Just numbers. Challenging statistical reasoning in Peter Watkins’s La Commune (Paris, 1871)

Abstract

The essay deals with the political aesthetics of cinema with regard to the use of extras. It is argued that what is usually considered as aesthetic abundance or luxury, especially in the Hollywood historical epic, which relies heavily on the use of extras, should be re-addressed from a social perspective as lack or shortage. Given the etymological proximity that exists between statistics (Statistik) and extras (Statisten) in German, the author proposes to think of extras as being produced by operations of numbering and counting that are deeply entangled into the political history of establishing and maintaining social and state order. In this context, Peter Watkins’s La Commune (Paris, 1871) (2000), a film about the Paris Commune, is discussed as critical engagement with the foundational practices of state order by challenging the statistical reasoning and thought that is so closely related to the figure of the extra.