Viewing Positions

Ways of Seeing Film

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Edited by Linda Williams

Type

Studies

Subject

Sociology

Keywords

sociology, viewer

Publishing date

1994

Publisher

Rutgers University Press

Collection

Rutgers Depth of Field Series

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 290 pages
6 ¼ x 9 ½ inches (16 x 24 cm)

ISBN-10
ISBN-13

0-8135-2133-5
978-0-8135-2133-6

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Book Presentation:
The essays in this volume represent some of the best new thinking about the crucial relations between visual representation in film and human subjectivity. No amount of empirical research into the sociology of actual audiences will displace the desire to speculate about the effects of visual culture, and especially moving images, on viewing subjects. These notions of spectatorship, however hypothetical, become extremely compelling metaphors for the workings of vision within the institution of cinema. Viewing Positions examines the tradition of a centered, unitary, distanced, and objectifying spectator's gaze; investigates the period when film spectatorship as an idea began; and analyses gender- and sexuality-based challenges to the homogeneous classical theory of spectatorship. It makes available critical understandings of spectatorship that have, until now, largely eluded cinema studies.

About the Author:
LINDA WILLIAMS is professor of film studies at the University of California, Irvine. She has won a number of awards for her work as a film producer and director, and is author of several books, including Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the Frenzy of the Visible.

See the publisher website: Rutgers University Press