Cinema is built for consumption rather than for contemplation

The argument

A second argument that cinema is not art concerns the kind of attention it is built to receive. Proponents of this position argue that a film arrives complete, moves at a speed the viewer does not set, and is designed to be absorbed in a single sitting without pause or re-reading. A painting can be stood in front of for an hour; a book can be put down, gone back over, read against itself. A film, on this view, does the interpretive work for the audience by choosing what is seen and when, which leaves the viewer following rather than attending, and discourages the slow, active, repeatable engagement that proponents take to be constitutive of an encounter with art. The second strand concerns what the medium is for. Proponents argue that cinema was commercial from its origins, developed as a fairground and music-hall attraction, and has always been priced, timed and located for mass consumption. What it sells is diversion: a few hours out of one's own life, with the discomforts resolved before the credits. On this account the resemblance to art lies at the level of technique, while the function, relief from the day rather than reflection on it, is the function of an amusement. Proponents accept that individual films exceed this and that some are made with no commercial intention at all. Their claim is that these are departures from what cinema is, in the way a hand-built car is a departure from the motor industry, and that the exceptions no more make the industry an art form than ornament makes advertising one.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Those who hold that cinema is art dispute both halves. Films are in fact re-watched, paused, studied shot by shot and argued over for decades, so the claim that the medium forecloses active attention describes a cinema seat rather than the works. On the second point they argue that origins do not determine status: the novel began as cheap serial entertainment and the theatre as popular spectacle, and both are now treated as art without embarrassment. A medium's commercial beginnings, they argue, tell you how it was funded rather than what it is capable of.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Films are in fact paused, re-watched, studied shot by shot and taught, so the single uninterrupted sitting describes one way of watching rather than a property of the medium. [Rejecting P2] Controlling sequence and duration does not foreclose active attention: music and theatre also unfold at a pace the audience does not set and are not thereby reduced to consumption. [Rejecting P3] Commercial origins do not fix a medium's character, as the novel and the theatre both began as cheap popular entertainment and are now treated as art without difficulty. [Rejecting C] The premises describe typical conditions of viewing and funding, from which nothing follows about whether the works are art.