Cinema’s image-reduction for commercial purposes blocks genuinely revolutionary film

Evidence

Cinema is, after all, the supreme maker and manipulator of images for commercial purposes, and the very act of using it well always entails reducing the complex stories of daily life to a sequence of images upon a depthless screen. The idea of a revolutionary cinema has always run aground on the rocks of exactly this difficulty. — David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 2039

Categorization

• XREF: Echoes the medium-determinism debates the reader knows from communication/media theory — the form itself resists the content’s liberatory aim. — connects to: Cinematic montage compressing a life symbolizes humanity’s reduction to administrable elements — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 642; Commercial tax motivations can subsidize radical avant-garde film — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York…, 36; Underground 1960s cinema deliberately courted technical failure and raw realness (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Commercial tax motivations can subsidize radical avant-garde film #qualifies (0.75) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 36
• Underground 1960s cinema deliberately courted technical failure and raw realness #exemplifies (0.72)
• The underground film scene defined itself against respectable cinema verité #responds-to (0.72) — J. Hoberman, Everything Is Now, 464