1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910779540003321

Autore

Benson-Allott Caetlin Anne

Titolo

Killer tapes and shattered screens [[electronic resource] ] : video spectatorship from VHS to file sharing / / Caetlin Benson-Allott

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, CA, : University of California Press, 2013

ISBN

0-520-95449-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (312 p.)

Disciplina

791.43/656

Soggetti

Cinematography - Technological innovations

Digital video - Production and direction - Data processing

Horror films - History and criticism

Motion picture audiences

Technology in motion pictures

Video recordings industry

Video recordings - Production and direction - Data processing

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references, filmography and index.

Nota di contenuto

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Illustrations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction. Opening Up to Home Video -- 1. Distributing the Dead Video Spectatorship in the Movies of George A. Romero -- 2. Addressing the "New Flesh" Videodrome's Format War -- 3. Reprotechnophobia Putting an End to Analog Abjection with The Ring -- 4. Going, Going, Grindhouse Simulacral Cinematicity and Postcinematic Spectatorship -- 5. Paranormal Spectatorship Faux Footage Horror and the P2P Spectator -- Conclusion. Power Play -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Filmography, Videography, and Gameography -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

Since the mid-1980s, US audiences have watched the majority of movies they see on a video platform, be it VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Video On Demand, or streaming media. Annual video revenues have exceeded box office returns for over twenty-five years. In short, video has become the structuring discourse of US movie culture. Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens examines how prerecorded video reframes the premises and promises of motion picture spectatorship. But instead of



offering a history of video technology or reception, Caetlin Benson-Allott analyzes how the movies themselves understand and represent the symbiosis of platform and spectator. Through case studies and close readings that blend industry history with apparatus theory, psychoanalysis with platform studies, and production history with postmodern philosophy, Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens unearths a genealogy of post-cinematic spectatorship in horror movies, thrillers, and other exploitation genres. From Night of the Living Dead (1968) through Paranormal Activity (2009), these movies pursue their spectator from one platform to another, adapting to suit new exhibition norms and cultural concerns in the evolution of the video subject.