Theodor Adorno and Film Theory The Fingerprint of Spirit

What is the fundamental nature of the filmic object: is it a commodity or is it, can it be, art? This book introduces the thought of Theodor Adorno into film studies to repair the schism that characterizes the field today, as historical and cultural modes of analysis have come to displace theoretical and philosophical ones. Adorno's scathing critique of the culture industry has been thought to close off any possible rapprochement between his philosophy and film, but through a deployment of some of the key ideas drawn from his aesthetics and philosophy - immanent critique and negative dialectics - Wall traces what "might be" in film more than its "being" as a product. Four singular films - The Maltese Falcon (1941), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Repo Man (1984), and The Big Lebowski (1998) - each come to reflect (though in very different ways) on both their status as commodities and their desire to be more than commodities, even their aspirations to art.

Brian Wall is is Assistant Professor of Cinema and Art History at Binghamton University, USA.