Consuming distractions: Commodities, visual pleasure, and film theory

My dissertation examines the tension between the rationalizing "narratives" of film theory and the irrational distractions of the cinematic detail. Traditionally, film theory proposes grand narratives that read movies (or groups of movies) allegorically, foregrounding particular patterns and ignoring individual details. Yet certain avant-garde theorists suggest that cinema lives at the level of detail. And in fact, many spectators can vividly recall details of the mise-en-scene, while easily forgetting the "moral of the story." Despite Classical Hollywood cinema's basis in narrative continuity, certain visual "distractions" point to the continued presence of a "cinema of attractions," a pre-narrative, presentational mode appropriated by the avant-garde.; I question why contemporary film theory (particularly feminist film theory) tends to devalue the cinematic detail, requiring its acquiescence to a grand narrative. At the core of this question lies the issue of fetishism. I challenge the prevailing notion of fetishism as a pernicious pathology and instead argue that when we examine the theory of the fetish (generalized from its anthropological, Marxist, and psychoanalytic origins), we find the foundation of the visual, material culture that characterizes modernity. I uncover particular "fetish-friendly" theories that celebrate the cinematic detail, and, in my final chapter, suggest ways these theories might be appropriated for a method of film criticism.