Medium and the End of Myths

Transformation of the Imagination in 'The World Viewed'

Abstract

Stanley Cavell opens The World Viewed with an autobiographical note about a recent transformation in his own movie-watching habits. Over the course of the 1960s, he has noticed a loss of interest in attending and attending to newly released movies. It is not too strong to say that The World Viewed functions as an account of Cavell’s personal transformation as a movie-goer, from a passionate and engaged regular attendee into someone who has lost a deep sense of urgency for contemporary Hollywood film. This moment of autobiography functions, as such autobiographical moments do generally in Cavell’s work, as a philosophical datum, a fact of contemporary experience that calls for reflection and explanation. Cavell’s loss of interest in contemporary movie-watching calls our attention to a general transformation in the relations between Hollywood movies and their audiences that occurred over the course of the 1960s but continues to have implications more than forty years later for contemporary movies and their audiences.