Surveillance Cinema

Catherine Zimmer is an Associate Professor of Film and Screen Studies and English at Pace University in New York City.

"Surveillance Cinemapresents cutting-edge scholarship in the field of cinema studies in its reconceptualization of the centrality of surveillance to film narratives, subject formations, and temporalities. Smartly pushing beyond the critical models that have long been associated with surveillance in and outside of cinema, Zimmer makes a persuasive case for examining surveillance within historical and political contexts. An excellent book, both far-reaching and convincing in its claims,Surveillance Cinemais sure to become one of the central works in the emerging field of surveillance studies.-" - Aviva Briefel,co-editor of Horror after 9/11: World of Fear, Cinema of Terror "[A] genuinely groundbreaking study. Timely, ideologically engaged and passionate in its critique both of contemporary geopolitics and the cinematic works that depict its sites of contestation, this is a book of significant interest to scholars in the fields of film studies and surveillance studiesand to those of us who are, quite justifiably, haunted by the sense that someone, somewhere is watching." - Linnie Blake (Times Higher Education) "Catherine ZimmersSurveillance Cinemaexplores the increasing presence of surveillance narratives in tandem with the socio-political ideologies underpinning the proliferation and normalization of monitoring technologies." (Surveillance & Society) "InSurveillance Cinema, Catherine Zimmer sets out to claim that our popular imagination of surveillanceconstructed by decades of espionage thrillers, police procedurals, and torture horror flicksserves to create and sustain the actual methods of surveillance that have come to encompass almost all cultural and social life." (Rain Taxi) "Surveillance Cinemais a thorough, innovative project useful to scholars researching surveillance." (Creative Commons) "Catherine Zimmer offers a generative analysis of surveillance as aesthetic and structuring logic....an exciting project that will surely open doors in critical examinations of surveillance, popular culture, and power." (Film Criticism) "Zimmers absorbing study zeroes in on the work of & surveillance cinemaher term for films in this modein the near present. Indeed, rather than focusing on the construction of an elaborate genealogy, Surveillance Cinematurns specifically to the & millennial surge in films and television series organized around and by surveillance technologies." (Film Quarterly)

• vii Contents Acknowledgments ix Author's Note xi Introduction: Surveillance Cinema in Theory and Practice 1 1. Video Surveillance, Torture Porn, and Zones of Indistinction 31 2. Commodified Surveillance: First-Person Cameras, the Internet, and Compulsive Documentation 73 3. The Global Eye: Satellite, GPS, and the "Geopolitical Aesthetic" 115 4. Temporality and Surveillance I: Terrorism Narratives and the Melancholic Security State 157 5. Temporality and Surveillance II: Surveillance, Remediation, and Social Memory in Strange Days 181 Conclusion 209 Notes 221 Bibliography 251 Index 261 About the Author 273 9781479864379 zimmer text.indd 7 1/20/15 3:32 PM