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The Sublime and the Ideology of Hollywood Spectacle This essay explores the relationship between the spectacle of Hollywood cinema and the sublime as explained by Immanuel Kant. According to Kant, the sublime is aroused in the failure of an imagination to comprehend the absolutely great. In his Critique of Judgement, Kant distinguishes the mathematical sublime as the immeasurable quantity from the dynamical sublime as the immeasurable force. In comparison with the sublime of Kant, Greg Tuck compares the sublime and the spectacle and argues that spectacles might be ‘impressive and fun’ but that there is something shallow about them, while the sublime is a moment of extraordinary metaphysical density. However, we will try to discuss how the spectacle of Hollywood cinema plays a role in arousing the effect of the sublime, illustrating the greatest images empowered by the development of technology in films. Why does the spectacle of Hollywood cinema stick to the image of the big size which can be the sublime, rather than the ‘absolutely great’ image? First, what seems to be shown in the spectacle of Hollywood films, is not so much a narrative effect, which communicates a story with intrinsic language but an overwhelming image achieved through the use of special effects. This means that the movie being screened in a theatre attracts the audience easily with the big size image. For example, the image in spectacle movies such as Kingkong (2005) and Terminator 4 (2009) make spectators delighted even without subtitles written in a particular language, and thus it can cross language barriers. Therefore, it goes beyond the boundary of nation-states and therefore tends to be globalized. Second, once the spectacle in films comes to effect the sublime, it is not simply an experience of subjective failure to comprehend the measureless thing, but an objective ‘common sense’ which universally has the power of judgment followed by the extent of the ideas of reason. The power of the sublime in cinema produces a spectator as a renewed subject reproduced by Hollywood cinema. The big size of the spectacle in movies captivates audiences with the effect of the sublime. The captivated audience passively watches the image without actively pondering critically about the cinema effect. The spectator is victimized with the illusion of reality, as Plato’s prisoner in a cave. In this respect, the ultimate goal of the spectacle of Hollywood cinema is to produce a renewed spectator as an ideological subject to the Hollywood capitalism. The sublime effect brought about by Hollywood spectacle movies and by the mass culture in general can be the ideological effect of cinema apparatus as explained by Jean-Louis Baudry rather than the value of the aesthetic as explained in Kant’s philosophy.
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the Sublime, Hollywood spectacle, ideological effect, spectator, capital
