... Fairbanks, and the Vitalization of Landscape 714Griffith, Gish, and the Narrative of the Face 1075 The Birth of the Star System and the Shaping of the Modern Self 1316 The Transition ... blocks of the American myth, and their interac-tion accounts for the emergence of American film as the dominant form of rep-resentation in the twentieth century.9INTRODUCTION The ... with the coming of sound and, later, with the advent of television and video. In itsdynamic integration of body, landscape, and face, film and its spinoffs havesustained the American...