Cinema and Spectatorship

<p><em>Cinema and Spectatorship</em> is the first book to focus entirely on the history and role of the spectator in contemporary film studies. While 1970s film theory insisted on a distinction betweeen the cinematic subject and film-goers Judith Mayne suggests that a very real friction between subjects and viewers is in fact central to the study of spectatorship.<br>In the book's first section Mayne examines three theoretical models of spectatorship: the perceptual the institutional and the historical while the second section focuses on case studies which crystallize many of the issues already discussed concentrating on textual analysis the `disrupting genre' `star-gazing' and finally the audience itself. Case studies incude the place of the spectator in the textual analysis of individual films such as <em>The Picture of Dorian Gray</em>; the construction of Bette Davis' star persona; fantasies of race and film viewing in <em>Field of Dreams</em> and <em>Ghost</em>; and gay and lesbian audiences as critical audiences. The book provides a very thorough and accessible overview of this complex fragmented and often controversial area of film theory.</p>