Reflections on Practices of Looking

The Panopticon and Diorama compared to modern cinema:

The Panopticon, a building designed to illuminate what was happening in cells of a prison, was created to show the truth of what was happening without revealing the viewer. In opposition to the Panopticon, the Diorama was designed to create illusions for the viewer. In modern cinema these two concepts, though seemingly polar opposite in purpose, are combined to take the viewer to other worlds that maybe complete fiction of similar to life but yet are not actual reality. Yet the viewer in unseen by what is being viewed, they are free to move about and comment without the fear of being judged or seen. So although the modern cinema is like the Panopticon in that the viewer in unseen by the viewed, it is more like the Diorama because what is being viewed is not reality. What is being viewed is a recording, and what was recorded was chosen by someone else.



Panoramas and the patrons of today:

Preceding the Diorama and introduced to the public just after the Panopticon was theorized, the Panorama was a 360-degree painting intended to make the viewer feel displaced. It was a popular form of entertainment, particularly for those who couldn’t afford to travel. A patron of a panorama could walk around and view as many different vantages as he desired, but over time, as forms of entertainment became more realistic, viewers were constrained to seats. There is even less demand on the viewer from a mental standpoint, because the more real something appears, the less work the brain has to do to suspend its disbelief.

With vast improvements to special effects, movies have constantly raised the bar of realism over recent years. Watch a movie from the 1950’s like Brigadoon or Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and it’s painfully obvious that those mountains or heather-covered heaths are painted on a backdrop just meters from the actors. Some thirty years later, a movie-goer can believe without a visual doubt that those actors are on the Titanic or in World War Two. Yet with all this believability, there is a desire in some visual culture consumers to see something that the mind is less ready to accept.

For example, Disney’s first full-length animated feature in 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, is still recognized as one of the hundred greatest American films of all time. It was wildly successful, and even though it is now possible to reach new heights of realism with computer animation, there is still a large fan base for traditional animation, so obvious in its artificiality.

It is also interesting to note a certain “artistic” trend to major motion pictures, a bit of artificial flair. This is evident from films like the Matrix, The Cell, Kill Bill, Sin City... The list goes on. The reception of these movies generally is proof that people are looking for the fantastic, the deliberately deceitful. After all, it’s entertainment, pure and simple--it’s just $11.95 now instead of a tuppence.

Extra link: Stephen Wiltshire drawns a panorama of Rome from memory

- Sydne Smith, Chelsea Schulz