Refiguring American Film Genres

Author : Nick Browne
Publisher : Univ of California Press
Page : 348 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 1998-04-22
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0520207319

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Refiguring American Film Genres by Nick Browne Pdf

This collection of essays by leading American film scholars charts a whole new territory in genre film criticism. Rather than assuming that genres are self-evident categories, the contributors offer innovative ways to think about types of films, and patterns within films, in a historical context. Challenging familiar attitudes, the essays offer new conceptual frameworks and a fresh look at how popular culture functions in American society. The range of essays is exceptional, from David J. Russell's insights into the horror genre to Carol J. Clover's provocative take on "trial films" to Leo Braudy's argument for the subject of nature as a genre. Also included are essays on melodrama, race, film noir, and the industrial context of genre production. The contributors confront the poststructuralist critique of genre head-on; together they are certain to shape future debates concerning the viability and vitality of genre in studying American cinema.

Author : Anonim
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 1998
Category : Film genres
ISBN : OCLC:804905671

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Refiguring American Film Genres by Anonim Pdf

Author : Thomas Schatz
Publisher : McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 48,8 Mb
Release : 1981-02
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : UCSC:32106011332027

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Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and The Studio System by Thomas Schatz Pdf

The central thesis of this book is that a genre approach provides the most effective means for understanding, analyzing and appreciating the Hollywood cinema. Taking into account not only the formal and aesthetic aspects of feature filmmaking, but various other cultural aspects as well, the genre approach treats movie production as a dynamic process of exchange between the film industry and its audience. This process, embodied by the Hollywood studio system, has been sustained primarily through genres, those popular narrative formulas like the Western, musical and gangster film, which have dominated the screen arts throughout this century.

Author : Stuart M. Kaminsky
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 238 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 1991
Category : Electronic
ISBN : OCLC:37317064

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American Film Genres by Stuart M. Kaminsky Pdf

Author : Daniel Bernardi,Michael Green
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 1127 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2017-07-07
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780313398407

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Race in American Film [3 volumes] by Daniel Bernardi,Michael Green Pdf

This expansive three-volume set investigates racial representation in film, providing an authoritative cross-section of the most racially significant films, actors, directors, and movements in American cinematic history. Hollywood has always reflected current American cultural norms and ideas. As such, film provides a window into attitudes about race and ethnicity over the last century. This comprehensive set provides information on hundreds of films chosen based on scholarly consensus of their importance regarding the subject, examining aspects of race and ethnicity in American film through the historical context, themes, and people involved. This three-volume set highlights the most important films and artists of the era, identifying films, actors, or characterizations that were considered racist, were tremendously popular or hugely influential, attempted to be progressive, or some combination thereof. Readers will not only learn basic information about each subject but also be able to contextualize it culturally, historically, and in terms of its reception to understand what average moviegoers thought about the subject at the time of its popularity—and grasp how the subject is perceived now through the lens of history.

Author : Amanda Ann Klein
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 257 pages
File Size : 41,8 Mb
Release : 2011-12-01
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780292726802

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American Film Cycles by Amanda Ann Klein Pdf

A series of movies that share images, characters, settings, plots, or themes, film cycles have been an industrial strategy since the beginning of cinema. While some have viewed them as "subgenres," mini-genres, or nascent film genres, Amanda Ann Klein argues that film cycles are an entity in their own right and a subject worthy of their own study. She posits that film cycles retain the marks of their historical, economic, and generic contexts and therefore can reveal much about the state of contemporary politics, prevalent social ideologies, aesthetic trends, popular desires, and anxieties. American Film Cycles presents a series of case studies of successful film cycles, including the melodramatic gangster films of the 1920s, the 1930s Dead End Kids cycle, the 1950s juvenile delinquent teenpic cycle, and the 1990s ghetto action cycle. Klein situates these films in several historical trajectories—the Progressive movement of the 1910s and 1920s, the beginnings of America's involvement in World War II, the "birth" of the teenager in the 1950s, and the drug and gangbanger crises of the early 1990s. She shows how filmmakers, audiences, film reviewers, advertisements, and cultural discourses interact with and have an impact on the film texts. Her findings illustrate the utility of the film cycle in broadening our understanding of established film genres, articulating and building upon beliefs about contemporary social problems, shaping and disseminating deviant subcultures, and exploiting and reflecting upon racial and political upheaval.

Author : Geetha Ramanathan
Publisher : Wallflower Press
Page : 256 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2006
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 190476469X

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Feminist Auteurs by Geetha Ramanathan Pdf

Feminist Auteurs examines a rich and diverse body of work that has received insufficient attention both in film studies and in feminist theory on film. Looking at individual films within the context of feminist film as a genre, Ramanathan examines film from diverse cultural traditions, while paying close attention to what might be regarded as feminist in different cultural contexts. The films chosen expand our ideas of feminism covering as they do film from Africa, Latin America, Europe, Asia and the US. Full-length interpretations of twenty-four films, both older and contemporary, including Vagabond, India Song, Bhaji on the Beach, Chocolat, and Daughters of the Dust lay out a complete and powerful framework for reading women's film.

Author : Danny Gronmaier
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2022-12-05
Category : Literary Criticism
ISBN : 9783110760354

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The US Sports Film: A Genre of American Dream Time by Danny Gronmaier Pdf

Sports and film are media that create time. They are temporal not only in the sense that they are defined and regulated by certain temporalities as a result of processes of social negotiation, but also in the sense of modulating and intervening in these processes in the first place. They are determined by multiple temporalities referring to and aligning along perceptual corporeality; but at the same time, they also produce time through and along temporalities of bodily expression and perception. Thus, as much as we perceive and understand sports and film by means of our culturally coded conceptions of time, this comprehension is itself already the product of these media’s fabrication and modulation of certain audiovisual imaginations of time. This book examines these imaginations with regard to US team sports feature films, understanding the former as the latter’s constitutive conflict which makes these films graspable as a genre in the first place. By addressing temporality as an ever-new crystallization of a heroic past and an unattainable future in a saturated yet volatile present, this conflict connects substantially to the American Dream as an idea of community-building historicity. Departing from a non-taxonomic approach in genre theory and such philosophical recognition of the American Dream as less an ideological narrative but more a social and socially effective imaginary embedded in an audiovisual discourse of time, this book demonstrates the interrelation of sports, cinema and “American” subjectivization along close readings of the poetics of affect of five exemplary sports films (FIELD OF DREAMS, WE ARE MARSHALL, KNUTE ROCKNE ALL AMERICAN, JIM THORPE – ALL-AMERICAN, MIRACLE).

Author : Barry Keith Grant
Publisher : University of Texas Press
Page : 785 pages
File Size : 43,7 Mb
Release : 2012-12-01
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780292745742

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Film Genre Reader IV by Barry Keith Grant Pdf

From reviews of the third edition: “Film Genre Reader III lives up to the high expectations set by its predecessors, providing an accessible and relatively comprehensive look at genre studies. The anthology’s consideration of the advantages and challenges of genre studies, as well as its inclusion of various film genres and methodological approaches, presents a pedagogically useful overview.” —Scope Since 1986, Film Genre Reader has been the standard reference and classroom text for the study of genre in film, with more than 25,000 copies sold. Barry Keith Grant has again revised and updated the book to reflect the most recent developments in genre study. This fourth edition adds new essays on genre definition and cycles, action movies, science fiction, and heritage films, along with a comprehensive and updated bibliography. The volume includes more than thirty essays by some of film’s most distinguished critics and scholars of popular cinema, including Charles Ramírez Berg, John G. Cawelti, Celestino Deleyto, David Desser, Thomas Elsaesser, Steve Neale, Thomas Schatz, Paul Schrader, Vivian Sobchack, Janet Staiger, Linda Williams, and Robin Wood.

Author : Desirée J. Garcia
Publisher : Rutgers University Press
Page : 200 pages
File Size : 42,9 Mb
Release : 2014-08-01
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9780813574271

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The Migration of Musical Film by Desirée J. Garcia Pdf

Movie musicals are among the most quintessentially American art forms, often celebrating mobility, self-expression, and the pursuit of one’s dreams. But like America itself, the Hollywood musical draws from many distinct ethnic traditions. In this illuminating new study, Desirée J. Garcia examines the lesser-known folk musicals from early African American, Yiddish, and Mexican filmmakers, revealing how these were essential ingredients in the melting pot of the Hollywood musical. The Migration of Musical Film shows how the folk musical was rooted in the challenges faced by immigrants and migrants who had to adapt to new environments, balancing American individualism with family values and cultural traditions. Uncovering fresh material from film industry archives, Garcia considers how folk musicals were initially marginal productions, designed to appeal to specific minority audiences, and yet introduced themes that were gradually assimilated into the Hollywood mainstream. No other book offers a comparative historical study of the folk musical, from the first sound films in the 1920s to the genre’s resurgence in the 1970s and 1980s. Using an illustrative rather than comprehensive approach, Garcia focuses on significant moments in the sub-genre and rarely studied films such as Allá en el Rancho Grande along with familiar favorites that drew inspiration from earlier folk musicals—everything from The Wizard of Oz to Zoot Suit. If you think of movie musicals simply as escapist mainstream entertainment, The Migration of Musical Film is sure to leave you singing a different tune.

Author : Wheeler W. Dixon
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 278 pages
File Size : 49,6 Mb
Release : 2000-02-24
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 0791445135

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Film Genre 2000 by Wheeler W. Dixon Pdf

New essays by prominent film scholars address recent developments in American genre filmmaking.

Author : Erin Franziska Högerle
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Page : 355 pages
File Size : 43,9 Mb
Release : 2020-10-26
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9783110696653

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Asian American Film Festivals by Erin Franziska Högerle Pdf

Responding to a lack of studies on the film festival’s role in the production of cultural memory, this book explores different parameters through which film festivals shape our reception and memories of films. By focusing on two Asian American film festivals, this book analyzes the frames of memory that festivals create for their films, constructed through and circulated by the various festival media. It further establishes that festival locations—both cities and screening venues—play a significant role in shaping our experience of films. Finally, it shows that festivals produce performances which help guide audiences towards certain readings and direct the film’s role as a memory object. Bringing together film festival studies and memory studies, 'Asian American Film Festivals' offers a mixed-methods approach with which to explore the film festival phenomenon, thus shedding light on the complex dynamics of frames, locations, and performances shaping the festival’s memory practices. It also draws attention to the understudied genre of Asian American film festivals, showing how these festivals actively engage in constructing and performing a minority group’s collective identity and memory.

Author : Agustín Zarzosa
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
Page : 172 pages
File Size : 40,5 Mb
Release : 2013
Category : Drama
ISBN : 9780739172537

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Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television by Agustín Zarzosa Pdf

The notion of mode is critical in the reevaluation of melodrama. As a mode, melodrama appears not only as a dramatic genre pervaded by sensationalism, exaggerations, and moral polarities, but also as a cultural imaginary that shapes the emotional experience of modernity, characterized by anxiety, moral confusion, and the dissolution of hierarchy. Despite its usefulness, the notion of mode remains mystifying: What exactly are modes and how do they differ from genres? Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television: Captive Affects, Elastic Sufferings, Vicarious Objects argues that, whereas genres divide a universe in terms of similarities and differences, modes express or modify an indivisible whole. This study contends that the melodramatic mode is concerned with the expression of the social whole in terms of suffering. Zarzosa explains how melodrama is not a cultural imaginary that proclaims the existence of a defunct moral order in a post-sacred world, but an apparatus that shapes suffering and redistributes its visibility. The moral ideas we associate with melodrama are only a means to achieve this end. To develop this conception of melodrama, Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television offers a novel conceptualization of the following aspects of melodrama theory: affect, interpretation, exchange, excess, sacrifice, and coincidence. These aspects of melodrama are coupled with the analysis of classic melodramas (Home from the Hill and The Story of Adele H.), contemporary films (The Piano, Safe], and Year of the Dog), and television series (Torchwood and Lost). Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television provides an essential new look at melodrama and its function in popular culture and media.

Author : Barry Keith Grant
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 230 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2023-12-22
Category : Social Science
ISBN : 9781003831150

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Film Genre by Barry Keith Grant Pdf

Offering an accessible introduction to the study of film genres and genre films, this book examines the use of genre in cinema from its beginnings to the present day. This book explains the various elements of genre, the importance of genre in popular culture, problems of definition, Hollywood and the studio system, ideology and genre, national cinema and genre, authorship and genre, and debates about representation. The book also provides an in-depth examination of four key genres: the Western, the horror film, the film musical, and the documentary film. Each chapter provides a historical overview of the genre and a summary of important critical debates, and concludes with a case study that builds on the historical and theoretical aspects already introduced and provides a model for subsequent analyses. Featured boxes throughout the text highlight specific cycles, filmmakers, and trends, and each chapter concludes with a list of suggestions for further reading. Film Genre: The Basics is an invaluable resource for those new to studying film and for anyone interested in the history and ongoing significance of film genres and genre films.

Author : Lin Feng,James Aston
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 266 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 2020-11-16
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 9783030550776

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Renegotiating Film Genres in East Asian Cinemas and Beyond by Lin Feng,James Aston Pdf

This book brings together nine original chapters to examine genre agency in East Asian cinema within the transnational context. It addresses several urgent and pertinent issues such as the distribution and exhibition practices of East Asian genre films, intra-regional creative flow of screen culture, and genre’s creative response to censorship. The volume expands the scholarly discussion of the rich heritage and fast-changing landscape of filmmaking in East Asian cinemas. Confronting the complex interaction between genres, filmic narrative and aesthetics, film history and politics, and cross-cultural translation, this book not only reevaluates genre’s role in film production, distribution, and consumption, but also tackles several under-explored areas in film studies and transnational cinema, such as the history of East Asian commercial cinema, the East Asian film industry, and cross-media and cross-market film dissemination.