문화사 지향의 새로운 역사학 –‘영화의 문화사’를 위한 시론

Abstract

As the prominent social and cultural historian Peter Burke expressed it accurately, all histories are now on the road for the cultural history. His clear estimation applies to the film history realm, too. This paper aims to examine critically the conventional film historiography since 1945. Such careful consideration to its problems can give us possibilities to describe the cultural history of film more deeply. In order to realize this aim, we take a critical look at the main tendencies of the traditional film history researches. For example, the historical studies of the Third Reich film have characteristics to put value mainly on the film text analysis and to include partly the various aspects of the cinema in the Nazi Germany, but relatively to overlook the importance of the cinema-goers at that times. Beyond the present limitations of the film history studies the film culture history moves toward a total film history by the weight shifting from the production-focusing film history to the consumer-focusing film history, from the macro film history to micro film history and from the film history from above to the film history from bottom. The new change of the old paradigm certainly brings about the horizontal enlargement of the new film history which could be a matrix for a total film history. Kinogeschichte in German language realm is now used narrowly as the history of cinema, but it needs its conceptional revival because the word originally meant the history of film culture other than film history. From this viewpoint Kinogeschichte can be understand as a combination of three dimensions, i.e. film history, cinema history and cinema audiences history. If Kinogeschichte will be a total film culture history, it should put these dimensions together into one spot. So then it is also important to take into account how Kinogeschichte can be methodologically executed. Here we can examine closely three cases which are mostly connected with the new currents of New Cultural History - historical anthropology, micro-history and Alltagsgeschichte. In brief, historical anthropology is very useful to investigate the various figures of film. Because it pays attention to the identity in flux, it can draw a conclusion that film text should be analysed by all means in the historical context which can also be changed in time. Secondly, micro history is proper to inquire the spacial meaning of the cinema as a small-sized place which is always united with the macrocosm. Thirdly, Alltagsgeschichte is appropriate for analysing the audience' movie visiting practice and his film taste. If three dimensions of the history of film culture can be simultaneously considered with the three methods, then the total film culture history comes true. In this meaning, we can listen such plentiful sounds from the little ordinaries of film culture life, as Walter Benjamin heard it, and then we should finally rescue all histories of film culture from the past's list which waits for the Messiah with impatience.