Theories of Filmgoing and Mass Culture

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In our age of online streaming platforms, diminishing theatrical ticket sales, and individual media devices, one may reasonably ask: what is the value of filmgoing in a space shared with others? This course will help us consider this pressing question by engaging past and present theories of cinema’s effect on landscapes of mass culture. Beginning with film photography at the cusp of modernity, before tracing positive and negative appraisals of cinema’s ideological power, we will ultimately consider arguments for why public filmgoing should matter: insofar as collective viewership may challenge insufficient assumptions, open up newfound ethical possibilities, and incite astonishing alternatives to the status quo.