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The Odd Illusion of Cinematic Time
You may not always know when you’re being manipulated
Cinematic theories of time have existed even before the advent of cinema studies as an academic field.
Henri Bergson’s notion of the durée, for example, questioned Immanuel Kant’s account of how human subjects experience time.
Bergson asks a phenomenological question:
How can the same image belong in two different systems at once, namely in my body and in the universe?
If my body perceives an image, how is this different from an image “existing” as such outside my own subjective position?
Bergson attempts to explain the phenomenon by dividing the perception of images into two categories and placing them in contrast with one another: subjective idealism versus material realism.
In Bergson’s understanding of subjective realism, the images that we perceive are variable, they can change depending on certain conditions, the person viewing them, etc.; hence in this sense they are subjective.
On the other hand, in his understanding of material realism, images “exist” in the universe regardless of whether or not we perceive them, and in this sense…
