Tropic of Cinema : Into a Grammar and Out Again

Tropic of Cinema is a collection of 50 meditations on “the cinema experience,” and the viewer’s experience with its grammar and grammatical modulations, understood at once in aesthetic, philosophical, historical, political, and other registers.

This book is an inspired reflection on cinematic tropes and tropics on codes, rules, and their variations. It draws on the American transcendental tradition, as well as the existentialism of Sartre, while at the same time stepping beyond these thinkers to consider what is often overlooked in in cinema studies, namely, our experience of watching.

Tropic of Cinema follows in the tradition of an extended study of the cinema experience by Pomerance, including: Virtuoso (2019); The Film Cheat (2020); Uncanny Cinema (2022); Edge of the Screen (2024); and Light Thoughts (2026). This volume has three movements, and all of the essays stand upon a multidisciplinary theoretical ground including philosophy of cinema, aesthetics, sociology, and more.