genre and enunciation, the case of horror

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GENRE AND ENUNCIATION: THE CASE OF HORROR Author(s): EDWARD LOWRY Source: Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 36, No. 2, SPECTATORSHIP AND NEW TECHNOLOGY (Spring 1984), pp. 13-20, 72 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20687601 . Accessed: 13/03/2011 17:27 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at . http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois. . Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Illinois Press and University Film & Video Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of Film and Video. http://www.jstor.org

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Page 1: genre and enunciation, the case of horror

GENRE AND ENUNCIATION: THE CASE OF HORRORAuthor(s): EDWARD LOWRYSource: Journal of Film and Video, Vol. 36, No. 2, SPECTATORSHIP AND NEW TECHNOLOGY(Spring 1984), pp. 13-20, 72Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20687601 .Accessed: 13/03/2011 17:27

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and youmay use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at .http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=illinois. .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

University of Illinois Press and University Film & Video Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize,preserve and extend access to Journal of Film and Video.

http://www.jstor.org

Page 2: genre and enunciation, the case of horror

GENRE AND ENUNCIATION: THE CASE OF HORROR

EDWARD LOWRY

The horror film, more than perhaps any other genre so readily identified by both audiences and producers, has largely eluded scholars in their attempts to define its specificities. As a category, it remains

inclusive enough, and its component films diverse enough, to present significant problems for the two major and inter related methods of analyzing genres: 1) according to iconography, and 2) accord

ing to the structuration of conflict.

Unlike such genres as the western and the

gangster film, which remain fairly specific in their settings, horror movies are set in a

variety of times and places, from medieval

castles to modem motels, from the clut

tered labs of demented scientists to the

fog-bound streets of 19th century London. The iconography of the horror film seems

equally eclectic when taken as a whole, and is subject to systematization mainly according to a fairly wide range of sub genres: the trappings of Eastern European

superstition and of Christianity in tales of

vampires and werewolves; the technologi cal and clinical instruments in stories of human-made monsters; the tools of butch

ery (knives, axes, chainsaws) associated

with the psychopathic killer; the sym bologies of ancient Egypt surrounding the mummy, of Haitian voodoo in the original zombie films, and of Hasidism in the story

of the golem. Clearly, there are points of contact between many of the sub

categories (castles, graveyards, labora

tories), but generalizations of this sort do more to demonstrate the superficiality of

iconographic definitions than to define horror as a genre.

Observations of certain consistencies on

the narrative level seem to reveal a bit more: horror films relate the genesis and the threat of someone or something which is monstrous, be it a vampire, a psycho or

a creature from the Black Lagoon. Robin

Wood put it most concisely when he ob served that, in the horror film, "normality is threatened by the Monster."1 Keeping in mind Wood's insistence that "normal

ity" be regarded as a "non-evaluative"

term in his definition, we may note at least two advantages which this formulation offers to structural analysis: 1) it allows the threat of the monster to represent a

variety of psychological and social

"others" (other sexualities, other cul

tures, other classes, etc.); and 2) it allows

(like Jim Kitses' structuration of anti

nomies in the western2) for individual films to champion values on either or both sides of the conflict: that is, we may be asked to

identify with the victims (Dracula), with the monster (The Bride of Frankenstein), with both (Curse of the Werewolf) or with neither (Texas Chainsaw Massacre).

While quite apt, Wood's definition nevertheless suggests the difficulties in volved in seeking generic specificity in structures of conflict. Other genres posit

the threat to normality posed by an "other." In westerns, for example, this

"other" is often the Indian; in war films, it

EDWARD LOWRY has taught Film Studies at the University of Texas and the University of

Iowa, and is currently an Assistant Professor at Southern Illinois University. He studied at the Centre Universitaire Am6ricain du Cinema in Paris and received his Ph.D. from the Univer

sity of Texas. Lowry has published in Film Comment, Take One and Velvet Light Trap.

Copyright ? 1984 by Edward Lowry

JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO XXXVI, (Spring 1984) 13

Page 3: genre and enunciation, the case of horror

is usually the enemy. Family melodrama

fairly consistently treats the threat posed to bourgeois normality by an "otherness"

arising from the intrusion of an outsider or

by a change in a member of the social group. Nor can the horror film be fit as a

whole, according to its structures of con

flict, into either the "genres of order" or

the "genres of integration" outlined by Thomas Schatz.3 Certainly, the ideologi

cally contested space where conflict is externalized in violence, characteristic of

the westerns, gangster movies and detec

tive films which Schatz classifies as

"genres of order," equally describes such

horror films as Frankenstein, Alien, Night

of the Living Dead and either version of The Thing. By contrast, movies like The

Exorcist, Psycho and any version of Dr.

Jekyll and Mr. Hyde conform, along with

family melodramas, screwball comedies

and musicals, to the category "genres of

integration," which occur in a civilized,

"familial" space, where conflict is moti

vated or strongly linked to emotional fac tors, and where the goal of the social

group is the re-integration of the aberrant

character.

Ultimately, these observations do less to

challenge the identification of specific structures of conflict within popular film narratives than to suggest that these

structures represent different strategies for articulating and resolving similar

ideological contradictions (e.g., threats to

the individual, threats to society)

strategies which often intermingle without

regard for generic boundaries. Of course,

the problem of generic specificity is further complicated on the empirical level by the existence of the generic "hybrid": the western cop film (Coogan's Bluff), the

western musical (The Haney Girls), the

horror musical (Phantom of the Paradise),

the horror comedy (Young Frankenstein).

Such cases further indicate the ease with

which generic structures may mesh, even

as they demonstrate that generic icono

graphies are by no means exclusive.

What I wish to propose is the examination

No other genre depends so thoroughly on the sado-masochistic relationship between

audience and filmic spectacle.

14 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO XXXVI, 2 (Spring 1984)

Page 4: genre and enunciation, the case of horror

of horror in the cinema as a mode of ad

dress, clearly linked to certain structural

conflicts and iconographies, but more im

portantly, engaging the viewer in a very specific type of discourse. It is this ques tion of address and of the discursive re

lationships established between audience and spectacle which provides a means to discuss what is unique about the horror film: that is, its will to horrify the viewer.

Examining horror from this perspective requires focusing attention on the textual

strategies by which the horror film works to produce horror. These are precisely the

strategies of filmic enunciation, which in volves the links between the formal and rhetorical systems of a text, the actual

performance of narrative and filmic codes in relation to the viewer. As Stephen

Neale writes,

Narrative . . . is both a process of

production and an activity of structu

ration, but it is so in and for a subject. ... Different modes of signification

produce different functionings of

subjectivity, moving the subject dif

ferently in their various semiotic pro cesses, producing distinct modes of

address.4

For Neale, this involves both the process

of enunciation and that which is (for lack of a better word) "enounced," the latter

implying the positioning of the viewer in relation to the narrative, as inscribed in

the text. "Each genre," Neale continues,

"has, at least to some extent, its own

mode of address, its own version of the

articulation of the balance" between pro cess and position.5 Therefore, if we are

willing to acknowledge that an important characteristic of the horror film is its at tempt to produce a horrific subject-posi tion for the viewer, we may learn a great deal about the genre by examining the enunciative strategies it involves.

Although nearly all narrative films proceed according to the promise of pleasure and its subsequent postponement (charac

terized by the hermeneutic code), and the

suspense sequence assumes this manner

of presentation as a strict formal strategy, no other type of film depends so thor

oughly on a sado-masochistic relationship between the audience and the film specta cle as does the horror film. This is exem

plified by the fact that the spectator's rela tion to the horror film is often quite active-screaming, covering the eyes,

laughing either nervously or derisively. Certainly, this dynamic relationship does a

good deal to account for the genre's emo

tional power, the fanaticism of its de votees and its frequent dismissal as pure sensationalism. Sensation is what the hor

ror movie promises, and the audience en

ters the theater in full knowledge that the film will attempt to terrorize them.

Noel Burch discusses "that mixture of re

pugnance and fascination experienced by the viewer confronted with . . . images of

horror" as the raison d'2tre of cinematic

aggression.6 It is the spectacle of horror

itself with which the enunciation threatens and teases the viewer. In the horror genre, this spectacle frequently involves con

fronting the spectator with images of vio

lence, of decay, of mayhem, or simply of

eerieness. Such images range from the

graphic mutilations presented in a "gore" film like Blood Feast to the grotesqueness of decaying actresses in Whatever Hap

pened to Baby Jane? Frequently, the

spectacle of horror is the monster itself,

whose appearance is withheld (The Cat

People) or revealed (the unmasking of The Phantom of the Opera) according to codes

of suspense and terror which characterize the horror film and separate it, for exam ple, from the mystery, where the killer is usually seen throughout but not identified as such until the conclusion, where the thing withheld is a solution and not a

JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO XXXVI, (Spring 1984) 15

Page 5: genre and enunciation, the case of horror

-t -':'s .. - sM w . . 9

"Horror as the spectacle of decay." (Psycho)

spectacle. Burch outlines a common

enunciative strategy in the presentation of horrific scenes: the spectator "is titillated at first by the suggestion of horror and thinks he (sic) has gotten off easily with a little shiver running up his spine, but then

absolutely everything is revealed to him."7 This clearly involves an aggressive structuration, Burch argues, "whose very

substance is horror ... invariably per

ceived (except by persons of extremely perverse sensibility) through a cloud of

pain," since "each of us is vulnerable to

these brutal assaults on bodies that after all, are terrifyingly similar to our own."8

It is useful here to examine the sado masochism of the spectator position in a bit more detail. Following Laura Mulvey's definition of the "two contradictory as

pects of the pleasurable structures of

looking in the conventional cinematic situ ation," we may observe that, in the horror

film, the scopophilic impulse, which "arises from the pleasure in using another person as an object of sexual stimulation

through sight," takes on overtly sadistic

aspects to the extent that the viewer is

placed in a position where the spectacle of horror is presented as the pleasurable fulfillment of a desire, paid for at the box office. On the other hand, the narcissistic aspect of the conventional construction of the viewer's look, which according to

Mulvey "demands identification of the ego with the object on the screen," places the spectator of the horror film in a simulta

neously masochistic position shared with the victim of the horror.9 The seeming contradictions of this duality adhere to a

psychoanalytic logic described by Freud in the dynamic relationship between sadism and masochism, based on the sub

ject's tendency to shift positions in fantasy between the active and passive roles.

On a textual level, this duality is charac terized by a variety of conventional strate

gies in the horror film, though for our pur poses the case of the moving point-of-view camera position associated with the mon ster or killer is exemplary. Elaborated most fully in the horror films of Dario Argento and thoroughly conventionalized

16 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO XXXVI, 2 (Spring 1984)

Page 6: genre and enunciation, the case of horror

by its use in John Carpenter's Halloween,

this device places the spectator in com

plete scopic identification with the sadistic

position of the perpetrator of horror. The

sadistic pleasure derived by looking through the killer's eyes is further en hanced by a scopophilic prelude to the violence which involves the voyeuristic intrusion on the victim, frequently eroticized by her/his nudity and/or overtly sexual activity. At the same time, how

ever, the killer's point of view does not

preclude the viewer's identification with the victim, the only person present on the

screen, and one usually presented in a

sympathetic state of extreme vulnerabil

ity. The masochism of this position is further emphasized by the fact that the viewer cannot see the face or the actions

of the killer (nor can the victim, until it is too late), yet the point-of-view requires that the horror be witnessed from the in

tolerable position of the aggressor.

Of course, the duality involved in the

spectator's simultaneous identification

with the victim and with an overtly sadis tic mise-en-scene is not restricted to the

killer's point-of-view shot, but represents a more general characteristic of the re

lationship between the horror film and its viewer which Noel Carroll has described as "the conflict between attraction and re

pulsion."10 The genre presents the specta cle of horror as a kind of forbidden scene, simultaneously desired and dreaded-a

Elr

scene which the mechanisms of the film repress, only to increase the amount of

psychic energy called forth when it is pre sented. This recalls the observations of

Freud on a closely related subject, the "uncanny." He writes,

... if psychoanalytic theory is cor

rect in maintaining that every affect

belonging to an emotional impulse, whatever its kind, is transformed, if it

is repressed, into anxiety, then among

instances of frightening things there must be one class in which the

frightening element can be shown to be something repressed which recurs.

This class of frightening things would then constitute the uncanny; and it must be a matter of indifference whether what is uncanny was itself

originally frightening or whether it carried some other affect."

For Freud, the "uncanny" frequently arises when "irrational, discarded beliefs"

seem to be verified by experience against the laws of logic.12 Most especially it is associated with the repression of the fear of death, a topic about which, he ob

serves, even the most "educated" find it

difficult to remain rational.13 Here we

should note that a central conflict in many horror narratives revolves around the dif

ficulties experienced by the rational (the educated and scientific) in recognizing and

dealing with the irrational (vampirism,

"In Halloween, the camera places the spectator in complete scopic identification with the sadistic position of the perpetrator of horror." (similarly in Friday, the 13th)

JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO XXXVI, (Spring 1984) 17

Page 7: genre and enunciation, the case of horror

lycanthropy, walking corpses, unknown

beasts, man-made monsters, demon pos

session), and that in any case the monstr

ous almost invariably represents the illogi cal and unexpected assertion of death.

This, of course, marks the genre as an

ideal site for the generation of the "un

canny."

Shifting our attention back to the level of

enunciation, we may now begin to

examine how the horror film positions the viewer in such a way that irrational fears are played upon and the sensation of "un

canniness" is generated. Here we may cite

all the enunciative strategies by which

danger and horror are concealed prior to their "uncanny" appearance. Framing, of

course, is a key device in this respect, as is

lighting, which obscures certain parts of the frame in darkness. Both deny access to an off-screen space from which a hand

may thrust forth to grab the shoulder of the protagonist, from which a cat may leap to provide a senseless shock, or from

which a murderous axe or monstrous claw

may appear. Here, Freud's observation

that "it is a matter of indifference whether what is uncanny was itself originally frightening" is quite enlightening in ex

plaining how the hand of a companion or a harmless housecat can be made as

frightening as the harbinger of death itself

by means of textual repressions on the level of framing and lighting.

Camera movement may be employed to an

equally "uncanny" effect by threatening to reveal horrors which lie outside the frame's immediate view. Further, camera

movement conveys the sense of a willful direction of the spectator position by the

camera/narrator; and given the enuncia tive logic of the genre, the spectator may rightfully assume that such direction holds a potential threat. Such camera movement of course includes the stalking killer's point-of-view; but the "stalking" camera can be ominous even when it is not related

to a specific character, a fact most clearly

exemplified by the camera's dollying in on victims in Argento's Suspiria and Deep

Red. 14

In his pioneer work on enunciation and the

cinema, Raymond Bellour has carefully analyzed the patterns of editing in several Hitchcock films in order to demonstrate the links between viewer positioning (exe cuted according to established codes of

point-of-view) and the symbolic con

structions of the text. His analysis of the

"crossing Bodega Bay" sequence from

The Birds especially focuses on the mech anism of suspense (a subject quite perti nent to the horror film) as it relates to viewer identification with Melanie's (Tippi Hedren's) gaze, enunciated according to a

rigorous alternation between shots of her

looking off-screen and shots representing what she sees. The complication of this

pattern, which occurs when Mitch (Rod Taylor) discovers Melanie, resulting in the introduction of a shot representing his

point of view, enables Bellour to draw

connections between the operation of the

enunciation and the aggression of the male

gaze, manifested narratively at the end of

the sequence in the first (and otherwise

unexplained) attack on Melanie by a

gull.15 Moreover, given Bellour's obser

vation that enunciation in the classical

American cinema is organized according to "a system in which the aggressive ele

ment can never be separated from the in

flection it receives from sexual differ ence,"16 we should be alerted to the pos

sibilities offered by an analysis of enunci ation for providing a significant explana tion of the horror film's penchant for vio

lence against women, allowing us to

understand the genre as a privileged site for the playing out of male castration anxieties in terms of horror, and at the ex pense of the female body.'7

Stephen Neale observes that "Mainstream narrative is a mode of signification which

18 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO XXXVI, 2 (Spring 1984)

Page 8: genre and enunciation, the case of horror

"The shock to the narrative is manifested on the eni

disorienting camera angles and Eisenstenian m<

works constantly to produce coherence in

the subject through and across the

heterogeneity of the effects that it mobilizes and structures ";18 and there is

certainly a coherence in the dualistic posi tion enunciated by the horror film for the viewer. Yet, it seems that one of the most

characteristic enunciative strategies of the

horror film involves the wholesale, if only

temporary, disruption of the viewer's po

sition of coherence. Witness the shock

techniques of the horror film: the shock cut, the unexpected aural punctuation by a

scream or a burst of music, the in

stantaneous materialization of horror in an

otherwise classically coherent scene.

Certainly, once the spectator has leapt from the theater seat when the hand bursts

from the grave at the end of Carrie, he/she

may place the event in the coherent diege tic context of a character's dream, moti

vated logically by the horrors which came before; but at the moment of the shock,

coherence gives way to panic. Similarly, when Marion Crane is murdered in the

shower in Psycho, the shock to the narra

tive is manifested and enhanced on the enunciative level by an incoherent explo sion of disorienting camera angles and

Eisensteinian montage.

The classicism of most horror films re quires a quick restoration of coherence to both the enunciation and the narrative; but it is precisely the disruption of that coher ence which the horror film markets in its

inciative level by an incoherent explosion of

ntage." (Psycho)

promise of sensationalism. Indeed, to the

extent that the classical film narrative

centers the ego of the viewer as the source

of meaning and coherence, the horror film

is that genre of classical narrative which

promises spectators the occasional sensa

tion of temporary insanity.

What I have attempted here is to outline some of the ways in which the study of film enunciation, taken as a semiotic

method with psychoanalytic implications, contributes to our understanding of the

horror film. This approach involves the

examination of specific textual usages of

the entire range of filmic codes, encom

passing all the elements of mise-en-scene,

of sound, of editing and of special effects.

Clearly the specific codes have chsnged significantly since Georges Melies em

ployed his technique of "trick editing" to awe and disorient the logical, perceptual

assumptions of an audience in the context

of a magic show. It is therefore fruitless to

attempt to compile a lexicon of enuncia

tive codes with fixed meanings, since the textual relationships between code and

viewer constantly shift, according not only to the type of narrative or genre, but also

according to the previous and current

usage of codes in a specific historical con text. I can only note here the important historical work which remains to be done.

Finally, it should be noted that the most significant work in the field of genre during

JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO XXXVI, (Spring 1984) 19

Page 9: genre and enunciation, the case of horror

the past several years has taken place in

the study of the musical, precisely from the perspective of address and the textual relations established between audience and spectacle.19 The musical has served as

an ideal site for such analysis, since the

study of that particular genre gained very little from methods which sought its deep structures of conflict but could not ac

count for that factor which makes a musi

cal a musical: that is, musical perfor mance. The placement of performance within the musical text, its presentation as

performance to the viewer, and its re

lationship to the narrative (which may it self be generic: e.g., Guys and Dolls,

Annie Get Your Gun, The Rocky Horror

Picture Show) seem far more pertinent to

understanding the musical than a catalog

ing of narrative conflicts common to the

genre. Furthermore, it should be added

that musical moments in films which are not specifically musicals themselves are

quite common (e.g., The Big Sleep, Citi

zen Kane), just as non-horror films

frequently capitalize on the codes of hor ror (in a Western like Ulzana's Raid, a

melodrama like Tarnished Angels, a

gangster film like DePalma's Scarface;

and, more broadly, in the expressionistic

lighting conventions of film noir). In this

respect, "horror" and "musical" are

better understood as modes of address

than as genres belonging to the same order

as the western, the gangster movie and the

detective film. As such, they might be

grouped with other modes of address such as the documentary, the comedic and the

pornographic, since all of these terms

posit specific relationships between audi ence and spectacle, and each represents a

mode of address which can inflect a wide range of subject matter.

Whatever taxonomy scholars may choose, the fact remains that the study of genre cannot be limited to the identification of icons or structures, but must be conceived in terms of film discourse. Specifically, in

regard to the topic at hand, it must be said that, while stories of monstrosity may constitute a narrative formula, horror in

the cinema is a process which can best be

examined at the level of filmic enuncia

tion.

Notes

1 Robin Wood, ed. The American Nightmare (Toronto: Festival of Festivals, 1979), p. 14.

2 Jim Kitses, Horizons West (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970), pp. 10-12.

3 Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres (New York: Random House, 1981); see especially Ch. 2.

4 Stephen Neale, Genre (London: British

Film Institute, 1980), p. 25. 5 Ibid., p. 26.

6 Noel Burch, Theory of Film Practice (Lon don: Seeker & Warburg, 1973), p. 128.

7 Ibid.

*Ibid., p. 126. 9 Laura Mulvey, "Visual Pleasure and Nar

rative Cinema," Screen, 16:3 (Autumn 1975), p. 10.

10 Noel Carroll, "Nightmare and the Horror Film: The Symbolic Biology of Fantastic Be

ings," Film Quarterly, 34:3 (Spring 1981), p. 17. 11

Sigmund Freud, "The 'Uncanny'," Stan dard Edition, 27, p. 241.

"Ibid., p. 248.

"Ibid., pp. 242-243. 14 Noel Carroll notes the use of this type of

''disembodied" but ominous camera movement in The Changeling, where the camera circles one of the characters.

15 Raymond Bellour, "Les Oiseaux: description

d'une s?quence," Cahiers du Cin?ma, 216

(Octobre 1969), pp. 24-38. Other works by Be llour dealing with filmic enunciation include: "Le blocage symbolique," Communications, 23 (1975), pp. 235-350 (on North by Northwest); "Hitchcock: The Enunciator," Camera Obs cura, 2 (Fall 1977), pp. 69-91 (mostly on Mar

nie); and "Psychosis, Neurosis, Perversion," Camera Obscura, 3/4 (Summer 1979), pp. 105 132 (on Psycho).

16 Bellour, "Psychosis, Neurosis, Perver

sion," p. 118. 17 On this point, see Janet Bergstrom,

"Enunciation and Sexual Difference (Part I)," Camera Obscura, 3/4 (Summer 1979), pp. 33-69. (This article provides an overview of Be

(continued on page 72)

20 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO XXXVI, 2 (Spring 1984)

Page 10: genre and enunciation, the case of horror

(continued from page 20) (continued from page 42)

llour's work on film, and a discussion of its

usefulness to feminist theory.) 18

Neale, p. 25. 19 See especially Rick Altman, ed. Genre:

The Musical (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981), and Jane Feuer, The Hollywood

Musical (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982).

(continued from page 30)

spectator's field of view were used for assessing the viewing angle of the 35mm theatrical presentation and for conventional television

viewing. Ben Schlanger, "Criteria for Motion Picture Viewing and for a New 70mm System: Its Process and Viewing Arrangements," SMPTE Journal 75 (1966): Figure 1, p. 162. The 30' field of view utilized for 35mm theatrical exhibition (the general target for HDTV) was used for determining the spectator's field of view encompassed in a home HDTV display.

"1Greg MacGillivary and Jim Freeman, "Producing the Imax Motion Picture: 'To Fly'," American Cinematographer 57 (1976): 751-752, 808; Englund, interview.

52While the wide-screen film formats such as Cinerama and CinemaScope do require (in certain houses) horizontal head and eye movements in order to watch the drama on the

screen, there is no required vertical movement for the spectator as there is in viewing a

large-screen film and in normal, everyday visual experience.

53Hatada, Sakata, and Kusaka, p. 568.

54Bridge, interview. "Ibid.

56Hooten, 1983 telephone interview.

"Telephone interview with Saul Swimmer, President of MobileVision Technology Inc., 30

August 1983. 58Alan Colins, "Letter from Toronto: IMAX

Five Years After," Take One, June 1975, pp. 36, 37; Bridge, interview.

"Englund, interview.

60Hooten, 1983 telephone interview.

61Harrington, p. 87.

62Telephone interview with Donald Weed, 30

August 1983.

19"The Brave New World of HDTV,"

Broadcasting, February 1, 1982, p. 84. 20Takashi Fujio, "Future broadcasting and

high-definition television," in High-Definition Television. Tokyo: NHK Technical Monograph number 32, June, 1982. p. 7.

21Hollywood Reporter, July 20, 1983, p. 1,16.

22RCA Corporation Annual Report, f.y. 1982, cited in Box Office, June 1983, p. 37. As an

additional confirmation of the theatrical vs. pay video figures, consult MGM/UA's annual

report, f.y. 1983, pp. 28-9. Over the past five

years, revenue from theatrical distribution has

jumped from $63 million to $260 million; for home video and pay tv in the same period, the

jump was from $3 million to $144 million. 23For example, see "Beam me up to the

booth, Scotty," Gary Fisher, Box Office, March

1984, pp. 44-6, and "Onrush of satellite tech

nology occupies world television community," Broadcasting, March 14, 1983-see especially the comments of Joseph Pelton, p. 166.

24Variety, September 7, 1983, p. 3 25"The Brave New World of HDTV," op cit,

p. 84.

26"Spectre of labor unrest looms in videotape future: Aldrich," Hollywood Reporter, October

23, 1981, pp. 1,13. 27"Francis Ford Coppola Interview," Jeffery

Wells, Film Journal, September 21, 1981, p. 9.

(continued from page 49)

looks quite good when viewed on a tube, but its video image in no sense compares favorably with that of film. There are even some electronic engineers who argue, privately, that electronic imaging will never compare favorably with that of

photochemical systems. We will see. Whatever the system which ultimately emerges, it will most likely be one which has benefited from the pioneering work of

Coppola and his associates at Zoetrope Studios.

72 JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO XXXVI, 2 (Spring 1984)