Table of Contents

    Saper - Of Spectacularization - JCRT 4.2

    Of Spectacularization: Writing New Media Theory

    Craig J. Saper
    University of Central Florida

    Theories and histories of modern spectacles and media-inundated society have recently shifted from ideological analyses (i.e., analyses that see through an illusory spectacle world to manipulative apparatuses of social control) to synthetic analyses that use spectacles’ structure as a basis, or lens, for writing. The former approach read media as texts. These textual theories created a tidy methodology for critics to use in reading and deciphering sounds and images as codes for sociopolitical meanings.

    Works Cited

    Baker, Houston A. Black studies, Rap, and the Academy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.

    Brunette, Peter and David Wills (editors). Deconstruction and the Visual Arts: art, media, architecture. Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

    Brunette, Peter and David Wills. Screen/play: Derrida and film theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989.

    Conley, Tom. “Afterword” to R’da Bensma’a’s The Year of Passages. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995.

    Daniel Dayan. “The Tutor-Code of Classical Cinema.” Film Quarterly 28, 1 (Fall 1974): 22-31. Reprinted in Bill Nichols, ed. Movies and Methods, vol. 1. Berkley: University of California Press, 1976.

    Debord, Guy. La soci’t’ du spectacle (first published in 1967), English translation, Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black & Red, 1973.

    Hart, Lynda. Between the Body and the Flesh: performing sadomasochism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1998.

    Kauppi, Niilo. Tel quel, la constitution sociale d’une avant-garde / The making of an Avant-Garde: Tel quel. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1994.

    Kipnis, Laura. Ecstasy Unlimited: on Sex, Capital, Gender, and Aesthetics; foreword by Paul Smith. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

    MacCabe, Colin. “Theory and Film: Principles of Realism and Pleasure,” in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Reader, Ed. Philip Rosen. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.

    Marcus, Greil. Lipstick Traces: a secret history of the twentieth century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989.

    McKenzie, Jon. Perform or Else: from Discipline to Performance, 2001.

    Mellencamp, Patricia. Indiscretions: avant-garde film, video & feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

    Metz, Christian. The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema, Trans. Celia Britton, Annwyl Williams, Ben Brewster, and Alfred Guzzetti. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982.

    Miller, 1966. This essay was presented to Lacan’s seminar on 24 February, 1965 and translated as “Suture (Elements of the logic of the signifier)” in Screen 18, 4 (Winter 1977/78): 24-34.

    Mulvey, Laura. Visual and Other Pleasures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989.

    Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” in Movies and Methods, Vol. II, Ed. Bill Nichols. Berkley: University of California Press, 1985.

    Nichols, Bill. Ideology and The Image: social representation in the cinema and other media. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981.

    Nichols, Bill.'Representing Reality: issues and concepts in documentary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991.

    Oudart, Jean-Pierre. “La Suture,” Caheirs du cinema, no. 211 (April 1969), p. 36-39, and no. 212, (May 1969), p. 50-55; translated as “Cinema & Suture,” Screen, Vol. 18, no. 4 (Winter 1977/78), p. 35-47.

    Ray, Robert B. “The ABC’s of Visible Theory,” Visible Language, Vol. 22, no. 4. Indiana University Press, 1988.

    Ray, Robert B. How a Film Theory Got Lost and Other Mysteries in Cultural Studies Indiana University Press, 2001.

    Ray, Robert B. The Avant-garde Finds Andy Hardy, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995.

    Ronell, Avital. The Telephone Book: technology–schizophrenia–electric speech. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1989.

    Shaviro, Steven. The Cinematic Body. vol. 2 of the Theory Out of Bounds Series. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993.

    Sontag, Susan. Regarding the Pain of Others. Farrar Straus & Giroux, 2003.

    Thomas, Lewis. The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher. New York: Penguin, 1975.

    Trinh, T. Minh-Ha (Thi Minh-Ha), When the Moon Waxes Red: representation, gender, and cultural politics. New York: Routledge, 1991.

    Ulmer, Greg. “Handbook for a Theory Hobby” Visible Language, Vol. 22, no. 4, 1989.

    Zizek, Slavoj. Enjoy Your Symptom!: Jacques Lacan in Hollywood and Out. London: Routledge, 1992.

    Notes

    Craig J. Saper is Director of Media Studies at the University of Central Florida. He is the author of Networked Art (University of Minnesota Press, 2001) and Artificial Mythologies: A Guide to Cultural Invention (University of Minnesota Press, 1997).

    ’ 2003 Craig Saper. All rights reserved.
    Updated 07/28/21.
    http://jcrt.org/archives/04.2/saper/

    1. Monaco, 3. ↩︎

    2. For a discussion of the distinction between American and British cultural studies, and the apparently more pessimistic attitude of the American critics see Caughie, 156-171, 158-159). ↩︎

    3. For a slightly different version of this comparison see Elaine Showalter, 222. ↩︎

    4. For the most influential examples of apparatus theory see Baudry. For a similar argument about the apparatus see Comolli. For the foundation of feminist apparatus theory see Mulvey. For a more sophisticated version of feminist apparatus theory see Rose. For the version of apparatus theory which Mulvey reacts against see Metz, 1982; cf. Metz, 1978; Augst, 1980. For good summaries of apparatus theory see MacCabe, 1986. cf. Heath, 1981. For the most famous, if tedious and pretentious, debate about apparatus theory see Carroll, 1982; and, Heath, 1983; and, Carroll, 1983. To understand the psychoanalytic foundations of apparatus theory see Miller, 1966. This essay was presented to Lacan’s seminar on 24 February 1965 and translated as “Suture (Elements of the logic of the signifier)” in Screen 18, 4 (Winter 1977/78): 24-34. For an early application of psychoanalysis to a proto-apparatus theory see Oudart, 1969; Oudart, 1977/78; see also Oudart, 1970; this article elaborates on some of the concepts around suture; see also Daney and Oudart (December 1971-January/February 1972); this article offers comments on the “unsutured” quality of contemporary cinema. For the most influential version of “suture” in apparatus theory see Dayan, 1974; see also Eberwein, 1978; this article is a discussion of Dayan and others; cf. Heath, 1977/78; see also Silverman, 1983; chapter 5 of her book deals with suture; see also Rothman, 1975. ↩︎

    5. Mulvey, 1989, 162. ↩︎

    6. McKenzie, 2001; Ray, 1995 / 2001; Conley, 1995; Conley 1991; Kipnis, 1995; Ronell, 1989; Marcus, 1989; Shaviro, 1993; Zizek, Enjoy; Hart; Ulmer, 1985; Minh-ha, 1991; Mellencamp, 1990; Baker, Hybridity; see also Brunette and Wills, 1989 & 1994. ↩︎

    7. Conley, 1995. ↩︎

    8. Conley, 1995, 142. ↩︎

    9. Conley, 1995, 144. ↩︎

    10. Ronell, 1989. ↩︎

    11. Conley, 1991. ↩︎

    12. Shaviro, 10. ↩︎

    13. Shaviro, 11. ↩︎

    14. Shaviro, 13. ↩︎

    15. Shaviro, 23. ↩︎

    16. Shaviro, 23. ↩︎

    17. Kipnis, 2. ↩︎

    18. Kipnis, 5. ↩︎

    19. Kipnis, 5. ↩︎

    20. Kipnis, 7. ↩︎

    21. Ulmer, 1989. ↩︎

    22. Ulmer, 1981. ↩︎

    23. Ulmer, 1981, 53. ↩︎

    24. Ulmer, 1981, 54. ↩︎

    25. Thomas, 157. ↩︎

    26. Wolf visually catalogues the effects available to advertisers and designers; he includes: unexpected combinations, strange combinations, strange perspective, repetition, motion, manipulated symbols, scale, type as design, Homage, color, collage, improbable settings, humor, celebrity, and more. ↩︎

    27. Ray, 1988, 173. ↩︎