Reviewed by:

• Screen Culture: A Global History by Richard Butsch
• Noah Arceneaux (bio)

Screen Culture is an ambitious attempt at a textbook, to put it mildly. In 225 pages, (supplemented with 72 pages of notes), esteemed scholar Richard Butsch sets out to provide a cultural history of electronic media technologies used for visual communication—specifically film, television, and online video, accessed via smartphones and computers. As the second [End Page 1217] word of the title suggests, Butsch is less interested in specific technical milestones but rather the social and cultural practices associated with each of these technologies.

Drawing from his previous work as a cultural scholar of audience studies, Butsch pays particular attention to the consumption practices for visual media, including the rowdy interactions of silent film patrons and the group-viewing practices from the early "tavern era" of television. Though Michel de Certeau and his famed concept of "making do" is explicitly cited only once, it is clear that this perspective underscores Butsch's work. Audiences are not depicted as passive vessels, but as active and fundamental participants in the interaction between mass media and society.

Staying true to its "Global History" subtitle, the book synthesizes prior scholarship on many countries. The initial focus, at least for the chapters on film and television, is on the United States and the United Kingdom. From there, Butsch then shows how these mediums proliferated and were received in other European countries, Asia, Africa, and South America. Specific topics include Egypt as a powerhouse for media production in North Africa and the Middle East, the popularity of South American telenovelas, and the booming film industries of India and Nigeria. While this global focus is refreshing and encouraging, given the vast amount of terrain the book intends to cover, none of these topics can be explored deeply. The hegemony of Western media remains at the fore.

One recurring theme is the anxiety, or sometimes moral panic, expressed by the ruling elite in each society over these new forms of communication. The consumption habits of the working class and rural audiences have often come under scrutiny. Another recurring theme is the concern over the American export of film and video products. In some cases, the concern was about the industrial threat coming from the West, as it jeopardized the viability of homegrown media industries; in other cases, the concern was about the corruption of local values by sensationalized American films.

The book loses its focus a bit in the final few chapters, which explore the growth of digital media. While it is undeniably true that these platforms, emphasizing personal computers and smartphones, are increasingly popular ways for people to consume visual media, these same devices can also be used for other purposes. When discussing mobile media, for example, Butsch devotes a good deal of attention to privacy and surveillance concerns. He also explores the growth of social networks on these platforms. Although these are all valid topics for scholarly analysis, chapters seven and eight in particular stray from the book's ostensible focus on "visual media" to survey digital media writ large. The final chapter documents the evolving nature of globalization; instead of a center of media production flowing outward to the rest of the world, we now have multiple nodes of production. There is no distinct concluding chapter to the book, perhaps an apt choice given that Butsch is highlighting a range of issues rather than presenting a cohesive argument. [End Page 1218]

For historians specifically interested in media technologies, the information on non-Western markets is useful. Despite the lack of granularity, the book's abundant references to so much prior scholarship provide a valuable starting point for further exploration. As a potential textbook, the book's somewhat repetitive style means observations are reiterated. The benefit of this structure is that individual chapters could function easily as stand-alone works and seem ideal to assign in upper-division or graduate-level seminars.

Prof. Noah Arceneaux is a historian of media technologies in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at San Diego State University. He is...

审核人：

• 《屏幕文化：全球历史》，作者：Richard Butsch
• 诺亚·阿塞诺（Noah Arceneaux）（生物）

轻描淡写地讲，“屏幕文化”是一本雄心勃勃的教科书尝试。尊敬的学者Richard Butsch在225页（补充72页的笔记）中着手提供了用于可视通信的电子媒体技术的文化历史，特别是电影，电视和在线视频，可以通过智能手机和计算机访问。正如标题的第二个[End Page 1217]字所暗示的那样，Butsch对特定的技术里程碑不太感兴趣，而对与每种技术相关的社会和文化实践都没有兴趣。

Butsch借鉴了以前作为受众研究的文化学者的工作，特别关注视觉媒体的消费习惯，包括无声电影顾客的喧闹互动和早期电视“酒馆时代”的集体观影习惯。尽管米歇尔·德·塞多（Michel de Certeau）及其著名的“做事”概念仅被明确引用过一次，但很明显，这种观点强调了布奇的工作。观众并没有被描绘成被动的船只，而是大众媒体与社会互动中的积极和基本参与者。

忠于其“全球历史”副标题，该书综合了许多国家的先前奖学金。至少在电影和电视的章节上，最初的重点是美国和英国。然后，巴特施（Butsch）从那里展示了这些培养基如何扩散，并在其他欧洲国家（亚洲，非洲和南美）得到了接受。具体主题包括埃及作为北非和中东媒体生产的重镇，南美电视小说的普及以及印度和尼日利亚蓬勃发展的电影业。尽管全球关注的重点令人耳目一新，但鉴于本书打算涵盖的地域众多，因此无法深入探讨这些主题。西方媒体的霸权地位仍然摆在首位。

一个反复出现的主题是每个社会中的统治精英们对这些新的交流形式所表达的焦虑，有时甚至是道德上的恐慌。工人阶级和农村居民的消费习惯经常受到审查。另一个反复出现的主题是对美国电影和录像产品出口的担忧。在某些情况下，人们担心来自西方的工业威胁，因为它危害了本土媒体产业的生存能力。在其他情况下，则担心的是美国电影引起轰动，破坏了当地价值观。

该书在探讨数字媒体增长的最后几章中失去了重点。不可否认，这些平台强调个人计算机和智能手机是人们消费视觉媒体的越来越流行的方式，但这些相同的设备也可以用于其他目的。例如，在讨论移动媒体时，Butsch致力于隐私和监视方面的关注。他还探讨了这些平台上社交网络的增长。尽管这些都是进行学术分析的有效主题，但本书第7章和第8章从表面上把重点放在“视觉媒体”到调查数字媒体上却显得特别重要。最后一章记录了全球化的不断发展的本质。现在，我们不再有媒体生产中心流向世界其他地方，而是有多个生产节点。书中没有明确的结论性章节，考虑到Butsch着重强调了一系列问题而不是提出一个有凝聚力的论据，这也许是一个恰当的选择。[完第1218页]

对于对媒体技术特别感兴趣的历史学家，非西方市场上的信息很有用。尽管缺乏粒度，但本书对如此多的先前奖学金的大量引用为进一步探索提供了宝贵的起点。作为一本潜在的教科书，该书的风格有些重复，这意味着观察得到了重申。这种结构的好处是各个章节可以轻松地作为独立的作品运行，并且似乎是分配给上级或研究生级别研讨会的理想选择。

Noah Arceneaux教授是圣地亚哥州立大学新闻与媒体研究学院的媒体技术历史学家。他是...