The Transparency of Spectacle

Reviews / Votes

"This is an exciting book, bursting with insights and information on virtually every page. A vast range of films and an equally astonishing range of references combine to present a dazzling array of thought-provoking discussions which range across virtually all of film history and geography. Both a meditation on the past and a call to arms for the future, this book truly sets a new agenda for film and media studies." - David Desser, University of Illinois

"Dixon suggests that what others have seen as a crisis of the moving image can better be regarded as a singular transformation point, laden with new possibilities. The spread of video, the Internet, etc., has indeed created difficulties for filmmaking as traditionally conceived. Digital processes have permitted an ever-more-thorough destruction of real referentiality. The technological boom as a whole has allowed for multinational corporations to exploit and control the media of expression as never before. But at the same time, Dixon argues, the technological revolution has unleashed a wide new variety of possibilities for critical discourse, and for a process of 'non-colonial, non-canonical revision' of the standards of cinema. Dixon covers a dazzling range of alternative film practices, ranging from post-Revolutionary Iranian cinema to feminist genre revisionism, from the race-conscious films of the Sankofa collective to the passionate low-budget filmmaking of Roger Corman. He also detours into the past to take up the fascinating cases of such forgotten earlier directors as Reginald LeBorg and John H. Collins. And he touches on crucial issues in contemporary film theory, such as the nature of the gaze in horror films. I found this book exhilarating for the way in which it displays a panoply of alternative strategies for cinematic production, which have survived despite being marginalized by mainstream Hollywood, and whose potentialities are, in spite of appearances, increasing at the present moment." - Steven Shaviro, University of Washington