Description
Book SynopsisFilm and television create worlds, but they are also of a world, a world that is made up of stuff, to which humans attach meaning. Think of the last time you watched a movie: the chair you sat in, the snacks you ate, the people around you, maybe the beer or joint you consumed to help you unwindall this stuff shaped your experience of media and its influence on you. The material culture around film and television changes how we make sense of their content, not to mention the very concepts of the mediums. Focusing on material cultures of film and television reception, The Stuff of Spectatorshipargues that the things we share space with and consume as we consume television and film influence the meaning we gather from them. This book examines the roles that six different material cultures have played in film and television culture since the 1970sincluding video marketing, branded merchandise, drugs and alcohol, and even gun violenceand shows how objects considered peripheral to film and television culture are in fact central to its past and future.
Trade Review "This book is an important and cutting-edge contribution. . . . A provocative, entertaining contribution to context and material culture studies,
The Stuff of Spectatorship provides an outstanding rationale to investigate stuff." * Film Quarterly *
"These unique analyses leave readers aware that a show's or a film's meaning and interest hinge on a material experience inseparable from the images flashing on the screen." * CHOICE *
Table of ContentsList of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Material Mediations
1. Collecting and Recollecting: Battlestar Galactica through Video's Varied Technologies of Memory
2. The Commercial Economy of Film History: Or, Looking for Looking for Mr. Goodbar
3. "Let’s Movie": How TCM Made a Lifestyle of Classic Film
4. Spirits of Cinema: Alcohol Service and the Future of Theatrical Exhibition
5. Blunt Spectatorship: Inebriated Poetics in Contemporary US Television
6. Shot in Black and White: The Racialized Reception of US Cinema Violence
Conclusion: Expanding the Scene of the Screen
Appendix: Documented Incidents of Cinema Violence in the United States through December 31, 2019
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
