Abstract

This essay proposes that the conspicuous appearance of freeze-frames in commercial cinema of the late 1960s and early 1970s figures the popularization of ecstatic fantasy in American culture during this period. Setting the contingency of photography against cinema’s comparatively abstract construction, freeze-frames not only crystallize ecstasy’s answer to unsatisfying realities but also register the violent hypostatizations of “inside” and “outside” on which it depends.

pdf

Share