Kyle Stevens (ed.) - The Oxford Handbook of Film Theory

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF

Film Theory

The Oxford Handbook of

Film Theory

Edited by

KYLE STEVENS

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Oxford University Press 2022

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2022027402

ISBN 9780190873929

eISBN 9780190873943

DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190873929.001.0001

Contents

Kyle Stevens

Tom Gunning

Daniel Morgan

Brian Price

Domietta Torlasco

Malcolm Turvey

Damon Ross Young

Nico Baumbach

Victor Fan

Maggie Hennefeld

Noah Isenberg

Kara Keeling

Marta Figlerowicz

Homay King

Davide Panagia

Antonio Somaini

Kyle Stevens

Luka Arsenjuk

Michel Chion

Translated by Claudia Gorbman

Usha Iyer

Pooja Rangan

Rick Warner

Caetlin Benson-Allott

Timothy Corrigan

David A. Gerstner

Adrian Martin

Marketa Uhlirova

Amy Villarejo

Sarah Keller

Julian Hanich

John David Rhodes

Scott C. Richmond

Robert Sinnerbrink

Edited collections should, I believe, be collective. So I must first thank each of the contributors, who shared my excitement and ambition for the volume from the beginning. Many of the authors were also cheerleaders, reinforcing my sense that the field needs a new volume of film theory, and that it should be this one. Writing, and writing about art and entertainment, during a global pandemic is not easy, and we were slowed down. But the pandemics lockdowns also reminded us of the intimate and, at the same time, vast space that audiovisual fictions occupy in our lives, and many of us turned to movies for comfort (especially by rewatching old favorites), intellectual stimulation, and a sense of social connectedness. I am proud of all of us, and very grateful to the contributors for sustaining the conviction that thinking seriously about cinema and the cinematic is a worthwhile, even necessary, enterprise during tumultuous times.

At Oxford University Press, Norm Hirschy and Lauralee Yeary are absolutely lovely to work with. No notes! Appalachian State University generously provided funds for translators. Adrian Martin not only assisted with the language of Antonio Somainis chapter. He went above and beyond and edited it, too.

I must also thank the many supportive colleague-friends who discussed my vision for the collection and helped me maintain enthusiasm for it over its years to fruition: including Kris Cannon, Eric Dienstfrey, Jennifer Fay, Maria San Filippo, Craig Fischer, Veronica Fitzpatrick, Noah Isenberg, Kartik Nair, Jules ODwyer, Brian Price, Scott Richmond, and Meghan Sutherland. No one encourages more radically than Eugenie Brinkema. Her fire kept me warm during some of the colder editorial days. Nor could I have managed without the ongoing Twitter groupchat with Maggie Hennefeld and Nicholas Baer. Sarah Keller not only writes the best emails; she also listens with uncanny sympathy and provides the most heartfelt advice. Rick Warner and I have been friends in the most profound sense of the word since graduate school. My orientation to film, and to thinking about film, is thoroughly shaped by our decades of conversation. And where would this volume bewhere would I be?without Dan Morgan? He was, as usual, the first call I made when I decided to undertake this project. His input into the introductory chapter was also invaluable. Finally, every possible whit of gratitude goes to James Pearson, my partner, proofreader, sounding board, and teammate. He gave both material and immaterial support. Is there a greater expression of love than becoming an expert in a new citation style?

List of Contributors

Luka Arsenjuk (University of Maryland, College Park)

Nico Baumbach (Columbia University)

Caetlin Benson-Allott (Georgetown University)

Michel Chion (Universit of Paris III: Sourbonne Nouvelle)

Timothy Corrigan (University of Pennsylvania)

Victor Fan (Kings College London)

Marta Figlerowicz (Yale University)

David Gerstner (CUNY)

Tom Gunning (University of Chicago)

Julian Hanich (University of Groningen)

Maggie Hennefeld (University of Minnesota)

Noah Isenberg (University of Texas at Austin)

Usha Iyer (Stanford University)

Kara Keeling (University of Chicago)

Sarah Keller (University of Massachusetts Boston)

Homay King (Bryn Mawr College)

Adrian Martin (Monash University)

Daniel Morgan (University of Chicago)

Davide Panagia (UCLA)

Brian Price (University of Toronto)

Pooja Rangan (Amherst College)

John David Rhodes (University of Cambridge)

Scott C. Richmond (University of Toronto)

Robert Sinnerbrink (Macquarie University)

Antonio Somaini (Universit Sorbonne Nouvelle: Paris 3)

Kyle Stevens (Appalachian State University)

Domietta Torlasco (Northwestern University)

Malcolm Turvey (Tufts University)

Marketa Uhlirova (University of the Arts London)

Amy Villarejo (UCLA)

Rick Warner (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Damon R. Young (University of California at Berkeley)

Kyle Stevens

When we think about the origins of modern or contemporary film theory we often have the academicization of film theory in mind. We might think of the late 1960s and 1970s, and of works that established lines of thought about the cinematic apparatus, representation of politicized identities, and audience experience that continue to extend today, such as Peter Wollens Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (1969); Donald Bogles Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films (1973); Amos Vogels Film as a Subversive Art (1974); Molly Haskells From Reverence to Rape: The Treatment of Women in Movies (1974); Laura Mulveys Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975); or Christian Metzs The Imaginary Signifier (translated into English in 1977). Yet only two of these authorsBogle and Metzwere academics at the time. Wollen and Mulvey would go on to become university faculty, but my point is that this foundational scholarship was written not for a field but for a culture. That is, what we might in retrospect think of as academic film theory was really an aspect of a cultural practice, a mechanism within the larger post-1960s grand project of theory, one that sought to ameliorate ideological injustices by better understanding the signs and images that comprise so much of culture, and by looking especially to mainstream cinema as a dominant source of this ideological dissemination. To be a film theorist was not just to participate in a discipline. It was to seek to do good in the world by creating a counterideology and a concomitant counterpractice. Film theorists at this time wrote explicitly against the propagation of dominant values for a presumptive readership of fellow oppressed victims of structures of racism, patriarchy, and capitalism.