Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens: Video Spectatorship from Vhs to File Sharing by Caetlin Benson-AllottMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I read this book in parallel with a video series by the same name curated in part by the author at the Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers. As of now, Jan 2018, it seems as though she is going to be a future editor of "Cinema Journal" which is a scholarly academic journal on various film topics that I happen to subscribe to. The book starts out with some heavy theory from the 1970's, Christian Metz, apparatus theory, Marxist film theory, etc. that I need to do some reading on, but the rest of the book is close to a breeze, being that the movies referred to are fortunately available rather easily. When I read "Guide for the Perplexed" about Werner Herzog, I had to track down by hook or by crook, 30 or 40 movies to back fill my reading. These are all common titles for even a moderate horror movie fan. The thesis is essentially that the viewer's role as a spectator, (and maybe as an object themselves) has changed with the development of the VCR, and then the DVD, and current day VOD and Blu-Ray. It's convincing, and the final page of the concluding chapter packs a good punch - spectatorship is a power play, one way or another. An interesting read, with a few $5 words to look up here and there. Recommend if you're a gentleman or gentlewoman and a scholar, and a horror movie fan.
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