In this Book
- Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies
- Book
- 2012
- Published by: University of Wisconsin Press
- Series: Wisconsin Studies in Film
summary
With Post-Theory, David Bordwell and Noël Carroll challenge the prevailing practices of film scholarship. Since the 1970s, film scholars have been searching for a unified theory that will explain all sorts of films, their production, and their reception; the field has been dominated by structuralist Marxism, varieties of cultural theory, and the psychoanalytic ideas of Freud and Lacan. Bordwell and Carroll ask, why not employ many theories tailored to specific goals, rather than searching for a unified theory?
Post-Theory offers fresh directions for understanding film, presenting new essays by twenty-seven scholars on topics as diverse as film scores, audience response, and the national film industries of Russia, Scandinavia, the U.S., and Japan. They use historical, philosophical, psychological, and feminist methods to tackle such basic issues as: What goes on when viewers perceive a film? How do filmmakers exploit conventions? How do movies create illusions? How does a film arouse emotion? Bordwell and Carroll have given space not only to distinguished film scholars but to non-film specialists as well, ensuring a wide variety of opinions and ideas on virtually every topic on the current agenda of film studies. Full of stimulating essays published here for the first time, Post-Theory promises to redefine the study of cinema.
Post-Theory offers fresh directions for understanding film, presenting new essays by twenty-seven scholars on topics as diverse as film scores, audience response, and the national film industries of Russia, Scandinavia, the U.S., and Japan. They use historical, philosophical, psychological, and feminist methods to tackle such basic issues as: What goes on when viewers perceive a film? How do filmmakers exploit conventions? How do movies create illusions? How does a film arouse emotion? Bordwell and Carroll have given space not only to distinguished film scholars but to non-film specialists as well, ensuring a wide variety of opinions and ideas on virtually every topic on the current agenda of film studies. Full of stimulating essays published here for the first time, Post-Theory promises to redefine the study of cinema.
Table of Contents
Download Full Book
- Title Page, Copyright Page
- pp. 2-5
- Contributors
- pp. ix-xii
- Introduction
- pp. xiii-xvii
- Part One. State of the Art
- pp. 1-21
- Part Two. Film Theory and Aesthetics
- pp. 69-89
- 6. The Logic and Legacy of Brechtianism
- pp. 130-148
- 8. Empathy and (Film) Fiction
- pp. 175-194
- 9. Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films
- pp. 195-218
- 12. Film Music and Narrative Agency
- pp. 248-282
- 15. Film, Reality, and Illusion
- pp. 325-344
- Part Three. Psychology of Film
- pp. 345-365
- 16. The Case for an Ecological Metatheory
- pp. 347-367
- 17. Movies in the Mind's Eye
- pp. 368-387
- 18. Notes on Audience Response
- pp. 388-404
- Part Four. History and Analysis
- pp. 405-425
- 19. Toward a New Media Economics
- pp. 407-418
- 23. Jameson and "Global Aesthetics"
- pp. 481-500
- 24. Reconstructing Japanese Film
- pp. 501-519
- Selected Bibliography
- pp. 533-560
Additional Information
ISBN
9780299149437
Related ISBN(s)
9780299149406, 9780299149444
MARC Record
OCLC
841172552
Pages
582
Launched on MUSE
2014-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No
Copyright
1996