135 Melita Zajc 1 Film after the Cinema. Cinematographic Dispositive T ransformed: Cultural Implications of the Online Distribution of Films Abstract: The digital transformation that was already taking place in all spheres of human life was further accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic. As governments were trying to keep the virus in check, cinemas have been forced to shut down all over the world. Simulta - neously, the streaming of films witnessed unprecedented growth and the fears that the cinema as we knew it might come to an end abound- ed. Yet the death of cinema has been predicted before, most notably with the introduction of television in the 1950s and the advent of video cassettes in the 1980s. The question is, does the recent digital transformation differ from these events? There exists an impressive theoretical tradition in studying the implications of digital technolo- gies for the film medium and this article turns to this tradition for the answer. The focus is on the concept of “the cinematographic dispos- itive” (“le dispositif cinematographique” in French) as the situation in which films are being watched, connecting the apparatus of dis- tribution and projection on the one hand, and the viewer as the con- crete, idiosyncratic, individual person watching the film on the other. As such, it proves to be a particularly suitable concept for the study of the recent transformation and its implications for film medium as well as for culture and society at large. 1 Melita Zajc (PhD) is an associate prof. at AMEU – ISH. E-pošta: mel- ita.zajc@gmail.com. / Dr. Melita Zajc deluje kot izredna profesorica na AMEU – ISH. Monitor ISH (2021), XXIII/1, 135–155 Izvirni znanstveni članek Original scientific article 136 Melita Zajc Key words: Film, Cinema, Streaming Platforms, Cinematographic Dispositive, Prosumers Film po kinu. T ransformacija kinematografskega dis- pozitiva: kulturne implikacije spletne distribucije filmov Izvleček: Digitalno preobrazbo, ki je potekala na vseh področjih človeš- kega življenja, je pandemija koronavirusa še pospešila. Da bi obvladale virus, so vlade širom sveta zapirale kinematografe. Hkrati pa je distribu- cija filmov na spletu doživela strmo rast in to je povečalo strahove, da je filma, kot smo ga poznali dotlej, nepreklicno konec. Vendar pa so smrt filma napovedovali že prej, predvsem ob uvedbi televizije v petdesetih letih prejšnjega stoletja in ob pojavu video kaset v osemdesetih. Vpra - šanje je, ali se nedavna digitalna preobrazba razlikuje od teh dogodkov? Obstaja impresivna teoretska tradicija preučevanja implikacij digitalnih tehnologij za filmski medij in ta članek se je pri iskanju odgovora obrnil na to tradicijo. Poudarek je na konceptu »kinematografskega dispozi- tiva« (v francoščini »le dispositif cinematographique«) kot situacije, v kateri filme gledamo, in ki poveže aparat distribucije in projekcije na eni strani ter gledalca kot konkretno, idiosinkratično, individualno osebo, ki gleda film na drugi strani. Kot tak se izkaže za posebej primeren kon- cept za preučevanje nedavne preobrazbe in njenih posledic za filmski medij pa tudi za kulturo in družbo nasploh. Ključne besede: film, kino, platforme, kinematografski dispozitiv, protrošnja Introduction The film is changing constantly. From silent films to the sound, black-and-white to color to computer-generated imagery and spec- tacular special effects, from cinema to TV and video, to IMAX and 3D and virtual reality. Yet it seems that at present we are witness- 137 Film after the cinema. Cinematographic dispositive transformed: cultural implications of the online distribution of films ing a much more thorough change. In the heart of this change is the Covid 19 pandemics which accelerated processes that predat- ed it and is now altering the production, distribution and viewing of films (Delaney and Greenberg 2020). As governments were try - ing to keep the virus in check, cinemas were forced to shut down all over the world. But, while the cinemas, from the biggest mov - ie theatre chains to the small European cinemas, reported huge revenue losses and feared they will be forced to close down, the streaming of films witnessed unprecedented growth. Many film production companies began to entirely avoid cinemas and direct- ly premiered their films on the streaming platforms. The majority of film festivals moved online and the first audience response was enthusiastic: the hybrid edition of the 2021 Sundance Film Festival reached more than half a million viewers, the largest-ever audience in the festival’s history (Lindahl 2021). The major streaming plat- forms that already dominated the digital media landscape before, such as Netflix and Amazon, were taking over the revenues of clas- sical cinemas. Experts (Harriman 2020) predicted that “we’re wit- nessing what may be the irreversible turn from cinema being a the- atrical mode to becoming a predominantly streaming medium”. This article presents the first step towards a comprehensive study of the transformations of the film in these “post-cinema” con- ditions, that is, in the conditions when the cinema is ceasing to be the prevalent form of film watching and online streaming prevails. This change affects a set of intertwined elements, from the film it- self with its narratives, characters, formats and languages, to the film viewers and modes of film watching, from different devices and screens (computer, mobile, ...) to the possibilities of interaction with the contents and among the viewers, including film reviews and oth- er modes of evaluation and rating. I believe that to apprehend such a large variety of practical features, a conceptual approach might 138 Melita Zajc be of use and in this article, I will propose a framework of such ap- proach. I will start with the analysis of the main theoretical tradi- tions of investigating the technological aspect of the film media, in particular of transformations brought about by digital cinema. In the second part, I will focus on the theory of the cinematographic dispositive. I aim to show that dispositive might provide the con- ceptual framework for the empirical research and at the same time facilitate the confirmation of the hypothesis of my research work, that is, that the weakening of the cinematographic dispositive in the contemporary mediascape, along with other related processes, indicate much broader transformations of contemporary societies. Methods and the hypothesis There exist several approaches and conceptions of cinema’s dig- ital transformation. Particularly valuable for this research are the views that technological changes have implications for the film itself, its contents and formats, as well as for the audienc- es. Technological changes might also, potentially, bring about broader social and cultural shifts, which is the basic premise of the concept of the dispositive. I previously applied this concept in the exploration of “prosumption” in social media (Zajc 2013) and of the “monetisation” of user generated content (Zajc 2015). The concept of social media dispositive is particularly useful for exploring the migration of the film to the internet and the dis- tribution of the film on social media platforms. To explain this, it is important to note that this concept is an elaboration of the concept of the cinematographic dispositive (“le dispositif cine- matographique”) developed by French film theorist Jean Louis Baudry (1986a, 1986b). He conceptualised the fact that technol- ogy is an intrinsic element of the film itself and also assumed that the filmic mechanism is connected to the processes of the 139 Film after the cinema. Cinematographic dispositive transformed: cultural implications of the online distribution of films construction of subjectivity, necessary for any (modern) society because it is based on the structure of central perspective. The central perspective was introduced as the main model for visual representation during the European Renaissance. It was instru- mental for the introduction of the modern subject as an individual responsible for one’s actions and thus, subsequently, for the modern capitalist, liberalist and neoliberalist Europe. Therefore, I would like to propose the hypothesis that the actual weakening of cinematic dispositive, along with other related contemporary processes, might indicate a potential for modifications of this modern notion of sub- jectivity, and, potentially, a transformation towards a society based not on isolated individuals but on connected and mutually depend- ent singularities and collectivities. Such expectations of course need to be further explored and verified by empirical research in various fields, by explorations of contemporary films, their languages and narratives on the one hand, and the ethnographic (observation and interview based) research among the creators and viewers of these films, the users of various platforms in diverse parts of Europe and the world on the other. This empirical part of the research will need to be performed in the next steps, below I would like to present theoretical foundations and conceptual reflections, based on the critical compar - ative analysis of existing scholarly work in the field. Research One year into the Covid19 pandemics, as cinema halls all over the world remained closed and the audiences were watching films on- line, director Martin Scorsese expressed concerns about the future of cinema as the streaming platforms have come to overtake the moviegoing experience. This “has created a situation in which everything is presented to the viewer on a level playing field” (Scorsese 2021). The celebrated director is himself making films 140 Melita Zajc for the popular streaming platforms: after in 2019 The Irishman was successfully released on Netflix, he is now pre-producing Kill- ers of the Flower Moon (Bramesco 2021) that will be produced and distributed by Apple. He does not deny that for filmmakers this might even be an advantage, however, he asks, if “further viewing is ‘suggested’ by algorithms based on what you’ve already seen, and the suggestions are based only on subject matter or genre, then what does that do to the art of cinema?” (Scorsese ibid.) Early theories of the digital cinema Scorsese’s essay marks very well the actual moment in a long his- tory of cinema’s digital transformation. The relations between the content and form have always been in the very centre of the critical reflections of this history. Early theorists of digital cinema, facing the use of digital technologies for the costly production of special effects, were mostly worried because the form, designated at that time by the term ‘spectacle’, was dominating over the cinematic narrative, that is, over the content. As early as 1986 Thomas El- saesser observed that “the success, of SF as a genre, or of direc- tors like Steven Spielberg whose narratives are simply anthology pieces from basic movie plots, suggest that narrative has to some extent been an excuse for the pyrotechnics of I L&M” (quoted in McQuire 2000, 42). The concerns over the demise of content in cinema further grew in the following decade as the use of the com- puter generated special effects in the Hollywood film industry con- tributed to the rise of blockbusters. Yet, as McQuire pointed out in 2000, special effects were essential to blockbuster exploitation strategies but they were also part of “the cinema’s efforts to demar - cate its ‘experience’ from that of domestic entertainment technol- ogies” (43). By that time, already, it became obvious that digital technologies constitute “a profound revolution in cinema, primari- 141 Film after the cinema. Cinematographic dispositive transformed: cultural implications of the online distribution of films ly because of their capacity to cut across all sectors of the industry simultaneously, affecting film production, narrative conventions and audience experience” (43-44). McQuire’s conclusion that “The repetition of awe and astonishment repeatedly evoked by ’im- possible’ images as the currency of today’s ‘cutting edge’ cinema undoubtedly functions to prepare us for the uncertain pleasures of living in a world we suspect we will soon no longer recognise“ (56-57) proved particularly visionary. Such was also his analysis of the dialectical relationship between the spectacle and the narra - tive in the cinema. Contrary to prevalently critical approaches, he believed that the spectacle might have a ’progressive’ function in contemporary cinema, for example, as Paul Young claimed, “con- temporary ’spectacle’ cinema constitutes an emergent challenge to ’Hollywood’s institutional identity’“ (in McQuire, 2000, 55). Post-millennial theories of the digital cinema (post-cinema) Such claims should be of no surprise. Ever since the early years of film media, film theorists focussed on its form in the search for its’ specificity. Technology was a key to acknowledging the film as a distinct art form. In the 1920s, avant-garde filmmakers were advo- cating for media specific cinematic qualities against classical nar - rative cinema because it was associated primarily with literary and theatrical scenarios. Similar concerns emerged with debates over auteur theory in the 1950s in France, where the literary qualities of the script were opposed to the ’properly cinematic’ qualities of mise-en-scene. A more analytical theoretical approach connected the specificities of cinema to the use of camera and central per - spective as modes of (realist) visual representation. Theorists who developed this approach (Comolli 1986, Baudry 1986a, 1986b) in the context of the prevalent philosophical current of combining Althusserian neo-marxism, semiology and psychoanalysis, were 142 Melita Zajc mostly associated with the French film magazine Cahiérs du Cin- ema. Today, on the contrary, we associate this view with the film theorist Christian Metz and his book Imaginary Signifier (1982). The reason for this is that Metz’s view that the classical narra - tive cinema was a rather narrow form that failed to fully utilise the affordances of the film media, was the starting point for several key conceptualisations of digital cinema in the 21 st Century. Lev Mano- vich, for example, directly quoted Metz that “most films shot today, good or bad, original or not, ‘commercial’ or not, have as a common characteristic that they tell a story,” and thus “all belong to one and the same genre” or, better, “super genre” (Metz in Manovich 2016, 21). Besides, adds Manovich, fictional films are all “live-action films” and largely “consist of unmodified photographic recordings of real events which took place in real physical space” thus, he concludes, “cinema is the art of the index; it is an attempt to make art out of a footprint“ (Manovich 2016, 21). Digital technologies, claimed Mano- vich, radically changed this. It is now possible to generate photoreal- istic scenes in a computer using 3-D computer animation; to modify individual frames or whole scenes with the help of a digital paint program; to cut, bend, stretch and stitch digitised film images into something which has perfect photographic credibility, although it was never actually filmed. Cinema “can no longer be clearly distin- guished from animation. It is no longer an indexical media technol- ogy but, rather, a sub-genre of painting” (22). Steve Shaviro similarly associated digital cinema with “the new possibilities of expression” (2016, 53) that might take the film be- yond the narrow confines of classical narrative cinema. His concept of post-continuity relates to the continuity as another important feature of this ‘super genre’, namely the requirement that “space is a fixed and rigid container, which remains the same no matter what goes on in the narrative; and time flows linearly, and at a uniform 143 Film after the cinema. Cinematographic dispositive transformed: cultural implications of the online distribution of films rate, even when the film’s chronology is scrambled by flashbacks” (60). In the 21 st century the “continuity itself has been fractured, de- valued, fragmented, and reduced to incoherence” (56). The integra - tion of graphics, sound effects and mixtures of footage emulating video games, the promiscuous mixtures of different styles of foot- age that we find in such films as Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers and Brian De Palma’s Redacted do not altogether dispense with the concerns of classical continuity, they are simply “no longer centred upon” it (60). Post-continuity aesthetics claims Shaviro, is expres- sive both of technological changes, such as the rise of digital and Internet-based media and also “of more general social, economic, and political conditions (i.e. globalised neoliberal capitalism, and the intensified financialization associated with it)” (ibid.). Even more than the new aesthetical and formal strategies, there were the radically new conditions of viewing and new ways in which films address their spectators (Denson and Leyda 2016, 4) that defined the transformations of cinema in the new millennium. Emblematic of this transformation was the Matrix franchise. Film The Matrix, the first in the feature film trilogy, directed by The Wa - chowskis and released in 1999 was accompanied by a whole set of various products and this caused a series of interpretations and new conceptualisations, most notable are “transmedia storytelling” (Jen- kins 2006) and “cinema of interactions” (Grusin 2016). The Matrix franchise was composed of the IMAX Reloaded, the Animatrix DVD and its related web versions, the Enter the Matrix video game (for Xbox, Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Windows PC), and a multiplayer online game, a film trilogy and a series of short films. For Grusin, the “cinema of interactions,” a hybrid medium, indicates “a change that is distributed across practices of production, screening, exhibition, distribution, interaction, use, and spectatorship” (ibid.) but the latter is far the most significant. The experience of the film 144 Melita Zajc in the cinema becomes “part of a more distributed aesthetic or cin- ematic experience” as “a film does not end after its closing credits, but rather continues beyond the theatre to the DVD, the video game, the soundtrack, the websites, and so forth” (2016, 71-72). Grusin cel- ebrated the rise of “an interactive spectator in a domestic or other social space rather than an immobilised spectator in the darkened dream-space of apparatus or gaze theory” (70). However, he also ob- served that the purpose of the Matrix franchise was an “attempt to acquire for the Matrix a cinema audience that extends across any number of different media times and places” (72). The ‘cinema of interactions’ is thus in the first place a marketing vehicle. Prosumption and the dispositive of social media Similar was the conclusion of Hallinan and Reynolds (2019) who analysed the adoption of digital technologies by the largest the- atrical chain in the United States, AMC. The use of media such as credit cards, computerised point-of-sale systems and loyalty pro- grams, the tactics like augmented reality (AR) integration, apps that deliver personalised advertising to moviegoers and other dig- ital overlays within the physical space of movie theatres convert these places into “platforms” while, simultaneously, turn cinema audience into “digitised media users” (2019, 6). These strategies “convert moviegoing preferences and habits into digital informa - tion that can be operationalised to advertise future films and com- municate the value of the theatrical experience” (ibid). Evoking the critical writings of communication theorist Christian Fuchs and his notion of audience commodification, the authors concluded that the digitisation of the cinema audience is “simultaneously the commodification of the audience” (2019, 15). Hallinan and Reynolds’s study is particularly important because it revealed that, to some degree, cinema audiences have been exposed 145 Film after the cinema. Cinematographic dispositive transformed: cultural implications of the online distribution of films to the same processes as social media users. And that this began even before, due to the Covid19 pandemics, the distribution of films migrated online. The physical closure of the cinemas during the pan- demic enforced these processes. Due to the decentralised structure of the Internet that allows many-to-many communication, social media users engage in permanent creative activity. This further ex- poses them to commodification because, by creating user generated content they perform what Fuchs defined as “free labour” (2012, 706) and also because their online activities are constantly monitored by social media operators and advertisers, turned into data, stored and used to train algorithms and generate targeted advertising. Performing these activities, social media users act as “pro- sumers,” which is a term introduced by Alvin Toffler in the early 1980s to describe the “progressive blurring of the line that sepa - rates producer from consumer” (Toffler in Fuchs 2012, 711). Ritzer demonstrated that there has always existed a continuum between production and consumption and the reason why we have become “a prosumer society” (Ritzer 2010, 10) is that, with digital technol- ogies, the material obstacles that separate production and con- sumption have virtually disappeared. While Toffler was mostly op- timistic and wrote about the arrival of a new form of economic and political democracy, today theorists mostly agree with Fuchs that prosumption is enabling corporations to reduce their costs and that jobs are destroyed while consumers who work for free are ex- tremely exploited (2012, ibid.). Ritzer and Miles warned that digital technologies speed up “processes of rationalisation while intensi- fying levels of consumption” and that prosumption itself is part of a broader change towards a “more highly controlled, bureaucratic and dehumanising society” (2018, 4). The concept of prosumption describes the important changes of media structures and practices (Fuchs 2012, 711) in which the 146 Melita Zajc positions of the media owners, as well as those of active and crea - tive media users, have been transformed. Building on Ritzer’s defi- nition of prosumption, I previously introduced the “social media dispositive” (2013, 2015), a concept that enables “a more detailed analysis of the functioning of social media within contemporary power relations, and also a more detailed insight into those pro- cesses within the dispositive of social media, where the possibili- ties of resistance may reside” (Zajc 2013, 17). This concept is based on a detailed study of the cinema viewing experience inside the cinema and is therefore particularly suitable to explore the migra - tion of film media online. The cinematographic dispositive The concept of social media dispositive is based on the notion of the cinematographic dispositive (le dispositif cinematographique) that originated in the same context as the endeavours to transcend the constraints of the classical narrative cinema (Manovich 2016, Shaviro 2016). The focal target of the criticism and the starting point of the search for innovative cinematic forms in the film the- ory of the 1960s was the realistic visual representation, based on the mechanism of central perspective. In this unique moment of convergence between form and content, aesthetics converged with politics: it was this exact model of cinematic representation that was considered emblematic for the modern subject and for the de- fects of modern capitalist societies. A note on the origins of the central perspective might better explain this. The central perspective became the main model of visual representation during the Renaissance. It was thought (Bri- tannica) to have been devised about 1415 by Italian Renaissance architect Filippo Brunelleschi and later documented by architect and writer Leon Battista Alberti in Della Pittura, published in 1435 147 Film after the cinema. Cinematographic dispositive transformed: cultural implications of the online distribution of films but much earlier Arab sources still have to be considered. What is clear, however, is that until this day, it is considered the model of the visual representation that is the most realistic, the “closest to life”. Its other names, linear, monocular, scientific i.a. well describe its main features - it is a system of creating an impression of depth on a flat surface, in such a way that, in a painting or drawing using this system, all parallel lines (orthogonals) converge in a single vanishing point on the composition’s horizon line. So as to appear farther from the viewer, objects in the compositions are rendered increasingly smaller as they near the vanishing point. The lines converging in the vanishing point on the drawing create an im- aginary cone, symmetrical to the cone that would be created if we imagine rays of light traveling from the painting and converging in the eye (monocular) of the viewer, thus confirming the viewer’s position at the center and origin of the image. The central perspective is considered instrumental for the in- troduction of the modern episteme and its’ central notion of the subject as an individual responsible for one’s actions. As such, the central perspective is also considered crucial for the develop- ment of modern capitalist, liberalist and neo-liberalist Europe. The fact is that this perspective has, until now, remained embedded in photographic and cinematographic cameras but also in the grids underlying the contemporary computer modelling and digital ani- mations including the latest technologies from virtual reality (VR) to virtual production (VP). At the same time, however, the central perspective, together with the conventions about the narrative and contingency, enforced the kind of cinematic realism that the boldest uses of digital technologies in cinema aimed to subvert (Manovich 2016, McQuire 2000, Shaviro 2016). More important- ly, the focus on the perspective in film theory connected the cin- ematographic camera with the film projector. It shifted the atten- 148 Melita Zajc tion from film production to the viewing experience and was the starting point for the conceptual exploration of the act of viewing through the concept of dispositive. It was the French film writer Jean-Louis Baudry who developed the idea of the cinematographic dispositive (le dispositif cine- matographique) in the most complex and comprehensive way. He wrote two essays: “Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematograph- ic Apparatus (“l’appareil de base” in original),” published in the journal Cinéthique in 1970 (Baudry 1986a) and “The Apparatus (“le dispositif” in original): Metapsychological Approaches to the Im- pression of Reality in the Cinema” published in 1975 in the journal Communications. Both were translated into English and reprinted in the epic film theory reader Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, edit- ed by Philip Rosen and published in 1986 by Columbia University Press. Unlike the English translation that uses the term “the ap- paratus” for both terms, “l’appareil de base” and “le dispositif”, I retain that the distinction is crucial for a proper understanding of Baudry’s theory and thus propose to translate “le dispositif” as “the dispositive” and maintain the distinction. Writing about the media, Baudry observed “that instrumenta - tion plays a more and more important role in them and that their distribution is more and more extensive.” Therefore “it is strange (…) that emphasis has been placed almost exclusively on their in- fluence, on the effects that they have as finished products, their content, the field of the signified if you like; the technical bases on which these effects depend and the specific characteristics of these bases have, however, been ignored” (Baudry 1986a, 287). Oth- er film theorists at that time investigated the role of technology in cinema by focusing on the representational system, that is, on the central perspective and the movie camera, while Jean-Louis Baudry refused to separate the camera from the rest of the cine- 149 Film after the cinema. Cinematographic dispositive transformed: cultural implications of the online distribution of films matic machinery. He analysed the act of viewing itself and in par - ticular the processes of “primary identification” and the “impres- sion of reality” within the film viewing experience. Baudry’s concept of “primary identification” refers to one of the very basics of visual media, that is, the cinema audience can only identify with the fictional persons on the screen if they previously rec- ognised these representations as meaningful. This, claimed Baudry, is only possible if they identified with the mechanism of representa - tion. The recognition of the cinematic representations is a result of what Baudry named the “impression of reality” in cinema and Metz the “reality effect” (in Manovich 2016, 32). According to Baudry, the “impression of reality” in cinema does not primarily depend on what is shown on the screen, because “the spectator identifies less with what is represented, the spectacle itself, than with what stages the spectacle, makes it seen, obliging him to see what it sees “ (Baudry 1986a, 295). For viewers to identify with the characters on the screen (secondary identification), they have to identify with the mecha - nism of representation (primary identification). In his second essay, Baudry concentrated on the cinema viewing experience and com- pared the cinema with Plato’s cave and with a dream, two situations that require a specific position of the human body: in Plato’s cave the hypothetical human person has been chained since birth; in a dream, a person sleeps and is immobile. Cinema is not Plato’s cave, nor is it a dream, but both these situations provide simulations of reality by constructing the place for the subject. The same happens within the cinema hall: the “impression of reality” in the cinema does not depend on what is being represented in the film. The cinema does not simulate reality, it simulates the conditions of the subject. “[T]he entire cinematographic dispositive is activated in order to provoke this simulation: it is indeed a simulation of a condition of the subject, a position of the subject, a subject and not reality”(1986b, 316). 150 Melita Zajc To specify the processes that take place in the act of cinema viewing, Baudry emphasised the need to “distinguish the basic cine- matographic apparatus (‘l’appareil de base’), which concerns the en- semble of the equipment and operations necessary to the production of a film and its projection, from the dispositive (‘le dispositif’) (…), which solely concerns projection and which includes the subject to whom the projection is addressed” (ibid., 317). Within the dispositive, the subject not only is simulated but also is included: not only is it a simulated point of view which one must take in order to recognise the representations, to “take them as reality,” but also it is the actual spec- tator as a condition of the flow, of the duration of these representa - tions, the one who guarantees that in the cinema the imaginary life of the protagonists, their emotions, their adventures, last by someone. Constituted is an imaginary subject position, a simulated point of view which one must take in order to recognise representations and which all spectators share. Included is the individual, the concrete, living person, and every single cinema-goer to whom the dispositive assigns a distinct place within the setting. The dispositive, as a sin- gle concept, enables the distinction that is constitutive for the social aspect of any technology, that is, the distinction between the subject position that the dominant use of media technology prescribes to any user and the creative practices of individual users with their his- tories, memories, expectations and desires, which can generate alter - native and oppositional uses (Zajc 2013, 11). Discussion: film and its’ audiences outside the cinema The dispositive, with its focus on the actual situation of film viewing, puts the present migration of film from the cinema hall to other dis- tribution platforms into a novel perspective. First of all, it enables a more precise comparison between the viewing of the film in the cin- 151 Film after the cinema. Cinematographic dispositive transformed: cultural implications of the online distribution of films ema and in other situations. Roland Barthes complained that watch- ing films on TV has no fascination as darkness and anonymity are gone (1986, 346). For watching the film in the cinema, a detailed pro- cedure is put in place, from buying the ticket that prescribes to the viewer the exact place within the cinema hall, darkness, silence, the look directed into one direction during the whole projection. As we are watching films online, all these physical constraints are gone. Yet the use of social media is regulated as well and several techniques might be seen as a direct substitute for the control of the viewer’s body in the cinema, from the single-use devices such as tablets and smartphones and their authentication technologies (fingerprint, face recognition,…) to the personal data one needs to provide in exchange for an individual account that conditions the use of any social media from the start. Just like the cinema going experience, the surveillance of social media users is individualised too. But besides the audience commodification and surveillance, the new modes of film viewing also open up new spaces for creativity and innovative, alternative filmmaking practices. For example, film viewing online is much more easily accessible and this means that new, more numerous audiences are available for several artists who started making films due to the new more accessible production technologies. This opens up new possibilities for the nonlinear and nonrealist cinematic forms that are exhibited on a television or a computer screen, rather than in a movie theatre (Manovich 2016, 32) to multiply in the future. This new, decentralised film viewing experience is happening along with other cultural and social practices that, similarly, demon- strate a radical decentering of the previously given central position of a subject as white, male, middle class human, defining all others as dif- ferent and thus, inferior. Movements such as feminism, anti-colonial- ism and environmental activism all testify to social and cultural trans- formations that are very similar to the recent multiplication of film 152 Melita Zajc viewing experience. We still need to investigate these processes in detail. Yet the concept of dispositive proves to be the right tool to con- ceptualise the basics of this new diversity where varied genres, races, human and other live beings jointly coexist, simultaneously sharing the position of centrality and keeping their particular idiosyncrasy. Conclusion The Covid19 pandemics accelerated the processes of digital trans- formation. The closure of cinemas advanced the migration of film distribution online and brought about a radical change in film view - ing and film medium itself. We know by now that this change is accompanied by profound changes in societies and culture at large. The review of the existing literature regarding digital technologies in the film media showed that several researchers pointed to the interrelations between new technologies, audiences and film aes- thetics on the one hand, and the broader cultural and social trans- formations on the other. The concept of cinematographic disposi- tive focuses on the viewer experience and provides a particularly suitable conceptual tool for theorising the contemporary migration of film viewing from the cinema to online networks and platforms, but also for the implications of present changes for the broader po- litical and cultural transformations of contemporary societies. Literature BARTHES, ROLAND. 1986. ’Leaving the Movie Theatre’. In The Rustle of Language, 345–49. New York: Hill and Wang BAUDRY, JEAN-LOUIS. 1986a. ‘Ideological Effects of the Basic Cinematographic Apparatus. [1970. Cinéma: Effets Idéologiques Produits Par l’appareil de Base. Paris: Cinéthique 7-8]’. In ROSEN, P. (Ed.). Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology, 286–98. New York: Colum- bia University Press. 153 Film after the cinema. Cinematographic dispositive transformed: cultural implications of the online distribution of films BAUDRY, JEAN-LOUIS. 1986b.’The Apparatus: Metapsychologi- cal Approaches to the Impression of Reality in the Cinema [1975. Le Dispositif: Approches Métapsychologiques de l’impression de Réalité. Communications 23: Psychanalyse et Cinéma. Paris: Seu- il.]’. In ROSEN, P. (Ed.). Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology., 299–318. New York: Columbia University Press. BRAMESCO, CHARLES. 2021. ’Jesse Plemons Joins Martin Scors- ese’s Killers of the Flower Moon’. Little White Lies, 18 February 2021. Available on https://lwlies.com/articles/jesse-plemons-mar - tin-scorsese-killers-of-the-flower-moon/ (Februar 20, 2021). BRITANNICA, Enciclopedia. Linear perspective. Available on https://www.britannica.com/art/linear-perspective (October 22, 2021). COMOLLI, JEAN. 1986. ’Technique and Ideology: Camera, Per - spective, Depth of Field.’ In ROSEN, P. (Ed.). Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology. 421-443. New York: Columbia University Press. DELANEY, JOHN F., AND GREENBERG, ERIC DODSON. 2020. ‘A River Runs Through It: The Pandemic’s Wave of Change to the Film and Television Industry (and Finding Potential Winners and Losers)’. Perkins Coie LLP. Available on https://www.perkinscoie. com/en/news-insights/a-river-runs-through-it-the-pandemics- wave-of-change-to-the-film-and-television-industry-and-finding- potential-winners-and-losers.html (February 20, 2021). DENSON, SHANE, AND JULIA LEYDA (EDS.). 2016. Post-Cine- ma: Theorizing 21st-Century Film, REFRAME Books. Available on http:/ /reframe.sussex.ac.uk/post-cinema/ (February 20, 2021). FUCHS, CHRISTIAN. 2012. Dallas Smythe Today - The Audience Commodity, the Digital Labour Debate, Marxist Political Economy and Critical Theory. Prolegomena to a Digital Labour Theory of Value. tripleC 10(2): 692-740. 154 Melita Zajc HALLINAN, BLAKE, AND REYNOLDS, C. J. 2019. Reynolds. ‘New Media Goes to the Movies: Digitizing the Theatrical Audience’. Television & New Media, 152747641986313. Available on https:// doi.org/10.1177/1527476419863131 (February 19, 2021). HARRIMAN, PAT. 2020. What’s next: The Future of Film. UCI News, 30 November 2020. Available on https://news.uci. edu/2020/11/30/whats-next-the-future-of-film/ (February 20, 2021) JENKINS, HENRY. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: The MIT Press. LINDAHL, CHRIS. 2021. ’Sundance Announces Record Audience in 2021: Over Half a Million Views’. IndieWire, 8 F ebruary 2021. Available on https:/ /www.indiewire.com/2021/02/sundance-2021-viewing-num - bers-largest-festival-audience-1234615605/ (Februar 20, 2021) MANOVICH, LEV. 2016. ’What is Digital Cinema?’ In Denson, Shane, and Julia Leyda (eds.) Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Cen- tury Film. 20 - 50. REFRAME Books. Available on http://reframe. sussex.ac.uk/post-cinema/ (February 19, 2021). METZ, CHRISTIAN. 1982. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanaly - sis and the Cinema. Trans. Celia Britton et Al. Bloomington: Indi- ana UP. MCQUIRE, SCOTT. 2000. ’Impact Aesthetics: Back to the Future in Digital Cinema?: Millennial Fantasies’. Convergence: The Inter - national Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 6, no. 2: 41–61. Available at https://doi.org/10.1177/135485650000600204 (February 20, 2021). RITZER, GEORG. 2010. ’Focusing on the Prosumer: On Correct- ing an Error in the History of Social Theory’, 61–79. VS Verlag fuer Sozialwissenschaften, 2010. Available on hXp://www.springerlink. com/index/ 10.1007/978-3-531-91998- 0 (February 19, 2021). 155 Film after the cinema. Cinematographic dispositive transformed: cultural implications of the online distribution of films RITZER, GEORGE, AND MILES, STEVEN. 2019. ’The Changing Nature of Consumption and the Intensification of McDonaldization in the Digital Age’. Journal of Consumer Culture 19, no. 1 (February 2019): 3–20. Available on https:/ / doi.org/10.1177/1469540518818628 (February 19, 2021). SCORSESE, MARTIN. 2021.’Il Maestro, Federico Fellini and the Lost Magic of Cinema’. Harper’s Magazine, 5 February 2021. Avail- able on https://harpers.org/archive/2021/03/il-maestro-feder - ico-fellini-martin-scorsese/ (February 20, 2021) SHAVIRO, STEVEN. 2016. ’Post-Continuity: An Introduction’. In Denson, Shane, and Julia Leyda (eds.) Post-Cinema: Theorizing 21st-Century Film. 51 - 64. REFRAME Books. Available on http:// reframe.sussex.ac.uk/post-cinema/ (February 20, 2021). ZAJC, MELITA. 2015. ‘The Social Media Dispositive and Moneti- zation of User-Generated Content’. The Information Society 31, no. 1 (January 2015): 61–67. ZAJC, MELITA. 2013. ‘Social Media, Prosumption, and Disposi- tives: New Mechanisms of the Construction of Subjectivity’. Jour - nal of Consumer Culture 15, no. 1 (March 2015 b): 28–47. ZAJC, MELITA. 1999. ‘The Concept of Dispositiv: Studying Tech- nology in Terms of Its Use Because of the All yet-to-Be-Written User Manuals.’ In Gerin R, Jedlicková P (Hrsg) A Decade of Trans- formation, Vol. 8. Vienna: IWM.