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{Most of my writings are available here through either HTML or PDF formats. I list the HTML link first, followed by a link to the PDF version.}
My latest book entitled What Media Classes Really Want To Discuss:A Student
Guide is a textbook that is unlike any other. It acknowledges that most
students entering an introductory film/television class already have a great deal
of knowledge about media (unlike introductory students in an accounting class,
for instance).This book addresses the assumptions students bring to class about
what “realism” is or how media cause violence, assumptions that we
rarely confront directly when we teach about film and television.This textbook
gives the introductory student a more precise language for discussing these
concepts, which makes better class discussion possible about these vague but
broadly held ideas.The book is written in an approachable, personal, non-“textbook-y”
tone that makes the big ideas of media studies more accessible to students.For
a sense of this tone, you can check out my widely used essay called "It’s just a movie!" (PDF version) , which is also the first chapter of
the book.Many undergraduates taking their first course in media criticism argue
that we academics are “reading too much into” a film/television
program.This essay takes that complaint seriously, and it provides an extended
answer to the concerns raised by that complaint.
I am interested in understanding how innovative, well-made storytelling texts enrich the narrative capabilities of media.
My book Beautiful TV: The Art and Argument of Ally McBeal is in part a discussion of the aesthetic innovations of that series (its handling of music, special effects, etc.) and in part an argument that scholars need to study whole television series from beginning to end. This is particularly true for serial television, and Beautiful TV demonstrates how we may examine a long-running serial narrative. The introduction to the book spells out my argument about the importance of studying television from a narrative perspective, and it also answers a question many of you may have: "Why Ally?"
I continue to be interested
in the complexities of serial narrative on television. As part of a
special journal issue on "good television," I discuss how the British
show Cold Feet arranges its story arcs in ways that
distinguish the serial without entirely distancing it from ordinary television
conventions. My work on Seinfeld(PDF version) answers the question, "How can a
series be ‘about nothing’ and simultaneously be one of the
fastest-moving shows on television?"
Some other of my articles
look at how the use of Steadicam affects the kinds of storytelling in John
Sayles’s City of Hope(PDF version) and in The West
Wing (PDF version). As a way of
showing how we should pay more attention to narrative structures in
documentary, I have examined the difficult narrative challenge posed by The Aristocrats:how can you maintain interest in a
one-joke film?
My essay on the computer game
adaptation of Monty Python and the Holy Grail
(PDF version) discusses what narrative structures
in the original film make particularly good material for a nonlinear medium. My
article on the pioneering computer game Myst (PDF version) discusses how the rhetoric about
the game articulates key concepts that frame a player’s experience.
Computer games are usually considered to be a visual and interactive medium. I
have looked at the neglected subject of dialogue in computer games, discussing
conventions in the way Final Fantasy VII uses
dialogue to tell its complicated story. In the introduction to On a Silver Platter: CD-ROMs and the Promises of a New
Technology, I break the vague concept of "interactivity"(PDF version) down into its various component
meanings.
We have learned much about emotion in the last couple of decades, thanks to innovations that allow us a much more precise picture of what goes on inside people when they feel. A significant portion work synthesizes much of this research in neurology and cognitive psychology and then applies it to film. Given this new understanding of emotion in general, what does that tell us about people sitting in movie theaters experiencing emotion? My book Film Structure and the Emotion System presents a "mood-cue" approach to analyzing the emotional appeals of film texts, and it demonstrates the utility of that approach on a variety of movies, from classical Hollywood films (such as Casablanca and Stella Dallas) to foreign films (Sergei Eisenstein, Jean Renoir) to independent films (Stranger than Paradise). The introduction to the book outlines the goals for a good approach to film emotion.
Carl Plantinga and I edited Passionate Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion, which asked scholars to apply the insights from cognitive psychology and philosophy to a range of film texts. That book contains a good introduction to cognitive film studies of emotion and an overview of my approach to film and emotion. In addition, I have written about the assumptions about emotion in the theoretical writings of Sergei Eisenstein(PDF version) and Andre Bazin.
One thread of my work looks at the construction of film stars. My article on Robert DeNiro (PDF version) shows how his refusal to give celebrity interviews opens up questions about both the mechanism of star publicity and the nature of the performing self. My essay on Norma Talmadge(PDF version), a silent film star who did not make a successful transition to the talkies allegedly because her voice did not match her image, details how silent film made it possible for Talmadge to portray an enormous range of ethnic Others, a feat that sound film made much more difficult. I have discussed how two Barbara Streisand (PDF version) television specials in the 1960’s (one of which takes place largely in a museum, the other in a department store) open up a deeper understanding of the similarities and differences between those two institutions.
Another thread of my work
looks at media reception. I investigated the production and the reception of Blockade(PDF
version), Hollywood’s first attempt to portray a contemporary war (the
Spanish Civil War). In detailing the controversy surrounding this rather tame
film, I assert that simplified "encapsulated texts" replace the full
complexity of the film text itself when circulating in public discourse. Also
included in the online version of this article is a wealth of images showing
how one particular theater owner documented the publicity around showing this
film, providing an intriguing reception case study in
movie ballyhoo. Pamela Wilson and I wrote an article on Cookin’ Cheap (PDF
version), a long-running television cooking show that foregrounds both the
cheapness of its recipes and the inexpertness of its hosts. Examining the
production of the text (through observation) and its reception (based on viewer
letters) enabled us to discuss the construction of "country" values,
an aesthetic of "cheap" television that links back to old-time radio,
and a rarely discussed feminized version of Southern masculinity. I have also
discussed how Western film critics, when confronted with a film that is
entirely "Other," rely on commonplaces and certain standard critical
positions to make sense out of the film (here I use Rashomon(PDF version), the first Japanese film seen by
most Western critics, as my example).
I am beginning to do critical
work on comics (after a lifetime of fandom). I have written about how the
animated adaptation of the comic book The Maxx (PDF version) allows us to gain insight into the
aesthetic assumptions we have made about the basic nature of both television
and comics. I have discussed how the superhero’s
secret identity provides both a portrait and a critique of the corporate
professional. In the online journal In Media Res, I wrote about the
difficulties created by the superhero’s
mask in making a film adaptation of a comic book. I also have examined the
importance of vaudeville in understanding the work of comics great Will Eisner.
Here is an unpublished
personal essay on why I think The Music Man is the
Great American Musical.
Film Structure and the Emotion System (introduction)
Passionate
Views: Film, Cognition, and Emotion (introduction and overview chapter)
The Aristocrats
Eisenstein
and Emotion(PDF version)
Andre
Bazin and Emotion
Robert DeNiro
and Celebrity Interviews (PDF version)
Norma
Talmadge and the Transition to Sound (PDF
version)
Blockade
and the Encapsulated Text (PDF
version)
Rashomon’s
Reception (PDF version)
Multiple
protagonists and John Sayles's City of Hope (PDF
version)
Cold
Feet
Seinfeld(PDF version)
The Maxx(PDF version)
The West
Wing(PDF version)
Cookin’
Cheap(PDF version)
Streisand’s
Television Specials (PDF version)
On a
Silver Platter: CD-ROMs and the Promises of a New Technolology
"A
Few Words about Interactivity" (PDF version)
Monty
Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail(PDF version)
Myst(PDF
version)
Dialogue
in Final Fantasy VII