Film Theory: The Basics, 2nd Edition

3 SCREEN THEORY, 1969–1996

DOI: 10.4324/9781003171379-4

With the structuralist and poststructuralist challenge to the intellectual establishment, film theory had a model that set the terms and tone for its rapid ascent in the decades that followed. As film studies was assimilated into the Anglo-American academy, its theoretical interests continued to move away from the medium’s aesthetic status and questions surrounding authorship. Although these concerns had played a decisive role in establishing film’s merit and in elevating earlier forms of film criticism, film theory throughout the 1970s and 1980s drew upon French Theory and the specific developments associated with semiotics, psychoanalysis, and Marxism to shift its focus more fully ...