Subject Positions in Very Early Cinema: A Sonic Perspective

Abstract

In this thesis I propose an encompassing theoretical understanding of the sound of very early cinema (1895-1906) in the United States. This sonic perspective offers fresh new insights in processes of subject construction in cinema in this period. I argue that, unlike classical narrative cinema, very early cinema offers various heterogeneous subject positions. One of these, though, is that position of very early cinema, and in my opinion the understanding of cinema it implies is the dominant one, already in the very early period.