Representing the Public of the Cinema’s Public Sphere

The emergence of Hollywood cinema is a significant moment in the history of modern media’s role in the changing conditions of equal participation in rational discourse idealized by Jürgen Habermas from eighteenth-century bourgeois public life (Habermas 1989; 2006 (2001, 1989)). On the one hand, as Miriam Hansen notes, ‘For Habermas, the industrial dissemination of cultural products is structurally incompatible with the possibility of public discourse’ (Hansen 1991, 11). On the other hand, John Durham Peters reminds that ‘Membership in a collective whose scale rules out face-to-face interaction or acquaintance, such as the nation, needs representation or some mediating fiction of the whole’ in order ‘to allow a common backdrop for participation’ (Peters 1993, 565). The modern public sphere depends on representations of the public as a necessary precondition, but such representations seem inevitably inscribed in practices of private economic considerations. This situation not only complicates theories of communication and rational—critical debate premised upon face-to-face encounters, but it also complicates the process by which private individuals can participate in the public sphere. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Bourgeoisie · Epistemology · Face (sociological concept) · Hollywood · Inscribed figure · Media studies · Movie theater · Political science · Politics · Private sphere · Public sphere · Representation (politics) · Social science · Sociology · Visual arts · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Mathematics · Media Studies and Communication · Philosophy

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  Open Access•Shawn Shimpach•The Handbook of Media Audiences•2011

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