The new cinema.

BEYOND THE MULTIPLEX: CINEMA, NEW TECHNOLOGIES, AND THE HOME

BY BARBARA KLINGER

BERKELEY: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS, 2006

324 PP./$60.00 (HB), $24.95 (SB)

In the introduction to her book Beyond the Multiplex: Cinema, New Technologies, and the Home, Barbara Klinger asks, what is cinema today? Klinger's response leads her to examine modes of production, distribution, and reception as they are reconfigured in the era of convergence media. Her portal into this complex domain is the home, where film is repurposed by the industry through home theater systems, home film collecting, re-screening on cable networks, and the rise of Web-based film exhibition. Klinger argues that such repurposing of cinema has transformed reception by making the home a primary site for the pleasures of repeat viewing and the rise of such cultural phenomena as "new media aristocrats."

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

The larger arguments made in Beyond the Multiplex are not necessarily new to readers who are engaged in the study of cinema in the era of convergence. However, her thorough historical approach and lucid prose makes this book a landmark text for cinema and new media studies. Just as Lynn Spigel's 1992 Make Room for Television provided the historical meat and potatoes for cultural studies arguments regarding the role of television in the postwar American home, Beyond the Multiplex historicizes home viewing cultures and what we mean by "cinema" in the era of convergence media.

Klinger begins by considering home theater systems and the reimagining of domestic space through digital technologies. Looking at advertisements, media industry discourse, and consumer magazines, Klinger identifies a public discourse on home theater that promises class mobility through the acquisition of digital technologies of exhibition. This chapter feels like an extension of Spigel's work into the twenty-first century. Spigel traces the public discourse on television that helped replace the hearth with the television set and led to the architectural transformation of suburban houses toward the "open home" design. Klinger traces public discourses on home theater that are helping replace the television set with multimedia systems that require the renovation of the postwar suburban home to accommodate an "aesthetic of integration" (in-wall speakers, large screens hidden within home decor, etc.) or full display of the apparatus (special theater rooms with huge speakers and screens). Klinger argues that home theater systems "convert the [American] household into an elite setting," such that "private residences become visions of the good life" (33).

Klinger moves on to discuss the transformation of cinephilia in the post-VCR era. She notes that "film's domestication has not obliterated cinephilia; rather, the conditions fueling this kind of zealotry have been relocated and rearticulated" (55). Indeed, the home film archive of VHS, laser disc, and DVD has led to such industry developments as elite film distribution models (the Criterion Collection), special collector's and director's cut versions of films, as well as standard DVD extras such as interviews with filmmakers and "behind-the-scenes" footage. Klinger demonstrates that the domestication of cinema through the home archive requires a reframing of such notions as textual authenticity as it delivers the trivia and control desired by the cinephile through the multimedia format of the home archive editions. Combined with the rise of home theater's emphasis upon the total cinematic experience in the home, film collection has also given rise, Klinger shows, to an enhanced public standing of those film genres associated with digital spectacle, including action and science fiction films. She explores this idea again when she looks at repeat viewing practices, which have given rise to gendered taste hierarchies (men love digital spectacle and the opportunity to "decode" multi-layered digital texts while women love "chick flicks" that connect with self-help cultures profoundly grounded in the home and individual).

At the close of the chapter on cinephilia and home film collecting, Klinger raises an interesting and troubling observation about the ways in which film's domestication can focus upon ownership and possession of film. In so doing, "contemporary high-end film collecting gravitates, then, toward apolitical modes of evaluation" that uphold the films as commodities that signal cultural capital (89). This cultural capital is often aligned with other practices of home viewing, including what Klinger describes as the "hardware aesthetic" of home theater systems. Thus, as presented by industry discourse, the value of a film like Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986) lies less in its engagement with the politics of the Vietnam War and more in its soundtrack that has been remixed for a potent surround sound effect.

Klinger also explores the re-screening of classic Hollywood cinema on cable television networks such as American Movie Classics (AMC) and Turner Classic Movies. According to Klinger, these networks operate as "cine-museums" that "make over" the classic film to mass-produce memory, negotiate contemporary concerns of the nation, produce symbolic capital of refined culture, and conserve film as American history. The film festivals that focus on particular Hollywood stars, for instance, demonstrate for Klinger how these networks emphasize historical continuity (consensus and unity) over discontinuity (radical dissent and difference). She provides the example of an AMC celebration of African American film stars for Black History Month in February 1994. The festival's commentary acknowledges the challenges of stereotyping and censorship for African Americans in Hollywood but highlights how certain stars "surmounted" these challenges, producing a nostalgic history of transcendence of social prejudice.

Klinger's chapter on Web-based film exhibition is in some ways the most exciting chapter of this thoroughly engaging text. A century from now it may well serve as a primary text for understanding this early era of Web-based cinema. Just as we cherish the works of Vachel Lindsay and other insightful authors who wrote during the era of early cinema, future scholars will treasure this chapter by Klinger. She traces the emergence of Web sites dedicated to online film viewing as well as the technological developments that have led to prioritizing the short film on the Web. Klinger is keenly aware of how quickly historical accounts of Web cinema become out of date, which is evident in the absence of YouTube from her list of short film Web sites (which spans 1999-2002). While absent from her history, YouTube's recent acquisition by Google for more than $1.6 billion seems to serve as material proof for the import of her claims that Web cinema's basis in the digital "promises to displace celluloid as the foundation of cinema" (237).

Beyond the Multiplex is a detailed yet highly accessible account of the recent history of home film culture. It is also a wonderful demonstration of the strength of a varied yet coherent methodological approach. Klinger moves from historiography of industry discourse to examining "insider" discourses articulated on message boards and surveys. She provokes the same kind of excitement generated by Spigel's Make Room for TV in that she takes the presumptions of cultural theory and rigorously historicizes them in a way that encourages further inquiry.

AMY SHORE is an assistant professor at the State University of New York at Oswego where she teaches in the Cinema and Screen Studies program.