Edited by lw | RLU SP RY 4, AGNESmF 10 THE FASHION FILM EFFECT marketa uhlirova ‘digital age’ has brought about considerable shifts in how fashion today is produced, repre- ert coreane frm to eryaize amidst chest transformations isthe fashion Sle WHEE TE thowing fashion through the moving image (and sound) is hardly news th ee enor fashion film as a widespread form driven and controlled by the fashion industry bs “only gained momentum ia the last decade. Just astwentieth-century fashion lene itself a pone oe rina by photography andthe Fashion show, twenty fist-cencury brands now Keen CN, racing eacsthtiizations. So much so that he fashion journalist Suzy Men} a 010: 1) Tecenly declared that movies have become the hottest new fashion aceon forthe YouTabe ggncraion. At fist glance, ‘acosory’ seems a fing way t0 Pot iene prow, ln not quite vital to the system, and it remains to be seen ificever ‘will be. Film is unlikely or al e photography’s dominant position as the most convenient visual mode of representation! ae aa Tey thefachion media. Yet, together with email, websites, e-commere, Sosa! Met blogging, live streaming and ocher dynamic forms of digital communication and excl ge th fashion film has already reshaped the industry in more than one way, and this seraon| 7 much ongoing. The moving image has proven os bean ener lees to 01 oO “ resentation because it has a capacity to open fashion ro a pet rmarive limension with ad rent Hind of sensorial and Sxprienial complexity. The fashion fil is s0 ubiquitous and seingy n= dispensable today that one imagines the a sf abet eh wo =e ® a ; Shi Stem (1967). Hle could hardly afford to ignore ‘moving image clothing’ 25 an al Fie ee from “real clothing’, Sritten clothing’ and (static) ‘image- a\sthing. Fashion films recent proliferation on the Incenet and beyond fas demanded hat we Ty rethink what role the moving image can play within fashion, and it has, arguably also simi historical impact of cinema on the fashion industry (and practice of s! enon of the seinvigorated a critical interest in the vice versa). In an attempt to better understand this fashion film phenomenon, itis perhaps unavoidable ro first ask about its legitimacy as a genre and how such a category might be conceptualized in what is a rather chaotic field, Elsewhere I have outlined a brief, introductory history of the fashion film asakind of cinema, linked to the fashion industry, that during the course of the twentieth-century evolved in many different modes and eventually exploded with the development of digital technol- ‘gies. Such a history isto act asa reminder that the rhetoric of newness that often accompanies the contemporary fashion film is not always justified. In that spirit, I have also suggested some ways of framing the fashion film in a broader sense, within intermedial practices and discourses of fashion, cinema, artand the new media (Uhlirova 2013). Ar the heart of my enquity here is the question of ‘what film can do for fashion that other media and forms cant. Rather than attempting to interpret individual works in any depth, I consider the recent fashion film phenomenon more globally, as a social, cultural and technological construction and a field that stems from the collective more than any particular individual's contribution. I will explore some of the specificities of the ‘ilm effec’ especially asic forms a synergy of sorts with the fashion effect’, and link these to che conditions of viewing in the ‘digital age’.' Because the fashion film has asserted that movement and chythm are among the key instruments of imaging contemporary fashion, it may be particularly illuminating to compare its aesthetic strategies with those of some subgenres in early cinema which, over 100 ‘years ago, first foregrounded the performance and the experience of costume in motion. J would argue that as an institutionalized culeural form, the fashion film had a curiously delayed emergence. Although it had existed in different guises throughout the twentieth century—the very label “fashion film’ was already used in connection with Pathé newsreels in 1911 (The Bioscpe, quoted in Leese 1976: 9}—it finally achieved a ‘cultural fi? anc widespread adoption by the fash- jon industry in the 2000s. ‘Thus my focus here on the fashion film in the 2000s is noc arbitrary. To frame the phenomenon this way proposes to understand it, firstly, as a form that is generated and ‘quintessentially owned by the fashion industry—fulfilling almost exclusively its ereative and busi- ness needs—and, secondly, asa form that should be situated within the context of the digital tech- nologies with which ic has largely been produced and disseminated. ‘This means acknowledging that rather than the origination and development of a form, itis the process of its solidification within certain conditions of its diffusion that amounts to a transformative cultural and social force. The electronic and, increasingly, digital technologies effected crucial changes in the practices of exhib- icing and accessing film material, dispersing fashion-as-moving-image in multiple contexts, from the common practice of recording fashion shows for documentation, to television, fashion retail, exhibitions and events. Buc it was the growing accessibility of the Internet, combined with its i creasing capacity to store and play audiovisual content, that made the fashion film finally enter the public consciousness as a distinct category of both the fashion image and the moving image. Key to this change was the placement of the fashion film in various ‘online archives’ (be they participatory or curated) that can be freely accessed at any time. Arguably the first and most important such online platform has been Nick Knight and Peter Savillés SHOWstudio, which has since 2000 produced and diffused the fashion film globally, exploring aesthetic possibilities and establishing conventions of this Internet ‘gente’. The fashion film, then, has come into its own at a time when the very tech- nologies and the spectatorial experience of the filmic and the cinematic were being transformed by the technologies and viewing/user modes of the electronic and especially the digital—a time that Steven Shaviro has characterized a ‘witnessing the emergence of a different media regime’ (2010: 2). THEFASHIONFILMEPFECT / 19 'er THE FASHION FILM AS A GENRE? Asa heterogeneous ctl foam with no lel predefined stylists or convecons, the fxhon i des any aempe ata nection a ere Fol pation ls ane ed ona ange of flmmaking techniques frm stop-motion and computer animations vaiowly proceed Inaction forage and combinations thee thy have borowst and fen coms bined-—conventions of other genres and modes of production, including music vi fo aan gad and experimental cinema, video art dcamentay fim, dance flm and commercial dey ha ranged rom non-atratet those that have (usally basi) narrative sealing: chey have in cluded a whole spectrum of approaches from mimetic representation t its simulation abe ton. They have varied rom big budget vitalyno-budget produsions, fom commisions by brands individ, fs-oating plese they have been made by individuals aswel a tam of experienced ishion imagemake, makers aniatrs and posiprodustion speci asion fins hae eon sated hough wide range of spaces rel and vil, mos rosin on websites bt aio in fin show tents, cinemas, masums, galleries and retail enironment. Ex ratory and vis ctv ins have cessed alongside ims that adop more stand Journalistic formats—inerviews and profiles, reportage on the catwalk, backstage, beau andthe red carpet—which are now integral to online fashion and lifestyle magazines such as Vigo, Elecom oT Magan. hse pes ofthe shion moving image—proif ven mui: nal ad sovguted a they areas the great mugen and dvi ‘moving image in the ‘digital age’. But are they all Yashion films? — Pethape characeritialy for a form that didnt devel in any progeammatc way one that Xe spoken for bya single collective—the fishion film and the debate about it are surround by seen 7 dnat exactly consticues it.The by certain mesines, ith 2 sapgetng pri of views ao what exactly consis, ‘more secure its place is within the fashion industry (that, for one, is hard to argue ithe more auestion mas ee to hover oer ts definition and is plice within ch ors of cinema a then media. Given shat he major of hon ls ate shot produced and ccltd igly can weil cmd the fiona par ofthe cinema triton’ As the new media theorist Le Mavic 2001 302-3) noe gly produced ina sin essence paoters gaphic and ancl les ast based on pei eles (hich as naman, aglycone sre and maple rer an he inde, phrogap bie lief of cine rope the fishio la, hen, a fom of dig or econ cinema, with its new aes derived not oy from the possibile of the elecwonc image butalo fom the new viewing experenss of he cootemprary moving image cule? Orit premature to overemphase th depart of he dig tal from the (analogue) cinematic, to see it as a rupture with the old rather chan its srs mation and consnsaton,epecally the eo atest profoundly interovined ad hybrids? Somevhatpretiab there are ao he familiar et-and-commercedigrsment, des the fashion film hae aretimeris or sijustanewknd of Goxmulae) adverts? Hast developed Scones language towards new aster o° scl pss, ors forthe os pare Fl filing he pecodedFucions ofthe ‘appartses) ® The proximity ofthe son fm avr ings pac hard to unpack ven tha the ctegory ofthe fashion lin scm: ob early applied to more direct kinds of advertising and, at the same time, to work that is demonstrably tnore invested in authoral expression than in generating promotional benefits for products or OJ MARKETAUHLIROVA brands, The fashion film doesnt always blatantly implicate the viewer as consumer and has, gener. ally. a greater degree of autonomy from the fashions it displays or connotes a it is less concerned with social and psychological processes of identification, persuasion and reassurance than is the case in more conventional advertising. And therein precisely les its appeal for brands who are certainly not blind to the new marketing trends that eschew conventional advertising in favour of more authentic experience, The fashion film thus sits somewhere on the margins of conventional advertising, and where it isa promotion, ie remains less direce and less governed-—perfecty in tune with an increasingly media-savvy spectator/user who is in control of what to view and how. One thing is certain: the fashion film enters a value system where it is considered on its own terme, hile, in an inverted logic, it becomes a commodicy to be consumed in its own right” Failing to establish a clear corpus of the fashion film by such crtetia as formal and physical Properties, mode of production and effet, could we classify ie by its most obvious property —its subject matter? Even that is not so simple. Through numerous interviews conducted with faohion image-makers and commentators including Diane Pernet, Adam Mufti, Kathryn Ferguson and Hywel Davies, the journalist Kirsty Blake Knox (2010) has shown that chere was no clear consen- sus as to whether the fashion film’ ‘raw material’ was fashion at all, Indeed, ‘atmosphere videos’ that accompany fashion shows are not necessarily of or about fashions they only begin to signify fashion in the right context. Although rarer, this can also be tue for stand-alone promotional films. One of the most stiking recent examples isthe short animation Wonderwood (2010), made by the Brothers Quay to promote Comme des Gargons’ fragrance of the same name. The ‘allegori- cal’ animation may have been made in direct reponse to the product which it was to promote the Quays took the perfumes smell as their point of departure and tried ro evoke the lush enence of an enchanted wood—but it showed nothing identifiable as fashion’ * Such practice of subordinating and even completely abandoning the fashion subject is certainly nothing nev, as it already became standard in fashion photography in the previous decades,’ When Barthes wrote about fashion photography in the 1960s, he argued it was a distinet genre possessing its own unique lexicon and syntax (1983). By chelate 1980s, however, this view became increasingly dlificult to sustain, for fashion photography had become highly hybridized—dired’ with a grow ing stock of ‘alien’ photographic genres and styles. Two major exhibitions which commented on this fendency within contemporary feshion photography, Chie Clicks (ICA Boston, 24 January-5 May 2002) and Fashioning Fiction in Photography Since 1990 (MoMA, 16 April-28 June 2004) made the same point: in the 1990s, fshion photography no longer strove to full its ‘principal’ task to lustrate che proper subject of fashion, the ‘theater of clothing’ (Lipovetsky 2002: T10), Instead, the Phorographers self-expression and exploration came tobe valued more highly, especially by the more brogressive fashion and lifestyle magazines such as Purple, i-D, Self service and Dutch, This shi, it as argued, made fashion photography come closer to the contemporaty lived realty (Lipovetsky 2002; Kismaric and Respini 2004) while also becoming more and mote artlike (Lehmann 2002; Kismaric and Respini 2004)—hence (it was implied) its rightful place in fine at establishments. Tike fashion photography, the fashion film appears to be something of an ubergenre, an um- brella term that accommodates, and breaks down the boundatics of, a great variety of existing Bentes. Such openness of parameters and a genuine sense of exploration of possibilities arc also actively encouraged by the various platforms that commission and exhibit it, keen as they are to emphasize the value of artistic originality. Ar the same time, the fashion film is, inevitably, THEFASHIONFILMEFFECT / el ’ee ‘i i s of of acceptance and institurionalization—of‘stabilifsing] its own ways 0 i | institution’ as ‘a coordinated complex of ob- his kind of self-management and self- the ‘mainstream undergoing @ process : being and doing’—while also becoming a ‘social jects, behaviours and expectations’ (Casseri 2009: 59). Th regulation of the fashion film hs been especially apparent since is snes Teeveen 2008 and 2010, with fashion joutnalists and big brands becoming ine reas gly impor- tans agents to coshape the Fld and the discourse. If we accept the fashion film as a genre, we Have ts accepea notion oF a gente not as stati sex of stylistic or material commonalities but as an ever-evolving historically bound category which is fluid and ac cimes ever! self-contradictory. “Arguably, the fashion film is most coherently bound by its belonging ro the fashion industry and by its (multiple) functioning within it, Ultimately, however, the methodological question remains of how inclusive or exclusive the fashion film as @ gente should te IE is tee to aranvare exploratory production led by visual effects, as I am inclined co apply i we sity oot TE on i embed cegieebi hhow are we to think of what is left behind? If, con- rely, iv includes all the journalistic formats that are being produced, lesving only fashion a 4 vernon eur just how useful can che caregory be ro any understanding and inrerpreasion of it? THE FASHION FILM EFFECT Since so many fashion filmmakers havea background in the fishion industey: and so have culti- vated specialist knowledge and an appreciation of clohing and accessories, hardly surprising ‘hat they are largely motivated by the desire ro demonstrate how these ate made, to show the com- plexities of their detail and functionality. As Nick Knight noved about one of his frst films, Steet he wanted t0 show how much effort, and even pain, goes inro making 2 single dress | wanted cic i a a na fm nw ae fe ht aon etrmatlydisposable—but Ii lucky enough to be able o work with people who prove thete’s more to i than cha. (quoted in Frankel 2000) Similarly, Ruth Hogben ssid of her 2009 collaboration with Gareth Pugh (Figure 10.1): makle] sure people can see the clothes. The clothes are just as Youve gor co uy and Ye Bo aeons rey ha ee what he eles 26 what " : ms Sn Bradley 2009) theyre made out of and how they move. (quoted in Ferguson 01, Frame enlargements rom Gareth Pugh autumn/vinter 2009.6 Ruth Hogben / Art + Commerce 2 / MARKETAUHLIROVA In adidactic sense, then, film can direct attention, show a multiplicity of angles, illustrate a way of folding or magnify detail. Crucially ic can also re-present clothing,as a living organism. As Hogben. observed: [Pugis] clothes are not about one simple siovement (walking up and down the runway). ‘As you saw in the film, che big coat changes form and becomes a kind of ladybird. I chink ic was ceally exciting for him to be able to see in more than one vay (quoted in Ferguson and Bradley 2009) But such notions of film as a moving study or illustration of fashion are only part of the story. Equally important is films capacity to extend the properties of physical garments into new mental spaces where experimental effecs of impressionisic and poctic cinema play a significant role—as do the qualities of sound and rhythm, And for this, the predisposition of digital cinema asa paint- erly medium is ideal. Hogben's own work transforms live footage of dressed bodies in motion into ‘multilayered imagery, synchronizing visual rhythms with musical ones. Such an approach char- acterizes the fashion film as a simultaneous exploration of the properties of cinema and fashion. Film transports the sartorial into a persuasive illusory world that has the dual effect of offering new knowledge and defamiliarizing, Film furnishes different experiences and at the same time poses dif- ferent spectatorial demands. As it moves, it also moves the spectator. “The fashion film's emphasis on the display of clothing in motion echoes that of early cinema's sctpentine dance and the tric film of the late 1890s and early 1900s. Iewas the serpentine dance in particular, as filmed at Edison Manufacturing Company, Gaumont, Pathé-Fréres, American Muco- scope and Biograph and other companies, that most prominently centred on costume as a fitting physical manifestation of motion and time (Gunning 2002; Lista 2006a: 353~7, 20066; Ublirova 2011). A distince subgente of ‘dance subjects, it capitalized on the international stage successes of the American dancer Loie Fuller, mechanically reproducing the swirling and undulating move- ments of many of her imitators (that included Annabelle Whitford Moore, Crissie Sheridan, Tere- sina Negei and Bob Walker). In these shore films, costume became a visualization of continuity—it presented itself in a petmanent state of flux, with shapes chythmically appearing and disappearing, momentarily ‘solidifying’ into flowers, waves, whirls or flames (Figure 10.2). Fuller herself had emphasized the constant metamorphosis of forms with the use of coloured lights and other stage effects, and similarly, the serpentine films were typically enhanced by colouts, applied by hand or, later, stencilling. Following Fuller, cinema embraced costume as a device that can mesmerize and hypnotize the spectator, a dramatic and radiant entity with a potential for engendering multiple forms and op- tical effects, Cinema proved that it could mimic, more or les successfully, che spectatorial plea sure of Fuller's distinct choreography of effervescent, ever-evolving form. Costume, movement and time appeared to form an indivisible unity in the serpentine dance, and through the provean ‘els of the earliest films, cinema already ancicipated its capacity to not only record (register) but also generate imagery. This interest in costume as a site of instability and constant transformation continued in Georges Mélits’s and Pathé’s trick films and ‘éerics” such as The Wonderful Living Fan (Le Mervellews évental vivant, Mélits, 1904), Rajals Casker (LEerin de najab, Gaston Yo 1906) and Transformation (Métempsycose, Segundo de Chomén, 1907), where the physica? ment of the serpentine dance gives way to the ‘magical’ movement of substitution tb Maliés, and Pathé filmmakers after him, conceptualizated the film camera as a ples THE FASHIONFILMEL 1serpentine dance di: Wilam HeiseMWKL. Dickson 102, Frame enirgements torn Aombee Witeford Moors fe ancaises du film / CNC for Edison Manufacturing Compary,c. 1895. Courtesy Archives that lavishes on the spectacular metamorphoses of material splendour, and once again, ics the cos- ume that typically becomes the principal variable, mutating into multiple incarnations before the ee ach like the fashion film, early cinema did not allow for elaborate narative development (al- though narrative certainly was not completely excluded) and instead strategically focussed on dis- play. André Gaudreault and Tom Gunning have called this tendency ‘the cinema of ateractions and Brpued it was ruled by an impulse to make visible, co exhibit (Gaudreault and Gunning 1986), Al though the term cinema of attractions described the early period of cinema (until c, 1906-7), Gun- ping (1990: 60-1) soon allowed for its wider applicitions, naming, among others, avant-garde and experimental film. Over the last evo decades, film scholars have applied Gaudreaules and Gun- hing’ influential theorization to examine a range of non-narratve film as well as non-narrativese- {quences within narrative film. Among others, the model of atractions has also recently been used to interpret fashion-relaed films such as newsreels and fashion sequences in fcrion films (Hanssen 2009; Evans 2011). ‘The contemporary fashion film too can be situated within this theoretical de- lineation as it clearly privileges a cumulative display of tableaux and effects (usually accompanied by asynchronous sound) over linear narrative with diegetic sound, [Although there are many affinities berween the fashion fi and early cinema worth examining i is the problem of costume in movement and its rdation to stasis thar | want ro emphasiae here, There isa striking similarity in how both early cinema and the fashion film emerged our of an impulse to animate a world that was for the most part mediated through static imagery (although in both cases this was already anticipated by existing practices within visual culture), Indeed, some of che early ‘SHOWstudio productions mine the aesthetic of what Penny Martin cals ‘moving stills (2009: 55). Films such as SHOWstudio's Shelly Fax 14, Nick Knight's 2002 Warhol tribute More Beautiful Women, Nigel Bennetts 2004 Martin Margiela AW 2004 and Jean-Francois Carly’s 2005 J Feel engineer, 47) MARKETRUMLIROVA very much from the photographer's viewpoint, a dialogue between photographic immobility and cinematic movement and time." Telingly, early cinema was often referred to as ‘animated photo- graphs’ or ‘animated pictures’, a fact that betrays carly film culture’s reluctance to dissociate its new mode of representation from the old ones based on stillness, This early terminology reveals an under- standing of cinematic movement as mechanically reconstructed from static images, not as the seam- less illusion of continuity its effect produced. Fluid movement was not seen as cinema's ontological essence but, rather, a surplus value added to pictures, especially photographs. Yet, fluidity of move- ment was precisely what early film practices and discourses were fascinated with. Following the many protocinematic devices (zoettope, praxinoscope, the magic lantern and so forth), erly cinema called attention to the illusion of movement—this time more seamless than ever—and its dizzying poten- tial to surprise and amuse spectators, As cinema emerged into the late nineteenth-century culture of popular attractions (originally considered, as it was, among subjects of popular scientific amuse ment), the notion of animated photographs also evoked the awe-inspiring miracle of the inanimate coming to life that cinema audiences experienced? Through movement and time, film undeniably foregrounds the quality of presence (although, admittedly, chis presence can be theorized from several perspectives). As Roland Barthes (1978: 45) and Christian Metz after him (1974: 5-8) have noted, the ‘having-been-there’ of a photograph gives way to the ‘being there of the thing in film or, as Viv- jan Sobchack (2009: 73) has it, the moment of the photograph is replaced with the momentum of film. And because of the impossibility of fixing and owning film as a discreet, portable image/object, ic also makes it less prone than a photograph to being had, to becoming fetishized (Metz 1985). “There is, of cousse, a fundamental difference between how early cinema strategically approached dress in movement and how the contemporary fashion film does, While early cinema mobilized costume (through dance or tricks, for example) in order to show what the moving image can do, the fashion industry has utilized movement (including that of the camera, editing or effects) in order to show what clothing can do. Yet, beyond this difference, both produce a similar result, what Teall the fashion film effcr, in that they present clothing as an elastic, polymorphous and unstable entity. No longer possessing a fixed form, the physical fashion object becomes less of an objective certainty. Its potential to be endlessly reconstituted in space and time imbue it with new defining values of visuality and transitionality. Both early cinema and the fashion film also accentuate the surface, che skin ofthe screen, on which the kinetic and spectacular images ‘parade’ and accumulate. This is where images of fashion are pushed towards the spectator, their fashion-filmic materiality and texture magnified in their capricious luidity. Fashion on the screen produces a unique, emo- tionally charged overlapping (layering) of two materials, the sartorial and the cinematic, what Giuliana Bruno (2011: 95) has called ‘the fashioning and wearing of the image’ or, to extend the Deleuzian concept (1983), a kind of fashion-image-movement. But for this materiality of the surface to reach its tactile and emotional potential, for it to assert its presence so as to touch che spectator, the experience of the electronic/digial sereen is more lim- iting when compared to the projection-based cinema experience (analogue or digital). And since the performative aspect of projection/display is such a vital part of cinema, the transition from cin- matic to electronic is as critical with regaed to the shifts in the spectators experience as ie is with regard to the sbifts in the aesthetic of the film object iselE. I is principally a question of two aspects of the viewing experience that have profoundly changed both the object and the spectatotial habits and expectations: firstly, the inferior image quality on the electronic screen that, even at its best, compromises image resolution and depth of colour and, secondly, the fragmentary viewing modes, THEFASHONPILMEFFECT / 125 'Ae a enabled by cable celevision, video and the Internet. The electronic and the digital have generated new regime in which che spectator becomes a spectator-user, exercising a greaer-than-ever conerol over film viewing while at the same time facing a greater degrec of acceleration and distraction. Importantly, this is also a regime which violates the notion of ‘cinematic time’ thae characterizes traditional film viewing, Nathalie Khan has recently drawn on Lev Manovich’s concept of a ‘per ‘manent presence’ to describe the foating existence of fashion films online, ‘{un)restricted by time ‘or space in which the imagels are] shown’ (Khan 2012: 237). It is perhaps not too far-fetched to claim that today’s ubcravailability of film (DVDs, online) has paracoxically recast film in cinematic projection as ‘the real thing’, as somehow possessing the quality of aura (which, following Walter Benjamin, seems an absurdity)" ‘The omnipresence and saturation of the moving image in electronic media has not aways been interpreted as a positive force. Already in the mid-1990s, Suzy Menkes (1995: 47) observed that the recent ‘fshion's TV [and video] frenzy’ (one that she put down to cable television especially) made fashion seem faster and mote disposable than ever. She also noted that designers were now ‘playling] to che cameras’, privileging theatrical effect and entertainment over the ‘real thing’ —the clothing itself, The film theorist Vivian Sobchack (2009: 79-81) has, equally gloomily, described the electronically disseminated image as simulated, atomized and merely skin-deep, in its ‘immulta- neous, dispersed, and insubstantial transmission across a network’. Locating the electronic image (and the electronic experience) within the postmodemist framework, she has argued that space “becomels] abstract, ungrounded, and flat—a site for play and display rather than an invested situ~ ation in which action “counts” (Sobchack 2009: 79-81) “This would suggest that, evocative and thrilling as it may be, the fashion film cannot really matter to us in the same way in the virtual electronic landscape of our computer screens as it can in the cinema, that it cannot be as fully absorbing or feel as physical. In some ways, the nor- so-precious digital experience of the fashion film echoes the nonimmersive spectatorship of the cinema of attractions where visual pleasure was not (yet) locked into coherent fantasy worlds (chat came to be emphasized by the narrative mode but also the cinema as a particular kind of space), worlds that would unleash che psychic mechanisms of desise and identification. The con- temporary fashion film, too, is part of a distracted miliew in which we, as che viewers/users, ate exposed to an abundance of appealing imagery that fight for our attention while being easily rup- tured and even cancelled out by each other. Postmodern critics such as Sobchack are probably right in implying that chis milieu produces short-lived audiovisual intensities whose experiences are equally short-lived. Whether we take a dismal view or not, the fashion film (somewhat like the music video) is undeniably sympromatic of our contemporary moving image landscape, the (new) media regime that raises some pressing questions about just how it might coshape twenty- first-century culture. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ‘Some of the ideas that I develop in this chapter stem from a conversation between Caroline Evans, Penny Martin and myself in 2009 about the inherent similarities between the contemporary fash- ion film and the early cinema of attraction. T would like to thank both for their comments on this text 6 MARKETAUHLIROVA NOTES 1 6 9, Chrisian Met, Jean-Louis Bady and other film theorists have considered cinema in texms of what unigue ects produces, of what it daca a medium, beyond altel. More cently Seon ‘Cubite has in his ambitious study The Cinema Efct (2005) posed this question anew, with eegard to th ci ior of nema nc gl erm “_ ‘om carly on, Manovih (2001) has shown how computer softvare programmes and packages cle cnted neque aac tyes taht norend contends enn int Pa ley In The Sytem of Objet, the caltaral theo ean Baudrilad has already made this poine about adverts: ing. He was concerned with its ‘dal satus asa discourse onan object and san objet in sow righ ani fncion epi and inde), lowing Barth at it ae ing isnot merely anctonal but also creates an esta universe of pre eonnovaton (Bava 176-9) which in acl beomes he rio becomumeds Gein (One mighe, of couric, ase what exactly a the fshion markers in most conventional perfume comme cial, given pefume and snl ae sch abstract entities The bottle isl? Images ofplamout, beats, dese, sex? The Comme des Gargns fi seems to bea rare example ofa perfume commercial that at tempts to illurate an etenceof the thing exter than promise it makes Thisis also efor other imagery produced and commisined within the ion indasy. Comme des Garon own ad campaigns or their Sir agazine fom beowen 1988 and 1991 are good examples The term serpentine dence i wsed here asa common denominator for a number of speifiechoeoge phies based ona sila principl, including the buttery fi, ily leus and sear dance, ° The cinematic frie (ity pay) developed from the sage Rei, a gene that was especialy popular in France duting che nineteenth cenury, with an equivalent in the English pancomime. The fees dale with fantastical and supernatural subjects and wee especialy ditneive for thei spectacular displays and magical transformations, with great emphasis on production values, including costumes. For more on eal lm costae a cinematic spectacle and the aesthetic of opulence see Uiiora 2011 In her recent article on the digital fashion film, Nathalie Khan (2012) too considers the contemporary fashion film as cransitional between stillness and movement; she also believes that th : she also believes that the contemporary fashion film must be understood vis--vis the fashion photograph. I would like to thank her for sharing her article with me prior to publication and comparing notes. ‘The act of coming-to-lie was in fact chematized in ealy cinema, most notably by Mélits who had paine ings and objects routinely transform into living, breathing creatures. Also see Barthes 1981 and Meer 1985 on the conceptualization of the photograph as death-like and the cinema a lifelike In Benjamin's account, film was precisely one of the prevalent modern media of mass reproduction associated with the loss of the aura. See especially his critique of the ‘ultraconservative’ notions of film as being in any way sacred or supernatural (Benjamin 1999: 221). Yet, Benjamin was largely concerned ‘with the absence of the real chat film—itsel 2 copy—can only represent; he couldn't sce the cinephile point of view thac film stock, despice its status as copy, may have intrinsic artefact value attached to it, thac cinema viewing, as experience, may be the authentic reality, and thatthe film image may acquire an auratic presence of sorts as it travels in realtime from a projector to a screen, Sobchack (2009) puts special emphasis on the network’ character as flimsy and insubstantial, as opposed to being a grounded and physical presence. 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