Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film 0674058305, 9780674058309, 0674058313

Although cinema was invented in the mid-1890s, it was a decade more before the concept of a "film spectator" e

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Table of contents :
Contents......Page 10
Introduction: Cinema Spectatorship and Public Life......Page 14
I Rebuilding the Tower of Babel: The Emergence of Spectatorship......Page 34
1 A Cinema in Search of a Spectator: Film-Viewer Relations before Hollywood......Page 36
2 Early Audiences: Myths and Models......Page 73
3 Chameleon and Catalyst: The Cinema as an Alternative Public Sphere......Page 103
II Babel in Babylon: D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916)......Page 140
4 Reception, Textual System, and Self-Definition......Page 142
5 “A Radiant Crazy-Quilt”: Patterns of Narration and Address......Page 154
6 Genesis, Causes, Concepts of History......Page 176
7 Film History, Archaeology, Universal Language......Page 186
8 Hieroglyphics, Figurations of Writing......Page 201
9 Riddles of Maternity......Page 212
10 Crisis of Femininity, Fantasies of Rescue......Page 231
III The Return of Babylon: Rudolph Valentino and Female Spectatorship (1921-1926)......Page 256
11 Male Star, Female Fans......Page 258
12 Patterns of Vision, Scenarios of Identification......Page 282
Notes......Page 310
Illustration Credits......Page 379
Index......Page 380

Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film
 0674058305, 9780674058309, 0674058313

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