Dissertation Research: Medium and Message in the Consumption Junction: Retailers, Consumers, and the Invention of Movies on Video

在最初的60年里，美国电影业发展了一个明确定义的结构，将特定的技术产物和社会实践整合成一个系统，从摄像机到发行网络再到剧院放映机，从好莱坞制片厂到世界各地的观众。然而，在过去的二十年里，新技术和新的社会实践极大地改变了这个行业。我们现在在电影院、飞机、汽车和我们自己的起居室里看电影，我们把它们编码在电影胶片上、录像带上、DVD上和电流里。在美国，构成电影的社会技术系统并没有发生太大的变化，而是在复杂性上发生了爆炸式的变化，但电影的想法在美国文化中似乎一如既往地没有问题。这篇论文的研究项目是研究对电影的本质以及正确使用的新理解的主要地点之一--20世纪80年代的视频零售店网络。视频零售商创建并促进了一个新的分销网络，该网络作为用户、电影制片厂和制造商的消费枢纽(Cowan 1987)，为我们目前对娱乐和媒体技术的大部分理解奠定了基础。归根结底，电影是如何在家里的录像带上观看的，而不仅仅是在影院里观看的故事，在很大程度上是关于这些媒介如何成功地构建了与播放它的媒体完全不同的信息(电影)的概念，这一想法对于建立一个技术系统(将磁性编码的磁带转换为阴极射线管上的像素)与另一个技术系统(胶片照片的投影)是必不可少的。NSF基金将支持各种研究网站的数据收集：电影艺术与科学学院图书馆；去百视达娱乐公司旅行；以及视频软件经销商协会。

In its first sixty years, the US motion picture industry evolved a clearly defined structure incorporating specific technical artifacts and social practices into a system stretching from cameras to distribution networks to theater projectors, from Hollywood studios to audiences around the world. However, in the past two decades, new technologies and new social practices have altered the industry dramatically. We now watch movies in theatres, airplanes, cars and our own living rooms, and we encode them on celluloid, on videotape, on DVD, and as streams of electricity. The socio-technical system that constitutes the motion picture in America has not so much shifted as exploded in complexity, and yet the idea of a movie seems as unproblematic in American culture as ever. This dissertation research project is studying one of the major sites where new understandings of both the nature of motion pictures as well as their proper use were constructed - the network of video retail stores of the 1980.s. Video retailers created and facilitated a new distribution network that served as a consumption junction (Cowan 1987) of users, movie studios, and manufacturers where the groundwork was laid for much of our current understanding of entertainment and media technologies. Ultimately, the story of how motion pictures came to be viewed on videotapes in the home rather than simply in theaters is largely the story of how these mediators managed to construct the idea of a message (a motion picture) that was completely distinct from the medium on which it was played, an idea which was essential to the establishment of one technical system (translation of magnetically encoded tapes into pixels on a cathode-ray tube) as equivalent to another (projection of celluloid prints). NSF funds will support data collection at various research sites: The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences library; trip to Blockbuster Entertainment; and the Video Software Dealers Association.