Motion pictures are first and foremost experienced as flow and only secondarily, if the machine stops or pauses, as still pictures. Notwithstanding the directness of our cinematic experience film depends on the rigidity of its motionless units, abstracted from the flux of time, for the synthesis of the filmic process to commence anew in the cinematic experience of which the spectator takes part. Monetary circulation, in contrast, is first and foremost experienced as the movement of rigid units; coins, bills, or digital denominations transferred from one place to the next, turning into flow only at a later “financial” stage at which the monetary unit takes on the properties of a liquid, as for example in the fluctuation of stock quotes. Yet, money too is an abstraction from a world of time, only later abstracted into the appearance of an object for the purposes of economic circulation. Thus, as time-based media, both film and money rely on the endurance of a subject relation.

Film and money are abstractions from an unmeasurable reality, their quantification into units, however, is what makes their circulation in a new sphere possible. In money’s case, lived reality is hidden behind the unit of account, never to recover its intersubjective dimension. In film’s case, to the contrary, lived reality is highlighted—the fixture of representation in effect turned back into something living and social through the viewing subject. This difference in circulatory characteristics provides an important insight, since at their respective end points the filmic experience is relation internalized while the monetary experience is relation externalized. The variations of this shared function of film and money lies at the heart of this investigation. Through a layering of credit and state theories of money, apparatus theory, attention economics, semiotics, and theories of social subjection and machinic subjugation, I will etch out the transhistorical properties of the social relation inherent to money and moving images. 

This dissertation contains five chapters. Chapter 1: Apparatus Theory and The Subject of Money starts by sketching the overarching principles of Jean-Louis Baudry’s apparatus theory to show how the lineages of mathematical, perspectival, and economic representation coalesce in “the transcendental subject of cinema.” Drawing on Brian Rotman’s semiotic history of mathematics enables me to flesh out the argument for the transhistorical structure underlying the filmic dispositif and its intertwined relation with money. Chapter 2: Dr. Mabuse and The Blindness of Modernity sets out to paint the picture of the upheaval of urban modernity and a failed modern monetary economy through a close reading of the emblematic film Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (Fritz Lang, 1922). Chapter 3: Secret Service and Hollywood continues with another close reading, this time of the counterfeiting-themed film noir T-Men (Anthony Mann, 1948). In Chapter 4: A Short History of Film and Copyright I trace the process, culminating in the Townsend amendment, that delineated film as a juridical object. Chapter 5: The Rise and Fall of The Hollywood Stock Exchange analyzes the discussions on the floor of Congress and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission regarding the setting up of exchanges for futures contracts based on projected box office numbers.