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Book Reviews243 further justification for his practice on the theoretical level and further define his position in relation to contemporary criticism. SERGIO RIZZO University of California, Riverside NOËL CARROLL. Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. 262 p. In Mystifying Movies, Noël Carroll mounts a comprehensive attack on recent academic film theory which he characterizes as a Marxist, psychoanalytic, and semiotic school of thought relying on the work of Lacan and Althusser. Carroll 's complaint is really two-fold: first, the Althusserian/Lacanian tradition is highly suspect but second, and more importantly, he believes it has been applied to film in a disastrously loose fashion by Christian Metz, Jean-Louis Baudry, Stephen Heath, and others. Much ofthis theory hinges on analogy (e.g., film is like the mirror stage ofpsychoanalytic development, or watching a film in a dark auditorium is like dreaming), but Carroll argues that these theorists do not understand how argumentation by analogy works. One must pay attention to how many pertinent features apply in an analogy and to how many features are significantly disanalogous. Carroll does just that in ways which are damaging to many of the casual assumptions in current theory. He also points out that for argumentation by analogy to be effective, we have to know more about the first term in the analogy than we do about the second. But in regard to psychoanalytic film theory, Carroll maintains, we know much more about movies than we do about the workings of the human mind. Carroll also argues that it has been a serious mistake in film theory to psychoanalyze the apparatus and the film-viewing process. These things, he maintains , were rationally designed by humans and can be understood rationally. Carroll reminds us that psychoanalysis itself is only interested in exploring the irrational after rational thought has been unable to account for something. Althusserian Marxism does not fare any better in Carroll's view since it attributes elaborate ideological effects to the media to explain why Marx's predicted revolutions have not occurred in advanced capitalist societies. But economic analysis can adequately account for this and we don't have to resort to murky hypotheses about confused subjects who behave irrationally. Movies do not have any great power to muddle the masses and thus we do not have to concoct theories to explain such muddlement. But Carroll doesn't just tear down; he also builds a cognitive psychology-based account of movies and their effects upon spectators. Everything from the narrative organization, to the stylistic features, to the often reported "powerful" effect of dominant film style can be rationally understood from this perspective . As with his critique, Carroll is clear and forthright with his alternative. 244Rocky Mountain Review Although much of Carroll's argument is incisive, it has serious flaws. For inadequate reasons and without enough attention, he totally excludes feminist theory. Although he does not want to "oppose" it or find it "wrong," the fact remains that feminist film theory is at the center of contemporary theory and much ofthe best of it is strongly implicated in the "foundation" which Carroll wishes to topple. Carroll has also, unfortunately, severed the relationship between theory and criticism. How can one evaluate Roland Barthes's argument without paying careful attention to what we have learned from him about Sarrazine , or Stephen Heath's without considering what we have learned about Touch of Evil! At other times, Carroll distorts the theories. For obvious reasons, it is true that the medical institution ofpsychoanalysis is only interested in the irrational. Unless someone does not understand some bizarre, uncontrollable behavior, they will not seek help and cannot be "cured." In short, there would be nothing for analysts to do (and no money to make). It does not follow, however, that in all cases we only turn to the irrational when we cannot explain something rationally . Logically, the two may very well co-exist. Carroll, for example, no doubt has rational reasons for his philosophical assault on contemporary film theory. It is not illogical, however, for a psychoanalytically inclined critic to argue that such an attack is also part of an...

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