LEADER 05340nam 2200673Ia 450 001 9910820561903321 005 20200520144314.0 010 $a0-674-26429-0 010 $a0-674-03829-0 024 7 $a10.4159/9780674038295 035 $a(CKB)1000000000787088 035 $a(StDuBDS)AH21620425 035 $a(SSID)ssj0000108315 035 $a(PQKBManifestationID)11122154 035 $a(PQKBTitleCode)TC0000108315 035 $a(PQKBWorkID)10036121 035 $a(PQKB)11086927 035 $a(Au-PeEL)EBL3300189 035 $a(CaPaEBR)ebr10314196 035 $a(OCoLC)923110042 035 $a(DE-B1597)574527 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780674038295 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC3300189 035 $a(dli)HEB08219 035 $a(MiU)KOHA0000000000000000002774 035 $a(OCoLC)1248759567 035 $a(EXLCZ)991000000000787088 100 $a19900615d1991 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aur||||||||||| 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 10$aBabel and Babylon $espectatorship in American silent film /$fMiriam Hansen 205 $a1st ed. 210 $aCambridge, MA $cHarvard University Press$d1991 215 $a1 online resource (x, 377 pages) $cillustrations 300 $aBibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph 311 0 $a0-674-05830-5 311 0 $a0-674-05831-3 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $aIntroduction: Cinema Spectatorship and Public Life PART I: Rebuilding the Tower of Babel: The Emergence of Spectatorship 1. A Cinema in Search of a Spectator: Film-Viewer Relations before Hollywood 2. Early Audiences: Myths and Models 3. Chameleon and Catalyst: The Cinema as an Alternative Public Sphere PART II: Babel in Babylon: D. W. Grffith's Intolerance (1916) 4. Reception, Textual System, and Self-Definition 5. "A Radiant Crazy-Quilt": Patterns of Narration and Address 6. Genesis, Causes, Concepts of History 7. Film History, Archaeology Universal Language 8. Hieroglyphics, Figurations of Writing 9. Riddles of Maternity 10. Crisis of Femininity, Fantasies of Rescue PART III: The Return of Babylon: Rudolph Valentino and Female Spectatorship (1921-1926) 11. Male Star, Female Fans 12. Patterns of Vision, Scenarios of Identification Notes Illustration Credits Index 330 8 $aOffers a perspective on American film by tying the growth of spectatorship to the historical transformation of the public sphere. Focusing on silent films, this text examines how the spectator concept evolved, integrating ethnically, socially and sexually differentiated audiences.$bAlthough cinema was invented in the mid-1890s, it was a decade more before the concept of a "film spectator" emerged. As the cinema began to separate itself from the commercial entertainments in whose context films initially had been shown--vaudeville, dime museums, fairgrounds--a particular concept of its spectator was developed on the level of film style, as a means of predicting the reception of films on a mass scale. In Babel and Babylon Miriam Hansen offers an original perspective on American film by tying the emergence of spectatorship to the historical transformation of the public sphere. Hansen builds a critical framework for understanding the cultural formation of spectatorship, drawing on the Frankfurt School's debates on mass culture and the public sphere. Focusing on exemplary moments in the American silent era, she explains how the concept of the spectator evolved as a crucial part of the classical Hollywood paradigm--as one of the new industry's strategies to integrate ethnically, socially, and sexually differentiated audiences into a modern culture of consumption. In this process, Hansen argues, the cinema might also have provided the conditions of an alternative public sphere for particular social groups, such as recent immigrants and women, by furnishing an intersubjective context in which they could recognize fragments of their own experience. After tracing the emergence of spectatorship as an institution, Hansen pursues the question of reception through detailed readings of a single film, D. W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916), and of the cult surrounding a single star, Rudolph Valentino. In each case the classical construction of spectatorship is complicated by factors of gender and sexuality, crystallizing around the fear and desire of the female consumer. Babel and Babylon recasts the debate on early American cinema--and by implication on American film as a whole. It is a model study in the field of Cinema Studies, mediating the concerns of recent film theory with those of recent film history. 606 $aSilent films$zUnited States$xHistory and criticism 606 $aMotion picture audiences$zUnited States$xHistory 606 $aFeminism and motion pictures 607 $aUnited States$xSocial life and customs$y1865-1918 615 0$aSilent films$xHistory and criticism. 615 0$aMotion picture audiences$xHistory. 615 0$aFeminism and motion pictures. 676 $a791.430973 700 $aHansen$b Miriam$f1949-2011.$0603366 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bMiAaPQ 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910820561903321 996 $aBabel and Babylon$91674006 997 $aUNINA