Videoland

Movie Culture at the American Video Store
1. Auflage 2014
ISBN: 978-0-520-27961-2
Verlag: University of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 336 Seiten, Cloth Over Boards, Format (B × H): 159 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 582 g

Videoland offers a comprehensive view of the "tangible phase" of consumer video, when Americans largely accessed movies as material commodities at video rental stores. Video stores served as a vital locus of movie culture from the early 1980s until the early 2000s, changing the way Americans socialized around movies and collectively made movies meaningful. When films became tangible as magnetic tapes and plastic discs, movie culture flowed out from the theater and the living room, entered the public retail space, and became conflated with shopping and salesmanship. In this process, video stores served as a crucial embodiment of movie culture’s historical move toward increased flexibility, adaptability, and customization.

In addition to charting the historical rise and fall of the rental industry, Herbert explores the architectural design of video stores, the social dynamics of retail encounters, the video distribution industry, the proliferation of video recommendation guides, and the often surprising persistence of the video store as an adaptable social space of consumer culture. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, cultural geography, and archival research, Videoland provides a wide-ranging exploration of the pivotal role video stores played in the history of motion pictures, and is a must-read for students and scholars of media history.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Herbert, Daniel

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften Film, Video, Foto
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften Mediengeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Video Rental and the “Shopping” of Media

Part I. The History and Culture of Video Rental

1. A Long Tale

2. Practical Classifications

Part II. Video Stores and the Localization of Movie Culture

3. Video Capitals

4. Video Rental in Small-Town America

Part III. Circulations of Video Store Culture

5. Distributing Value

6. Mediating Choice: Criticism, Advice, Metadata

Coda: The Value of the Tangible

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Daniel Herbert is Assistant Professor of Screen Arts and Cultures at the University of Michigan.