From the Editors Cinema: Labor

The job security of skilled modes of intellectual labor, like higher education, have been shown to be nostalgic fictions; “green jobs” represent a promise for a future that may already be past; and plaintive laments for Fordist modes, which were probably never what is recalled in retrospect, are sun...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Diacritics 2018, Vol.46 (4), p.3-5
Main Authors: Pinkus, Karen, Rhodes, John David
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aesthetics
Chaplin, Charlie (1889-1977)
Essays
Factories
Farocki, Harun
Gender
Godard, Jean-Luc (1930-2022)
Higher education
Labor unions
Literary devices
Motion pictures
Rhodes, David (1946-2022)
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Summary:The job security of skilled modes of intellectual labor, like higher education, have been shown to be nostalgic fictions; “green jobs” represent a promise for a future that may already be past; and plaintive laments for Fordist modes, which were probably never what is recalled in retrospect, are sung in the public sphere. In developing this special issue we asked ourselves, what can we learn from thinking about labor (or its refusal) in relation to cinema, today, when “cinema” bears an archeological relationship to new media just as “labor” bears an ambivalent relationship to terms like the assembly line, wages, unions, collective action, time clocks, the working day, and strictly regulated gender divisions? Despite the apparent non-reciprocity of filmmaking and the labor process, the history of cinema offers a rich archive of representations of labor: slave labor, domestic labor, reproductive labor, sex work, affective labor, office work, not to mention the backstage musical’s elaborate attempts to represent the labor of cinematic entertainment itself.
ISSN:0300-7162
1080-6539
1080-6539
DOI:10.1353/dia.2019.0000