Neil Harris's term "operational aesthetics" covers much, if not all, of my interests in cinema. Harris develops the term in his book Humbug on P.T. Barnum. Noting that audiences flocked to Barnum's productions, even though they were known to be hoaxes and the ways Barnum's advertising invited audiences to "decide for themselves" - Harris elaborates a particularly American attitude, skeptical and information-seeking, that seeks to know how things look and how they work. It refers to the capacity of productions to appeal to the analystic,investigative, and problem-solving faculties. To elucidate his point, Harris even discusses Poe's invention of the detective story and its popularity. Yet operational aesthetics in cinema perhaps stretch beyond American borders. Early documentary forms, especially something like Basil Wright's Night Mail can be seen to be constructed around a desire to show --just as much as poeticize -- Britain's rail mail. Additionally, Eisenstein discusses something very much like the operational aesthetic (in a quote contained in Annette Michelson's essay "Dr. Crase and Mr. Clair") when he talks about the school film, and the ability of cinema to show pupils "how a power station, a newspaper, a book, a glass factory, a colored illustration is produced.."(paraphrase - from Conversations with Eisenstein trans. harry brose, 1970) . Urban cinema -- film which shows "how a city works" is one mode of operational aesthetics (and Eisenstein alludes to the urban nature of the school film earlier in this quote.)

“Do you know, Watson,” said he, “that it is one of the curses of a mind with a turn like mine that I must look at everything with reference to my own special subject. You look at these scattered houses, and you are impressed by their beauty. I look at them, and the only thought which comes to me is a feeling of their isolation and of the impunity with which crime may be committed there.”

“Good heavens!” I cried. “Who would associate crime with these dear old homesteads?”

“It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.”

“You horrify me!”

“But the reason is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard’s blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these lonely houses, each in its own fields, filled for the most part with poor ignorant folk who know little of the law. Think of the deeds of hellish cruelty, the hidden wickedness which may go on, year in, year out, in such places, and none the wiser.”

– The Adventure of the Copper Beeches, page 2