Network Theory and Nashville

Network Theory and Nashville offers a concise overview of network theory, the study of the way elements in a network interact, with particular attention to the form of the "network" film. In its reading of Robert Altman's 1975 film Nashville, Zachary Tavlin offers a motif-based approach to the network film that shows how we might learn to track aesthetic form and structure through ensemble texts representing the complexity of social life.

Organized into two parts, the first section of the book presents an overview of network theory and its historical context in post-industrial life, before turning to Altman's Nashville, situating the film and its characters in relation to the nascent discourse of network cinema to argue that appeals to "connectedness" alone cannot make sense of the network form (and often, in fact, obscure it).