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This book reviews the cross-disciplinary debate sparked by renewed interest in Elinor Glyn’s life and legacy by film scholars and literary and feminist historians and offers a range of views of Glyn's cultural and historical significance and areas for future research. Elinor Glyn was a celebrity figure in the 1920s. In the magazines she gave tips on beauty and romance, on keeping your man and on the contentious issue of divorce. Her racy stories were turned into films – most famously, Three Weeks (1924) and It (1927). Decades on the ‘It Girl’ remains in common currency, defining the sexy, sassy and alluring young woman. She was beloved by readers of romance, and her films were distri...
A Critical Companion to Terry Gilliam provides a fresh, up-to-date exploration of the director’s films and artistic practices, ranging from his first film Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975) to his recently released and latest film The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018). This volume presents Gilliam as a director whose films weave together an avant-garde cinematic style, imaginative exaggeration, and social critique. Consequently, while his films can seem artistically chaotic and thus have the effect of frustrating and upsetting the viewer, the essays in this volume show that this is part of a very disciplined creative plan to achieve the defamiliarization of various accepted notions of human and social life.
In the early twentieth century Hollywood was fascinated by the Far East. Chinese immigrants, however, were excluded since 1882 and racism pervaded U.S. society. When motion pictures became the most popular form of entertainment, immigration and race were heavily debated topics. 'Visualizing Orientalness' is the first book that analyses the significance of motion pictures within these discourses. Taking up approaches from the fields of visual culture studies and visual history, Björn A. Schmidt undertakes a visual discourse analysis of films from the 1910s to 1930s. The author shows how the visuality of films and the historical discourses and practices that surrounded them portrayed Chinese immigration and contributed to notions of Chinese Americans as a foreign and other race.
Ultimately, Gamer Nation reveals not only how video games are a key aspect of contemporary American culture, but how games affect how people relate to America itself.
The Persistence of Whiteness investigates the representation and narration of race in contemporary Hollywood cinema. Ideologies of class, ethnicity, gender, nation and sexuality are central concerns as are the growth of the business of filmmaking. Focusing on representations of Black, Asian, Jewish, Latina/o and Native Americans identities, this collection also shows how whiteness is a fact everywhere in contemporary Hollywood cinema, crossing audiences, authors, genres, studios and styles. Bringing together essays from respected film scholars, the collection covers a wide range of important films, including Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The Color Purple, Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. Essays also consider genres from the western to blaxploitation and new black cinema; provocative filmmakers such as Melvin Van Peebles and Steven Spielberg and stars including Whoopi Goldberg and Jennifer Lopez. Daniel Bernardi provides an in-depth introduction, comprehensive bibliography and a helpful glossary of terms, thus providing students with an accessible and topical collection on race and ethnicity in contemporary cinema.
This book contends that Hollywood films help illuminate the incongruities of various periods in American diplomacy. From the war film Bataan to the Revisionist Western The Wild Bunch, cinema has long reflected US foreign policy’s divisiveness both directly and allegorically. Beginning with the 1990s presidential drama The American President and concluding with Joker’s allegorical treatment of the Trump era, this book posits that the paradigms for political reflection are shifting in American film, from explicit subtexts surrounding US statecraft to covert representations of diplomatic disarray. It further argues that the International Relations theorist Walter Mead’s concept of a US polity dominated by contesting beliefs, or a ‘kaleidoscope’, permeates these changing paradigms. This synergy reveals a cultural milieu where foreign policy fissures are increasingly encoded by cinematic representation. The interdisciplinarity of this focus renders this book pertinent reading for scholars and students of American Studies, Film Studies and International Relations, along with those generally interested in Hollywood filmmakers and foreign policy.
Explores the ways Hollywood represents race, gender, class, and nationality at the intersection of aesthetics and ideology and its productive tensions
Bringing together superhero scholars and key industry figures The Superhero Symbol unmasks how superheroes have become so pervasive in media, culture, and politics. This timely collection explores how these powerful icons are among the entertainment industry's most valuable intellectual properties, yet can be appropriated for everything from activism to cosplay and real-life vigilantism.
Superman’s first appearance in Action Comics #1 (1938) proclaimed that the character would “reshape the destiny of the world.” The advent of the first superhero initiated a shared narrative—the DC superhero universe—that has been evolving in depth and complexity for more than 80 years. Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman have become key threads in the tapestry of the American mythos, shaping the way we think about life, right and wrong, and our relationship with our own universe. Their narrative world is enriched by compelling stories featuring lesser-known characters like Dr. Fate, the Doom Patrol, John Constantine, and the Legion of Super-Heroes. Stories set within this shared universe have explored questions of death, rebirth, the apocalypse, the nature of evil, the origins of the universe, and the destiny of humankind. This volume brings together the work of scholars from a range of backgrounds who explore the role of theology and religion in the comics, films, and television series set in the DC Universe. The thoughtful and incisive contributions to this collection will appeal to scholars and fans alike.
Anna Froula is Associate Professor of Film Studies in the Department of English at East Carolina University, USA Stacy Takacs is Associate Professor and Director of American Studies at Oklahoma State University, USA