The indomitable Kristor, frequent correspondent at the View From the Right, and now at Laura Wood's The Thinking Housewife, makes the no-nonsense response to her post Would Protectionism Have Saved Kodak?:
Film is like buggy whips. Let’s just move on, shall we?To this comment by Roger G.:
Donald Trump said on the Sean Hannity Show yesterday that the once mighty Kodak has gone bankrupt because they didn’t get the U.S. government to protect them from Fuji. Trump argued that Fuji destroyed Kodak by selling below manufacturing costs.I studied photography and film for four years (about 1/3 of those years were part-time, while I worked in a completely unrelated job to fund for my school).
The program was wonderfully technical. I avoided the Leftist/Marxist/Third World/Anti-Art/Anti-Beauty/Anti-west bias of many of the "art" teachers (well it was more like a bulldozer-level bias) by disappearing into the photography dark rooms, and the film editing suites, where no-one bothered me, and I could simply work on those machines (which surprisingly, few students used until the marathon rush of due assignments). This "experimentation" was vital for my education, since most of the teachers wanted us to produce some self-expression drivel, screw technique and art!
Part of the wonder for me in the dark room and while editing was the tactile aspect of working with the celluloid (film or photography). Another was seeing the chemicals magically produce an image from nothing (a blank, white piece of paper). And yet another was the challenge of fitting a puzzle, trying to put a coherent set of images together in the editing room.
Of course, some of these pleasures are possible in digital media since the digital images are is still a puzzle to fit together, but here, we are several steps away from the original images. In film, we see them viscerally on the film strip. We can touch the strip, turn it upside down, pass it through the editing board, cut it here or there, and attache various sections together to make a coherent piece. This visceral experience was especially clear around my work area, where film strips were flying everywhere, pieces were misplaced, then found, cutting boards were sometime faulty, sometimes ruining a special frame, for which I would have to improvise another. And it took time to physically maneuver all those strips around.
In the photography dark room, it was liquid (and the smell of the chemicals) that were the messy components.
Near the end of my studies, I actually developed my own films, after having learned to do the same in photography. One more step closer to the "images."
Film editing used to remind me of sewing, or embroidery, which is probably why I went into the archaic field of textile design.
So, this is what Kodak is forfeiting (well, its been going on for a while now). I don't think it is just cheap Fuji films which destroyed photography, but the attitude that the intricate, time-consuming, artistic endeavor of making films can be replaced by fast, impersonal digital technology.
I am not completely against digital technology. I think the internet, blogs, online sources, have provided incredible services. Yet, at the same time, this digital world needs to come second to the real world. What good is a "digital" relationship unless we've given up on the real one?
Fitting Puzzles
The mage in the background is a print of this