During the past three decades, studying the voice has intrigued many film theorists and thinkers. Arguing that the cinematic image is an audiovisual space largely structured according to human body and voice, some scholars (Mary Ann Doane, Sarah Kozloff, and Michel Chion, among others) have been drawn to the various manifestations and mysterious connotations of the non-visualized voice. If off-screen voices foster a need to categorize and perhaps control their elusive nature, then the voice-over raises some challenging questions about … Continue reading →

Realism appears to have reached a critical juncture in recent years: digital technology has all but usurped the photographic medium, rendering the indexical nature of photographic images obsolete (Doane 2002; Rodowick 2007); “reality” television and on-line exhibitionism have proliferated audiovisual culture, trivializing the fidelity of documentary realism and its particular mode of truth telling; and social realism has gradually detached itself from the socio-political convictions that once defined it, instead looking inward towards private/familial issues removed from the public sphere … Continue reading →