On Preventing the Ceremonies of Dumb People in Hollywood From Being a Burden on Their Parent Companies or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Public
Kill screen from the Cartoon Network video game Orphan Feast
“I am giving an account of what…ought…to be.”
― William Daniel Defoe, A Friendly Proposal for Foundlings and Bastard Children Moll Flanders
Much like the birth of Christ, historians of film rarely agree on when it happened: the birth of cinema, that is. Perhaps even more controversial, however, is the question of paternity. Who’s your daddy, indeed?
Francophiles will forever laud Méliès, Teutons will zealously campaign for Murnau, the Russians <3 Eisenstein and proud Americans some of D.W. Griffith’s first, err, exploits. And yet, no matter the geographic genesis of film, one fact about its origin remains clear across the national board: it was, in fact, a silent birth. #Scientology.
If radio had delivered the psychologically bewildering disembodied voice (i.e.… Read the rest
