Podcast Summary: New Books Network – Mark Goble, "Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion"

Date: September 15, 2025
Host: Alex Beeston
Guest: Mark Goble, Professor of English at UC Berkeley
Book: Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion (Columbia University Press, 2025)

Overview of Episode

This episode of New Books in Film features host Alex Beeston in conversation with Professor Mark Goble about his new book, Downtime: The Twentieth Century in Slow Motion. Goble discusses the ubiquity and history of slow motion as both a filmic technique and a broader cultural metaphor, tracing its evolution from early cinema to contemporary media and literature. The conversation covers the technical, historical, and philosophical dimensions of slow motion, delving into its significance for how we experience time, history, and cultural change. Humor and scholarly voice—along with references to key films and literary texts—thread through this engaging discussion.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Genesis of the Project and the Ubiquity of Slow Motion

• Goble describes his initial interest in slow motion as stemming from an awareness of speed as the dominant theme in modernist studies and his own scholarship (03:45).
  • “I work in modernist studies where everything’s about speed all the time. … Then I just sort of asked, when did slow motion start?” (03:45, Mark Goebel)
• He notes a lack of comprehensive historical accounts of slow motion, prompting his investigation.
• Early associations: Iconic films like Bonnie and Clyde (1967) served as catalyst, but Goble found usage predates this.

2. The Hidden History of Slow Motion

• Goble uncovers that slow motion was present in early 20th-century media but mostly outside of mainstream narrative cinema—e.g., in scientific films, sports newsreels, and experimental works (06:34).
  • “Slow motion…its primordial to film…the slow motion part of a book on slowness basically swallowed the entire book on slowness.” (03:45, Mark Goebel)
• Mainstream adoption in feature films only exploded post-1960s, especially after Bonnie and Clyde.

3. On Tracking Slow Motion’s Proliferation

• Goble highlights the difficulty of cataloguing slow motion due to its sheer volume in later decades (08:42).
  • “You get to the point where you'd be missing—what about all the TV, what about all the…episodes of Law & Order? I mean, slow motion is inescapable.” (08:42, Mark Goebel)
• Anecdote: In Zack Snyder’s Justice League (the “Snyder Cut”), approximately 10% of shots are in slow motion (09:47).

4. Spectatorial Effects and Historical Imagination

• Pre-1960s, slow motion moments (even when familiar today) were novel to audiences—a fact that demands “historical imagination” when analyzing them now (11:12).
  • “You did see them [early slow motion scenes] used in ways that…would look like the tropey version of slow motion. And then realizing, oh wait, no one on earth had seen that trope yet…” (11:12, Mark Goebel)
• Example: The pearl necklace slow motion scene in the Soviet rom-com By the Bluest of Seas parallels later Hollywood tropes (12:00).

5. Slow Motion in Literature

• The book moves beyond cinema, discussing slow motion as a literary trope—especially in writers like William Faulkner and Don DeLillo (18:11).
  • “Faulkner and DeLillo…are both extremely kind of film…drawn to film. There's explicit references to slow motion all over their writing.” (18:48, Mark Goebel)
• Slow motion operates as both a narrative metaphor (for historical or social processes happening “too slowly”) and as a reflection on broader technological/cultural conditions.

6. Slow Motion and Cultural/Political Modernity

• Goble links the rise of slow motion to broader shifts and crises in Western modernity, particularly during the “long 1968” (23:21).
  • The cluster of five influential films he identifies (Bonnie and Clyde, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Wild Bunch, Zabriskie Point) all channel themes of historical change, violence, and generational transition.
• Bonnie and Clyde is spotlighted as emblematic:
  • “What makes Bonnie and Clyde so powerful…is that it's a film with such a strong generational sort of mythology around it…a film about the 1930s that is read by so many as…about the counterculture of the 1960s.” (24:19, Mark Goebel)

7. Slow Motion as a Political and Temporal Paradox

• Goble elaborates on how slow motion, as a technique, crystallizes a paradox: “a mode of slowness constructed through speed”—mirroring the contradictory temporalities of modernity and political crisis (28:51).
  • “Slow motion…is a mode of slowness that's constructed through speed. Or…it's kind of speed that's rendered as slowness…that opens onto a much larger argument about the political temporalities and trajectories of the 20th and 21st centuries.” (28:53, Alex Beeston)
• These films reflect on the endurance and slow dissolution of the 20th century, with hope found in the possibility that some long histories (e.g., of violence or injustice) can and should end (29:46-33:00).

8. Humor and Scholarly Voice

• Beeston highlights the remarkable presence of humor in Goble’s work, including his penchant for “academic dad jokes,” wit, and anti-reverential tone (36:01).
  • “I wanted to have fun with films that don't seem that fun sometimes or whose memories are so kind of heavy…” (37:58, Mark Goebel)
• Goble reflects on the necessity of humor as both a response to the self-seriousness of canonical films and as a method for engaging with the material and the reader.

9. Temporality, Labor, and Scholarly Process

• Discussion on the relationship between slow motion and the experience of scholarly labor: the slowness of research and writing versus the pressure for quick results in academia (44:34).
  • “There's a kind of pressure in…scholarly writing that we're told to…signpost your argument…as scholars…we're almost…reading under time pressure. …But then realizing…the kind of rate of exchange between these sort of timelines is pretty weird…when we're close reading something, you read one paragraph and then write about it for a month.” (44:34, Mark Goebel)
• Goble encourages embracing the necessary slowness of thoughtful scholarship, acknowledging the invisible, time-consuming work that underlies academic production.

10. Future Directions and Ongoing Conversations

• Goble hints at future explorations of slow motion in relation to “slow cinema,” slow food, and continued literary adaptations (52:39).
  • “So I'll still be thinking about slow things in other things—slowly.” (52:39, Mark Goebel)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Thank you. It's great to be here and I appreciate the academic dad jokes getting called out whenever possible.” (02:49, Mark Goebel)
• “You get to the point where you'd be missing—what about all the TV, what about all the…episodes of Law & Order? I mean, slow motion is inescapable.” (08:42, Mark Goebel)
• “There was an earlier version of thinking about the project where I was going to try…just counting to actually chart out from 68 forward…then suddenly seemed like impossible. I mean, it would just be…” (08:42, Mark Goebel)
• “There's a scene where a woman…her pearl necklace breaks…pearls slowly drop to the ground. ...That’s the trope that now every time you have to talk about Zack Snyder, every time Batman’s parents gets killed, the mother’s necklace falls.” (12:00, Mark Goebel)
• “It wasn't this kind of always this…great aesthetic achievement. …It is kind of a tasteless thing sometimes. And…you can call it that.” (37:58, Mark Goebel)
• “Some of the things we sort of want to have go away. They are going away. They just won’t go away fast enough for us to take pleasure in watching them vanish. But they will. They should.” (33:00, Mark Goebel)

Important Timestamps

• 01:28 – Introduction of Mark Goble and his interdisciplinary background.
• 03:45 – Goble’s origin story: why slow motion became a subject of study.
• 06:34 – Historical “potted” overview of slow motion’s emergence.
• 08:42 – Discussion of slow motion’s contemporary ubiquity and challenges in quantifying its proliferation.
• 11:12 – On early spectacles of slow motion and historical imagination.
• 18:11 – Slow motion as a literary trope in Faulkner, DeLillo, and others.
• 23:21 – The “long 1968” and key films marking slow motion’s new era.
• 24:19 – Why Bonnie and Clyde matters for the history of the effect.
• 28:51 – Slow motion as a paradox of speed and slowness; implications for modernity.
• 36:01 – Extended discussion of humor, tone, and the anti-reverential voice in the book.
• 44:34 – Academic labor, slowness, and the process of research/writing.
• 52:39 – Future directions: slow cinema, novels, and more slow motion.

Conclusion

This engaging and insightful interview offers listeners an accessible yet deeply nuanced account of slow motion’s trajectory across modern media and culture. Goble’s approach—blending close attention to detail, historical depth, literary breadth, and wit—extends the discussion well beyond film studies, inviting reflection on how we make sense of time, change, culture, and the labors of both artists and scholars. The episode is particularly notable for its exploration of the political and personal stakes of slowness, as well as for its humorous, self-aware engagement with the challenges of scholarship and cultural criticism.