The Last of the Suture?

Barry Salt, Joan Mellen
1978 Film quarterly  
BOOKS was "designed as an introduction to film and society" is too daunting, by virtue of its monstrous size, to be truly introductory; Tulloch, who admits that the scope of his collection of articles is "eclectic," simply has tried to cram too much material, too many variant approaches, between two covers, for Conflict and Control to do what he hopes it will do-to appeal to the "film buff" as well as "the specialist sociologist." He avoids chaos by using particular "critical perspectives" to
more » ... ver particular types of film: "film as (mimetic) reflection of society" a' la Kracauer is applied to the horror film, and the other headings are no less predictable-functionalism for the documentary, "interactionism" for Hollywood, structuralism (inevitably) for the Western. But neither the articles themselves (which do make the book worth dipping into), nor Tulloch's introductory essays to his six sections save Conflict and Control from being (in all senses of the word) too heavy.
doi:10.2307/1211817 fatcat:f2dyb7k2fjcsvlgzj47oedmq4e