Camera Obscura, Camera Lucida

Structure rather than the Differentiation Structure. And if that is so, the appearance
of self-contradiction that initiated this investigation has been successfully
dissolved.
IV. An Objection
Eisenstein’s Philosophy of Film 141
We have been wrestling with an apparent problem in Eisenstein’s writings. On
the face of it, his project is to tell us what is special about cinema, and why that
specialness should convince us that film is an artform. Montage seems to be his
answer. But then he goes on to analogize cinematic montage with every other
artform, and with human thought as well. Yet how does this tell us what is special
about film, if montage in film does not differ in kind from the principles
that govern all the other arts and the human mind to boot? Eisenstein’s analogies
seem at odds with his purposes. Our solution to this ostensible inconsistency
has been to interpret Eisenstein’s philosophy of film not as an example of
the differentiation approach for characterizing film art, but rather as an instance
of the exemplifying approach.
However, some might prefer an alternative interpretation. They will agree
that Eisenstein’s theory does not abide by the Differentiation Structure, but
will go on to claim that it is not a case of the Exemplifying Structure either.
Rather, Eisenstein’s analogies with the other arts show that he is attempting to
establish that film is an art by what Wittgensteinians will later come to call the
method of family resemblances. That is, Eisenstein is demonstrating that film
can be an art by showing that some films resemble established artworks and/
or art forms in various respects. Moreover, these respects are quite diverse and
cannot be reduced to a single theme, such as ‘exemplifying thought.’
This is not an unknown strategy for advancing the cause of film art. It is the
primary strategy of Vachel Lindsay, for example, in his The Art of the Moving
Picture. In the chapters ‘Sculpture-in-Motion,’ ‘Painting-in-Motion,’ and ‘Architecture-in-Motion,’
Lindsay draws multiple, non-overlapping analogies
between film and the established arts. 38 The point of these analogies is that
some films, namely the ones that are appreciably like already acknowledged
art, have a legitimate claim to art status. Why not suppose that Eisenstein’s
analogies are intended to function argumentatively in the way that Lindsay’s
do?
Nevertheless, the question here is not whether Eisenstein could have proceeded
to defend the artistic credentials of film in this manner, but, rather, did
he? I think that this is unlikely. Speaking of his own practice of analogizing, he
indicates that it ‘is the discovery of similarity in methods and principles of differ-