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Kristin Thompson (born 1950) is an American film theory and author whose research interests include the close formal analysis of films, the history of film styles, and "quality television," a genre akin to art film. She wrote two scholarly books in the 1980s which used an analytical technique called neoformalism. She also co-authored two widely used film studies textbooks with her husband David Bordwell.
She co-wrote the film textbook, Film Art: An Introduction, with her husband David Bordwell. Film Art, with a 12th edition published in 2019, was first published in 1979 and has become a standard in the field of film aesthetics. , it has been translated into twelve languages.
Thompson predominantly relies on an analytical method drawn from Russian Formalism known as neoformalism. This method formed the basis for her dissertation, which subsequently became her first scholarly book, Eisenstein's "Ivan the Terrible": A Neoformalist Analysis. Neoformalism is also the basis for her later book, Breaking the Glass Armor.
/ref> She claims that television shows such as Twin Peaks, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, and The Simpsons exhibit traits also found in , such as psychological realism, narrative complexity, and ambiguous plotlines.
She wrote that David Lynch's Twin Peaks television series had "a loosening of causality, a greater emphasis on psychological or anecdotal realism, violations of classical clarity of space and time, explicit authorial comment, and ambiguity." She compared Lynch's film Blue Velvet and the television series Twin Peaks and asked "whether there can be an 'art television' comparable to the more familiar 'art film'".Kristin Thompson. Storytelling in Film and Television. Summary available at: http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:_gjqtGL44gEJ:www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/THOSTF.html+%22art+television%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=126
Thompson pointed out that series such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Sopranos, and The Simpsons "have altered longstanding notions of closure and single authorship", which means that "television has wrought its own changes in traditional narrative form." She stated that The Simpsons uses a "flurry of cultural references, intentionally inconsistent characterization, and considerable self-reflexivity about television conventions and the status of the program as a television show."
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