Sound Technology and the American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Modernity

by James Lastra

Overview

Representational technologies including photography, phonography, and the cinema have helped define modernity itself. Since the nineteenth century, these technologies have challenged our trust of sensory perception, given the ephemeral unprecedented parity with the eternal, and created profound temporal and spatial displacements. But current approaches to representational and cultural history often neglect to examine these technologies. James Lastra seeks to remedy this neglect.

Lastra argues that we are nowhere better able to track the relations between capital, science, and cultural practice than in photography, phonography, and the cinema. In particular, he maps the development of sound recording from its emergence to its confrontation with and integration into the Hollywood film.

Reaching back into the late eighteenth century, to natural philosophy, stenography, automata, and human physiology, Lastra follows the shifting relationships between our senses, technology, and representation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780231115179
Publisher:	Columbia University Press
Publication date:	07/18/2000
Series:	Film and Culture Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 8.99(h) x 0.62(d)
Lexile:	1740L (what's this?)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

James Lastra is associate professor of English at the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

1. Inscriptions and Simulations: The Imagination of Technology
2. Performance, Inscription, Diegesis: The Technological Transformation of Representational Causality
3. Everything But the Kitchen Sync: Sound and Image Before the Talkies
4. Sound Theory
5. Standards and Practices: Aesthetic Norm and Technological Innovation in the American Cinema
6. Sound Space and Classical Narrative

What People are Saying About This

Rick Altman

Rarely has high-flying theory been anchored in such careful research and presented in such clear prose.

— Rick Altman, University of Iowa

Claudia Gorbman

James Lastra brings complexity, texture, and erudition to the story of the development not just of film sound, but the Big Three of modernity's representational technologies: photography, phonography, and cinema itself. From Edison's 'tone tests' to the 'up-and-downer,' Lastra constructs a history/metahistory of technological devices and practices as negotiated through changing discourses and institutions. His book is a model of intellectual rigor and vigor; its impact will be felt for a long time to come.

— Claudia Gorbman, University of Washington - Tacoma

Mary Anne Doane

Rigorous, detailed, and compelling.

— Mary Anne Doane, Brown University

Editorial Reviews

Rarely has high-flying theory been anchored in such careful research and presented in such clear prose.

Rick Altman

James Lastra brings complexity, texture, and erudition to the story of the development not just of film sound, but the Big Three of modernity's representational technologies: photography, phonography, and cinema itself. From Edison's 'tone tests' to the 'up-and-downer, ' Lastra constructs a history/metahistory of technological devices and practices as negotiated through changing discourses and institutions. His book is a model of intellectual rigor and vigor; its impact will be felt for a long time to come.

Claudia Gorbman

Rigorous, detailed, and compelling.

Mary Anne Doane