Response to Gene Youngblood’s Expanded Cinema Part One: The Audience and The Myth of Entertainment

In Part One of Gene Youngblood’s book, Expanded Cinema, explores the relationship between the viewer and traditional cinematic and television media to express his idea that a new form of cinema, an expanded cinema, is the way art can help to craft the intellect and metaphysics of audience in preparation for the “new age”. Youngblood talks about the world being a crossroads in history where society is in the state of permanent “radical evolution” in which nothing is certain but the fact of change itself. In a world of uncertainty, Youngblood finds the form of traditional cinema and television, mired in their catering to out limited senses, are not adequate to help Man form a new perspective about the world around him in order to acclimate to this environment of “radical evolution”. Chief amongst these forms is Entertainment, which according to Youngblood, “not only isn't creative, it actually destroys the audience's ability to appreciate and participate in the creative process.”(59) Entertainment perpetuates the training of audiences to act to the cues of commonly learned societal patterns and tropes, and thereby actually makes the individual think less. This is what Youngblood fears humanity must avoid at all costs.

So what does Youngblood propose as a solution to humanity’s need for redefinition of its metaphysical basis. Youngblood proposes that Man use a powerful culture for me nature of traditional cinema to what, he dubs, expanded cinema. He talks about the idea of humanization, which is the collective knowledge of generations being available to use more readily at birth than ever. Such a proliferation of accumulated knowledge would shape a much more aware society, as well as intellectual society which would require a mode of expression artistically, which he says is the role of expanded cinema. The two major examples he explores is the rise in the interconnected nature of the world due to the advent of the modern communication. He talks about the idea of the Noosphere where the culture of the world freely proliferates between countries, and pop culture and news is no longer just a local affair. This is facilitated by intermedia, which is the sharing of media over connected lines of communication that he say will shape the future of media. Youngblood points out the Man of tomorrow will no longer be an isolated consumer, but a producer of media tied into the world stage. In this way expanded cinema, with these elements, will serve as the ultimate mirror for humanity to discover as much as is possible of itself in artistic expression.

My personal opinion of Youngblood’s work is that he was a very forward thinker given that this work was written in the 1970s. Much of what he says will change media and the way we interact with it has happened. His notions of intermedia came true in the form that we now know as the World Wide Web, and the idea of the noosphere has only increased in its proliferation of cross culture interactions. Nevertheless, though I do believe that Youngblood’s aversion to commercial entertainment might be too extreme, I do agree that commercial entertainment, with its proliferation of “working models” over inventive and new undertakings for the profit are hurting society by stifling art. On a much brighter note, more and more consumers these days are becoming involved in the production of media as well, a fact that I think Youngblood would rejoice over and a trend very much predicted by the man himself. Indeed, Youngblood’s work has much to offer as well as show us how art and creativity may be shaped by the changing world and technologies around us.

-Nathan D.