Melanie J. Wright
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780195152265
- eISBN:
- 9780199834884
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0195152263.003.0004
- Subject:
- Religion, Biblical Studies
This chapter examines Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 biblical epic film The Ten Commandments. The analysis of the film and its reception draws on insights from cinema studies, particular in relation to the ...
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This chapter examines Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 biblical epic film The Ten Commandments. The analysis of the film and its reception draws on insights from cinema studies, particular in relation to the history and status of the motion picture industry in mid‐twentieth‐century America. The Hollywood epic has typically been characterized as superficial and banal by biblical scholars and film critics alike, but this study argues for the rehabilitation of DeMille's Moses as a complex example of innovative biblical interpretation, shaped by DeMille's desire to champion American values in the context of Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union.Less
This chapter examines Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 biblical epic film The Ten Commandments. The analysis of the film and its reception draws on insights from cinema studies, particular in relation to the history and status of the motion picture industry in mid‐twentieth‐century America. The Hollywood epic has typically been characterized as superficial and banal by biblical scholars and film critics alike, but this study argues for the rehabilitation of DeMille's Moses as a complex example of innovative biblical interpretation, shaped by DeMille's desire to champion American values in the context of Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union.
Louis-Georges Schwartz
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- September 2009
- ISBN:
- 9780195315059
- eISBN:
- 9780199871995
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195315059.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Chapter 1 summarizes the book and examines the Society for Cinema Studies Resolution on the Rodney King case.
Chapter 1 summarizes the book and examines the Society for Cinema Studies Resolution on the Rodney King case.
Trevor Ponech
- Published in print:
- 1997
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198159216
- eISBN:
- 9780191673566
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198159216.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter gives a pragmatic account on the different reasons for why a movie is categorized as non-fiction. This chapter's analysis of non-fictional audio-visual communication owes more to speech ...
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This chapter gives a pragmatic account on the different reasons for why a movie is categorized as non-fiction. This chapter's analysis of non-fictional audio-visual communication owes more to speech act theory and the philosophy of action than to cinema studies. A wholly non-fictional motion picture need not be wholly factual. A cinematic work is non-fiction if and only if its maker intends it to be. The chapter's beliefs is in agreement with that of Carl Plantinga whose intelligent work on the nature of non-fiction merits critical commentary. There are two main strategies of non-fictional depiction and these are: Type 1 Non-fiction and Type 2 Non-fiction. Type 1 movies result from improvisation, spontaneity, and accident while Type 2 movies result from intentions that are more restrictive of content.Less
This chapter gives a pragmatic account on the different reasons for why a movie is categorized as non-fiction. This chapter's analysis of non-fictional audio-visual communication owes more to speech act theory and the philosophy of action than to cinema studies. A wholly non-fictional motion picture need not be wholly factual. A cinematic work is non-fiction if and only if its maker intends it to be. The chapter's beliefs is in agreement with that of Carl Plantinga whose intelligent work on the nature of non-fiction merits critical commentary. There are two main strategies of non-fictional depiction and these are: Type 1 Non-fiction and Type 2 Non-fiction. Type 1 movies result from improvisation, spontaneity, and accident while Type 2 movies result from intentions that are more restrictive of content.
David T. Johnson
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252036927
- eISBN:
- 9780252094040
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252036927.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter captures Richard Linklater's preoccupation with time in brief and lays out some background information on Linklater and his films. It reviews the scholarly body of literature surrounding ...
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This chapter captures Richard Linklater's preoccupation with time in brief and lays out some background information on Linklater and his films. It reviews the scholarly body of literature surrounding Linklater's films, contextualizing his works into the broader category of cinema studies; and looks furthermore at the myriad influences, references, and kinships Linklater's films share with other films and literature. The chapter then advances a particular approach to studying Linklater's films, which will thus be utilized in the later chapters. This approach might be summed up, generally, as the exploration of temporality, particularly one that celebrates an attendance to the present—one not divorced, it should be said, from the past or future—even as the films are as likely to explore this idea's darker implications and consequences.Less
This chapter captures Richard Linklater's preoccupation with time in brief and lays out some background information on Linklater and his films. It reviews the scholarly body of literature surrounding Linklater's films, contextualizing his works into the broader category of cinema studies; and looks furthermore at the myriad influences, references, and kinships Linklater's films share with other films and literature. The chapter then advances a particular approach to studying Linklater's films, which will thus be utilized in the later chapters. This approach might be summed up, generally, as the exploration of temporality, particularly one that celebrates an attendance to the present—one not divorced, it should be said, from the past or future—even as the films are as likely to explore this idea's darker implications and consequences.
John Mowitt
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780520284623
- eISBN:
- 9780520960404
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520284623.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter assesses the odd sound, or sound oddity, of “thirdness”—tercer sonido (third sound). A term that finds its current philosophical footing in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, thirdness ...
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This chapter assesses the odd sound, or sound oddity, of “thirdness”—tercer sonido (third sound). A term that finds its current philosophical footing in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, thirdness designates the substance of mediation. But, less abstractly, thirdness also figures decisively in the discursive field of cinema studies. There it resonates as a form of filmmaking, often tied to Latin America in the 1960s, that designates what falls between the global cinema of Hollywood and the various national cinemas that have risen to challenge its cultural and economic hegemony. Noting that despite the enormous theoretical attention given to the phenomenon of “third cinema,” the soundtracks of tercer cine films have largely lapsed into silence. The chapter explores the deployment of “the third” in the Roberto Esposito's The Third Person and Hélène Cixous's The Third Body to track the work of the audit in people's “deafness” to mediation in the works of cultural revolution.Less
This chapter assesses the odd sound, or sound oddity, of “thirdness”—tercer sonido (third sound). A term that finds its current philosophical footing in the work of Charles Sanders Peirce, thirdness designates the substance of mediation. But, less abstractly, thirdness also figures decisively in the discursive field of cinema studies. There it resonates as a form of filmmaking, often tied to Latin America in the 1960s, that designates what falls between the global cinema of Hollywood and the various national cinemas that have risen to challenge its cultural and economic hegemony. Noting that despite the enormous theoretical attention given to the phenomenon of “third cinema,” the soundtracks of tercer cine films have largely lapsed into silence. The chapter explores the deployment of “the third” in the Roberto Esposito's The Third Person and Hélène Cixous's The Third Body to track the work of the audit in people's “deafness” to mediation in the works of cultural revolution.
Marco Deseriis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694860
- eISBN:
- 9781452952413
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694860.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change
This chapter focuses on Alan Smithee, a pseudonym introduced by the Directors Guild of America to allow film directors to work outside of their reputation. The chapter shows how the accumulation of ...
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This chapter focuses on Alan Smithee, a pseudonym introduced by the Directors Guild of America to allow film directors to work outside of their reputation. The chapter shows how the accumulation of negative reputation in the name of Smithee ultimately undermined the DGA’s ability to preserve its original function within the regulated field of Hollywood labor relations.Less
This chapter focuses on Alan Smithee, a pseudonym introduced by the Directors Guild of America to allow film directors to work outside of their reputation. The chapter shows how the accumulation of negative reputation in the name of Smithee ultimately undermined the DGA’s ability to preserve its original function within the regulated field of Hollywood labor relations.
Joseph Mai
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719096471
- eISBN:
- 9781526124104
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719096471.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This book provides a comprehensive account of Robert Guédiguian’s numerous films since 1980, combining stylistic analyses with historical, political, and generic context. More importantly, it makes ...
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This book provides a comprehensive account of Robert Guédiguian’s numerous films since 1980, combining stylistic analyses with historical, political, and generic context. More importantly, it makes the case that Guédiguian’s work represents one of the most discretely original but radical projects of contemporary French cinema: to make politically committed films with friends, predominately in a local space, over a long period of time. The book starts with a consideration of the philosophy of friendship and its relation to politics, relation, difference, time, and space. It concentrates on Guédiguian’s early life in the Estaque neighbourhood of Marseilles, where he became politically active and developed the friendships that would continue in his filmmaking, as well as Guédiguian’s disillusionment with the Communist Party. It then examines the political pessimism of the 1980s through Guédiguian’s four early films. The book examines the turn toward local activism and utopianism in the 1990s, and follows Guédiguian’s work as it spreads into diverse experimentation with genres and registers in more recent work. It emphasises Guédiguian’s political assessments and his frequent meditations on history, violence, and utopia. But it returns consistently to the underlying themes of friendship, and thus intervenes at the crossroads of affect, politics, philosophy, and art.Less
This book provides a comprehensive account of Robert Guédiguian’s numerous films since 1980, combining stylistic analyses with historical, political, and generic context. More importantly, it makes the case that Guédiguian’s work represents one of the most discretely original but radical projects of contemporary French cinema: to make politically committed films with friends, predominately in a local space, over a long period of time. The book starts with a consideration of the philosophy of friendship and its relation to politics, relation, difference, time, and space. It concentrates on Guédiguian’s early life in the Estaque neighbourhood of Marseilles, where he became politically active and developed the friendships that would continue in his filmmaking, as well as Guédiguian’s disillusionment with the Communist Party. It then examines the political pessimism of the 1980s through Guédiguian’s four early films. The book examines the turn toward local activism and utopianism in the 1990s, and follows Guédiguian’s work as it spreads into diverse experimentation with genres and registers in more recent work. It emphasises Guédiguian’s political assessments and his frequent meditations on history, violence, and utopia. But it returns consistently to the underlying themes of friendship, and thus intervenes at the crossroads of affect, politics, philosophy, and art.
Oliver Gaycken
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199860685
- eISBN:
- 9780190235987
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199860685.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
The introduction lays out the framework for the book. It positions early popular-science films between the disciplines of cinema history and the history of science. It provides a rationale for the ...
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The introduction lays out the framework for the book. It positions early popular-science films between the disciplines of cinema history and the history of science. It provides a rationale for the keywords “curiosity” and “popular science” and it discusses the relevance of early popular-science films for the field of documentary studies. It also introduces the key notion of the circulation of knowledge for understanding popular-science films.Less
The introduction lays out the framework for the book. It positions early popular-science films between the disciplines of cinema history and the history of science. It provides a rationale for the keywords “curiosity” and “popular science” and it discusses the relevance of early popular-science films for the field of documentary studies. It also introduces the key notion of the circulation of knowledge for understanding popular-science films.
Sharrona Pearl
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226461229
- eISBN:
- 9780226461533
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226461533.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Are our identities attached to our faces? If so, what happens when the face connected to the self is gone forever—or replaced? Face/On investigates the stakes for changing the face–and the changing ...
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Are our identities attached to our faces? If so, what happens when the face connected to the self is gone forever—or replaced? Face/On investigates the stakes for changing the face–and the changing stakes for the face—in both contemporary society and the sciences. The first comprehensive cultural study of face transplant surgery, Face/On reveals our true relationships to faces and facelessness, explains the significance we place on facial manipulation, and decodes how we understand loss, reconstruction, and transplantation of the face. To achieve this, the book draws on a vast array of sources: bioethical and medical reports, newspaper and television coverage, performances by pop culture icons, hospital records, personal interviews, films, and military files. It argues that we are on the cusp of a new ethics, in an opportune moment for reframing essentialist ideas about appearance in favor of a more expansive form of interpersonal interaction. Accessibly written and respectfully illustrated, Face/On offers a new perspective on face transplant surgery as a way to consider the self and its representation as constantly present and evolving. Highly interdisciplinary, this study engages with critical interventions into recent medicine, makeover culture, and the beauty industry through critical disability and gender studies, bioethics, history of medicine and the body, relationship ethics, cinema and television studies, journalism studies, critical theory, science studies, and media and communication.Less
Are our identities attached to our faces? If so, what happens when the face connected to the self is gone forever—or replaced? Face/On investigates the stakes for changing the face–and the changing stakes for the face—in both contemporary society and the sciences. The first comprehensive cultural study of face transplant surgery, Face/On reveals our true relationships to faces and facelessness, explains the significance we place on facial manipulation, and decodes how we understand loss, reconstruction, and transplantation of the face. To achieve this, the book draws on a vast array of sources: bioethical and medical reports, newspaper and television coverage, performances by pop culture icons, hospital records, personal interviews, films, and military files. It argues that we are on the cusp of a new ethics, in an opportune moment for reframing essentialist ideas about appearance in favor of a more expansive form of interpersonal interaction. Accessibly written and respectfully illustrated, Face/On offers a new perspective on face transplant surgery as a way to consider the self and its representation as constantly present and evolving. Highly interdisciplinary, this study engages with critical interventions into recent medicine, makeover culture, and the beauty industry through critical disability and gender studies, bioethics, history of medicine and the body, relationship ethics, cinema and television studies, journalism studies, critical theory, science studies, and media and communication.
Marco Deseriis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816694860
- eISBN:
- 9781452952413
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816694860.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Politics, Social Movements and Social Change
This book offers a genealogy and theory of the improper name—defined as the adoption of the same pseudonym by organized collectives, affinity groups and individual authors. Improper Names focuses on ...
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This book offers a genealogy and theory of the improper name—defined as the adoption of the same pseudonym by organized collectives, affinity groups and individual authors. Improper Names focuses on shared pseudonyms that make their appearance in Europe and North America at three critical historic junctures: the Industrial Revolution, the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism, and the emergence of the network society. While proper names designate a referent as part of the operation of a system of signs, improper names fail to circumscribe a clearly defined domain. An improper name differs from other collective subjects of enunciation in that its progenitors are ultimately unable to control third-party usages. The book examines this tension between centralization and decentralization, the We and the I, by focusing on five case studies: Ned Ludd, a pseudonym shared by the English machine breakers of the early nineteenth-century known as the Luddites; Alan/Allen Smithee, an alias adopted by Hollywood film directors from 1969 to 1999 to disown films that were re-cut by film producers; Monty Cantsin, an “open pop star” created by U.S. and Canadian mail artists in the late 1970s to share their reputation and critique bourgeois notions of authorship as originality and novelty; Luther Blissett, a folk hero of the information age introduced by Italian media activists in the 1990s to prank the media and the culture industry; and Anonymous, a signature globally shared by Internet activists to protest against censorship and restricted access to information and information technologies.Less
This book offers a genealogy and theory of the improper name—defined as the adoption of the same pseudonym by organized collectives, affinity groups and individual authors. Improper Names focuses on shared pseudonyms that make their appearance in Europe and North America at three critical historic junctures: the Industrial Revolution, the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism, and the emergence of the network society. While proper names designate a referent as part of the operation of a system of signs, improper names fail to circumscribe a clearly defined domain. An improper name differs from other collective subjects of enunciation in that its progenitors are ultimately unable to control third-party usages. The book examines this tension between centralization and decentralization, the We and the I, by focusing on five case studies: Ned Ludd, a pseudonym shared by the English machine breakers of the early nineteenth-century known as the Luddites; Alan/Allen Smithee, an alias adopted by Hollywood film directors from 1969 to 1999 to disown films that were re-cut by film producers; Monty Cantsin, an “open pop star” created by U.S. and Canadian mail artists in the late 1970s to share their reputation and critique bourgeois notions of authorship as originality and novelty; Luther Blissett, a folk hero of the information age introduced by Italian media activists in the 1990s to prank the media and the culture industry; and Anonymous, a signature globally shared by Internet activists to protest against censorship and restricted access to information and information technologies.
Oliver Gaycken
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- April 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199860685
- eISBN:
- 9780190235987
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199860685.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This book excavates a largely unknown genre of early cinema, the popular-science film. Primarily a work of cinema history, it also draws on the insights of the history of science. Beginning around ...
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This book excavates a largely unknown genre of early cinema, the popular-science film. Primarily a work of cinema history, it also draws on the insights of the history of science. Beginning around 1903, a variety of producers made films about scientific topics for general audiences, inspired by a vision of cinema as an educational medium. This book traces the development of popular-science films over the first half of the silent era, from its beginnings in England to its flourishing in France around 1910. These films initially relied upon previous traditions such as the magic-lantern lecture for their representational strategies, and they continually had recourse to established visual iconography, but they also created novel visual paradigms and led to the creation of ambitious new film collections. The book thus also considers how popular-science films exemplify the circulation of knowledge. Finally, the book discerns a transit between nonfictional and fictional modes, seeing affinities between popular-science films and certain aspects of fiction films, particularly Louis Feuillade’s crime melodramas. This kind of circulation is important for an understanding of the wider relevance of early popular-science films to cinema studies, in particular their influence on documentary, educational, and avant-garde cinemas.Less
This book excavates a largely unknown genre of early cinema, the popular-science film. Primarily a work of cinema history, it also draws on the insights of the history of science. Beginning around 1903, a variety of producers made films about scientific topics for general audiences, inspired by a vision of cinema as an educational medium. This book traces the development of popular-science films over the first half of the silent era, from its beginnings in England to its flourishing in France around 1910. These films initially relied upon previous traditions such as the magic-lantern lecture for their representational strategies, and they continually had recourse to established visual iconography, but they also created novel visual paradigms and led to the creation of ambitious new film collections. The book thus also considers how popular-science films exemplify the circulation of knowledge. Finally, the book discerns a transit between nonfictional and fictional modes, seeing affinities between popular-science films and certain aspects of fiction films, particularly Louis Feuillade’s crime melodramas. This kind of circulation is important for an understanding of the wider relevance of early popular-science films to cinema studies, in particular their influence on documentary, educational, and avant-garde cinemas.
Meryl Shriver-Rice
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474428729
- eISBN:
- 9781474449595
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474428729.003.0013
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Meryl Shriver-Rice interprets Brothers, After the Wedding, and In a Better World in terms of the shared trope of the white male sojourner who travels from Denmark to locations that feature non-white, ...
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Meryl Shriver-Rice interprets Brothers, After the Wedding, and In a Better World in terms of the shared trope of the white male sojourner who travels from Denmark to locations that feature non-white, non-Western citizens. This chapter situates the Bier/Jensen trilogy within a wider trend of contemporary Scandinavian narratives of guilt. In assessing potential critiques of the trilogy on postcolonial grounds, Shriver-Rice argues that the “elsewheres” of these films do not ignore geographic location specifics and cultural contexts in order to assert a universalizing morality. Instead, the ethical trajectories of these films are not universal, and the idea that universalist ethics will inevitably fail takes precedence. Shriver-Rice argues that Bier’s drawing from non-industrialized non-Western space has more to do with speaking to the privileged-world guilt in the Danish viewer, and reminding him or her of the world at large beyond Western space.Less
Meryl Shriver-Rice interprets Brothers, After the Wedding, and In a Better World in terms of the shared trope of the white male sojourner who travels from Denmark to locations that feature non-white, non-Western citizens. This chapter situates the Bier/Jensen trilogy within a wider trend of contemporary Scandinavian narratives of guilt. In assessing potential critiques of the trilogy on postcolonial grounds, Shriver-Rice argues that the “elsewheres” of these films do not ignore geographic location specifics and cultural contexts in order to assert a universalizing morality. Instead, the ethical trajectories of these films are not universal, and the idea that universalist ethics will inevitably fail takes precedence. Shriver-Rice argues that Bier’s drawing from non-industrialized non-Western space has more to do with speaking to the privileged-world guilt in the Danish viewer, and reminding him or her of the world at large beyond Western space.
Nicholson Heather Norris
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- May 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780719077739
- eISBN:
- 9781781704547
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719077739.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
Chapter 9 is both reflective and forward-looking. Discussion acknowledges the broad shifts within amateur activity, its variety and also the profound scope for further activity as amateur film gains ...
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Chapter 9 is both reflective and forward-looking. Discussion acknowledges the broad shifts within amateur activity, its variety and also the profound scope for further activity as amateur film gains new visibility and as digitisation widens access and opens new opportunities in archival practice and outreach. Interests in amateur cinema have mushroomed during the writing of this book amongst scholars, archival circles and other users. The writing seeks to reflect that dynamism and diversity of intellectual, creative and other possibilities, whilst remaining faithful to the multiple stories and memories represented by the filmmakers and films that have contributed to the book. Links to media archaeology, memory studies and the repositioning of amateur practice within more integrated understanding of visual cultural history spanning cinema and television are suggested. Challenges and possibilities lie ahead. Acquisition, conservation and interpretation for films must continue as must the alternative framings of conceptual, theoretical and disciplinary interests that will emerge, refine or replace those offered here. This book seeks to further stimulate wider curiosity, critical understanding and enjoyment of amateur film practice as its approaches its centenary.Less
Chapter 9 is both reflective and forward-looking. Discussion acknowledges the broad shifts within amateur activity, its variety and also the profound scope for further activity as amateur film gains new visibility and as digitisation widens access and opens new opportunities in archival practice and outreach. Interests in amateur cinema have mushroomed during the writing of this book amongst scholars, archival circles and other users. The writing seeks to reflect that dynamism and diversity of intellectual, creative and other possibilities, whilst remaining faithful to the multiple stories and memories represented by the filmmakers and films that have contributed to the book. Links to media archaeology, memory studies and the repositioning of amateur practice within more integrated understanding of visual cultural history spanning cinema and television are suggested. Challenges and possibilities lie ahead. Acquisition, conservation and interpretation for films must continue as must the alternative framings of conceptual, theoretical and disciplinary interests that will emerge, refine or replace those offered here. This book seeks to further stimulate wider curiosity, critical understanding and enjoyment of amateur film practice as its approaches its centenary.
William V. Costanzo
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- March 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190924997
- eISBN:
- 9780190925031
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190924997.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This is a book about the intersection of humor, history, and culture. It explores how film comedy, one of the world’s most popular movie genres, reflects the values and beliefs of those who enjoy its ...
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This is a book about the intersection of humor, history, and culture. It explores how film comedy, one of the world’s most popular movie genres, reflects the values and beliefs of those who enjoy its many forms, its most enduring characters and stories, its most entertaining routines and funniest jokes. What people laugh at in Europe, Africa, or the Far East reveals important truths about their differences and common bonds. By investigating their traditions of humor, by paying close attention to the kinds of comedy that cross national boundaries and what gets lost in translation, this study leads us to a deeper understanding of each other and ourselves. Section One begins with a survey of the theories and research that best explain how humor works. It clarifies the varieties of comic forms and styles, identifies the world’s most archetypal figures of fun, and traces the history of mirth from earliest times to today. It also examines the techniques and aesthetics of film comedy: how movies use the world’s rich repertoire of amusing stories, gags, and wit to make us laugh and think. Section Two offers a close look at national and regional trends. It applies the concepts set forth earlier to specific films across a broad spectrum of sub-genres, historical eras, and cultural contexts, providing an insightful comparative study of the world’s great traditions of film comedy.Less
This is a book about the intersection of humor, history, and culture. It explores how film comedy, one of the world’s most popular movie genres, reflects the values and beliefs of those who enjoy its many forms, its most enduring characters and stories, its most entertaining routines and funniest jokes. What people laugh at in Europe, Africa, or the Far East reveals important truths about their differences and common bonds. By investigating their traditions of humor, by paying close attention to the kinds of comedy that cross national boundaries and what gets lost in translation, this study leads us to a deeper understanding of each other and ourselves. Section One begins with a survey of the theories and research that best explain how humor works. It clarifies the varieties of comic forms and styles, identifies the world’s most archetypal figures of fun, and traces the history of mirth from earliest times to today. It also examines the techniques and aesthetics of film comedy: how movies use the world’s rich repertoire of amusing stories, gags, and wit to make us laugh and think. Section Two offers a close look at national and regional trends. It applies the concepts set forth earlier to specific films across a broad spectrum of sub-genres, historical eras, and cultural contexts, providing an insightful comparative study of the world’s great traditions of film comedy.
Cath Moore
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781474428729
- eISBN:
- 9781474449595
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474428729.003.0012
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Cath Moore draws attention to the unique Danish co-writing process that most Danish directors employ, in which a director and screen-writer collaborate on scripts and share writing credit. Bier’s ...
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Cath Moore draws attention to the unique Danish co-writing process that most Danish directors employ, in which a director and screen-writer collaborate on scripts and share writing credit. Bier’s most successful films have been co-written with Anders Thomas Jensen, who also works with actors during the writing process, rewriting lines of story and dialogue after collaborative reading sessions. With a focus on the Bier/Jensen trilogy, Moore delineates the creative divergences between Bier’s solo work and Jensen’s dark satirical and absurdist self-written and directed films. Moore concludes that the critical and commercial success of the unparalleled Bier/Jensen oeuvre is a result of their preference for highly dramatic stories focused on personal conflict that transcends the local domestic space of Denmark. These transnational storylines, she believes, utilize different national settings as an important facet of story construction to visualize a shared humanity.Less
Cath Moore draws attention to the unique Danish co-writing process that most Danish directors employ, in which a director and screen-writer collaborate on scripts and share writing credit. Bier’s most successful films have been co-written with Anders Thomas Jensen, who also works with actors during the writing process, rewriting lines of story and dialogue after collaborative reading sessions. With a focus on the Bier/Jensen trilogy, Moore delineates the creative divergences between Bier’s solo work and Jensen’s dark satirical and absurdist self-written and directed films. Moore concludes that the critical and commercial success of the unparalleled Bier/Jensen oeuvre is a result of their preference for highly dramatic stories focused on personal conflict that transcends the local domestic space of Denmark. These transnational storylines, she believes, utilize different national settings as an important facet of story construction to visualize a shared humanity.
Paul Roquet
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780816692446
- eISBN:
- 9781452953625
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Minnesota Press
- DOI:
- 10.5749/minnesota/9780816692446.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
Contemporary life is increasingly shaped through attunement to the atmospheric affordances of the media environment. Ambient Media delves into the use of music, video, film, and literature as tools ...
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Contemporary life is increasingly shaped through attunement to the atmospheric affordances of the media environment. Ambient Media delves into the use of music, video, film, and literature as tools to tune this atmospheric self. The book traces the emergence of mood-regulating media in Japan from the environmental art and Erik Satie boom of the 1960s and 70s to the more recent emphasis on “healing” styles. Focusing on how ambience reshapes those dwelling within it, Ambient Media explores the working of atmospheres designed for affective calm, rhythmic attunement, embodied security, and urban coexistence. The book argues for understanding ambient media as a specifically neoliberal response to mood regulation, serving as a way to atmospherically shape collective behavior while providing resources for emotional autonomy and attention restoration at the individual level. Ambient Media considers the adaptive side of atmosphere as an approach to self-care and social mobility. At the same time, the book considers the limits of mood regulation and the low-affect lifestyle when it comes to interpersonal life. Musicians, video artists, filmmakers, and writers in Japan have expanded on Brian Eno’s original idea of a style affording “calm, and a space to think,” providing materials to cultivate sensory serenity within the uncertain horizons of the contemporary social landscape. Offering a new way of understanding Japanese social demands to “read the air,” the book documents both the adaptive and the alarming sides of this turn to mediated moods.Less
Contemporary life is increasingly shaped through attunement to the atmospheric affordances of the media environment. Ambient Media delves into the use of music, video, film, and literature as tools to tune this atmospheric self. The book traces the emergence of mood-regulating media in Japan from the environmental art and Erik Satie boom of the 1960s and 70s to the more recent emphasis on “healing” styles. Focusing on how ambience reshapes those dwelling within it, Ambient Media explores the working of atmospheres designed for affective calm, rhythmic attunement, embodied security, and urban coexistence. The book argues for understanding ambient media as a specifically neoliberal response to mood regulation, serving as a way to atmospherically shape collective behavior while providing resources for emotional autonomy and attention restoration at the individual level. Ambient Media considers the adaptive side of atmosphere as an approach to self-care and social mobility. At the same time, the book considers the limits of mood regulation and the low-affect lifestyle when it comes to interpersonal life. Musicians, video artists, filmmakers, and writers in Japan have expanded on Brian Eno’s original idea of a style affording “calm, and a space to think,” providing materials to cultivate sensory serenity within the uncertain horizons of the contemporary social landscape. Offering a new way of understanding Japanese social demands to “read the air,” the book documents both the adaptive and the alarming sides of this turn to mediated moods.
Sharrona Pearl
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226461229
- eISBN:
- 9780226461533
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226461533.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This chapter explores the history of cosmetic surgery and its intersections with transplants, showing how FAT is both and neither and something else entirely. Through a deep dive into the literature ...
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This chapter explores the history of cosmetic surgery and its intersections with transplants, showing how FAT is both and neither and something else entirely. Through a deep dive into the literature of cosmetic surgery, the chapter maps the discursive terrain on which face transplants have been charted, discussing the rhetoric of facial manipulation in the context of FAT. If the lack of a face is a debilitating medical condition for which a transplant is the cure, what is the difference between that and a more cosmetic intervention—is it a difference of degree or kind? The narrative differentiating the former from the latter, this chapter shows,is one of risk: the risk of the operation and especially of the lifetime on immunosuppressants while living with a new face. But risk is just an excuse that obscures the true source of our objections. After a discussion of the first transplants and their relationship to the birth of bioethics as a field, the chapter explores the first facial reattachment and reactions to it. It moves to fears of identity transfer and cellular memory, tracking the literary and cultural manifestations of these phenomena, thinking about how these concerns impact conceptions of transplant surgeries more broadly.Less
This chapter explores the history of cosmetic surgery and its intersections with transplants, showing how FAT is both and neither and something else entirely. Through a deep dive into the literature of cosmetic surgery, the chapter maps the discursive terrain on which face transplants have been charted, discussing the rhetoric of facial manipulation in the context of FAT. If the lack of a face is a debilitating medical condition for which a transplant is the cure, what is the difference between that and a more cosmetic intervention—is it a difference of degree or kind? The narrative differentiating the former from the latter, this chapter shows,is one of risk: the risk of the operation and especially of the lifetime on immunosuppressants while living with a new face. But risk is just an excuse that obscures the true source of our objections. After a discussion of the first transplants and their relationship to the birth of bioethics as a field, the chapter explores the first facial reattachment and reactions to it. It moves to fears of identity transfer and cellular memory, tracking the literary and cultural manifestations of these phenomena, thinking about how these concerns impact conceptions of transplant surgeries more broadly.
