American Medium

In this masterful new work, film critic and philosopher Eyal Peretz forges a new connection between the concept of "America" and the medium of film. Through exemplary close readings of six fundamental American films-John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, Steven Spielberg's West Side Story, and Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation and Marie Antoinette-Peretz demonstrates the way the connection between "America" and film is enabled through the development of a philosophical concept of medium that allows both "America" and film to be thought anew.
As Peretz shows, "America" can be understood as a medium providing a new framework for understanding human life in modernity-an era that's seen the demise of theology (or the "death of god," as Nietzsche declared). Through incisive readings of the films mentioned above, Peretz shows each to function in its own singular fashion as an allegory of the way that "America"-that is, the demand to ground human life non-theologically-becomes the notion around which the medium of Hollywood film circulates.

Eyal Peretz is Professor of Comparative Literature, Indiana University Bloomington and the author of several books, including The Off-Screen: An Investigation of the Cinematic Frame (Stanford, 2017).