The Art of Manipulation: John Smith's Anticipation of the Media Crisis
Cinema
Feb 4, 2025
by Hugo Santos
In the vast world of experimental cinema, few filmmakers have played as effectively with the relationship between image and sound as John Smith. His work, characterized by a constant play with the viewer's perception, has challenged the conventions of audiovisual language, making sound a narrative element as powerful as the image.
The Girl Chewing Gum (1976) masterfully exemplifies this exploration, blurring the lines between fiction and documentary and questioning the very nature of cinematic reality.
At first glance, The Girl Chewing Gum appears to be a simple observational documentary. The camera is fixed on a London street and records the everyday movement of individuals, vehicles, and other elements of the urban landscape. However, what truly takes center stage in the short film is the intervention of the voice-over. This resource, in an apparent act of omniscience, seems to direct every action occurring on screen. "Now, the man in the dark coat will cross the street," orders the voice, and indeed, the man does so.
The Girl Chewing Gum (1976), 12min, John Smith
The viewer quickly falls into the trap of assuming that the narrator has control over the events until the same discourse begins to unravel. The narration becomes increasingly erratic, imprecise, and even absurd, revealing that there is no such direction. What seemed like an order is, in fact, a description of what had already been recorded.
Smith subverts the logic of traditional cinema by separating what we see from what we hear, showing that the relationship between image and sound is not as obvious or immutable as we tend to think.
The Girl Chewing Gum (1976), 12min, John Smith
In most audiovisual productions, sound is usually relegated to a secondary role, subordinate to the image as mere accompaniment or emotional reinforcement. Smith, however, reverses this hierarchy and demonstrates that sound not only complements the image but can completely rewrite it.
The Girl Chewing Gum is a direct lesson on the power of sound in cinema and how the image can be manipulated at will and benefit.
The British director forces us to question the extent to which we trust audiovisual synchronization and how cinema can manipulate our perception with something as seemingly subtle as the voice-over.
The Girl Chewing Gum (1976), 12min, John Smith
Beyond technical exploration, The Girl Chewing Gum raises a reflection on the nature of cinema itself. Traditionally, we distinguish between documentary and fiction based on the filmmaker's intention and the relationship of the images to reality. We think a documentary reflects reality as it is, while fiction constructs it. But Smith shows us how blurred this dividing line is. His short is, essentially, a documentary: it shows images without physical intervention in their development. However, the use of the narrator transforms the perception of the scene, turning it into some sort of directed fiction.
This play between the real and the constructed is a recurring theme in Smith's work. In his filmography, the British filmmaker constantly questions the supposed objectivity of the documentary and reminds us that all cinematic representation is ultimately a construction.
The Black Tower (1987), 23min, John Smith
Om (1986), 4min, John Smith
With The Girl Chewing Gum, John Smith achieves a work that not only challenges the established norms of cinema but also re-educates our audiovisual perception. Through the differentiation between image and sound, he forces us to reflect on the mechanisms of cinematic language and the fragility of our trust in what we see and hear.
Almost fifty years after The Girl Chewing Gum we realize that Smith was anticipating a world where truth is increasingly malleable and flexible,
where post-truth and image manipulation are at the center of the media debate, making it clear that cinema, like reality, will always be a matter of perspective and construction.
The Girl Chewing Gum (1976), 12min, John Smith
