Sound Technology and the American Cinema

Film and Culture Series

by James Lastra

Representational technologies including photography, phonography, and the cinema have helped define modernity itself. Since the nineteenth century, these technologies have challenged our trust of sensory perception, given the ephemeral unprecedented parity with the eternal, and created profound temporal and spatial displacements. But current approaches to representational and cultural history often neglect to examine these technologies. James Lastra seeks to remedy this neglect.

Lastra argues that we are nowhere better able to track the relations between capital, science, and cultural practice than in photography, phonography, and the cinema. In particular, he maps the development of sound recording from its emergence to its confrontation with and integration into the Hollywood film.

Reaching back into the late eighteenth century, to natural philosophy, stenography, automata, and human physiology, Lastra follows the shifting relationships between our senses, technology, and representation.

Genres: Film, Academic

288 pages, Paperback

First published June 27, 2000

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though a little dense in places, this is a pretty interesting account of the coming of sound in American cinema. It avoids many of the usual stories of the development of technologies and the roles of specific companies and studios and focuses instead on how the technology was adapted to the existing norms of classical Hollywood filmmaking. Beginning with a history of sound recording and reproduction devices (which is incredibly fascinating on its own) the book explores primarily discourses around sound and perception, the people who held those particular views, and how these discourses and theories had to change in order to bring fully integrated sound films to the American public.

[Yenreads · Rating 3 out of 5]

referenced this in a supervision and my supervisor said that a lot of the information in this would not have been possible to surmise and therefore my essay was build upon sandy pillars of faulty conclusions and then i did BAD for the essay so yeah . but my supervisor might have also just been a prick so idk. thank you james lastra for writing this in a legible and understandable way though

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a brilliant piece of scholarship. This is theory with a firm footing in history, industry, practice and culture... Or is it history that knows its way around theory and industrial practice? Either way, Lastra examines competing modes of aural representation in early sound cinema in Hollywood, but he uses this historical moment to reflect upon industrial practices (leading obliquely to capitalism), film theory, embodiment, simulation, and the history of mediation in general. That sounds rather grand, but what I admire most is that this is actually very informed and pragmatic theory. Which, in itself, is amazing and inspiring. I am only sorry I took so long getting around to reading it.