A Futile Attempt at Medium Specificity: Hollywood's Cinematic Assault on Television and Video, 1994-2003

Abstract

In the decade between 1994 and 2003, an unprecedented wave of 36 American feature films offered hostile visions of television and video. This article argues that, read collectively, these films reflect a desire in the industry for cinematic medium specificity amid technological, esthetic, and material changes that threaten film's ostensible status as a distinctive, pristine art. The article also establishes a typology of these films and uses them as an opportunity to interrogate medium specificity theory, concluding that these films and their implications instead betray the very futility of either achieving or theorizing medium specificity in the contemporary media environment.