Opening Up Re-enactment for Film Theory - Megan Carrigy

When Megan Carrigy presented her seminar on Opening up Re-enactment for Film Theory, she considered the re-enactment as a self-reflexive performance of reference. This notion is interesting in its acknowledgement of the staged re-construction and its historical viability in presentation. Carrigy explored the dynamics of reproduction whilst also examining the techniques of film re-enactments, as they have since been adopted and integrated as norms of narrative cinema. In essence, Carrigy’s seminar sought to elucidate her research approach by introducing a strategic positioning of the re-enactment through its operation in the past and governing lineage, and the progression that has secured its place in the contemporary cinematic sphere. This progression has since seen the re-enactment encompass validation of indexicality, as she suggested through the example of CSI, whilst presenting the form as an act of drawing attention to re-enactment.

Although re-enactment has been heavily presented as a naïve form, it is the techniques that were pioneered in film re-enactment that paved a successful path for narrative cinema. With reference to Mary Ann Doane, Carrigy gave the example of continuity editing where the temporal necessity of concealing cuts in the re-enactment was then able to cross over in delivering a seamless, more real sense of the narrative.

Historically, the re-enactment served to draw people closer to action that they otherwise would not have exposure to. As Carrigy suggested, re-enactment serves to dramatise and explicate a more real experience, regardless of the content’s validity. She spoke of these concepts in considering the early film re-enactments from 1898-1907 particularly in regards to the war and the reconstituted newsreels that delivered a sense of action and immediacy to the home front. With these earlier film re-enactments bearing an unapologetic representation of a skewed or embellished truth, Carrigy’s research saw the consumption of re-enactment aligning with Tom Gunning’s ‘cinema of attractions.’ The exhibitionism of foregrounding drama in the ‘real’ therefore attracts its audience not only by its topicality, but primarily through the techniques employed to tease out spectatorial engagement.

As Carrigy suggested initially, art theory and performance studies have presided over the development of the re-enactment across time. Artists have staged their re-constructions of events or elements of history, and these representations have found performance in multiple capacities, some including live history performances, tourism features, commemorative ceremonies, biopics and reality television. The performative value of re-enactment has, however, proved problematic in terms of the factual value for historians. The place of tradition and question of truth has been inclined to prolong this tension, although historians in contemporary contexts are tending to recognise their value on a number of levels and as a means by which their research can possibly be informed. A struggle remains in defining what exactly the re-enactment is and its associated etymology, but the acknowledgement of re-enactment as performance of pre-existing events has signalled the form sans a denial of theatricality. That said, Carrigy also acknowledged the tension of re-enactment in its position between two agendas: the foregrounding of theatricality and repetition in representation.