Kim Wilkins, American Eccentric Cinema

In American Eccentric Cinema, Kim Wilkins offers to define and decipher the eccentric mode in American cinema, a very challenging effort that deserves praise in itself. First, because the existing theoretical framework is dense and growing, which complicates any attempt at building on it. Wilkins's corpus of films is indeed already encompassed in a certain number of theories that she had to carefully consider before unfolding her own. Second, because she defines eccentric cinema by drawing constant parallels with New Hollywood films, thus striving to inscribe her approach in American film history as well as theory. Third, because eccentricity is a mode that complements genres rather than qualifying as one, which makes it difficult to establish a list of eccentric films (the introduction does not provide a clearly determined corpus). All in all, the validity of Wilkins's eccentric mode is put to the test by any reader familiar with preexisting theories such as the New Sincerity, smart cinema, the quirky, or metamodernism, who will instantly raise the fundamental question: "so, what's new here?"

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Eccentric · Epistemology · Hollywood · Literature · Movie theater · Parallels · Physics · Praise · Sincerity · Cinema and Media Studies · Computer Science · Engineering · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology