Your point is well taken, but even in your breakdown of "camera A" and "camera B" you revert to
the age old conundrum between "theatre" and "cinema." While it is true that what the camera
records diagetically manipulates what is uttered in the "here and now" of a speaking subject, it
also is its own medium that establishes its own reality—one divorced from the stage of a theatre.
The cinema creates its own fiction and reality—one that is divorced from the "present" of any time
in the "here and now" by establishing its *own* "present" through editing/camera techniques—its
own universe. The diagesis of a film is locked within the film frame, one that is captured through
the camera lens as a witness. As a spectator, one can *never* lay hold of the actual represented
body or voice, in film it is always locked within the diagesis—one that is screened by the camera.
Therefore, I am confused when you say the following:
"there is then an important change in OUR experience of the scene, while there
has been no change in what we understand to be the scene we are experiencing
. . . this is an important difference..."
What is the "scene" we are experiencing if not the one that is shown on the cinematic screen? How
can we hold claim to an original "experience" of an actual actor, when, as spectators, we were
never able to be with the actor at the same time of his/her utterance or performance.
Comparing the theatre with cinema (and vice versa) is an argument that dislodges the important
stakes cinema has as its own medium. Film mediates, and by mediating whatever subject a
camera captures, cinema creates its own reality (if not epistomology and ontology).
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