Podcast Summary: Book Talk 69 – American Medium: A New Film Philosophy with Eyal Peretz

Podcast: New Books Network
Host: Uli Baer
Guest: Eyal Peretz, Professor of Comparative Literature, Indiana University
Episode Date: January 3, 2026

Overview

In this episode, Uli Baer interviews Eyal Peretz about his new book American Medium: A New Film Philosophy. The conversation delves into the evolving role of art—particularly film—in modern life and American culture. Peretz traces the historical shift from religious art to secular art, the unique function of art in America, and the power of cinema as a “laboratory” for new ways of imagining collective life. The discussion also focuses on how American film explores questions of meaning, community, and the open-ended "call" of America, with close analysis of emblematic works by directors John Ford, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, and Sofia Coppola.

Main Discussion Themes

1. The Transformation of Art's Function and Meaning

• From Religious to Secular Art (03:31–08:09)
  • Peretz situates the traditional work of art within a religious, sacred framework—as a conduit to the divine.
  • With the waning of this framework in modernity (Kantian aesthetics, rise of secularization), art’s task shifts toward creating and conveying beauty and pleasure.
• Allegory and the Search for Meaning (09:08–10:45)
  • Art has always functioned allegorically, pointing to meanings “beyond itself”—first religious, then increasingly enigmatic and open-ended.
  • Even in secular contexts, art continues to reach for greater meaning, though the referent becomes less clearly defined.
• Skeptical Traditions, Iconoclasm, and the Function of Images (10:45–15:12)
  • The biblical prohibition of images (iconoclasm) is discussed: Judaism eschews material sites for the divine, while Christianity reintroduces images as "pointers" toward the divine but never literal embodiments.

2. Art After the Disappearance of Transcendence

• Secularization and Restlessness (15:12–19:06)
  • With the collapse of transcendent authority in modern life, art is "orphaned"—no longer under a cosmic or theological order.
  • Artists and philosophers seek new models: “art for art’s sake,” political art, the Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk (total work of art).
• Persistent Yearning for Unity (16:52–19:06)
  • Despite modern disunity, there is a persistent feeling that art should point to, or build, a new kind of whole.

3. The American Context

• America as Laboratory for New Organization (20:44–24:13)

  • The United States is born amid the search for an order neither strictly secular nor purely religious—a unique experiment in living together.
  • Notable quote (20:44–21:57):

    "The United States is a new political entity which... tries to find... a new way of organizing that is not exactly like the modern European states and is neither... in reference to the divine nor as... complete separation from the divine."

• Art’s Special Status and America’s Ongoing “Call” (24:13–28:09)

  • Peretz distinguishes between the United States as a political entity and "America" as an idea or open-ended project.
  • The work of art, especially in America, becomes a privileged site for asking: What is America? What does it mean to live together anew?

4. The Placelessness of Modern Art

• Modern Art as Decontextualized/“Orphaned” (31:55–33:32)

  • Unlike traditional works tied to specific locations (temples, churches), modern art can be moved and displayed anywhere—symbolizing its “placelessness.”
  • Art’s special role is to figure out the meaning of this lack of fixed place—its very openness to the world.

• Heideggerian Frame: World as the New “Whole” (33:32–35:44)

  • The modern work of art becomes the site for questioning and potentially creating a new "whole" or "world," distinct from religious cosmologies.

5. The Unique Positivity and Openness of American Film

• Beyond Modernist Ruins: The “American” Alternative (37:07–41:46)
  • High modernism (Faulkner, Joyce, Kafka) expresses the ruin or loss of the central organizing principle.
  • American film, especially the tradition Peretz analyzes, attempts to offer a positive new way of organizing life—an openness to renewal, not mere fragmentation.
  • Notable quote (41:46–42:32):

    “American art, especially film, is understood... as extremely positive or revolving around the question of the happy ending. But I think this positivity is crucial. ... American [film] tries to bring about ... a new kind of way, or a positive way, of organizing.”

6. The Films as Laboratories of American Organization

• The Role of the Desert in John Ford’s Films (43:45–51:23)

  • The desert is not just a setting but a metaphor: a space between ruin and renewal, a site for hearing the "call" of a new community.
  • Ford’s Westerns, particularly Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, dramatize this threshold between desert (the unformed) and civilization (the attempt to form a community).
  • Notable quote (43:45–45:12):

    “Ford... never managed to ... fully exit from the desert to a new kind of civilized life that we can call America... There was something that is still blocking the full arrival.”

• The Threshold Figure and the Ambiguous “Law” (54:11–59:00)

  • Films repeatedly feature characters who stand at the threshold—neither entirely lawful nor fully excluded, open to a “higher law” or call that exceeds existing institutions.
  • Jimmy Stewart’s lawyer (not sheriff) in Liberty Valance and the Godfather as transition figures: Their lives embody the tension between formal law and the “call” of a new organization.

• Migration, Initiation, and the “Call” of America (61:02–63:55)

  • Arrival in America, in Peretz’s reading, confronts characters and newcomers with the unfinished “call”—a challenge that is ongoing and not merely fulfilled by assimilation or law.

• Inclusivity and Anxiety of Belonging (65:11–66:02)

  • The refrain that someone is “not really an American” signifies a deeper collective anxiety: “Americans don’t know fully what to be an American means.” (65:11)

7. Cinematic Form: The Power of the Cut

• The Cinematic Cut as Opening (“Desert Moment”) (66:02–73:41)

  • Unlike other arts, cinema’s cut decontextualizes but also promises continuity—evoking the paradox of being cut off from one world but opening onto the possibility of another.
  • Example: In Lost in Translation_, the cut between the two protagonists enacts a kind of mutual calling across the “desert” of dislocation and loneliness.

• Cinema as Experiment in New Community (73:41–77:18)

  • In Coppola's Marie Antoinette, the queen represents not just the end of an old order, but the potential for a new kind of revolution—one that looks, in Peretz's reading, "elsewhere" (i.e., America) for its actualization.
  • Films repeatedly feature women as figures responding differently to “the excessive demand” of a new order, sometimes gesturing at new possibilities for organization.

8. Art, Politics, and Openness

• Art as Site for the Ongoing “Call” and Universal Relevance (78:49–79:24)
  • The “call” is not simply a subject for politics; political organizations may manifest or suppress the call, but the openness itself is never exhausted by them.
  • Although rooted in American experience, Peretz insists the phenomena and questions raised in these films are relevant globally.
• Why Do People Go to the Movies? (79:42–81:07)
  • Movies provide a privileged site to inhabit, even temporarily, the “desert moment” of openness—both a confrontation with the world’s ruin and an experience of new possibility.

9. The Optimism of American Film and the Role of the Viewer

• Tragedy and Hope (82:23–83:48)

  • Even tragic or melancholic films analyzed in the book are ultimately optimistic: “They revolve around something that they insist on keeping alive, even if they show the world to fail in living up to it.”

• Openness to the Call as a Democratic Experience (81:46–82:23)

  • Peretz: You don’t have to be an expert. Simply being “overwhelmed, excited, undergoing an enthusiasm,” you are already in the presence of the film’s opening.

Memorable Quotes & Timestamps

• On America as a Question, Not an Answer
  “There’s something in this project that is still a question, and we know it’s still a question because America is undergoing a moment right now where it’s sort of a deep moment of self-questioning.” – Uli Baer (27:05)

• On Art’s Function in Modernity
  “Art was understood aesthetically. What exactly this means? ... But the main character of it was now the beautiful and it was often understood in relation to an experience of pleasure.” – Eyal Peretz (04:15)

• On the Desert as Site of Renewal
  “The desert is both ... the sign of a ruin, but also, most important, is like as it was in the Bible ... where an ancient call to some degree is heard, which ... other organization[s] of human life have not been able to answer. So the desert is a site of renewal in this sense.” – Eyal Peretz (43:45)

• On Cinematic Cut
  “For me, the cut, finally, is the essence of cinema... we see something that is, on the one hand, not part of any realm we have full access to, but at the same time, we expect something beyond what we see. ... It’s like, in this sense, it’s like so perfect to inscribe the moment that I call the desert...” – Eyal Peretz (67:15)

• On the Viewer’s Role
  "Simply being overwhelmed, excited, you know, undergoing an enthusiasm, you’re already in the movies. Yes, you are in what they open." – Eyal Peretz (82:02)

Notable Film Analyses & Key Scenes

• John Ford’s Stagecoach, Young Mr. Lincoln, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (51:06–54:11)

  • The recurring motif of returning to the desert, inability to fully “arrive” at the new community
  • Tension between law (Jimmy Stewart as lawyer) and the unorganized or “desert” element (John Wayne)

• Spielberg’s West Side Story (43:45–49:58)

  • Reenacts the tension between desert (the Western) and community (the musical)—the utopian promise glimpsed but not fully realized

• Coppola’s Godfather (59:00–61:02)

  • The mafia functions as a “threshold” group: both haunted by the past and embodying an excessive demand not met by the modern legal state; immigrant experience as negotiation with the “call” of America

• Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation (66:02–73:41)

  • The opening cut evokes the mutual calling and strangeness of new encounters in the “desert” of modern life

• Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (73:41–77:18)

  • The queen as tragic, revolutionary figure—a precursor to the “new woman” and new forms of community; the revolution she prefigures is not the actual French Revolution but a different, still unactualized possibility

Conclusion

Peretz’s book and the discussion propose that American film, in its very form and thematic concerns, operates as a medium uniquely suited to grappling with the persistent restlessness, openness, and unfinished project of “America.” Through close readings of influential films, Peretz traces how cinema becomes a site for the enactment and interrogation of community, belonging, and what it means to inhabit a world in the shadow of lost orders and emerging possibilities. The optimism of American film lies not in naiveté but in its insistence on keeping alive the unresolved, open-ended call for new forms of living together.

Recommended Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:31–10:45] — Transformation from sacred to aesthetic art; allegory and meaning
• [20:44–24:13] — The American context, political experiment, and shifting references
• [31:55–35:44] — Placelessness of art, Heidegger’s world
• [43:45–51:23] — The “desert” in American film, John Ford’s cinema
• [54:11–59:00] — Law, thresholds, and the problem of the “American” in Ford and Coppola
• [66:02–73:41] — The cinematic cut, Lost in Translation, form as philosophy

Final Reflection Peretz encourages not only scholars but all viewers to experience the “call” and openness inscribed in American film—an ongoing invitation to reimagine community and world in uncertain times.