TV AND CINEMA: WHAT FORMS OF HISTORY DO WE NEED? JOHN ELLIS PUBLISHED IN: Cinema, Television & History: New Approaches, ed. Laura Mee, Johnny Walker, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, 2014 pp.12-25 Moving image and sound, the media of cinema and television, have a brief past when compared to most other human activities. But the question of their histories, what they might be and how to tell them, is now a pressing one. The old models are no longer working well: it is ďeĐoŵiŶg haƌdeƌ to ŵouŶt a histoƌLJ of filŵ eǀeŶ though the fiƌst atteŵpt at a comprehensive audiovisual Story of Film has only recently appeared. The task becomes ever more daunting, not simply because more works continue to be produced and more of what was produced in the past is rediscovered. It is not a problem of growing corpuses; it is a problem of systemic change. There is now much more to moving image and sound that cinema and television. New media appear, and so the old are remediated. New histories therefore have to explain and account for features that the old histories took for granted, including fundamental features like the length of a feature film or the nature of a TV schedule. In this context, we need to ask what forms of history are now appropriate for cinema and television, and what forms will be appropriate for new audiovisual media. History is a branch of storytelling, one of the central features of our culture. Historical narratives are distinct as narratives only because they depend on evidence; otherwise their cultural place is similar to that of fictional narratives. Story-telling spectacularises what it tells, as much in verbal accounts as audiovisual ones. To tell a story is to package up into an acceptable form that which is difficult in life; to put up there on the screen the things that we prefer not to face down here. Storytelling abstracts and externalises, making other the people, the behaviours, the times and places that we live in. Storytelling, whether fictional or historical, is a practice of ordering and attribution of meaning. Stories bring structure to events which often appear chaotic to those experiencing them. A narrative provides a sense of ending: a point from which all the actions within the narrative finally make sense. The ending of a narrative attributes meaning retrospectively, reordering the elements into a satisfying whole. The ending of a narrative also has a moral function: it allows —or even insists—on judgements of human behaviour, on good and evil, on adequacy or inadequacy, on mistakes and their subsequent correction. Bad deeds may often remain unpunished in life, but storytelling allows the retribution that the ordinary way of the world is too compromised to allow. Narratives also permit a distinctive point of view to their users. A viewer or reader often has a superior view to that of any one of the characters, and sometimes even that of all the characters. This superior viewpoint is not necessarily one of omniscience: any detective or suspense narrative involves the withholding of information from the user. Sometimes a ĐhaƌaĐteƌ ĐaŶ ďe ahead of the ǀieǁeƌ oƌ ƌeadeƌ. Naƌƌatiǀes depeŶd oŶ diffeƌeŶtial knowledge during their progress towards their ending, and the user is as caught in this play as any of the characters. However, the ending exists only for the reader or viewer: it makes sense for the observer. The user of a narrative is the point where the narrative makes sense. The characters, with the rest of their lives to lead, do not necessarily perceive the ending as an ending at all. For the user, however, there are no more pages; the film runs off the spool; the file is used up. The ending of a narrative is the point of final meaning-making. The function