Technology's Role

Corrigan’s article discusses the advancement in technology’s ability to warp the position of the spectator. First he notes improved technology (in the context of special effects) taking on the role of a new sort of fetish for the spectator instead of “naturalizing” the film as the director perhaps had intended. However, I believe that this new technology both allows for naturalization as well as promotes fetishism, but I also question the definition of fetishism in this context and its relation to the Freudian philosophy behind the sexually driven fetish.
What intrigues me even more than the idea of technology as a fetish is Corrigan’s notion of technology as a means of literally handing control over to the spectator. I agree with Corrigan’s notion about the distracted action of “going out” to the cinema, however I disagree with his claim that this action of placing control in the hands of the spectator via the remote controlled cable or the VCR encourages “dispersing, rather than fixing subjectivity” in the domestic household (29). I believe that through the act of actively choosing the “narcissistic subject of their own active desires” through technological means, the spectator is voluntary subjecting him/herself to a position where he/she is more like to be entirely absorbed by the viewing. In this, I don’t see the “dispersing” of selection as a means of creating “image-fragments,” but rather actively specifying and creating a more intimate connection with the screen. Therefore, I see technological advancement as the main contribution to the formation of a gaping divide between the intimate effects of cinema and home-viewing – cinematic viewing has become entirely “distracted” while domestic viewing has become entirely “absorbed”.
I am, however, a little confused as far as Corrigan's classification of the Blockbuster audience. Is it "too large and diverse by the dominant blockbusters" (26)? Or where does the role of genre play in, because he later notes that these different types of film lead to differentiation.