The More We Discover, the Less We Know

Altman took aim at what he saw as more than half a century of favoritism toward the image.Critics and theorists, Altman observed, have treated cinema as an "essentially visual art, sound serving as little more than a superfluous accompaniment."The major goal of this special issue, Altman explained, was thus to remedy the "hegemony of the visual." 1 Altman's critique plainly did not go unheeded.As I write this Introduction nearly forty-five years later, no one can credibly claim that sound remains an overlooked dimension of cinema studies.