Part One: The Audience and the Myth of Entertainment

Chapter one of Gene Youngblood's Expanded Cinema is a refreshingly transcendental and surprisingly erudite discussion of cultural evolution and the need to use cinema, as well as Art in general, to aid in the necessary change from what Youngblood terms a “Paleocybernetic Age” to one which is self-nourishing, or “negentropic”, and which generates new ideas. “Part One: The Audience and the Myth of Entertainment” starts out by questioning man’s perception of reality and points to the probability that we are unable to comprehend our place in the Universe. Youngblood pontificates on the reconvergence of art, science, and metaphysics that was occurring in the 1970’s and the associated technological growth which created an accelerated transfer of knowledge. Much of what Gene Younglood describes in this chapter is prevalent and even more pressing today.

“The Audience and the Myth of Entertainment” illuminates a time in which there is an urgent need for change in order to survive, but also one that is rife with opportunity for a global expansion of consciousness, both outward and inward. Youngblood quotes Pierre Teilhard, using the term hominization, as a description for the manifestation: “the process by which the original protohuman stock becomes increasingly more human, realizing more of its possibilities” (47). Youngblood then critiques the iniquity of commercial media in juxtaposition with the evolution of the natural world. He states “Art is the language through which we perceive new relationships at work in the environment, both physical and metaphysical. Indeed, art is the essential instrument in the very development of that consciousness” (47). Youngblood then writes of the need for a new vision for the exchange of ideas, the beginning of which he terms expanded cinema.

In the next portion of the chapter, subtitled “Radical Evolution and Future Shock in the Paleocybernetic Age”, Gene Youngblood deciphers that change, or revolution, is the only constant, experienced ubiquitously by modern man; he thus refers to the phenomenon as radical evolution (50). As the lines between nature and technology, science and metaphysics, become increasingly intertwined, the lack of knowledge or idea expansion, transferred via the “global intermedia network” becomes more and more acute. “The Intermedia Network as Nature” makes the case that “man is conditioned more by cinema and television than by nature” (54). Gene Youngblood envisions the intermedia network as the cinema, television, radio, magazines and newspapers that inform and define the social organism.

“Art, Entertainment, Entropy” explores commercial cinema’s formulaic prescription and the viewer’s conditioned response, made mandatory by a profit motive. Harnessing the power of the conditioned response, or memory, Youngblood argues that commercial entertainment capitulates a backwards-looking audience that is robbed of their power to think for themselves. He states, “Art is freedom from the conditions of memory; entertainment is conditional on a present that is conditioned by the past... To confront a work of art is to confront oneself— but aspects of oneself previously unrecognized” (60). Youngblood then observes that a “healthy” mind will regard the most important information as entertaining, and defines a healthy mind as one “capable of creative thinking” (61), or artistic thought. As new information is not circulated in the current commercial entertainment environment, change does not occur, and entropy, the “state of increasing chaos due to misinformation about the structure of the system” (62), accelerates in our society.

If the cinema can create an active participation with the audience, it can be regenerative. Youngblood states “If the information (either concept or design) reveals some previously unrecognized aspect of the viewer's relation to the circumambient universe— or provides language with which to conceptualize old realities more effectively— the viewer recreates that discovery along with the artist, thus feeding back into the environment the existence of more creative potential, which may in turn be used by the artist for messages of still greater eloquence and perception” (65).

“Retrospective Man and the Human Condition”: Man is Retrospective because the ideas he is currently circulating are recycled and redundant. This degeneracy is apparent in all aspects of our society, including our educational system (68). The current Human Condition for man is that of total confrontation of what we do and do not know about ourselves. The Artist is the Saviour as he or she creates new Symbols with which Man can explore themselves and their existences. An artist may be an artist, poet, scientist, philosopher (67)...

Finally, in “The Artist as Design Scientist”, Youngblood makes exceptions for several films working within the bounds of conventional cinema, resting their transcendental qualities in the design aesthetics created. Youngblood notes that the word “design” indicates “to remove the symbol of”, and charges artists/design scientists with the creation of a language that reveals the hidden meaning or potential within some aspect of our Humanity, and/or our relationship to the Cosmos. He states “The artist does not point out new facts so much as he creates a new language of conceptual design information with which we arrive at a new and more complete understanding of old facts, thus expanding our control over the interior and exterior environments” (71). And this, My Friend, is how we change the world.