basic research and clinical data in an attempt to derive a cohesive model which explains the behavioral effects of the drug. Johnson is an experimental psychologist, and his work underlies many of the chapters which suggest that lithium decreases the behavioral response to novel external stimuli. He then utilizes this foundation to propose a cognitive model for lithium's anti-manic action, its inhibition of violent impulsivity, and its prophylactic effects in recurrent depression. Previous formulations which were clinically based, such as that of Mabel Blake Cohen and her associates, stressed the primacy of depression and noted the \"manic defense\" as an attempt to ward off intolerable depression. In direct contrast, Johnson views mania as the primary disturbance in bipolar disorder. He considers depression in bipolar disease as an over-zealous homeostatic inhibitory responsf to a maniaassociated cognitive overload. Consistent with this, he believes, lit lum exerts its anti-manic effect by decreasing cognitive processing in a manner analogous to his animal studies. Johnson also suggests that lithium exerts its prophylactic effect in recurrent depressions by treating subclinical mania. These concepts are supported by the work of Johnson's associate, Kukopulos, to whom the book is dedicated. The bulk of the research which describes the cognitive disturbance in mania is complex, however, and uncomfortably open to multiple interpretations. Recognized as a preliminary effort, Johnson's formulation may help to guide further research. Although Johnson clearly traces lithium actions through a broad range of subjects, his discussion of the neurophysiological aspects of this drug is notably spotty. In particular, Johnson ignores the work of Svensson, DeMontigny, Aghajanian, and others who suggest that serotonergic systems may play an important role in the antidepressant actions of lithium. As a result, he fails to discuss one of the most important current uses of lithium: as an agent used in conjunction with antidepressant medications to increase treatment response in medication-resistant forms of depression. Lithium augmentation of antidepressant medication also challenges the formulation presented by Johnson. This formulation suggests that lithium should have no therapeutic value in patients, such as those with endogenous depression, who already \"under-process\" cognitive information. The omission of lithium augmentation in depression is clearly unfortunate in this text. Overall, this volume demonstrates the benefits of a single-authored text. It it clearly organized and readable. The bibliography is also broad and useful. In this book, Johnson primarily addresses a research audience, and his model seems designed to stimulate thought rather than to improve clinical technique. In this capacity, his book will be of most interest to behavioral psychologists. Other books, focusing purely on clinical data, may be more useful to clinicians. Nevertheless, the clear organization, the large bibliography, and the thoughtful presentation may make this text a useful addition to a clinical library as well.

The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World.

In this innovative book, a well-known feminist and sociologist-who is also the founding editor of Gender & Society-challenges our most basic assumptions about gender. Judith Lorber argues that gender is wholly a product of socialization, subject to human agency, organization, and interpretation, and that it is a social institution comparable to the economy, the family, and religion in its significance and consequences. Calling into question the inevitability and necessity of gender, she envisions a society structured for equality, where no gender, racial ethnic, or social class group is allowed to monopolize positions of power.

Paradoxes of gender

Preparing this piece, I found myself looking back, not only at “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (“VP&NC”) itself (Laura Mulvey 1975), and the theoretical and political context in which it app...

On 'Visual pleasure and narrative cinema'

The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act

Richard Abel, author of two distinguished works on French film and theory, teaches at Drake University. Carolyn Anderson teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Edward D. Castillo is a California Cahuilla Indian and chair of Native American Studies at Sonoma State University. Darius Cooper teaches at San Diego Mesa College. David Desser, our Book Review Editor, teaches at the University of Illinois, Urbana.

http://www.composingdigitalmedia.org/mca_f14/MCA_reads/williams,linda_filmbodies.pdf

Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess

In this unprecedented and brilliant study, Linda Williams moves beyond the impasse of anti-porn/anti-censorship position-taking to analyze what hard-core film pornography is and does - as a genre with a history, as a specific cinematic form, and as part of contemporary discourse on sexuality. Working against tendencies to oversimplify hard core - either as pure abusive power or pure liberatory pleasure - Williams sees the form as inherently contradictory. Hard core claims to speak confessional and involuntary 'truths' of sex. However, analysis of its forms (including its spectacular 'money shots' and sexual 'numbers' parallel to those in musicals) reveals that sex in the sense of a natural, visible 'doing what comes naturally' is in fact the supreme and deeply contradictory fiction of the genre. Gender, the social construction of the relation between the sexes, is what determines this fiction. For most of its history, pornography has been for men and about women. Yet in hard core's attempt to solve the riddles of sex with more, different, or better sex, the monolith of masculine pleasure breaks down and the possibility of women using pornography for their own purposes begins to emerge. To this end, Williams traces the roots of contemporary hard core's quest to see the 'truth' of sex back to the origins of cinema itself - in motion studies of women's bodily movements. She then follows the generic development of hard core through its silent, primitive stag form and into feature-length narratives like "Deep Throat" and "Behind the Green Door", up to its recent sadomasochistic and 'couples market' permutations - showing how the form has begun to respond and react to changing gender relations. Neither a defense of what pornography has been nor a utopian dream of what it should be, this daring book refuses simply to scapegoat the form as the cause of all our ills. Instead, Williams utilizes the insights of recent studies of mass culture to show that hard core is a discourse, a genre, and a rhetoric that can only be understood through comparison with, rather than separation from, other forms.

Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible"

Mirrors without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary

Part 1: Really useful theory from aesthetics to semiotics and half-way back again why theory? film theory and the revolt against master narratives case study - "Singin' in the Rain" - a study of interpretation who (and what) is it for? Part 2: Film as mass culture dream factory the publicness of cinema case study - the political culture of address in a "Transitional Cinema" - Indian popular cinema reception theory and audience research - the mystery of the vampire's kiss re-examining stardom - questions of texts, bodies, and performances. Part 3: questions of aesthetics after the classic, the classical and ideology - the difference of realism rethinking genre case study - judging audiences, the case of the trial movie introducing film evaluation "Style" posture and idiom - Tarantino's figures of masculinity. Part 4: The return to history what is film history? "Animated Pictures" - tales of cinema's forgotten future, after one hundred years of film the mass production of the senses - classical cinema as cenacular modernism case study - discipline and fun - psycho and postmodern cinema. Part 5: Cinema in the age of global multi-media film theory and spectatorship in the age of the "posts" case study - digging an old well - the labour of social fantasy in a contemporary Chinese film facing up to Hollywood the end of cinema - multi-media and technological change.

Linda Williams

Papers

Hard Core: Power, Pleasure, and the "Frenzy of the Visible"

Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess

Mirrors without Memories: Truth, History, and the New Documentary

Reinventing film studies

"Something Else besides a Mother": "Stella Dallas" and the Maternal Melodrama