Artists in the Audience

Greg Taylor is Assistant Professor in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film at Purchase College, State University of New York.

"The educated public has known for years that vanguard film theory is one part self-indulgence, two parts hoodwinking. Taylor's study shows precisely how and why the interpreters lost touch within the medium."--Jacob M. Appel, Boston Book Review "Taylor constructs a detailed history of some of the most salient trends in Post-World War II American cinema and film criticism... [His] points are well-taken and his analyses convincingly argued."--Robert L. Cagle, afterimage "Lively, provocative reading... This is a gripping saga as Taylor tells it, carefully constructed and lucidly written."--David Sterritt, Cineaste "Greg Taylor's intriguing study of film critics takes both a discriminating and aesthetic approach to the subject... An illuminating book."--Filmbill

• PREFACE CHAPTER ONE The Spectator as Critic as Artist 3 CHAPTER TWO Movies to the Rescue: American Modernism and the Middlebrow Challenge 19 CHAPTER THREE Life on the Edge: Manny Farber and Cult Criticism 30 CHAPTER FOUR Hallucinating Hollywood: Parker Tyler and Camp Spectatorship 49 CHAPTER FIVE From Termites to Auteurs: Cultism Goes Mainstream 73 CHAPTER SIX Heavy Culture and Underground Camp 98 CHAPTER SEVEN Retreat into Theory 122 CONCLUSION Love, Death, and the Limits of Artistic Criticism 150 NOTES 159 REFERENCES 179 INDEX 193