000), ..
..
p. 110. .. Motion Picture Herald’s architectural ‘Better Theatres’ section observed that
..
..
..
..
..
..
theatre designers studying the function of the motion picture theatre
..
... with its special relationships to architecture, are adopting the attitude
..
..
.. that interiors, particularly the auditorium, should contribute through
..
..
.. their very lines and appointments to the focusing of all the patron’s
..
49 ‘Why remodel? An editorial’, ..
.. interest upon the screen.49
..
Motion Picture Herald, 11 April .. In the following year Ben Schlanger stated that
..
..
1931, p. 11. ..
..
..
..
the large deluxe, lavishly treated theatre is no longer a symbol or agent
..
..
..
of the motion picture. As a matter of fact, the motion picture was only
..
..
..
an accompanying attraction in them at their inception ... an
50 Ben Schlanger, ‘Vision in the ...
.. unnecessary addition to the motion picture itself’.50
motion picture theatre’, ‘Better ..
..
..
Theatres’ section of Motion .. What was ‘unnecessary’ were the decorative trappings glimmering
..
Picture Herald, 30 July 1932, p. 8. ..
.. throughout the palace; ‘necessary’ theatrical touches focused on seating
..
.. comfort, lessened eye strain and continually improved viewing angles, all
..
..
.. of which provided enhanced consumer value and a more directed
..
..
..
.. cinematic experience.
..
..
.. Palace designers had certainly always encouraged a state of escape
..
..
...
through bodily comfort, primarily marketed with atmospheric luxury,
..
..
..
with designs evoking lush scenarios such as a ‘magic carpet’ or a ‘king’s
51 E. C. A. Bullock, ‘Theater
..
..
..
palace’.51 Plush seats encouraged a lavish experience of ‘maximum
entrances and lobbies’, ..
.. comfort’ that resonated through elaborate draping, gilding and
Architectural Forum, vol. 42, no. 6 ..
(1925), p. 369.
..
.. decoration.52 Air conditioning provided another extravagance for
..
52 Heywood-Wakefield .. audiences, but one economically and spatially affordable only by owners
..
..
advertisement, Exhibitors’ Herald .. of palaces seating more than 2000 patrons; Balaban & Katz’s Tivoli and
..
and Moving Picture World, 10 ..
March 1928, p. 8.
..
.. Chicago Theatres (1921), ‘marvels of modern-day engineering and com-
..
..
...
fort’, required a basement room with 15,000 feet of pipe, a 240-horse-
53 Gomery, Shared Pleasures, p. 54.
..
..
..
power electric motor and a dedicated engineer.53 After the debut of Willis
..
..
..
Carrier’s cheaper, more compact system in the 1930s, however, smaller the-
..
.. atres gained access to air conditioning; even the more intimate theatre could
..
54 Ibid., p. 76.
..
.. now extend the comforts of cooled air to all classes of patron.54 Yet the
..
.. palace’s main goal was an entirety of spectacle rather than straightforward
..
..
.. focus on the film itself. At the height of the palace’s popularity in 1925,
...
..
..
Samuel L. ‘Roxy’ Rothafel, stated that while he agreed that ‘“The picture is
..
..
..
the thing” [...] Of course the picture is important, and we could not do
..
.. without it; but what we have tried to do is to build around it an atmospheric
..
55 Samuel L. Rothafel, ‘What the
..
.. program that is colorful, entertaining and interesting.’55 Music, for Roxy,
..
public wants in the picture .. supplied the ‘body and foundations of the presentation [...] It will become so
..
theater’, Architectural Forum, ..
.. integral a part of the picture that the lines of confluence will hardly be
vol. 42, no. 6 (1925), p. 362. ..
..
56 Ibid., p. 363. ..
.. distinguishable [...] reach[ing] the standard of grand opera.’56 Like the
..
..
.. exuberant palace decorations, music strengthened an entirety of spatial
...
..
..
rather than screen coherence. While Roxy looked towards a theatre of
..
..
..
tomorrow with ‘neutral’ decorative character, the eventual result would
..
.. transform movies from being a ‘fusion of varied abilities’ to the ‘highest
..
57 Ibid., p. 364.
..
.. expression of art’.57 Such a new expression, Thomas Tallmadge argued in a
..
.. controversial 1928 article that would be debated for months, would eliminate
..
..
.. ‘prostituted’ theatres away from the ‘blare and din of an architectural
..
..
..
.. circus’, enhanced by the slapping-on of vaudeville and comedy acts,
..
..
.. towards an uplifting and intimate space. ‘Divorce the motion picture
...
..
..
from vaudeville and jazz’, Tallmadge insisted, ‘from tawdry decoration
..
..
..
and vulgar architecture and it will yet take its place not only among the
..
..
..
educational and moral forces of this country, but with the arts as
58 Tallmadge, ‘The screen, a new
..
.. well.’58 The palace and the smaller theatre of the 1930s were therefore
..
art’, p. 9. ..
.. distinguished from one another in terms of economics, sonic qualities
..
.. and immersion – a transformation from immersion in general theatrical
..
..
..
.. and spectacular luxury to immersion in the film onscreen. To
..
..
.. encourage this newly regimented spectatorship, modernized theatres
..
..
...
should be focused not on wealth and luxury tinged with exotic flair, but
..
..
..
on the twinned outcomes of physical comfort and visual immersion.
..
.. Whereas comfort more generally signified indulgence and
..
..
.. extravagance in the 1920s palace, the 1930s comfortable theatre tended
..
.. toward ergonomics, posture and a collective cinematic immersion in
..
..
.. keeping with an emerging ideal of cinephilic spectatorship.
..
..
..
.. Changes in the importance of seating and seating position, necessitated
..
..
.. by increasing interest in the relationship between eye and bodily comfort
..
..
...
as well as visual immersion, reflected these multiple discourses as well as
..
..
..
interest in modernization and modernism. Mainstreaming of modernism
..
..
..
in the movie theatre continued throughout the 1930s and 1940s, yet
..
.. ‘modern’ in theatrical parlance functioned as an umbrella term for a
..
.. variety of styles: from regionalism to the International Style; from
..
..
.. folklore to functionalism to Moderne; from the barren rooms of New
..
..
.. York’s and Washington’s little cinemas to the rose-coloured fluorescent
..
59 John Eberson, ‘Making use of the ..
new materials that add color and
..
.. lamps and cherry-red Formica of the RKO Theatre in Cincinnati.59 Yet
..
life’, ‘Better Theatres’ section of ..
...
mid-century exhibitors in general understood the modern theatre as a
Motion Picture Herald, 21 ..
..
..
collection of smoothly working parts whose goal was filmic immersion.
September 1940, p. 18. For a ..
discussion of the ‘little cinema’ ..
..
‘The whole public portion of the building itself’, architect John Eberson
..
movement, see Barbara Wilinsky, .. declared in 1940, ‘is really part of the machinery of public entertainment
..
Sure Seaters: The Emergence of ..
.. that the invention of motion pictures has created’; in 1944 Schlanger
Art House Cinema (Minneapolis, ..
.. repeated this assertion, calling for ‘full awareness that the [theatre]
MN: University of Minnesota ..
..
Press, 2001). .. building itself is an integral part of the elaborate and exact projection
...
60 Eberson, ‘Making use of the new ..
..
equipment’.60 Moving imagery, but more specifically the entirety of its
materials’, p. 16, and Ben ..
..
..
apparatus, from production to projection to the spectator in her chair,
Schlanger, ‘The theater for ..
motion pictures by film and .. proclaimed the age of the American machine and, in turn, the possibility
..
..
television projection’, .. of a mass-produced and industrious spectator straddling the categories
..
Architectural Record, vol. 95, no. .. of labour and leisure, of industry and community, of human and
..
1 (1944), p. 86. ..
.. interchangeable part. The mechanized chair designed for posture and
..
..
..
.. focus was a prototype for exhibition’s new spectator: noiseless, directed,
..
..
.. identical; one member among many of a silent community immobilized
...
..
..
under the screen’s glow.
..
..
..
As the fulcrum of the screen’s relationship with its viewer, the theatre
..
.. chair in the 1930s aided in the streamlining of the cinematic machine.
..
..
.. More directed focus on the screen and greater comfort became rallying
..
.. cries for exhibitors, architects and auditorium interior designers, during
..
..
.. and after the Depression, looking to put bodies in the seats and encourage
..
..
..
.. stillness, silence and theatrical integration after investing in expensive
..
..
.. transitions to sound. In addition to the removal of the proscenium arch,
...
..
..
the shrinking of balconies and a general reduction in extravagant design,
..
..
..
the new desire for theatrical efficiency in the 1930s found expression in
..
..
..
the chair. Chair designers seized upon the opportunity to market the
..
.. appropriateness of their furnishings for the new theatres; Heywood-
..
61 Heywood-Wakefield ..
.. Wakefield advertised their theatre seats as deluxe and ‘acoustically correct’.61
..
.. Arguing in 1932 that the broader aspects of efficient seating design had yet
26 September 1931, p. 8.
..
.. to be fully addressed, Schlanger urged the integration of architectural ideals
..
..
.. of perfect vision with better chairs through analysis of
..
..
... ocular comfort. Bodily comfort. Size of screen and location of seats
..
..
..
.. therefrom. Areas most valuable for seats. Floor slopes in relation to
..
..
.. chair design. Minimum walking distance and stair climbing to reach
..
..
..
seats. Relationship of seating arrangement to the various elements of
..
62 Ben Schlanger, ‘Modern Seating ..
..
theatre design.62
and chair maintenance: VIII – an ..
..
architectural point of view’, ..
.. According to Schlanger, despite its importance for rethinking chair and
..
.. seating design, ocular comfort was too frequently ignored by exhibitors.
Motion Picture Herald, 4 June ..
1932, p. 16.
..
...
Yet he continues,
..
..
..
.. the patron does react to eye-strain [...] [and] the ordeal of adjusting the
..
..
.. eye to accommodate vision cannot be tolerated for more than a few
..
..
.. seconds by the spectator. An adjustment takes place in the position of
..
..
..
the whole body to relieve eye-strain in the front orchestra seats by
..
..
..
slumping down in the seat, or in balcony seats, by bending forward.
..
..
..
And so the factor of eye-strain is more directly related to the placing
63 Ibid.
..
..
..
and construction of seats than is generally assumed.63
...
..
..
..
Such a strong relationship between posture and eye-strain elucidates
..
..
..
comfort’s direct correlation with seating as well as its opposition to
..
.. labour – a strange erasure of earlier seating research from scientific
..
.. management’s approach to productive workflow. In order to achieve
..
..
.. ‘scientific seating’, backs must be correctly angled in relationship to the
..
..
.. floor slope as well as to the body’s need for support; presciently
...
..
..
Schlanger mused that the ‘enlarged screen will probably be the factor that
64 Ibid.
..
..
..
will soon force this problem to the attention of all those concerned’.64
..
.. The carefully calibrated combination of a massive screen, sound cinema
..
..
.. and seats that all ‘come within range of comfortable sight of the entire
..
.. screen’ could create a fuller cinematic illusion; for Schlanger,
..
..
..
..
..
..
bodily comfort is of the utmost importance in this respect, not only
..
..
..
because of the need for physical comfort, but also because bodily
..
... discomfort, which causes the spectator to move about in his seat, is
..
65 Ben Schlanger, ‘The screen: a ..
.. also a disconcerting factor in achieving the much desired illusion.65
problem in exhibition’, ‘Better ..
..
..
Theatres’ section of Motion .. Cinematic illusion required the spectator’s body to be incorporated into
..
Picture Herald, 24 October 1931, ..
.. the film experience, kept in place by a proper seat positioned in a proper
pp. 14–66. ..
.. location. And the entirety of cinematic illusion – immersion into the film
..
..
.. experience rather than the theatre experience – was of utmost importance
..
..
..
.. for the modernized theatre’s ideal spectator.
..
..
.. Alongside Schlanger’s call for greater efficiency and scientific analysis
...
..
..
in auditorium chairs, seating patterns and architectural design, theatre
..
..
..
chair producers began to focus on technological as opposed to just
..
..
..
stylistic innovations. From the 1930s onwards, upholstery furniture
..
.. producers experimented with chair mechanisms in order to provide
..
.. greater visibility and to minimize irritation for seated patrons. Luxury
..
..
.. chair producer Heywood-Wakefield advertised their products’ 1935
..
..
..
.. installation at the Ambassador Theatre in Baltimore as a way to smooth
..
..
.. audience movement, reduce inconvenient delays and function as ‘ready
..
..
...
eye guides’ to patrons looking for seats; their 1936 installation of
..
..
..
‘Streamline Seats’ at the Plaza in Stamford, Connecticut added ‘good
66 Heywood-Wakefield
..
.. modern styling’ and ‘quicken[ed] house traffic’.66 Similarly the
..
.. International Seating Corporation’s ‘V-16’ chair and its patented ‘rising
.. seat’ facilitated theatrical efficiency by allowing patrons to stand so other
16 November 1935, p. 2, and 17 ..
..
October 1936, p. 5. ..
.. viewers could enter the row.67 Evidenced by Heywood-Wakefield and
..
67 ‘New type chair’, ‘Better .. the International Seating Corporation’s marketing, the theatre chair of the
..
Picture Herald, 10 February 1934,
..
.. 1930s funneled spectatorship from body to eye to screen. Lushly padded
..
p. 25. ..
...
chairs encouraged reverie, both promoting repeat visits and soothing
..
..
..
spectators into an experience of relaxed, passive viewing. Ideal modern
..
..
..
seating should in fact be
..
..
..
.. so caressingly comfortable that the physical is completely forgotten
..
..
..
and the illusion created on the screen reigns supreme [...] Every seat is
..
..
..
filled by patrons who are entirely forgetful of surroundings, which is
..
..
..
the ideal condition of motion picture entertainment reception [...] Were
..
..
..
they not comfortably relaxed, even the most elaborate presentation
68 Ansel M. Moore, ‘Again seating ...
.. would not hold their interest.68
modernization moves ahead ..
..
..
smartly’, ‘Modern Theatres’ ..
..
Film, in short, could not do all the work; to create a proper narcotic effect
section of Boxoffice Magazine, 7 ..
.. the chair must sculpt the spectator’s body into a receptive position.
January 1939, p. 36. ..
.. Efficiency implied not merely streamlining the movement of spectators
..
..
.. but forming them all into the same shape, keeping them in place.
..
..
.. Industrially made chairs, each exactly the same, could similarly force
...
69 ‘History of the Kroehler Mfg. Co.’, ..
..
spectators into assembly-line versions of themselves, remade into
Folder ‘Timeline history of ..
..
..
duplicate parts of a larger cinematic machine.
Kroehler with pics’, Box 49, ..
Kroehler Manufacturing .. In 1937 the Kroehler Manufacturing Corporation, at the time the
..
..
Corporation Archives, Naperville .. world’s largest producer of upholstered home furniture, established its
..
Heritage Society (hereafter .. Public Seating Division and entered the theatre seating market with ‘the
..
Kroehler Archives). ..
.. world’s finest theatre chair’, its patented Push-Back Seat (figures 1
..
..
70 ‘Kroehler Celebrates 65th ..
.. and 2).69 As the first American manufacturer to introduce ‘divided
..
Anniversary’, Upholstering .. operations’ in the furniture factory assembly line, Kroehler had a history
..
Magazine, January 1958, Box 22, ...
Kroehler Archives. ..
..
of innovation in furniture production and industry practice, and held
..
..
..
substantial factory line systems employing thousands throughout the
71 ‘History of the Kroehler Mfg. Co.’;
..
.. USA.70 Operating factories in both Naperville and Kanakee, Illinois,
..
‘Reports-industry generated’, Box ..
.. Kroehler was a major force in the towns where its factories stood during
30, Kroehler Archives. ..
.. and after the Depression; by the third period of 1951, the Naperville
..
..
72 When Kroehler closed in 1978, .. headquarters employed 956 men and women on the factory floor,
..
..
managers discarded its corporate ..
.. while in 1959 the company as a whole employed 5959 factory and
history in dumpsters at the ..
Naperville factory site. Gathered
..
.. office workers.71 As the market dropped for relatively expensive
...
by enterprising employees and ..
..
domestic upholstered furniture during the Depression, Kroehler sought
other citizens of Naperville and ..
..
..
out new revenue streams, settling eventually on filling a need for better
currently held by the city’s ..
Heritage Society, the archives are ..
..
vision through mechanized seats in the movie theatre. Precisely why the
..
necessarily and unfortunately .. corporation made moves towards the movie industry, which was
..
incomplete; in particular, few ..
.. experiencing lower attendance and fewer theatres during the Depression,
records exist from the 1930s ..
when the Public Seating Division
..
.. remains somewhat unclear.72 But in 1909 its founder, P. E. Kroehler, had
..
was established. ..
.. patented a new form of folding davenport bed, whose popularity among
..
73 Folder ‘Timeline history of ..
.. the new, mobile, urban families requiring modular space-saving furniture
..
Kroehler with pics’, Box 49, ..
...
had brought fame to the company.73 Such a history of metal mechanism
..
..
production, combined with corporate and industrial infrastructure for
..
.. upholstery furnishings, undoubtedly laid the groundwork for Kroehler’s
..
..
.. Push-Back Seat; with the introduction of the Unifold and Duofold
..
.. davenport bed models, Kroehler Manufacturing’s founder showed a
..
..
.. canny comprehension of the needs of the American urban citizen in
..
..
..
.. modernity. P. E. Kroehler’s decades-long experience with flexible,
..
..
.. mechanical efficiency allowed him to seize on the latest trends, such as
..
..
...
modular objects and spaces, to great profit in both domestic and public
..
74 See, for example, ‘Why remodel? ..
..
markets. In addition, while far fewer theatres were built during the
..
An editorial’, pp. 11–154, and ..
..
Depression and World War II, many were being remodeled. Exhibition
Ben Schlanger, ‘II. The economics ..
.. journals often encouraged demoralized theatre owners to inject some
of theatre remodeling: material ..
.. vitality into their shabby auditoria with new carpeting, curtains, lighting
and construction costs’, ‘Better ..
..
Theatres’ section of Motion .. or comfortable seats, all of which were substantially cheaper than theatre
..
..
Picture Herald, 9 May 1931, ..
.. construction.74 Chair producers such as Heywood-Wakefield advertised
pp. 18–19. ..
75 Heywood-Wakefield Theatre
..
.. their models ‘for the owner and operator who desires to modernize his
..
Seating Catalog (Boston, MA: ..
...
interior without drastic and architectural change’.75 Stylish and comfortable
Walsh Press, ca. 1937). See ..
..
..
seats offered an illusion of luxury to make the theatre experience
‘Digital Treasures’, W. Joseph ..
Carr Collection, Mount ..
..
enticing for a public in dire financial straits, while their internal
..
Wachusett Community College, .. mechanisms highlighted a mid-century investment in factory-produced
..
<https://www. ..
.. innovations gleaming with the machine culture’s slick veneer.
digitalcommonwealth.org/search/ ..
.. Patented in December 1938 by engineer Merrill W. Hard, but credited
commonwealth:bk1292082> ..
..
accessed 5 July 2016. .. also to actor and inventor Alan Hale, Sr, the Kroehler Push-Back Seat
Fig. 1. Kroehler Push-Back Seat
advertising brochure, 1944.


patent, filed 1938.

...
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
...
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
Fig. 5. Kroehler Push-Back Seat ..
..
advertising brochure, 1939. ..
..
...
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
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...
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...
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..
Fig. 6. Kroehler Push-Back Seat ..
..
..
advertising brochure, 1939. ..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
..
featured a retraction unit allowing seated audience members to simply
... ‘push back’ with their feet on the floor in order to slide the seat
..
..
76 ‘Theater’s worst plague ended by ..
.. backwards while other attendees passed through the row (figures 3 and
..
new Kroehler seating system!’ ..
..
4).76 The chair therefore eradicated what Kroehler described as ‘Theater’s
pamphlet (1939), Folder ‘Push- ..
back theater seat promotional
..
..
Worst Plague’: the irritating need for seated spectators to move when
..
info and cover letter’, Box 30, ..
..
tardy audience members entered (figure 5). According to promotional
..
..
materials,
...
..
..
when occupied, the chair is designed to give the utmost comfort to all
..
..
..
types of people – tall or short – thin or fat. When anyone wishes to
..
..
..
pass, seat can be instantly retracted with slight thrust of feet [...]
..
.. Ample passing space is provided without rising. Retraction does not
..
.. reduce space in adjoining rows. When not occupied, seat
..
..
77 Ibid. ..
.. automatically retracts.77
..
..
..
..
..
As a result, the Push-Back Chair, the first theatre seat to ‘meet modern
..
... movie theatre operation’, allegedly provided the following benefits:
..
..
.. 1. No Waste Floor Space.
..
..
.. 2. No Standing.
..
..
.. 3. No Stepped-on Toes.
..
..
.. 4. No Aggravated Patrons.
..
..
..
5. Increased Vision.
..
..
..
6. More Comfort.
..
..
..
7. Greater Safety.
78 Ibid.
..
... 8. Bigger ‘Box Office’.78
..
..
..
.. While ‘Bigger Box Office’ was an arguable claim, one that Kroehler
..
..
.. suggested could be achieved by announcing the arrival of Push-Back
..
..
.. Seats on the theatre marquee, the Push-Back was a meeting point for
..
..
..
public and private discourse in 1930s cinemas and homes. Kroehler’s
..
..
..
advertising insisted not only on the convenience of the Push-Back Seat in
..
..
..
eliminating the so-called ‘“climbing-over” nuisance’ and streamlining
..
..
..
audience movement in the theatre, but also its usefulness in moving
..
.. audiences from the home to the theatre: ‘the new Push-Back Seats are
...
..
.. said to provide comfort that even goes the easy chair at home one better’
..
79 ‘Kroehler push-back seats ..
.. (figure 6).79
promotional packet, ready-to- ..
..
.. Compared to the domestic easy chair, however, the theatre chair
release publicity story’ (1939), ..
Box 30, Kroehler Archives.
..
..
offered not only equal comfort but idealized cinematic vision. The easy
..
..
..
chair, after all, was positioned by amateurs in the home, and in 1939 was
..
..
..
probably still in front of a radio. Yet the Push-Back, as in the Crim
..
..
..
Theatre in Kilgore, Texas, would be ‘scientifically installed so as to
..
.. assure its user of perfect vision, with the staggered seating arrangement
...
..
.. being employed so as to eliminate the obstruction of the person in
..
80 ‘Kroehler push-back seats promo- ..
.. front’.80 Whereas the home might signify intimacy, relaxation and the
tional packet, “New crim installs ..
..
.. presence of spouse and children, the movie theatre offered a rarified and
floating chairs”’, Box 30, Kroehler ..
Archives.
..
.. modern experience that was attending to – and reducing – the signs of the
..
..
..
pesky public. In the dark, in the Push-Back Seat, in a modern theatre,
..
..
..
Kroehler promised, all individuals, ‘tall or short – thin or fat’, could enjoy
..
..
..
equal treatment, equal comfort, a scientifically gauged visual experience
..
.. and a diminishment in the annoyance of noticing others sharing one’s
...
..
.. space. Yet to ‘go the easy chair one better’ also implied an immersive
..
..
.. private experience without the aggravations of family. The automated
..
..
.. ‘instinctive’ action of the Push-Back Seat quietly helped to usher in an
..
..
.. impression of cinematic reverie and of silence, bodily relaxation, relative
..
..
..
stillness and solitary contemplation while in public – the ultimate escape
..
.. from family and from the persistent sensations of life outside the cinema
...
81 ‘New retracting theater seat ..
..
or experiences outside of the eye, the ear and the mind.81 What consti-
minimizes annoyance’, ‘New ..
..
..
tuted ‘theater’s worst plague’ was, fundamentally, annoyance: the prickly
Equipment’ section of ..
Architectural Record, March .. environmental details that unpleasantly stimulated spectators’ nerves.
..
..
1939, p. 66. .. The body in half-repose in the Push-Back Seat, relieved to the greatest
..
.. possible extent from external realities of whirlpool crowds, jostling limbs,
..
..
.. cityscapes teeming with cacophonous noise or children clamouring for
..
..
..
.. attention, could fade into minimized sensation, pain-wished-gone,
..
..
.. physical ignorance and surrender.
...
..
..
The Push-Back’s production was on hold between August 1942 and
82 Kroehler Factory News, 25
..
..
..
April 1944 due to restrictions on steel during World War II.82 A redesign
February 1944 and 21 April 1944, ..
.. and relaunch of the chair occurred in 1944 to great success; 88,785 seats
..
.. were made and installed in 1947, while by 1951 Push-Backs were in-
..
.. stalled throughout the USA and Canada, as well as in Venezuela,
..
..
.. Lebanon and the United Nations Council Chamber at Hunter College in
..
..
83 ‘Letter to employees from D. L. ..
.. New York.83 Rhetoric surrounding the new chair, however, remained
..
Kroehler (Pres) on 28 February’, ..
.. similar to that of its predecessor. The new chair was ‘Smooth [...]
Folder ‘Correspondence re: ...
Company Policies 1937–1976, ..
..
Noiseless [...] the most important theater improvement since air
..
1949’, Box 21, Kroehler Archives; ..
..
conditioning’ and ‘designed to fit the normal, comfortable posture of the
Kroehler Factory News, April and ..
..
..
human body in a relaxed position’. Like the original Push-Back, ‘merely
October, 1951, Box 3, Kroehler ..
Archives; Kroehler Manufacturing .. relaxing the body brings it forward to its original seating position where
..
Corporation advertisement from .. it stays until the patron consciously retracts it again’, meaning that
..
..
..
Motion Picture Herald, 4 May ..
..
the Push-Back is the only theater chair that permits patrons to remain
1946, p. 7. ..
..
..
seated throughout the entire show. There is no standing up to let others
..
..
..
pass ... no stepped-on toes ... no dropped articles ... no being jostled
... around ... no aggravating annoyances. Other patrons suffer fewer
..
..
..
.. inconveniences, too. When people enter or leave rows in theaters
..
..
.. equipped with ordinary seats, all in the row must stand. This blocks
..
..
..
the vision of those behind. But, because there is no standing up with
..
..
..
Push-Back Seats, and because they also allow sufficient freedom of
..
..
..
movement for patrons to pass quickly and quietly, there is very little
..
..
..
interruption. Thus, all patrons can see the picture with practically no
..
..
..
obstructed vision [...] [and] leave their comfortable chairs at home for
84 ‘Theater Pushback Seats’, ...
.. the equally comfortable Push-Back Chairs.84
pamphlet, 15 November 1944, ..
..
..
Box 24, Kroehler Archives. ..
..
The revolutionary theatre chair operated with no interruption, with
..
.. silence and invisibility, both relaxing its occupant and keeping her still,
..
.. making her one part among many lulled into a mass cinematic dream
..
..
.. state and a public stupor of dulled physical sensation yet sharpened filmic
..
..
.. vision.
..
..
..
.. At once a meeting place between eye and body, and the representation
..
..
...
of exhibition’s tension between relaxation and focus, theatre chairs and
..
..
..
their placement aroused a curious ambivalence of approach: were they
..
..
..
required to be efficient, geared toward pristine optics, replacements for
..
.. the comforts of home, profit drivers, instruments for controlling the flow
..
.. of audience members, or all at once? A similar ambivalence accompanied
..
..
.. the reverse floor slope, an experimental seating and floor plan that
..
..
.. married relaxation and focus, and bore strange consonance with the
...
..
..
domestic easy chair. When paired with identical seats, the parabolic
..
..
..
reverse floor slope – introduced by Schlanger in 1931 and first put into
..
.. practical action in 1932 at the 300-seat Thalia Theatre at 95th and
..
..
.. Broadway in New York City – sought to account for poor optical
..
.. conditions in certain theatres by shifting the seating pattern, changing the
..
..
.. slope of the floor and maintaining identical audience bodily positions.
..
..
..
.. The plan called for placing the high point of the orchestra floor closer to
..
..
.. the screen than the auditorium, raising the screen above the eye-line of
...
..
..
the first row and simultaneously tilting the backs of the chairs on the
..
..
..
slope. Angling the back of the chair and seat at ninety-eight degrees on
..
.. the slope created a ‘correct and restful’ posture, while even body-weight
..
85 Frederic Arden Pawley, ‘Design of
..
.. distribution eliminated unequal wear.85 ‘By tilting the body backward’,
..
motion picture theaters’, ..
.. George Schutz explained,
Architectural Record, June 1932, ..
..
pp. 435–37. ..
..
..
and permitting the higher part of the floor in front of the seat to
..
..
..
support the feet, a comfortable position of the patron is sought which
..
... yet allows him to obtain a complete view of the screen without having
..
..
.. to raise his head from its natural position. The slope of the reversed
..
..
.. floor automatically establishes the proper pitch for the backs of the
..
..
.. seats in every row, eliminating the need for specially adjusted chair
..
..
..
backs and changes in the standards and leg supports of the chairs. All
..
..
..
chairs can then be exactly alike in every detail of construction. Instead
..
..
..
of designing differently constructed seats to fit a floor slope, as is now
..
..
..
necessary, the floor is designed to suit uniform seating. It is as though
..
..
..
the seats were placed in an ideal position for viewing the screen, the
86 ‘The reverse floor slope in ...
.. floor being built afterward to support the seats in the proper manner.86
practice’, ‘Better Theatres’ ..
..
..
section of Motion Picture Herald, .. ‘Ideal’, in this context, meant a spectator being able to see the entirety of
..
9 April 1932, p. 29. ..
.. the screen without distortion and being cradled, motionless, in a position
..
.. dictated by the architecture of the theatre and the infinitely repeatable
..
..
.. form of the chair. Specially designed chairs produced by Heywood-
..
..
..
.. Wakefield were installed in the Thalia, the dramatic new floor slope of
..
..
.. which required ‘new ideas in seating, sight lines, and chair construction’,
..
87 Heywood-Wakefield ..
...
according to an advertisement from 1932.87 Although the parabolic
..
..
reverse slope enjoyed relatively widespread exhibition coverage, its
4 June 1932, p. 21. ..
..
experimental status, potential expense and specificity of environmental
88 See ‘That ‘reverse slope’ – past
..
.. requirements restricted installation to select theatres for about a decade.88
..
and present’, ‘Better Theatres’ .. Yet its development and use in the 1930s and 1940s illustrated serious
..
.. exhibition interest in the echoes of optics in seating design; reverse slopes
24 August 1940, pp. 7–8. ..
..
.. implied the integration of both chair and eye into the very structural
..
..
..
.. integrity of the theatre, and the consideration of all parts of the theatre as
..
..
...
necessary components within a larger organic and cinematic machine. In
..
..
..
addition, the parabolic reverse slope implied a crossover between public
..
..
..
and domestic viewing spaces: although intended to improve sightlines
..
.. and thus increase focus on the screen, the reverse slope positioned its
..
.. spectator at a more supine angle. Like the easy chair, it encouraged the
..
..
.. spectator’s head to rest gently backwards, tilting slightly up; but chairs
..
..
..
...
..
..
on the reverse slope also promoted a relaxed physical sensation in order
..
..
..
to engage with deeper mental introspection.
..
.. Schlanger’s 1932 prediction that the enlarged screen would force
..
..
.. changes on seating patterns came to fruition during the widescreen
..
.. revolution. Widescreen’s physical and industrial dominance and an
..
..
.. increasingly urgent threat from television in the 1950s resulted in theatre
..
..
..
.. seats being touted as both supremely comfortable and encouraging of a
..
..
.. relaxed submission to the image. Alongside the new predominance of
...
..
..
television viewing and a lowered cinema attendance, exhibitors made
..
..
..
comparisons between living-room chairs and theatre chairs, leading to
..
.. the conclusion that perfectly projected pictures were not enough to
..
..
.. seduce patrons back. The theatre must both
..
..
..
..
..
supply every condition for fulfillment of the art that it offers [...] [and]
..
..
..
be equipped to allow the enjoyment of the art in the highest possible
..
..
..
comfort. Auditorium seating figures in both of these functions. As an
..
... arrangement of viewing positions it is a crucial element of the
..
89 ‘Comfort isn’t a luxury now – it’s ..
.. presentation machinery.89
a necessity’, ‘Better Theatres’ ..
..
..
..
In addition to competition from home comforts, seating construction was
3 September 1955, p. 11. ..
.. also dramatically affected by widescreen techniques. Prior to screen
..
.. advances, exhibitors argued that relatively small projection areas meant
..
..
.. more use of closeups to compensate for narrow seating patterns and
..
..
..
.. spectatorial distance from the image; given widescreen’s use of long and
..
..
.. wide shots, seating patterns must similarly be changed. New larger pictures
..
..
... eliminate the necessity of such heads bereft of bodies and the scenic
..
..
..
.. material which gives them meaning, allowing instead a more
..
..
.. naturalistic technique of narration. Every spectator should be given the
..
..
..
conditions which allow him, if his faculties permit, to experience, from
..
..
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his seat in a theatre, the feelings which the director desired him to
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have. The picture should have such realism that the audience lives
..
..
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through its time in front of the screen as a witness in the environment
..
..
..
of the performance. Effective obstructions to its view of the screen,
... and intrusions upon its perception of the scene, defeat the purpose of
..
..
..
.. the new technological effort [...] For the performance to dominate the
..
..
.. field of vision and give a high sense of ‘presence’, the audience must
..
90 Gio Gagliardi and George Schutz, ..
.. be as close to the screen as practical requirements permit.90
‘What wide-screen technique is ..
..
doing to the seating plan’, ‘Better .. Discourses of widescreen ‘domination’ in the 1950s provide further
..
..
.. evidence that a passive form of spectatorship had been embedded in the
Picture Herald, 3 September ..
1955, pp. 13–24.
..
.. structure of the auditorium’s interior design for decades. Looming above
..
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...
its spectators, the movie screen became a monumental, overpowering
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force, yet one that mimicked real life perception. In 1953, Schlanger
..
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analyzed quotidian visual experience as threefold:
..
..
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.. (1) With no, or very little, movement of the eyes or head; (2) with
..
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movement of the eyes and/or the head [in which the subject does not
..
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feel conscious of the movement]; (3) with eye, head and sometimes
...
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body movement, consciously, to cover a wide range, which may even
..
..
..
be as much as full circle coverage [a turn-around]. The greatest part of
..
..
..
visual experience falls within the second group, with the next largest
91 Ben Schlanger, ‘Theatres and the
..
.. falling in the third.91
..
new techniques’, ‘Better ..
..
..
Based on this breakdown of visual experience, theatres should create
Picture Herald, 5 September ..
..
..
realistic perception by limiting the spectator’s head movement; thus, as in
1953, p. 12. ..
..
..
the 1930s, the domination of the gigantic image and relaxing yet
..
... structured seats led to a regulation of the spectator’s inactive body to
..
..
.. release her vision into the filmic ether. ‘Visual acuity’ was produced not
..
..
.. just by film projection but by audience positioning. In this way, mid-
..
..
.. century American movie theatres embraced a spectatorial culture of
..
..
.. immersion and submission, evoking, decades in advance, both Baudry’s
..
..
..
ideologically encapsulated spectator and Steven Shaviro’s account of
..
..
..
cinema’s pleasures, its mimetic properties and the tangible physical and
92 See Steven Shaviro, The
..
..
..
identity-effacing effects it has upon its viewer.92 Through the dual
Cinematic Body (Minneapolis, ..
... influence of massive screen and structuring chair, the auditorium and its
MN: University of Minnesota ..
Press, 1993), p. 52.
..
.. attendant objects formed an engine of passivity that anaesthetized
..
..
.. spectators. Little surprise, then, that the rhetoric of domination through
..
..
.. closeness to the screen would increase in volume with the onset of home
..
..
.. viewing, one of the first major crises for exhibition; the placating effects
..
..
..
of the easy chair were simply too effective on their own. Yet the theatre
..
..
..
chair was still redolent of a humming machinery, of the delicate network
..
..
..
upholding the primacy of the screen, and of the sweet sublimity of being
..
..
..
one cog among many activating cinematic immersion.
... Peter Kubelka’s infamous ‘Invisible Cinema’, replete with hooded
..
..
..
.. seats designed for a fully immersive experience, opened at Anthology
..
..
.. Film Archives in 1970 – the year that Baudry’s ‘Ideological effects of the
..
..
.. basic cinematographic apparatus’ essay first appeared in Cinéthique –
..
..
..
and closed in 1974 – the year that Film Quarterly published it in Alan
..
93 Peter Kubelka, ‘The invisible ..
..
Williams’s English translation.93 To once again recall Elsaesser’s view of
cinema’, Design Quarterly, no. 93 ..
..
..
theory as the funeral of practice, perhaps both Kubelka’s artworld
(1974), ‘Film Spaces’, pp. 32–36. ..
..
..
cinephilia and Baudry’s sparking of a theoretical turn elegized a certain
... mode of spectatorship. The chair’s transition from luxury to
..
..
..
.. mechanization to secondary stand-in for the pleasures of home viewing
..
..
.. speaks to the progression of our relationship to the screen, to theatrical
..
..
.. surroundings, and to the messages we accept when we watch a film.
..
..
..
Unlike the myriad places in which we consume digital media, the mid-
..
..
..
century theatre seat spoke to a desire for commonality in erasure, for
..
..
..
universality in efficiency and for immersion in repetition. Its unspoken
..
..
..
contract was that to give oneself over to the chair, to be consumed by
... the screen, was to join a multitudinous state of cinephilic rapture.
..
..
..
.. In ‘On the mimetic faculty’, Benjamin describes how ‘the nexus
..
..
.. of meaning of words or sentences is the bearer through which, like
..
..
.. a flash, similarity appears’. Humans, he explains, have an innate
..
..
..
talent for mimesis. They find similarities in nature and, prior to language,
..
..
..
‘read what was never written’ in animal entrails or the movements of
...
94 Walter Benjamin, ‘On the mimetic ..
..
the stars.94 Such earlier mimesis passed through language, and eventually
faculty’, Selected Writings 1931– ..
..
..
effaced the word’s attachment to sensuousness and magic. Theories of
1934, ed. Michael William ..
Jennings, Howard Eiland and .. spectatorship have looked to versions of this mimetic inclination to
..
..
Gary Smith (Cambridge, MA: .. explain the enigma of film’s seductive power, particularly in terms of the
..
Harvard University Press, 1999), .. image’s bodily draw. Yet we might also look to theatrical space and, in
..
p. 722. ..
.. particular, physical position in the auditorium as the gateway between
..
..
..
.. body and eye, and as a structuring force in spectatorial projection.
..
..
.. Stillness arises not just from the artificial movement of images on the
...
..
..
screen, but from the very architecture of the theatre, from the chairs that
..
..
..
attempt to maintain us in passive denial of our bodies. Our theatres,
..
.. haunted by mid-century ideals, still subtly foster spectatorships of proj-
..
..
.. ected minds and complacent bodies on which they can act like a drug.
..
.. And like a narcotic, film provides its subject in repose with the promise of
..
..
.. a momentary release, with the opportunity to experience something past
..
..
..
.. the richness of the sensual world, past the nervousness of everyday life. If
..
..
.. we still take pleasure in the theatre’s promise of escape through enforced
...
..
..
bodily passivity, then perhaps we learn to do so by the ready guides that
..
..
..
hold us in our assigned and identical places. The auditorium chair has long
..
..
..
been a product of cinematic, cultural, economic and phenomenological
..
.. discourse, and a tool of identification that shows us how to be alike in our
..
.. stillness, in our forgetfulness of our bodies, in our projections towards the
..
..
.. screen. Its modest nature camouflages its work as a manifestation of, and a
..
..
..
.. rationale for, Baudry’s dispositif and our cinephilic nostalgias. If we look
..
..
.. back, we might uncover exhibition’s long-standing insistence that film
..
..
...
alone does not act upon us; so do the unnoticed elements of inanimate
..
..
..
spectatorship that sit beside and around us, silently, in the dark.
..
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.. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers and the editors at Screen, Bryan Ogg at Naper Settlement and Richard Leson.
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Cinematic Chair

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253 Screen 57:3 Autumn 2016

Fig. 2. Kroehler Push-Back Seat

Fig. 3. Kroehler Push-Back Seat

Fig. 4. Kroehler Push-Back Seat

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