Sound Technology and the American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Modernity PDF
Preview Sound Technology and the American Cinema: Perception, Representation, Modernity
SOUND TECHNOLOGY AND THE AMERICAN CINEMA: Perception, Representation, Modernity James Lastra COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS SOUND TECHNOLOGY AND THE AMERICAN CINEMA Perception, Representation, Modernity Film and Culture John Belton, General Editor FILM AND CULTURE A series of Columbia University Press Edited by John Belton What Made Pistachio Nuts? Henry Jenkins Showstoppers: Busby Berkeley and the Tradition of Spectacle Martin Rubin Projections of War: Hollywood, American Culture, and World War II Thomas Doherty Laughing Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy William Paul Laughing Hysterically: American Screen Comedy of the s Ed Sikov Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema Rey Chow The Cinema of Max Ophuls: Magisterial Vision and the Figure of Woman Susan M. White Black Women as Cultural Readers Jacqueline Bobo Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity, Japanese Film Darrell William Davis Attack of the Leading Ladies: Gender, Sexuality, and Spectatorship in Classic Horror Cinema Rhona J. Berenstein This Mad Masquerade: Stardom and Masculinity in the Jazz Age Gaylyn Studlar Sexual Politics and Narrative Film: Hollywood and Beyond Robin Wood The Sounds of Commerce: Marketing Popular Film Music Jeff Smith Orson Welles, Shakespeare, and Popular Culture Michael Anderegg Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, – Thomas Doherty SOUND TECHNOLOGY AND THE AMERICAN CINEMA Perception, Representation, Modernity James Lastra C Columbia University Press Publishers Since New York Chichester, West Sussex Copyright © by Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library ofCongress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lastra, James. Sound technology and the American cinema : perception, representation, modernity / James Lastra. p. cm. — (Film and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN–––(cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN –––(paper : alk. paper) . Sound motion pictures—History. . Sound—Recording and reproducing—History. I. Title. II. Series PN..L .'—dc – Casebound editions ofColumbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Designed by ChangJae Lee Printed in the United States ofAmerica c p For Janice, Charlotte, and Paul This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgments ix Introduction—Discourse/Device/Practice/Institution: Representational Technologies and American Culture . Inscriptions and Simulations: The Imagination of Technology . Performance, Inscription, Diegesis: The Technological Transformation of Representational Causality . Everything But the Kitchen Sync: Sound and Image Before the Talkies . Sound Theory . Standards and Practices: Aesthetic Norm and Technological Innovation in the American Cinema . Sound Space and Classical Narrative Conclusion Notes Index This page intentionally left blank ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Like most projects, this book could not have been accomplished without the aid of many others in matters both large and small. From its first hesitant drafts in , until its completion ten years later, this book has ben- efited from the wise counsel offered by friends, colleagues, and teachers in several different places and institutions. The earliest versions of the ideas set forth here were written at the University ofIowa. My debt to teachers and fel- low students there is enormous. Professors Dudley Andrew, John Peters, Lauren Rabinovitz, and Steven Ungar all made valuable and irreplaceable contributions to its early growth, as did fellow students Charles O’Brien, Steve Wurtzler, Dana Benelli, Scott Curtis, Pieter Pereboom, Greg Easley, and James McLaughlin. I am grateful for the many enlightening conversa- tions I have had during my many return trips to Iowa City since graduation, especially those with the members of the Sound Research Seminar. My greatest Iowa debt, however, is to Rick Altman, without whose cama- raderie, insight, and constant intellectual challenges neither the dissertation nor the book would have been written. Rick’s influence is evident on every page, and it would be a far poorer book were it not for his inspiration, his crit- icism, and, most of all, his friendship. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Warner Bros. Archives at the University of Southern California aided my research immea- surably. I would especially like to thank Valentin Almendarez, Barbara Hall, Scott Curtis, and Stuart Eng for their kind, and usually crucial, assistance. The
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