91抖阴

The 91抖阴 Berkeley Department of English offers its congratulations to Professor Mark Goble on the publication of his new monograph,听Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion, by聽Columbia University Press. as "...the definitive account of cinematic slow motion...from its earliest instances in film history through its glory moment in the representation of the global crises of the late 1960s to its thorough normalization as a feature of the smartphone," Goble's book thinks through one of the most dauntingly expansive territories in the history and aesthetics of film.聽

"Slow motion has become perhaps the least special effect in film and media, a stylistic technique for showing violence, dream sequences, and flashbacks or other experiences outside ordinary time. We see so much slow motion on our screens today that we can look past its history and forget how rare it was before the 1960s, when films such as聽The Wild Bunch,听Bonnie and Clyde, and聽2001: A Space Odyssey聽helped it explode in popularity at a moment of cultural change and social upheaval. This ambitious book tells the story of slow motion, tracing a broader fascination with the uneven speeds of modern life and our ability to comprehend them.

Downtime explores the history and aesthetics of slow motion, from its origins in early film to its prominence today. Mark Goble argues that the effect鈥檚 sudden visibility after 1968 registers experience of modernity as a period of perpetual acceleration that somehow makes even the smallest intervals of time feel endless. Ranging across literature, art, and cinema鈥攊ncluding novels by William Faulkner, Don DeLillo, and W. G. Sebald as well as Robert Smithson鈥檚聽Spiral Jetty聽and Julie Dash鈥檚聽Daughters of the Dust鈥攈e describes how writers and filmmakers depict the velocities and durations of contemporary life. Goble reveals the twentieth century and its aftermath as figured in slow motion: rushing past and deliriously delayed, everything going fast and slow at once. Downtime is about time and its technologies in an accelerated world that can advance only in slow motion."

-Columbia University Press聽