What are film props? What do they do? This book answers these questions by a close attention to those material objects that are used to construct cinematic worlds.
The term prop is short for property. This truncated terms etymology belies the expansiveness of the concept and indicates the micro and macro scales at which the prop operates. Props are the materialoften literalfurniture of cinemas diegetic reality. Props are also narrative agents: think of the animacy of objects in Jean Epsteins account of photogénie, the crystal egg in Risky Business, or the domestic bric-à-brac of Sirks melodramas. The prop is central to production design and the construction of mise-en-scène. And yet, the prop has rarelyalmost neverbeen taken as an object of analysis and theorization in its own right.
This book begins by tracing the props curious but unacknowledged role in film theory, before proceeding to a series of theoretical speculations and close readings that bring the prop into focus. Analyses of scenes of prop mastery demonstrate the labor that props perform and enable, as well as the interpretive work they make possible. Across a variety of genres, modes, and historical contextsstudio filmmaking, art cinema, adult and avant-garde filmsThe Prop introduces readers to the notion of prop value, a quality that puts the prop in proximity to the capitalist commodity, but also provides an ironic distance from the commoditys subjection to exchange value. Gorfinkel and Rhodes argue that the prop is nothing less than a condensation of how labor, subjection, value, and instrumentality underwrite the very conditions of cinema.