Cinema Perception and Platform Distribution: Problem as a Perspective

Abstract

Rapid and worldwide extension of streaming video distribution raises relevant questions concerning the state of cinema as art and social institution. The author concentrates on the problems connected to the spectator’s preference for platform service at the expense of theatrical one, mostly related to the perception of cinema as a work of art, and tries to determine if a certain essential component of the reception is lost as a result of autonomous viewing.
Cinema historians saw the advantages of theatrical viewing in the coupling of the technological potential of cinema with the situation of a public venue — spectators’ integration into a group, identifying themselves with a film as discourse and simultaneously with the elements of narration, connecting the illusory screen space and the real space of the cinema hall.
In other words, in creating an inter-subjective base for getting new experience and its subsequent mutual exchange. However, under contemporary technological conditions a new process of mass interactive communication (self-communication according to Manuel Castells), connected with the culture and technology of network society, comes into play.
Independent selection of films for individual viewing and public response to them in social networks exemplify this sort of communication, which is analyzed by the author taking as an example a certain discussion on the Russian streaming platform “Kinopoisk”. Turning to some milestones of cinema history in connection with the collective and individual viewing, the author comes to the conclusion that platform distribution is logically integrated into the cinematic process.
Accordingly in the contemporary context of network culture stand-alone viewing as a variant of self-communication doesn’t restrain, but stimulates the spectator’s agency, his urge to search for and generate meaning in the streamed content as well as prolongs the product’s life and advances its updating.