The Off-Screen

Abstract

The Off-Screen offers a comprehensive theory of film, a concise history of American cinema from Griffith to Tarantino, and a reflection on the place and significance of film within the general context of the arts of modernity. It does this by focusing on an element at the very heart not only of film but of modern art in general (meaning here the various artistic media of modernity as they have been developed from the Renaissance onward). This element is a new kind of frame, with which the modern work of art is fascinated, and around the investigation of which it organizes itself. Two main things characterize this frame. First, it decontextualizes, meaning a frame is achieved by creating a zone that cuts itself off from the continuity of the world, a zone constituting the realm of fiction. The modern theatrical stage, the framed painting, the cinematic screen, the work of narrative fiction--all are modern framed-out zones. Second, the modern artistic frame, like any frame, creates a separation between “inside” and “outside,” yet the “outside” of the artistic frame is particularly mysterious and constitutes the main enigma of the work of art of the modern age. It is this “outside” of the artistic frame, a new kind of “outside,” that the book calls the “off” (as in off-stage, or off-screen). It is to the exploration of the historical and conceptual significance of this “off” that this book is dedicated.