Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies
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Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies Film theory no longer gets top billing or plays a starring role in fi lm studies today, as critics proclaim that theory is dead and we are living in a post- theory moment. While theory may be out of the limelight, it remains an essential key to understanding the full complexity of cinema, one that should not be so easily discounted or discarded. In this volume, contributors explore recent popular movies through the lens of fi lm theory, beginning with industrial-economic analysis before moving into a predominately aesthetic and interpretive framework. The Hollywood fi lms discussed cover a wide range from 300 to Fifty First Dates, from Brokeback Mountain to Lord of the Rings, from Spider-Man 3 to Fahrenheit 9/11, from Saw to Memento and Kill Bill. Individual essays consider such topics as the rules that govern new blockbuster franchises, the “posthumanist real- ism” of digital cinema, video game adaptations, increasingly restricted sty- listic norms, the spatial stories of social networks like YouTube, the mainstreaming of queer culture, and the cognitive paradox behind enjoy- able viewing of traumatic events onscreen. With its cast of international fi lm scholars, Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies demonstrates the remarkable contributions theory can offer to fi lm studies and moviegoers alike. Warren Buckland is Reader in Film Studies at Oxford Brookes University. His authored and edited books include Puzzle Films, Directed by Steven Spielberg, Studying Contemporary American Film (with Thomas Elsaesser), and The Cognitive Semiotics of Film. He also edits the New Review of Film and Television Studies. 9780415962612-FM.indd i 4/1/2009 10:48:44 AM Previously published in the AFI Film Readers series Edited by Edward Branigan and Charles Wolfe Landscape and Film Martin Lefebvre East European Cinemas Anikó Imre New Media Anna Everett and John T. Caldwell Authorship and Film David A. Gerstner and Janet Staiger Westerns Janet Walker Masculinity Peter Lehman Violence and American Cinema J. David Slocum The Persistence of History Vivian Sobchack Home, Exile, Homeland Hamid Nafi cy Black Women Film and Video Artists Jacqueline Bobo The Revolution Wasn’t Televised Lynn Spigel and Michael Curtin Classical Hollywood Comedy Henry Jenkins and Kristine Brunovska Karnick Disney Discourse Eric Smoodin Black American Cinema Manthia Diawara Film Theory Goes to the Movies Jim Collins, Ava Preacher Collins, and Hilary Radner Theorizing Documentary Michael Renov Sound Theory/Sound Practice Rick Altman Fabrications Jane M. Gaines and Charlotte Herzog Psychoanalysis and Cinema E. Ann Kaplan European Film Theory Temenuga Trifonova 9780415962612-FM.indd ii 4/1/2009 10:48:44 AM Film Theory and Contemporary Hollywood Movies EDITED BY WARREN BUCKLAND 9780415962612-FM.indd iii 4/1/2009 10:48:44 AM First published 2009 by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2009. To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk. © 2009 Taylor & Francis All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identifi cation and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Film theory & contemporary Hollywood movies / edited by Warren Buckland. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Motion pictures—Philosophy. 2. Motion pictures—United States. I. Buckland, Warren. II. Title: Film theory and contemporary Hollywood movies. PN1995.F4667 2009 791.430973—dc22 2008043558 ISBN 0-203-03076-1 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 10: 0-415-96261-7 (hbk) ISBN 10: 0-415-96262-5 (pbk) ISBN 10: 0-203-03076-1 (ebk) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-96261-2 (hbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-415-96262-9 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-0-203-03076-9 (ebk) contents illustrations vii acknowledgments ix introduction 1 warren buckland part one: new practices, new aesthetics 17 1. new hollywood, new millennium 19 thomas schatz 2. the supernatural in neo-baroque hollywood 47 sean cubitt 3. man without a movie camera—movies without men: towards a posthumanist cinema? 66 william brown 4. movie-games and game-movies: towards an aesthetics of transmediality 86 douglas brown and tanya krzywinska 5. saw heard: musical sound design in contemporary cinema 103 k.j. donnelly 6. the shape of 1999: the stylistics of american movies at the end of the century 124 barry salt 7. tales of epiphany and entropy: paranarrative worlds on youtube 150 thomas elsaesser part two: feminism, philosophy, and queer theory 173 8. reformulating the symbolic universe: kill bill and tarantino’s transcultural imaginary 175 saša vojkovic´ 9780415962612-FM.indd v 4/1/2009 10:48:44 AM 9. (broke) back to the mainstream: queer theory and queer cinemas today 192 harry m. benshoff 10. demystifying deleuze: french philosophy meets contemporary u.s. cinema 214 david martin-jones part three: rethinking affects, narration, fantasy, and realism 235 11. trauma, pleasure, and emotion in the contents viewing of titanic: a cognitive approach 237 carl plantinga 12. mementos of contemporary american cinema: identifying and responding to the unreliable narrator in the movie theater 257 volker ferenz 13. fantasy audiences versus fantasy audiences 286 martin barker 14. “what is there really in the world?” forms of theory, evidence and truth in fahrenheit 9/11: a philosophical and intuitionist realist approach 310 ian aitken contributors 331 index 335 vi 9780415962612-FM.indd vi 4/1/2009 10:48:44 AM illustrations fi gures 6.1 Historical survey of Average Shot Length (ASL) in American commercial cinema 1940–1999 130 6.2 The proportions of shots of different scale (or closeness) 135 6.3 Average Shot Length of American fi lms released between 1982 and 1987 147 tables 1.1 2006 net U.S. media revenue 22 6.1 Average Shot Lengths, percentage of Reverse Angle cuts, percentage of POV shots, and percentage of Insert shots for the twenty-fi lm sample from 1999 132 6.2 Camera movements for the twenty-fi lm sample from 1999 139 13.1 Relations of kind of world choices with levels of enjoyment and importance 300 9780415962612-FM.indd vii 4/1/2009 10:48:44 AM 9780415962612-FM.indd viii 4/1/2009 10:48:44 AM acknowledgments I wish to thank Edward Branigan and Charles Wolfe for commissioning me to edit this volume. They also offered advice on this project from its beginnings through to the end, and presented me with valuable comments on my introduction. All the contributors have provided me with in-depth papers that refl ect their current research interests. They have been patient with my queries and requests for revisions and modifi cations. In addition, Thomas Elsaesser, Eleftheria Thanouli, and Yannis Tzioumakis offered feedback on my introduction. My colleagues at Oxford Brookes (Alberto Mira, Yoko Ono, Paolo Russo, and Daniela Treveri-Gennari) have created a working environment congenial to carrying out research. Finally, I would like to thank Eun Young Kim for her moral and emotional support during the completion of this volume. 9780415962612-FM.indd ix 4/1/2009 10:48:44 AM 9780415962612-FM.indd x 4/1/2009 10:48:44 AM introduction warren buckland Theory has not vanished: it is in disguise. It plays hide and seek. (Francesco Casetti, 44) fi lm theory Debates on the status of theory—especially in the humanities—over the last few decades were largely dominated by ecological and evolutionary metaphors of theory’s “life cycle.” Theory was presented as a natural, organic body—but one in “decline” or being kept artifi cially alive in the university, like a zombie (Boyd), or is an abject ghost (Cohen). Or the body called “theory” was simply dead and we are attending its wake (Bové). Theory’s demise was also expressed using mechanistic metaphors: theory had run out of steam (Latour) or, like a large and ineffi cient corporation, had been downsized (Stow), was in chaos (Kirby) or is on the scrap heap (Losee). We are therefore in an age of post-theory (Bordwell and Carroll), or after theory (Cunningham; Eagleton). David Rodowick has written an elegy for Film Theory—the most visible and privileged of all humanities theories. But Rodowick wants to liberate theory from the scientism of cognitive and 9780415962612-Intro.indd 1 4/1/2009 10:49:13 AM analytic approaches to fi lm, and renew the need for a philosophy of the humanities.1 Francesco Casetti entertains three reasons for fi lm theory’s apparent demise: “there is no more theory because there is no more cinema” (35); cinema “has never existed as such” (37); and “the third reason for the weakening of fi lm theory may be found in the weakening of the social need for ‘explanation’” (39)—that is, postmodernism has weakened theory by rejecting master narratives and rationality itself. The result, however, is not theory’s disappearance; instead, theory is (in Casetti’s words) merely in disguise, playing hide and seek. In Shakespeare After Theory David Scott Kastan is more positive about the- ory’s invisibility: “The great age of theory is over,” he writes, “but not because theory has been discredited; on the contrary, it is precisely because its claims have proven so compelling and productive” (31).