war and cinema: the logistics of perception [paul virilio]

Virilio’s text has a straightforward premise: that the developments in cinema and the developments in weaponry (or war) have been a complementary process. Which is also to say developments in methods of perception. These developments are evidenced in cinema’s ability to view the world from different perspectives, which is related to the demise of the horizontal battle, with war now being followed from the perspective of the sky, or space. Elements such as the introduction of colour, widescreen, sound are all charted in cinema’s technological arms race. There are fascinating details about the Nazis' quest to make colour films, spurred on by American advances. Many of the regular tools of modern warfare: radar, ballistic missiles, surveillance methods etc are linked to developments in the audio-visual field, such as the rise of television. Virilio carefully depicts the way in which the atomic bomb itself acts as a kind of camera, leaving a negative: “It left its imprint on stone walls, changing their apparent colour…the same was the case with clothing and bodies, where kimono patterns were tattooed on victim’s flesh.”

It’s a small, sweeping book, originally published in 1984, something which gives pause, and makes the reader wish there was an updated edition to take the grandiose themes the book addresses forwards. Hollywood cinema, post Star Wars, has become ever more military in its technological creation and its thematics. The links between Hollywood and the military (industrial complex) would appear to be more and more firmly entrenched, whilst US military might continues to dominate on a ‘global stage’. Soft power and hard power create a united front. There’s the remarkable paradox that people all over the world who would rage against US military intervention will happily absorb the soft power cultural warfare of Netflix and its ilk, never thinking twice about how they are made subjects of a global power structure whilst they consume the pretty pictures. 

War and Cinema would have a field day with this issue, along with the issue of 21st century surveillance and the way in which the machines we thought would liberate us are in fact being used to control and monitor our every move.