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，美国电影产业发展出了一种明确的结构，将特定的技术产物和社会实践融入到一个从摄像机到发行网络到影院放映机，从好莱坞工作室到世界各地观众的系统中。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、飞机上、汽车上和自己的客厅里看电影，我们把它们编码在赛璐珞、录像带、DVD上，并以电流的形式进行编码。在美国，构成电影的社会技术体系并没有发生太大的变化，而是在复杂性方面发生了巨大的变化，然而，电影的概念在美国文化中似乎一如既往地没有问题。本论文的研究项目是研究20世纪80年代的视频零售商店网络，这是对电影的本质及其正确使用产生新认识的主要场所之一。视频零售商创造并促进了一个新的分销网络，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理解奠定了基础。最终，电影是如何在家里而不是简单地在影院里通过录像带观看的，这个故事很大程度上是这些调解人如何设法构建信息（电影）的概念的故事，这种信息（电影）与播放它的媒介完全不同，这个想法对于建立一种技术系统（将磁性编码磁带转换为阴极射线管上的像素）与另一种技术系统（放映赛璐珞胶片）的等效性至关重要。美国国家科学基金会基金将支持不同研究地点的数据收集：电影艺术与科学学院图书馆；百视达娱乐之旅；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.