POST-THEORY Reconstructing Film Studies WISCONSIN studies in fjlm General Editors David Bordwell Donald Crafton Vance Kepley, Jr. Kristin Thompson, Supervising Editor Post-Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies Edited by David Bordwell and Noel Carroll Shared Pleasures: A History of Movie Presentation in the United States Douglas Comery Lovers of Cinema: The First American Film Avant-Garde, 1919-1945 Edited by Jan-Christopher Horak The Wages of Sin: Censorship and the Fallen Woman Film, 1928-1942 Lea Jacobs Settling the Score: Music and the Classical Hollywood Film Kathryn Kalinak Patterns of Time: Mizoguchi and the 1930s Donald Kirihara POST-THEORY Reconstructing Film Studies Edited by DAVID BORDWELL and NOEL CARROLL The University of Wisconsin Press The University of Wisconsin Press 1930 Monroe Street, 3rd floor Madison, Wisconsin 53711-2059 3 Henrietta Street London WC2E 8LU, England www.wisc.edu\wisconsinpress Copyright © 1996 The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a Web site without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews. 4 6 8 7 5 Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Post-theory: reconstructing film srudies/ edited by David Bordwell and Noel Carroll. 582 pp. cm. - (Wisconsinsrudies in film) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-299-14940-4 (cloth: alk. paper). - ISBN 0-299-14944-7 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Motion pictures. I. Bordwell, David. II. Carroll, Noel (Noel E.) III. Series. PN1994.P6565 1996 791.43-dc20 95-37052 ISBN-13: 978-0-299-14944-4 (pbk.: alk. paper) CONTENTS Contributors lX Introduction Xlll PART ONE. STATE OF THE ART l. Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory 3 David Bordwell 2. Prospects for Film Theory: A Personal Assessment 37 Noi:1 Carroll PART TWO. FILM THEORY AND AESTHETICS 69 3. Psychoanalytic Film Theory and the Problem of the Missing Spectator 71 Stephen Prince 4. Convention, Construction, and Cinematic Vision 87 David Bordwell 5. Is a Cognitive Approach to the Avant-garde Cinema Perverse? 108 James Peterson 6. The Logic and Legacy of Brechtianism 130 Murray Smith 7. Characterization and Fictional Truth in the Cinema 149 Paisley Livingston 8. Empathy and (Film) Fiction 175 Alex Neill 9. Feminist Frameworks for Horror Films 195 Cynthia A. Freeland 10. Apt Feelings, or Why "Women's Films" Aren't Trivial 219 Flo Leibowitz v VI Contents II. Unheard Melodies? A Critique of Psychoanalytic Theories of Film Music 230 Jeff Smith 12. Film Music and Narrative Agency 248 Jerrold Levinson 13. Nonfiction Film and Postmodernist Skepticism 283 Noil Carroll 14. Moving Pictures and the Rhetoric of Nonfiction Film: Two Approaches 307 Carl Plantinga 15. Film, Reality, and Illusion 325 Gregory Currie PART THREE. PSYCHOLOGY OF FILM 345 16. The Case for an Ecological Metatheory 347 Joseph Anderson and Barbara Anderson 17. Movies in the Mind's Eye 368 Julian Hochbe'l'lJ and Vi'l'lJinia Brooks 18. Notes on Audience Response 388 Richard J Gerrig and Deborah A. Prentice PART FOUR. HISTORY AND ANALYSIS 405 19. Toward a New Media Economics 407 Douglas Gomery 20. Columbia Pictures: The Making of a Motion Picture Major, 1930-1943 419 Tino Balio 2I. "A Brief Romantic Interlude": Dick and Jane Go to 31/2 Seconds of the Classical Hollywood Cinema 434 Richard Maltby 22. The Jazz Singer's Reception in the Media and at the Box Office 460 Donald Crafton 23. Jameson and "Global Aesthetics" 481 Michael Walsh 24. Reconstructing Japanese Film 501 Donald Kirihara Contents Vll 25. Danish Cinema and the Politics of Recognition 520 Mette Hjort 26. Whose Apparatus? Problems of Film Exhibition and History 533 Thnce Kepley, Jr. Selected Bibliography 553 Index 561 CONTRIBUTORS JOSEPH ANDERSON and BARBARA ANDERSON have written several articles on film theory. Joseph Anderson's book The Reality of Illusion: An Ecological Approach to Cognitive Film Theory is forthcoming from Southern Illinois Uni versity Press. TINO BALlO is Professor of Film in the Communication Arts Department at the University ofW isconsin-Madison. His most recent book is Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Motion Picture Enterprise, 1930-1939, published by Charles Scribner's Sons as volume 5 of the History of the American Cinema serIes. DAVID BORDWELL is Jacques Ledoux Professor of Film Studies in the Com munication Arts Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His books include The Cinema of Eisenstein (Harvard University Press, 1993) and, with Kristin Thompson, Film History: An Introduction (McGraw-Hill, 1994). VIRGINIA LORING BROOKS is Professor of Film at Brooklyn College. She is both a scholar and a filmmaker. NOEL CARROLL is Monroe C. Beardsley Professor of the Philosophy of Art at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Philosophical Problems ofF ilm Theory (Princeton University Press, 1988), Mystifying Movies (Columbia University Press, 1988), and The Philosophy ofH orror (Routledge, 1990). He is also widely published in the philosophy of the arts. DONALD CRAFTON is Professor of Film in the Communication Arts De partment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has directed the Wis consin Center for Film and Theater Research and has written on the history and aesthetics of animated film. His study of Hollywood talkies is forthcom ing as volume 4 of Scribner's History of the American Cinema series. GREGORY CURRIE is Professor of Philosophy and Head of the School ofA rts at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. His Image and Mind: Film, Phi losophyand Cognitive Science will be published by Cambridge University Press in 1995. He is currently working on a study of the imagination. CYNTHIAA. FREELAND is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Women's Studies at the University of Houston. She has published widely on ix