- Hardcover: 352 pages
- Publisher: Harvard University Press (1 July 1989)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0674543351
- ISBN-13: 978-0674543355
- Product Dimensions: 23.9 x 15.7 x 3.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,500,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Making Meaning
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Review
An A-list historian and theorist himself, Bordwell is the unchallenged "capo di tutti capi" of academic film studies...His industrial-strength overview is a streamlined and steady Eurail pass through the Continental modes of thought that have dominated the American university since the late 60s.--Thomas Doherty "Boston Phoenix Literary Supplement "
Product Description
David Bordwell's new book is at once a history of film criticism, an analysis of how critics interpret film, and a proposal for an alternative program for film studies. It is an anatomy of film criticism meant to reset the agenda for film scholarship. As such "Making Meaning" should be a landmark book, a focus for debate from which future film study will evolve.
Bordwell systematically maps different strategies for interpreting films and making meaning, illustrating his points with a vast array of examples from Western film criticism. Following an introductory chapter that sets out the terms and scope of the argument, Bordwell goes on to show how critical institutions constrain and contain the very practices they promote, and how the interpretation of texts has become a central preoccupation of the humanities. He gives lucid accounts of the development of film criticism in France, Britain, and the United States since World War II; analyzes this development through two important types of criticism, thematic-explicatory and symptomatic; and shows that both types, usually seen as antithetical, in fact have much in common. These diverse and even warring schools of criticism share conventional, rhetorical, and problem-solving techniques--a point that has broad-ranging implications for the way critics practice their art. The book concludes with a survey of the alternatives to criticism based on interpretation and, finally, with the proposal that a historical poetics of cinema offers the most fruitful framework for film analysis.
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tag this product(What's this?)Think of a tag as a keyword or label you consider is strongly related to this product.
Tags will help all customers organise and find favourite items. |
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I needed a book that explained the practice of film criticism to me in detail, but I was mortified at the prospect of reading this book cover to cover. A book interpreting the process of interpretation? Get out of here. Flicking through the pages beforehand, I struggled to locate a single recognizable word: 'schemata', 'heuristics' - it looked like a foreign language to me. However, I have to say that when I started reading, things became clear. The book details the mechanics of the entire critical process, and focuses on the manner in which the 'meaning(s)' of film text(s) are constructed. Bordwell's prose is concise, on the dry side of humorous, and extremely insightful. At times the new terms and concepts can be overwhelming, and you may begin to think that Bordwell's seeing things that really aren't there, but at other times a single line can contain a revelation. Look out for the cartoon by The Simpsons' Matt Groening, included near the beginning. It's about film critics, and, ultimately, their pretentiousness and/or uselessness. It made me laugh out loud, and that doesn't happen all that often. There's also an interesting chapter on the various meanings that critics have ascribed to Hitchcock's Psycho. I would strongly recommend Making Meaning to other academics seeking to understand their own practices. Invaluable before undertaking any critical work on film.
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
I can't begin to describe how liberating this book is.
As a student I was forced to read endless drivel about film and television, most of it blighted by steam-age psychology dressed up in postmodern garb, and tedious 'symptomatic' readings based on the 'Zeitgeist fallacy'.
Film was presented as simply an aspect of the 'Ideological State Aparatus', a manifestation of capitalist ideology.
The fact that University is itself implicated in the reproduction of capitalist ideology to a far, far greater extent than film is, and that the politicization of film studies itself was a product of the repositioning of film studies as an academic discipline in financial and academic competition with other disciplines was something which went unexamined.
Above all the fact that the supposedly emancipatory discourses of film studies were elitist in their valoration of the avant garde and amounted to little more than intellectual bullying should have rang alarm bells.
This book freed me from all that claptrap by laying bare the lazy, mechanical procedures that lead to tedious, grossly inacurate 'readings' which are often passed off as analysis. Bordwell shows the audience as active participants in the creation of meaning, not the helpless cultural dupes that Screen Theory and the like would have us believe are 'interpellated' by film.
This, like Noel Carroll's 'Mystifying Movies', should be required reading for all students of film.
As a student I was forced to read endless drivel about film and television, most of it blighted by steam-age psychology dressed up in postmodern garb, and tedious 'symptomatic' readings based on the 'Zeitgeist fallacy'.
Film was presented as simply an aspect of the 'Ideological State Aparatus', a manifestation of capitalist ideology.
The fact that University is itself implicated in the reproduction of capitalist ideology to a far, far greater extent than film is, and that the politicization of film studies itself was a product of the repositioning of film studies as an academic discipline in financial and academic competition with other disciplines was something which went unexamined.
Above all the fact that the supposedly emancipatory discourses of film studies were elitist in their valoration of the avant garde and amounted to little more than intellectual bullying should have rang alarm bells.
This book freed me from all that claptrap by laying bare the lazy, mechanical procedures that lead to tedious, grossly inacurate 'readings' which are often passed off as analysis. Bordwell shows the audience as active participants in the creation of meaning, not the helpless cultural dupes that Screen Theory and the like would have us believe are 'interpellated' by film.
This, like Noel Carroll's 'Mystifying Movies', should be required reading for all students of film.
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
