Introduction -- Science's cinematic method: motion pictures and scientific research -- Between observation and spectatorship: medicine, movies, and mass culture -- The taste of a nation: educating the senses and sensibilities of film spectators -- The problem with passivity: aesthetic contemplation and film spectatorship -- Conclusion: toward a tactile historiography.
Summary
In this exceptionally wide-ranging study, Scott Curtis draws our eye to the role of scientific, medical, educational, and aesthetic observation in shaping modern conceptions of spectatorship. Focusing on the nontheatrical use of motion picture technology in Germany between the 1890s and World War I, he follows specialists across disciplines as they debated and appropriated film for their own ends, negotiating the fascinating, at times fraught relationship between technology, discipline, and expert vision.