Jean Elisabeth Pedersen
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- February 2006
- ISBN:
- 9780195165272
- eISBN:
- 9780199784554
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195165276.003.0009
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
This chapter recounts this book's author's own experiences of teaching Durkheim and introducing feminist theory, which have always occurred in settings where the dominant approach is reading and ...
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This chapter recounts this book's author's own experiences of teaching Durkheim and introducing feminist theory, which have always occurred in settings where the dominant approach is reading and discussion. Each section takes a similar approach, beginning with an overview of the existing work on Durkheim in a particular area, continuing with an analysis of its relevance to the Elementary Forms of Religious Life, and including a series of possible discussion questions for classroom use. Topics covered include women, sex, and gender in Durkheim's works; Durkheim on divorce and sex education; and feminist theory and Durkheimian social realism.Less
This chapter recounts this book's author's own experiences of teaching Durkheim and introducing feminist theory, which have always occurred in settings where the dominant approach is reading and discussion. Each section takes a similar approach, beginning with an overview of the existing work on Durkheim in a particular area, continuing with an analysis of its relevance to the Elementary Forms of Religious Life, and including a series of possible discussion questions for classroom use. Topics covered include women, sex, and gender in Durkheim's works; Durkheim on divorce and sex education; and feminist theory and Durkheimian social realism.
David Martin-Jones
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748633913
- eISBN:
- 9780748651207
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748633913.003.0008
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter focuses on two films that draw upon the social realist tradition, Ae Fond Kiss (2004) and On a Clear Day (2005). First, it outlines the way social realism is defined in studies of ...
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This chapter focuses on two films that draw upon the social realist tradition, Ae Fond Kiss (2004) and On a Clear Day (2005). First, it outlines the way social realism is defined in studies of cinema, and then sketches in something of its history in relation to British cinema and previous cinematic representations of Scotland. It then demonstrates the two films' different cominglings of social realism with melodrama. Whilst Ae Fond Kiss draws a subtle distinction between global and local identities, in On a Clear Day the question of a specific identity that can be described as global, local or even national recedes into the background as the film focuses on gendered identity in a post-industrial milieu. In Ae Fond Kiss, Scotland plays an integral role as a location in which the action is set. In On a Clear Day, Scotland becomes a film set, a backdrop with resonances of industrial masculinity — long-established in previous cinematic representations of working-class life in Scotland's shipyards — against which to explore the future of post-industrial masculinity in the United Kingdom more generally.Less
This chapter focuses on two films that draw upon the social realist tradition, Ae Fond Kiss (2004) and On a Clear Day (2005). First, it outlines the way social realism is defined in studies of cinema, and then sketches in something of its history in relation to British cinema and previous cinematic representations of Scotland. It then demonstrates the two films' different cominglings of social realism with melodrama. Whilst Ae Fond Kiss draws a subtle distinction between global and local identities, in On a Clear Day the question of a specific identity that can be described as global, local or even national recedes into the background as the film focuses on gendered identity in a post-industrial milieu. In Ae Fond Kiss, Scotland plays an integral role as a location in which the action is set. In On a Clear Day, Scotland becomes a film set, a backdrop with resonances of industrial masculinity — long-established in previous cinematic representations of working-class life in Scotland's shipyards — against which to explore the future of post-industrial masculinity in the United Kingdom more generally.
Sally Haslanger
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780199892631
- eISBN:
- 9780199980055
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199892631.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy
In his book The Social Construction of What?, Ian Hacking offers a schema for understanding different social constructionist claims along with a framework for distinguishing kinds or degrees of ...
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In his book The Social Construction of What?, Ian Hacking offers a schema for understanding different social constructionist claims along with a framework for distinguishing kinds or degrees of constructionist projects. Hacking's efforts are useful, but his account leaves many of the philosophical aspects of social construction projects obscure, as are the connections, if any, with more mainstream analytic philosophy projects. This chapter aims to argue that although Hacking's approach to social construction is apt for some of those working on such projects, it does not adequately capture what's at issue for an important range of social constructionists, particularly many of us working on gender and race. Moreover, a different way of understanding social construction reveals interesting connections and conflicts with mainstream analytic projects.Less
In his book The Social Construction of What?, Ian Hacking offers a schema for understanding different social constructionist claims along with a framework for distinguishing kinds or degrees of constructionist projects. Hacking's efforts are useful, but his account leaves many of the philosophical aspects of social construction projects obscure, as are the connections, if any, with more mainstream analytic philosophy projects. This chapter aims to argue that although Hacking's approach to social construction is apt for some of those working on such projects, it does not adequately capture what's at issue for an important range of social constructionists, particularly many of us working on gender and race. Moreover, a different way of understanding social construction reveals interesting connections and conflicts with mainstream analytic projects.
Esther M. K. Cheung
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9789622099777
- eISBN:
- 9789882206953
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Hong Kong University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5790/hongkong/9789622099777.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores Chan's realist mode in the traditions of Chinese-language cinemas. There are many modes of realism and Chan's case illustrates this concept clearly. His concern for ...
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This chapter explores Chan's realist mode in the traditions of Chinese-language cinemas. There are many modes of realism and Chan's case illustrates this concept clearly. His concern for underprivileged people and social injustice brings him close to this realist tradition. His so-called “Handover Trilogy” and his later films such as Durian Durian and Hollywood Hong Kong embody certain basic traits: the story of ordinary people, the theme of marginality, on-location shooting, jerky hand-held camerawork, frequent use of objective point of view camera, and the casting of non-professional actors. All these characteristics have led critics to conclude that he belongs safely to the tradition of social realism and that the Hong Kong through his lens is a “real” one.Less
This chapter explores Chan's realist mode in the traditions of Chinese-language cinemas. There are many modes of realism and Chan's case illustrates this concept clearly. His concern for underprivileged people and social injustice brings him close to this realist tradition. His so-called “Handover Trilogy” and his later films such as Durian Durian and Hollywood Hong Kong embody certain basic traits: the story of ordinary people, the theme of marginality, on-location shooting, jerky hand-held camerawork, frequent use of objective point of view camera, and the casting of non-professional actors. All these characteristics have led critics to conclude that he belongs safely to the tradition of social realism and that the Hong Kong through his lens is a “real” one.
Lara Feigel
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780748639502
- eISBN:
- 9780748652938
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748639502.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This book tells the story of a generation of writers who were passionately engaged with politics and with cinema, exploring the rise and fall of a distinct tradition of cinematic literature. Dismayed ...
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This book tells the story of a generation of writers who were passionately engaged with politics and with cinema, exploring the rise and fall of a distinct tradition of cinematic literature. Dismayed by the rise of fascism in Europe and by the widening gulf separating the classes at home, these writers turned to cinema as a popular and hard-hitting art form. The book crosses boundaries between high modernism and social realism and between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture, bringing together Virginia Woolf with W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bowen with John Sommerfield, Sergei Eisenstein with Gracie Fields, and offering new interpretations of their texts. The book ends in the Second World War, an era when the bombs and searchlights rendered everyday life cinematic. The book interrogates the genres she maps, drawing on cultural theories from the 1920s onwards to investigate the nature of the cinematic and the literary. While it was not possible directly to transfer the techniques of the screen to the page any more than it was possible to ‘go over’ to the working classes, the attempts nonetheless reveal a fascinating intersection of the visual and the verbal, the political and the aesthetic. In reading between the frames of an unexplored literary tradition, this book redefines the 1930s and wartime literature and politics, offering a new perspective on Spanish Civil War as well as Second World War writing.Less
This book tells the story of a generation of writers who were passionately engaged with politics and with cinema, exploring the rise and fall of a distinct tradition of cinematic literature. Dismayed by the rise of fascism in Europe and by the widening gulf separating the classes at home, these writers turned to cinema as a popular and hard-hitting art form. The book crosses boundaries between high modernism and social realism and between ‘high’ and ‘popular’ culture, bringing together Virginia Woolf with W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Bowen with John Sommerfield, Sergei Eisenstein with Gracie Fields, and offering new interpretations of their texts. The book ends in the Second World War, an era when the bombs and searchlights rendered everyday life cinematic. The book interrogates the genres she maps, drawing on cultural theories from the 1920s onwards to investigate the nature of the cinematic and the literary. While it was not possible directly to transfer the techniques of the screen to the page any more than it was possible to ‘go over’ to the working classes, the attempts nonetheless reveal a fascinating intersection of the visual and the verbal, the political and the aesthetic. In reading between the frames of an unexplored literary tradition, this book redefines the 1930s and wartime literature and politics, offering a new perspective on Spanish Civil War as well as Second World War writing.
Tony Garnett
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719066283
- eISBN:
- 9781781702529
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719066283.003.0015
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
This chapter shares some excerpts of Garnett's acting and production career. After revolutionary forces, left-wing teachers, union activists and television producers all found themselves branded, in ...
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This chapter shares some excerpts of Garnett's acting and production career. After revolutionary forces, left-wing teachers, union activists and television producers all found themselves branded, in a much-quoted phrase, as the ‘enemy within’. In this climate, conspiracy theories abounded; indeed, conspiracy, and its twin, betrayal, run through much discourse off both right and left in the decade. It is not surprising that they also surface in television drama, both on and off the screen. Kestrel Productions was the first independent drama production company in British television, and had its origins in the shake-up that followed the re-franchising of commercial television in 1967. The chapter also briefly discusses Kes—the development of a political aesthetic. However, radical television drama did not go uncontested, and there were high-profile cases of dramas being challenged across the media and other public discourses, and in some cases, withdrawn from the schedules before screening.Less
This chapter shares some excerpts of Garnett's acting and production career. After revolutionary forces, left-wing teachers, union activists and television producers all found themselves branded, in a much-quoted phrase, as the ‘enemy within’. In this climate, conspiracy theories abounded; indeed, conspiracy, and its twin, betrayal, run through much discourse off both right and left in the decade. It is not surprising that they also surface in television drama, both on and off the screen. Kestrel Productions was the first independent drama production company in British television, and had its origins in the shake-up that followed the re-franchising of commercial television in 1967. The chapter also briefly discusses Kes—the development of a political aesthetic. However, radical television drama did not go uncontested, and there were high-profile cases of dramas being challenged across the media and other public discourses, and in some cases, withdrawn from the schedules before screening.
Tony Garnett
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- July 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780719066283
- eISBN:
- 9781781702529
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719066283.003.0013
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
This chapter revolves around the two Wednesday Plays, Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home. The Wednesday Play anthology series has acquired a pivotal role in the history of television drama, ...
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This chapter revolves around the two Wednesday Plays, Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home. The Wednesday Play anthology series has acquired a pivotal role in the history of television drama, providing a showcase for drama that was formally experimental, distinctive to the medium of television, socially and culturally provocative. It was designed as a replacement for two existing play strands, Festival and First Night, as a response to a series of pressures that were being applied to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the mid-1960s. The best known and most widely debated of The Wednesday Plays in the 1965 season was Up the Junction. Up the Junction is set in and around the eponymous Clapham Junction, and concerns the lives of its inhabitants, notably three young women, Sylvie (Carol White), Rube (Geraldine Sherman) and Eileen. It connects immediately to a contemporary sense of a hitherto unrepresented and socially extended reality—and thus to social realism. One of the main differences between Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home is that the latter has a single protagonist, around whom the narrative is organised (something which gave the film a more accessible narrative shape, from an audience viewpoint).Less
This chapter revolves around the two Wednesday Plays, Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home. The Wednesday Play anthology series has acquired a pivotal role in the history of television drama, providing a showcase for drama that was formally experimental, distinctive to the medium of television, socially and culturally provocative. It was designed as a replacement for two existing play strands, Festival and First Night, as a response to a series of pressures that were being applied to the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in the mid-1960s. The best known and most widely debated of The Wednesday Plays in the 1965 season was Up the Junction. Up the Junction is set in and around the eponymous Clapham Junction, and concerns the lives of its inhabitants, notably three young women, Sylvie (Carol White), Rube (Geraldine Sherman) and Eileen. It connects immediately to a contemporary sense of a hitherto unrepresented and socially extended reality—and thus to social realism. One of the main differences between Up the Junction and Cathy Come Home is that the latter has a single protagonist, around whom the narrative is organised (something which gave the film a more accessible narrative shape, from an audience viewpoint).
Howard Felperin
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198122654
- eISBN:
- 9780191671517
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198122654.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature
Fourteen years ago, Bruce Erlich offered a Marxist interpretation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest. He argued that there are times when we have a ...
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Fourteen years ago, Bruce Erlich offered a Marxist interpretation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest. He argued that there are times when we have a duty to look beyond the ‘purely aesthetic or ‘beautiful’ dimensions’ of the play in order to recognize ‘how a work of profound social realism can be written in the mode of romance and sacramental allegory’. It was only a matter of time before a social-realist Tempest of some sort would displace the allegorical romance from the strategic position within Shakespeare studies that it, along with the other late romances, had only just regained. Since the ‘death of the author’ and the ‘end of man’, it is no longer Shakespeare's personal history, let alone his ‘spiritual autobiography’ that matters, but the larger history and discourse of colonial imperialism that are inscribed in The Tempest. This chapter deals with the recent politicization of The Tempest, its formation of the canon within the canon, and its interpretation through the new historicism.Less
Fourteen years ago, Bruce Erlich offered a Marxist interpretation of William Shakespeare's The Tempest. He argued that there are times when we have a duty to look beyond the ‘purely aesthetic or ‘beautiful’ dimensions’ of the play in order to recognize ‘how a work of profound social realism can be written in the mode of romance and sacramental allegory’. It was only a matter of time before a social-realist Tempest of some sort would displace the allegorical romance from the strategic position within Shakespeare studies that it, along with the other late romances, had only just regained. Since the ‘death of the author’ and the ‘end of man’, it is no longer Shakespeare's personal history, let alone his ‘spiritual autobiography’ that matters, but the larger history and discourse of colonial imperialism that are inscribed in The Tempest. This chapter deals with the recent politicization of The Tempest, its formation of the canon within the canon, and its interpretation through the new historicism.
Malini Guha
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748656462
- eISBN:
- 9781474408585
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748656462.003.0003
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter situates the film Dirty Pretty Things (2002) within a wider historical continuum of “migrant London” cinema, while examining the longevity of social realist modes of storytelling and its ...
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This chapter situates the film Dirty Pretty Things (2002) within a wider historical continuum of “migrant London” cinema, while examining the longevity of social realist modes of storytelling and its “global turn.” It presents a departure from an interpretation of Dirty Pretty Things as a film that allegorizes the conditions of global London in order to chart a history of representation of post-imperial migration to the city. Furthermore, the chapter analyzes the concept of the “dirty/pretty” as a bifurcated understanding of city space, one that scholars argue has its origins in a Victorian imaginary of the city but is subsequently re-imagined in the telling of other urban stories.Less
This chapter situates the film Dirty Pretty Things (2002) within a wider historical continuum of “migrant London” cinema, while examining the longevity of social realist modes of storytelling and its “global turn.” It presents a departure from an interpretation of Dirty Pretty Things as a film that allegorizes the conditions of global London in order to chart a history of representation of post-imperial migration to the city. Furthermore, the chapter analyzes the concept of the “dirty/pretty” as a bifurcated understanding of city space, one that scholars argue has its origins in a Victorian imaginary of the city but is subsequently re-imagined in the telling of other urban stories.
Richard Hewett
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781784992989
- eISBN:
- 9781526128362
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781784992989.003.0002
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Television
By the early 1960s television was more established and widespread, and its conventions were beginning to be tacitly understood by audiences and performers alike. While the introduction of videotape ...
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By the early 1960s television was more established and widespread, and its conventions were beginning to be tacitly understood by audiences and performers alike. While the introduction of videotape pre-recording, as employed on Doctor Who, did little to change the ‘outside’ rehearsal and multi-camera studio performance template of the live era, it also meant that actors were for the first time able to watch their own performances, and adapt them to the medium. While still arriving at television via a multiplicity of routes, actors now typically shared the same degree of screen experience, leading to a greater uniformity in studio realism. At the same time, the growth of social realism meant a subtle shift in the style of acting that would be acceptable to audiences of the time. Despite its perceived outlandishness in narrative terms, reports show that Doctor Who was more than acceptable to contemporary audiences in terms of performance style.Less
By the early 1960s television was more established and widespread, and its conventions were beginning to be tacitly understood by audiences and performers alike. While the introduction of videotape pre-recording, as employed on Doctor Who, did little to change the ‘outside’ rehearsal and multi-camera studio performance template of the live era, it also meant that actors were for the first time able to watch their own performances, and adapt them to the medium. While still arriving at television via a multiplicity of routes, actors now typically shared the same degree of screen experience, leading to a greater uniformity in studio realism. At the same time, the growth of social realism meant a subtle shift in the style of acting that would be acceptable to audiences of the time. Despite its perceived outlandishness in narrative terms, reports show that Doctor Who was more than acceptable to contemporary audiences in terms of performance style.
