M ICHAEL P UNT Swing Time: Technology as/ &/ as Metaphor According to legend and most reliable reports, when it came to dancing Fred Astair was a hard task-master constantly rehearsing the same piece for days on end. Famously, Ginger Rogers recalls that practice could last for fourteen hours and at times her shoes were covered in blood. Typically, Astair and Rogers danced as a couple and in the early sound films such as Swing Time 1 they are recognised to be in top form. Much of the dance in this and other Astair/ Rogers vehicles is ‘tap dancing’ in which the rapid movement of the feet and the steel plates attached to the shoes produce a percussive accompaniment to the music. As a dance form it has a long precedent in clog dancing, jigs, and slave dancing (in the USA), but at the turn of the 19 th century it was embraced by the United States of America largely as an attraction at Burlesque and Vaudeville theatres in which the demonstrations of virtuosity and the inevitable leg-show produced an intoxicating libidinous mix which affirmed the youth, exuberance, and independence of an emerging nation. If it had a metaphorical significance in these contexts, they were quite weak and long since overshadowed by the formalism of the choreography and the exhibition of performative virtuosity. Tap dancing has its own critical discourse and network of histories and became most popular in the USA of the early 20 th century as “Hoofing,” a form of tap in which exaggerated movements of the legs gave a force and gusto to the “Tap.” Hoofing was a wilfully coarse dance form that maximized the raw eroticism of the dance mixing an adult liberation with a juvenile pleasure in unnecessary and noisy repetition. Although as Kracauer argued in the Mass Ornament, this kind of dancing was not without social meaning, in its aestheticization of pointless work it had no metaphorical significance. Astair, of course, knew that, if he was to have a broad star appeal in the cinema he needed to embourgeoise the form while, at the same time, maintaining his contact with a working class audience. He achieved this by developing a special form of Tap, later known as Broadway Tap, in which the leg movements are less exaggerated and the sounds are only made with the bottom of the shoe. This became a style associated primarily with him in a calculating strategy which elevated his performance from admirable skill to an auteur art. In Swing Time, we see this passage in the three key 1 Swing Time, dir. George Stevens, prod. Pandoro S. Berman, chor. Hermes Pan, 1936. M ICHAEL P UNT 316 dances in which the Hoofing style of “Pick Yourself Up” gives way to Broadway Tap in the final number “Never Gonna Dance.” Strategically accentuating this stylistic difference was important for ambitious stars like Astair and Rogers, and doing it very well was crucial, but Tap in any dance form is a highly demanding performative system that calls for great skill and training to freely reproduce a particular set and the added value of innovation cannot be underplayed. Nonetheless, still the question remains as to why the rehearsals were so demanding: What was it in the dance that insisted on such relentless repetition to achieve perfection? Why was it so important to get it absolutely right for a film which would be seen and forgotten by an audience as intent on dating as they were on movie going. At this distance, with the advantage of repeated viewing and even freeze frame and under cranking, it is clear that a dance such as the Astair/ Rogers duet ‘Pick Yourself Up’ in the Gordon School of Dancing in Swing Time is not merely an exhibition piece but a burgeoning metaphor consistent with the lyrics of the song. Its plot strategy, vernacular semiotics and the formal composition propel the scene into a Depression era narrative of native skill making its own luck. It begins the journey from virtuosity to art by framing the dance in such a way that it stands in for a necessary and particular kind of ebullience that is required to sustain endeavour in the face of massive adversity. As the plot charts the passage of John ‘Lucky’ Garrett (Astair) and Penny Caroll’s (Rogers) relationship from interpersonal antagonism to physical synchronicity, the narration of adolescent sexual dynamics in Swing Time means that “Pick Yourself Up” can also be understood metaphorically — but quite what for is another matter. Even in their relative maturity (they are both in their thirties) as the couple swirl through the dance school in the first number they stand in for the narcissistic exuberance of youth, the energetic parry and thrust of adolescent dating bound up in a universal discourse of conquest and resistance. But with such conveniently resonant names such as John ‘Lucky’ Garrett (luck and artistic deprivation/ poverty) and Penny Caroll (modest hope and Christian celebration) the dance may also be seen as a historical metaphor for the emancipating power of the muscular individualism that ’won’ the USA in the previous centuries. In this reading it is a sort of Pilgrim’s Progress for the American 1930s. As such it is a Republican metaphor: a metaphor for how the power of individuals looking after themselves can produce the dynamics necessary for progress in a hostile world. Alternatively, it is a metaphor for the progressive synergetic union of individual difference epitomized in heterosexual bonding and family that produces an impregnable force for the future, and which also rectifies the omissions and errors of the past. It is a metaphor of the consequences of democratic collaboration between individuals sharing surplus gifts in a collective enterprise for Swing Time: Technology as/ &/ as Metaphor 317 good. Alternatively, it can be seen as an ode to the pleasures of the fit and able body when shared in a synergetic relationship with a separate other: a metaphor for an ideal youth. Such interpretation could extend much further, endlessly extracting the metaphorical significance of the dance and, within the broad spectrum of permissible interpretation that the narrative allows, all metaphorical readings of the same sequence would be valid, or at the very least their competing claims could be fought out in a minute textual and intertextual analysis. Indeed, the whole dance could stand in for the subsequent interpretative interactions of generations of films scholars picking themselves up and starting all over again. None of this, however, suggests why Astair and Rogers needed to rehearse so intensely that their feet bled. Broadly speaking: All they had to do was sparkle and to be in the right place to leap out of the confines of the dance floor and then to willingly return only to leave it again for good with a certain rebellious dash. This is perhaps how the stage direction for a live show might have read and, of course, there would be no second takes and edits to micro-construct the best performance. Even so in live theatre it would be uneconomical to pay for extensive rehearsal and preparation that this film (and those like it) seemed to demand. In the movies, however, the stakes are high and a good film makes good money (a budget of $886,000 for Swing Time yielded the third highest USA box office for 1936). In addition, Astair/ Rogers numbers used extended long takes and film is an unforgiving medium since, once it is printed, the imperfections are indelible and a matter of record moreover errors are invariably picked up by the alert film buff and antagonistic critic to alert the moviegoer. Hence a galaxy of regulated and unionized professions collaborate with performers to produce, if not the perfect take, at least one that is acceptable within the constraints of convention and budget that can be printed and (possibly) included in the final immutable product. In the so-called ‘Classical Hollywood’ era when films were produced by Majors, a system of vertical integration insisted that the whole process from script idea to release print and even the exhibition venue were in the purlieu of the studio. Film products for the cinema (as distinct from other cinema products such as live-acts, auditoriums, sound systems, fast food, etc.) emerge from a wellplanned phased construction which can be demarcated in several ways. For example, four of the broadest phases might be characterised as 1. idea/ script/ screenplay/ shooting script, 2. performance/ cinematography/ effects, 3. editing/ post production, publicity/ release. From there the finished product (including its publicity packages) was 4. distributed to a circuit of first run houses which were usually owned by, or under contract to the studio, and then on to the independent sector of second and third runs etc. Each of these four phases is accompanied by its distinct concerns, conventions, and M ICHAEL P UNT 318 priorities and it is the task of the production company, the ‘studio’ (a deceptively domestic name for a vast industrial and financial apparatus), to ensure that the final release is coherent, and will yield a maximum return. As film goers, critics, and film analysts we often overlook the making of the film as a determinant of meaning and give special attention to the exhibited film as a trace of a production process which are, by and large, ignored as active agents in the final form of the finished product. Production histories are sometimes used to explain why some films are the way they are, in support of a textual reading. However, with the exception of a few scholars, textual readings of films proceed from the release print and, possibly, work back through production history to account for film and narrative form — usually explaining anomalies through production detail. In the practice of film production, however, each phase and group of contributing technicians also has its own vision of the product, its own criteria and its own specialist technologies to realise an acceptable standard which does not necessarily correspond with the release version. Finally bringing these divergent visions together as a theatrical and/ or television product is the responsibility of the executive producer who has the final responsibility to the financial backers. The spate of re-releases as ‘Director’s Cuts’ and even ‘Final Director’s Cuts’ remind us that between the script idea and the pay box a film is many different things to many different people in the various processes of production. The virtue of separating these phases in this essay is that it allows us to cosider the decision making processes in the performance/ cinematography/ special effects phase as a determining factor in the final film form. Clearly, it is in this phase where Astair and Rogers had the clearest vision of their own version of the film and their greatest influence over its quality and meaning. It was at this stage that they rehearsed with lighting riggers and cinematographers, all of whom were at some remove from the script and the final product, until they got the ‘look’ that they imagined. This compartmentalization of the production process provides the logical context for their scope and limits of the performers’ agency and suggests that we might look afresh for the meaning of Astair and Rogers’ relentless regime (or at least part of it) in the context of the technologies and processes of making photographic images appear to move naturally rather than in the film text. Perhaps most significantly, Astair and Rogers, unlike their audiences, could repeatedly review their performances on film as daily rushes both projected on a screen and analytically at an editing desk. They could see their dance numbers at considerably reduced speeds or even frame by frame. Mistakes and poor choreography could, within limits, be rectified in further rehearsal and shot again. For most cinema-goers, however, the movie was an unrecoverable event and much of the subtlety and virtuosity of their dance routines simply evades the viewer in the relentless forward momentum of Swing Time: Technology as/ &/ as Metaphor 319 the narrative and the apparatus. Outside the major capitals, where there may have been repertory houses, once the film had ended its run through the various chains of exhibitors it was never to be seen again. More often than not the studio left the (invariably worn) release print at the final theatre on the circuit since it was not worth the carriage cost of returning it, and where, fortunately for us, many of the great finds for the archive have been made. Programmes changed at least twice a week and so, although there must have been exceptions, seeing the same film twice was a rarity and fanzines, sheet music, and still photographs met the residual appetites of the audience — until the next film. Only with the domestic VHS recorder did film become something that could be revisited over again and be analytically slowed or accelerated. Slowing the dances in Swing Time, although never intended as part of the release version, offers a special insight into how this couple, at their best, literally flies. For long periods of the dance it seems that they spend more time in the air than on the floor as each toe tapping click becomes the engine of levitation. But the great trick of these dances is that this flight is naturalized through a dazzlingly complex and difficult set of steps and, perhaps most importantly, seamless transformations between one rhythm and another. Reminiscent of J.W.M. Turner’s paintings, these dances are made by the spaces in between the dramatic flourishes which are consistent with the overall style of the key gestures and, as such, are distinct from the fanzine photographs which “merely” depict them momentarily airborne as in a chronophotograph. Astair and Rogers worked so hard in the rehearsal room, it seems, in order to convincingly counter the overbearing demands of gravity. Viewed from this position, the metaphorical significance of the dance in Swing Time lies not only with the meaning of the performance as an adjunct to the narrative, but also in a parallel, technologically facilitated metaphor of transcendence — one that the early cinematographe ensemble constructed in its projected form, in the very first encounter with an audience. Including the metaphorical dimensions of technology invites a reexamination of the emergence of cinema as a popular form of entertainment in relation to the contemporary discourses of movement, science, and technology, and in as far as it can be separated, entertainment. As Martha Blassnigg has argued in her parallel paper included in this volume, the discussion of movement was not only central to a dominant philosophical system in France in the latter part of the 19 th century, but it also provided the foil for the scientific examination of movement using chronophotography. Moreover, as I have discussed elsewhere, the technological arrangement that produced a cinema experience in the years following the presentation of the Cinematographe in 1895 can only be understood if the realist argument is suspended in favour of a more fully located transcendent imperative. If, as it is now generally understood, the audience did not confuse the image of a mov- M ICHAEL P UNT 320 ing train with a pro-filmic moving train, what was the lure of the grubby little image shown in the basement of the Salon Indienne? This is an issue that I have addressed extensively elsewhere and in this paper I want to examine the counter-realist version of cinema by looking ahead from 1936 to the signature dance of another musical icon of the Classical Era, Singing in the Rain. 2 Like Swing Time, Singing in the Rain follows the ‘show within a show’ narrative format and is a film that is structured around the phases of its own production. Both films foreground the idea that in the cinema (if not elsewhere) the technology functions at both a practical and metaphorical level. Singing in the Rain was also a box office success, although not quite the hit that Swing Time was (it cost around $2,500,000 and yielded $7.5 million on its first release). It also features dance routines which demanded intensive rehearsals and, as with Swing Time, there are apocryphal stories of practising endlessly in blood soaked shoes to get the dance numbers right. Stories of the difficulty of production are necessary studio spin to raise the value of the film. Many of these marketing ploys are inspired by the correlation between art and suffering which gained currency in 18 th century Romanticism and persisted in the popular arts well into the 20 th century. The Romanticist challenge to an overbearing rationalism derived from an unquenchable belief in the exclusive capacity of humans to be creative in oppressive regimes; and as such it may be ideologically dubious, but it has sustained a wide diffusion of high cultural assets and ideas at various times. Many of the musicals that were produced by Arthur Freed featuring talents such as Gene Kelly, Cid Charisse, Fred Astair, and Judy Garland exhibited a modernist appetite for minimalist decors and modern dance that were relatively easy to stage and had an international style. The vast uninterrupted sets with clean bold colour were cheap to produce and could be moved around on dollies to open up tracks for the camera as it changed angles. At times whole sets would be dismantled and reformed in a choreography no less complex than that of the dancers themselves. Such simple styles could be invested with higher production values if the production narratives could be underwritten by a ‘difficult’ and somewhat distorted concept of 18 th century Romanticist art that was always accompanied by suffering. Singing in the Rain reflects this antinomy in its story of film production technology on the cusp of the so-called ‘sound era.’ Although synchronized sound is mostly presented as a technological ‘improvement’ on the silent form of cinema (which, of course, was never silent since there was always some integral sound accompaniment), in fact there was a profound scepticism in the industry as to its virtue. The idea and the technology had been around for most of the 20 th century but the key players in the industry resisted for good economic reasons. Some are evident in Sing- 2 Singing in the Rain, dir. Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, prod. Arthur Freed, 1952. Swing Time: Technology as/ &/ as Metaphor 321 ing in the Rain, for example they had a satisfactory product, and many films could be made simultaneously in the same studio, moreover the universality of the silent codes meant that each product had worldwide distribution. However, once the major studios were more or less forced (by Warner Bros.) to invest in the technology, they destroyed the silent back-libraries and invested in publicity that presented earlier forms as primitive so as to ensure that their investments were safe. Although costly and fraught with problems, sound movies, the “Talkies,” had a singular advantage in that they deprived the exhibitor of any product control since all films had to be run at a standard rate. Whereas previously over-cranking and under-cranking the projector in response to audience reaction was part of the projectionists’ art, with synchronised sound film, however, it always had to run at twenty-four frames per second. The downside to sound film was that it segmented a market that had formerly been international. Films now had to be language-specific and it is often noted that the lavish musical film emerged as a genre in this period as an attempt to produce an international product that was not entirely dependent on understanding the spoken language. This, however, produced one of the unforeseen opportunities that sound film offered the studios which was to renegotiate the contracts with actors and particularly stars whose fees had risen substantially through fan discourses. A major tactic in this renegotiation was the suggestion that the star’s voice was unsuitable for the talkies. Singing in the Rain produced in 1952, at the time when sound film had finally become the accepted and irrevocable standard for the future of the industry, takes its cue for the ‘unsuitable voice’ ploy and presents a twodimensional narrative of excessive ambition on the part of an adored star thwarted by technological ‘progress.’ The story of Singing in the Rain concerns the creative artist’s struggle against the changes in exhibition technology imposed by the industry and the studio boss R. F. Simpson (Millard Mitchell). Some artists fail, notably the unfortunate Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) whilst others, through wit and talent, especially Cosmo (Donald O’Connor), are relentlessly promoted throughout the film on the basis of their ability to solve intransigent problems with simple answers. The Don Lockwood character (Gene Kelly) also succeeds as a star and a man, but rather through his athletic and creative skill as a dancer and his developing passion for Kathy Selden (Debbie Reynolds) and increasing dislike of Lina Lamont. Almost all the decisions he makes are driven not by a professional creativity and his experience as an actor, but by his growing infatuation with Kathy — a rather ordinary looking and gently aspiring contract player. Their first two meetings are engineered to set out the polemic between high art and popular culture as mutually exclusive domains. After their first meetings the work of the rest of the narrative is to resolve this opposition and create a durable heterosexual couple for whom art is popular M ICHAEL P UNT 322 cinema. An ambition which remains unresolved until the last poster shot advertising the film within the film. In this, Gene Kelly and Debbie Reynolds stand, shoulder to shoulder, admiring a huge advertising billboard comprising a crudely drawn double portrait of them. Cinema becomes the high art set against the static and approximate achievements of the graphic arts. As with Swing Time, metaphors for the struggle between the individual and the oppressions of a system abound such as in poor Lina’s attempt to do what she does well in the new technological regime of synchronized sound. The crew also suffer from the technological oppression of the talkies as they are forced to work in make-shift sound-proof boxes removed from the glamour of the action on the set. Studio boss R.F. Simpson’s embrace of new technology is also driven by darker and more powerful forces to whom he has to answer. The underlying themes of social opposition and individual reconciliation in Swing Time are present in Singing in the Rain, nowhere more so than in Kelly’s dance to the signature tune which heralds the beginning of the end of the film. Singing and dancing in the rain, this ‘thirty-somethings’ realization that love can liberate his body so that he can enjoy the pleasures of a thorough soaking from what Kathy calls ironically the exceptionally heavy ‘California Dew.’ He is so in love that he dances, skips, and stamps his way around the minimalist set until his bohemian moment is brought up short by a cold wet cop (who is presumably not in love). The dance to “Singing in the Rain” (in Singing in the Rain) is the culmination of the successful strategy to reinstate a necessary order to movie-making that the technological change has temporarily disrupted. The inspiration for this new order occurred earlier in the day as Cosmos hatched the idea that the Don Lockwood/ Lina Lamont silent vehicle The Duelling Cavalier can be saved from ‘bombing’ by becoming a musical called The Dancing Cavalier. But this success comes at a personal price, which is that Kathy will have to sacrifice her own visibility and career prospects by singing Lina’s tunes off camera. The trio split up for the evening and become a heterosexual pair who enjoy the evening in the glow of a shared vision of a promising future. After a chaste goodnight kiss (in which Kathy begins to take command of the relationship) Don realizes that he is in love and the polemic between art and popular culture dissolves in an overtly synthetic studio-bound song and dance number in which the progressive euphoria of his actions evoke the reckless abandon of first love. In a simulation of a spontaneous expression of the irresponsible exuberance of adolescents he dances in a manufactured storm of “piped rain” which was mixed with milk to make it photogenic. With the mounting exaggeration of a love-induced regression, the dance runs its course until a passing policeman (Robert Williams) brings him back to his thirty-four years and citizenship. He wanders off, down what is obviously a stage set, handing his umbrella to a non-descript passer-by played by Harry Swing Time: Technology as/ &/ as Metaphor 323 Pollard, a comedian from the silent era who worked with Harold Lloyd and Hal Roach. This dance number is a profound and mobile metaphor for male infatuation: one can imagine generations of love-struck men (usually somewhat younger) reliving this number in real life — albeit briefly and without the skill. It is also a reprise of the Astair and Rogers’ number ’Pick Yourself Up,’ in that an overbearing environment (the economic depression in Swing Time and the inescapability of love and the weather in Singing in the Rain) provides a narrative rational for a movement-driven metaphor for the individual’s struggle against these apparently unalterable oppressions. The metaphors are, however, very different because in the intervening years between 1936 and 1952 something quite crucial appears to have changed in the movies that is quite independent of film style. Most obviously, the later film is in colour; a distinction which, in popular (and some scholarly) language, marks a historical shift: Old films are black and white and modern ones are in colour — despite the fact that this is a crude reduction of the evidence. It is now generally acknowledged that about 80% of all films produced up until 1920 were coloured in some way or another, and after that date release prints progressively became black and white until the 1960s when they were again routinely coloured. The wisdom of this popular periodization and corruption of the evidence, however, should not be overlooked since this particular slippage of history alerts us to the metaphorical aspect of technology. The story of colour, like the story of sound, is not a simple tale of technological progress. The Technicolor Corporation was formed in 1912 and although it successfully developed the technology for colour systems for film production, it was not until the 1930s that the full colour spectrum was used on screen, and it was only at the end of that decade that audiences appeared to prefer coloured films. By 1950 Eastmancolor, which used a single strip, made the Technicolor dye transfer process obsolete, but it continued to be used for a while, in part because studios were equipped for it, and also because it was understood as a carefully monitored and high-quality product that imparted ‘class’ to a picture. Singing in the Rain appeared at a time when full spectrum colour had become the industry standard for cinema products that were marketed with high production values, and indeed as the posters show, the film was billed foregrounding the technological aspects of the product as ‘MGM’s Technicolor Treasure.’ This tag-line draws the film ever closer into a recursive relationship with an industry: a film within a film, a film about film and, above all, a film about Hollywood films. The film begins in Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and never leaves that corner of Los Angeles. It tells the tale of the human impact of changes in film technology as it impacts on people in Hollywood. It shows, mostly in the background, the structural changes to Hollywood production as the habit of M ICHAEL P UNT 324 shooting two or three films simultaneously in one studio had to give way to the dedicated sound stage, and with that the possibility of a totally synthetic product — including dubbed sound (disavowed as it is also acknowledged as the standard). Told in the symbolic naturalism of Technicolor, Singing in the Rain is a film that in every aspect never leaves the major studios or American movie history. As we have seen, even its bit players all have their place in the major and minor histories of Hollywood. At times it is almost pathologically tied to the studio, at best reluctant to leave the Hollywood club and the vast apparatus that turned film technology into cinema products. Given this, it is perhaps not surprising that when the signature number in this film is slowed it shows that rehearsal time was not spent in making the dancer fly (as in Swing Time), although it is an equally complex dance routine as ‘Pick Yourself Up.’ Instead the demanding rehearsal of dancer, bitplayers, and camera was needed to ensure that everything — every prop, player, and lighting rig — was meticulously in the right space at the right time. The song, “Singing in the Rain,“ has an uncertain beginning, but Arthur Freed published it in 1929 and there are a number of filmic version of it from that date. It has the rhythmic form of a child’s doggerel, each beat foreshadowing the next and each rhyme predictable and easily anticipated. Initially, so are Kelly’s movements; after thirteen steps stage left against a blue background he stops at the moment the background becomes red. The umbrella breaks the divide and after a twirl or two and another thirteen steps against a red background a jump takes him up to the lamp post where he twirls again and there is a close up. Another ten steps and legs akimbo another close up in full rain — this time picked out against the blue ground with a green bush as a halo. Another thirteen steps takes him to the window of the Mahout boutique which provides the backlight for his next routine. Mahout’s offers him a mini stage, and in front of this the routine is carried over to a darker ground with a green door lit with a key light and the dance is repeated, but this time the umbrella becomes an active participant. The close-up at the end of this passage leads him to the Millinery shop-front which provides a larger stage (the sum of the first two smaller backdrops) and a larger sound from the orchestra accompanies him. At this point, the gushing down-pipe provides the moment for cathartic release from the confines of the sidewalk parallel to the shop fronts and he leaps into the road with the familiar flamboyant circling dance concluding with puddle-jumping and reckless splashing in front of the Hollywood Art School. The policeman arrives and Kelly departs with stuttering steps, handing his umbrella to a passing “Snub” Pollard, and as Kelly walks stage left Pollard leaves stage right and they both reach the edge of the frame simultaneously offering a satisfying geometric closure to the scene as the orchestra fades. Swing Time: Technology as/ &/ as Metaphor 325 Clearly structured around the body, “Singing in the Rain“ (the dance) is a metaphor for what might have transpired had Kathy not kissed him sweetly and sent him on his way. But it is so displaced by its formal structuring in relation to the mode of representation as to be almost incoherent as a metaphor for sex; or, at the very least, this metaphor becomes a secondary reading of its meaning when set against the visual and aural materialism of the performance. The cinematographic apparatus, a technology that became a metaphor for the disembodied in its early phases, had by 1950 become transformed into a metaphor for technological order — largely through the naturalization of synthetic colour achieved in a synergetic relationship between Max Factor and Technicolor. The cosmetics used to heighten colour contrast on film negative and to amplify the allure of the stars increasingly became fashion essentials for the audience since they were particularly light and “natural.” As Singing in the Rain refused to leave Hollywood, the audiences became inscribed in the film. It is necessary to be brief in the summary, although tempting to look harder at later films such as Matrix, Fight Club, and The Lake House and to see another technological metaphor as the industry naturalizes CGI and the reliability and significance of the pro-filmic referent dissolves completely. Perhaps in the context of this essay the 2005 Mint Royale re-mix of “Singing in the Rain” accompanied by a CGI version of the dance used to advertise Volkswagen deserves the last word. 3 In this version, the determining referent is the memory of the film itself. As such it throws into stark and memorable relief that the only “real” “real” is the Volkswagen motor-car as it appropriates our memory of a juvenile doggerel and produces a moment of misrecognition. However, once the original is restored to memory there are no discourses of punishing rehearsals and bleeding feet, in their place is the professional internet chat traffic about CG techniques, texture skins, and a collegiate admiration for the dedication and sacrifice of the programmers to achieve the effect: bleeding feet become bleeding fingers, the 24 hour pizza, and Coke coding sessions. What it shares with the other examples in this essay, however, is the non-metaphorical imbrication of the body and the technological processes in order to invest human value and make metaphorical reading a possibility. This brief excursion into the history of film technology might lead us to consider more fully the metaphorical significance of technology in our reading and “decoding” of media products, and perhaps invite us to attend a little more closely to the processes of production that precede the public text and the agency and individuals who contribute on the way to the construction of the final exhibited form. What is at stake here is that the machine (like this essay) is running as we become aware of it. Only 3 It can be seen at <http: / / www.tellyads.com/ show_movie.php? filename=TA1540 &advertiser=Volkswagen/ >. July 7, 2009. M ICHAEL P UNT 326 through the critical reflection on technology as a human construct, which has a metaphorical dimension that is independent of the text, can we stay in touch with the processes through which technology acquires a spurious claim to cultural determinacy and, through this, restore agency to the domain of human action. 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