Available From UC Press

Film and television create worlds, but they are also of a world, a world that is made up of stuff, to which humans attach meaning. Think of the last time you watched a movie: the chair you sat in, the snacks you ate, the people around you, maybe the beer or joint you consumed to help you unwind—all this stuff shaped your experience of media and its influence on you. The material culture around film and television changes how we make sense of their content, not to mention the very concepts of the mediums. Focusing on material cultures of film and television reception, The Stuff of Spectatorship argues that the things we share space with and consume as we consume television and film influence the meaning we gather from them. This book examines the roles that six different material cultures have played in film and television culture since the 1970s—including video marketing, branded merchandise, drugs and alcohol, and even gun violence—and shows how objects considered peripheral to film and television culture are in fact central to its past and future.

Caetlin Benson-Allott is Provost's Distinguished Associate Professor of English and Film and Media Studies at Georgetown University and editor of JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies. She is author of Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens: Video Spectatorship from VHS to File Sharing and Remote Control.

"In crystalline language, and in breathtakingly original argumentation, Caetlin Benson-Allott shows us that the material objects we may take to be adjacent, ambient, or peripheral to cinema and television in fact constitute how we live with those media—indeed, how we live. The Stuff of Spectatorship makes matter’s mattering shine."—Nick Salvato, author of Television Scales

"The Stuff of Spectatorship is sui generis, its expansive and rigorous case studies focusing on neglected, yet common, material aspects of film/TV spectatorship so as to reveal the reversible modalities and effects of both industrial and phenomenological 'incorporation' and 'consumption.' Original, surprising, and a pleasure to read, this is an extraordinary historical and methodological contribution to film and media studies."—Vivian Sobchack, author of Carnal Thoughts: Embodiment and Moving Image Culture

"Original, bold, and evocative, this book reveals that spectatorship involves a dazzling array of objects—from formats to furniture, from wine to weed. Benson-Allott’s clever exploration of material media cultures opens up new paths of inquiry in cinema and media studies and delivers a riveting read along the way!"—Lisa Parks, author of Rethinking Media Coverage: Vertical Mediation and the War on Terror