Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology

Smartly selected and organized, the essays in this anthology introduce several central issues in film theory, namely, the classical narrative text, oppositional and avant-garde cinema, subject positioning, the cinematic apparatus, and ideology. Written by seminal scholars, including Christian Metz, Jean-Louis Baudry, Stephen Heath, Peter Wollen, Laura Mulvey, and Noël Burch, as well as such leading thinkers as Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva, and Jean-François Lyotard, these works utilize a number of approaches in their analyses, particularly structuralism, poststructuralism, psychoanalysis, feminism, neoformalism, Marxism, and semiotics. Divided into sections, the anthology features introductions to each group of essays outlining the major assumptions, ideas, and arguments of the articles and situating them within the history of film theory, narrative analysis, and social and cultural theory.

Author Biography

Philip Rosen is professor of modern culture and media at Brown University and works in the fields of film theory and history, with special attention to the question of culture and ideology and to historiography and temporality in the contexts of national cinemas. He is the author of Change Mummified: Cinema, Historicity, Theory and coeditor of Cinema Histories, Cinema Practices.