Le siège des sensations : la salle de cinéma en crise et le gimmick tactile Percepto (William Castle, 1959)

Throughout its history, the movie theater has emerged from politics of sensory purification inherited from a long tradition, making the cinematographic spectatorial experience one of a purely audiovisual contemplation. When going through a period of crisis, be it economic or intermedial, the movie theater reconnects with an attractional, multi-sensory and mainly tactile model linked to the origins of cinema and to its first exhibition spaces, but repressed at the time of the institutionalization of the media and its stabilization in the dedicated theater. In the United States, this is notably the case around 1930 with the arrival of talking pictures and the Great Depression, as well as during the 1950s when significant intermedial competition resulting from the advent of television, coupled with major demographic shifts, affects theater exhibition. This has also been the case since the early 2000s, when the digital surge and the possibilities of home viewing have torn more and more spectators away from theaters.  This thesis offers an in-depth examination of an exemplary period and case. It analyzes precisely when American theaters experienced a major drop in attendance during the 1950s. During this period, several audiovisual technologies appeared, along with many multi-sensory gimmicks. However, the latter are only a radical and materialized version of ideals of attractions carried by the producers and the film industry of the time in the United States, as demonstrated by the study of the Percepto tactile gimmick, developed in 1959 by filmmaker William Castle to complement his film The Tingler. Far beyond a simple promotional gadget, the Percepto device makes the seats vibrate and the audience scream, addressing the spectators with a direct physical sensation supposed to extend the fictional world of the film right into the theater. This unique cinematographic experience also underlines both the collective and participatory qualities of theatrical viewing.   At the junction of several theoretical fields, namely the cultural history of the senses, media archeology and exhibition studies, this thesis seeks to bring to light the major role of the so-called “minor” senses, in particular that of the touch, in the history of the American cinema, and to restore tactility in relation to the attractional origins of cinema, by demonstrating how the spectator's body is, through multisensory strategies, included again in the experience of cinema although it is traditionally excluded. In addition, it aims to re-establish gimmicks within the historiography of cinema as a whole and that of movie theaters in particular while revealing a tactile cinematographic device largely unknown and forgotten by scholarly research to this day: Percepto. To achieve this, the thesis offers the analysis of the following aspects, based on several primary sources: the film The Tingler, the functioning of the gimmick, the advertisements produced around the device, its theatrical release and exploitation as well as its critical and popular reception.

Keyphrases: Sens, Gimmick, Percepto, William Castle, 4D, 5D, Attraction, Touch, Haptic, Sense, Tingler, 4-D, 5-D, Film exhibition