Sound positions individuals as social subjects. The presence of human beings, animals, objects, or technologies reverberates into the spaces we inhabit and produces distinct soundscapes that render social practices, group associations, and socio-cultural tensions audible. The Acoustics of the Social on Page and Screen unites interdisciplinary perspectives on the social dimensions of sound in audiovisual and literary environments. The essays in the collection discuss soundtracks for shared values, group membership, and collective agency, and engage with the subversive functions of sound and sonic forms of resistance in American literature, film, and TV.

Black Panther is one of the most financially successful and culturally impactful films to emerge from the American film industry in recent years. When it was released in 2018 it broke numerous records and resonated with audiences all around the world in ways that transcended the dimensions of the superhero film. In Black Panther: Interrogating a Cultural Phenomenon author Terence McSweeney explores the film from a diverse range of perspectives, seeing it not only as a comic book adaptation and a superhero film, but also a dynamic contribution to the discourse of both African and African American studies. McSweeney argues that Black Panther is one of the defining American films of the last decade and the most remarkable title in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (2008-). The MCU has become the largest film franchise in the history of the medium and has even shaped the contours of the contemporary blockbuster, but the narratives within it have almost exclusively perpetuated largely unambiguous fantasies of American heroism and exceptionalism. In contrast, Black Panther complicates this by engaging in an entirely different mythos in its portrayal of an African nation-never colonized by Europe-as the most powerful and technologically advanced in the world. McSweeney charts how and why Black Panther became a cultural phenomenon and also a battleground on which a war of meaning was waged at a very particular time in American history.

What's your impression of the CIA? A bumbling agency that can't protect its own spies? A rogue organization prone to covert operations and assassinations? Or a dedicated public service that advances the interests of the United States? Astute TV and movie viewers may have noticed that the CIA's image in popular media has spanned this entire range, with a decided shift to more positive portrayals in recent years. But what very few people know is that the Central Intelligence Agency has been actively engaged in shaping the content of film and television, especially since it established an entertainment industry liaison program in the mid-1990s. The CIA in Hollywood offers the first full-scale investigation of the relationship between the Agency and the film and television industries. Tricia Jenkins draws on numerous interviews with the CIA's public affairs staff, operations officers, and historians, as well as with Hollywood technical consultants, producers, and screenwriters who have worked with the Agency, to uncover the nature of the CIA's role in Hollywood. In particular, she delves into the Agency's and its officers' involvement in the production of The Agency, In the Company of Spies, Alias, The Recruit, The Sum of All Fears, Enemy of the State, Syriana, The Good Shepherd, and more. Her research reveals the significant influence that the CIA now wields in Hollywood and raises important and troubling questions about the ethics and legality of a government agency using popular media to manipulate its public image.

Cinema Derrida charts Jacques Derrida's collaborations and appearances in film, video, and television beginning with 1983's Ghost Dance (dir. Ken McMullen, West Germany/UK) and ending with 2002's biographical documentary Derrida (dir. Dick and Ziering, USA). In the last half of his working life, Derrida embraced popular art forms and media in more ways than one: not only did he start making more media appearances after years of refusing to have his photo taken in the 1960s and 1970s, but his philosophy also started to draw more explicitly from visual culture and artistic endeavours. While this book offers explanations of this transition, it contends the image of "Jacques Derrida" that emerges from film and TV appearances remains spectral, constantly deferring a complete grasp of him. Tyson Stewart draws out the main tenets of spectrality from Derrida's seminal texts Of Grammatology and Specters of Marx and other writings, like Echographies of Television, in order to fill a gap in studies of Derrida and film. Throughout the book, he explains how various techniques and spectral effects such as slow motion, stillness, repetition, mise-en-abime, direct address, and focus on body parts/bodily presence bring about a structure of spectrality wherein the past other returns to make impressions and ethical demands on the viewer. Drawing on communication theory and film and media studies, Cinema Derrida makes a major intervention in classical communication thought.

The 2012 film The Hunger Games and its three sequels, appearing quickly over the following three years, represent one of the most successful examples of the contemporary popularity of youth-oriented speculative film and television series. This book considers "The Hunger Games" as an intertextual field centred on this blockbuster film franchise but also encompassing the successful novels that preceded them and the merchandised imagery and the critical and fan discourse that surrounds them. It explores the place of The Hunger Games in the history of youth-oriented cinema; in the history of speculative fiction centred on adolescents; in a network of continually evolving and tightly connected popular genres; and in the popular history of changing ideas about girlhood from which a successful action hero like Katniss Everdeen could emerge.

Chic, sophisticated, seductive and enigmatic, the Parisienne possesses a je ne sais quoi that makes her difficult to define. But who or what is the Parisienne, and how is she depicted in cinema? The first book-length study on the subject combines scholarship in the fields of art history, literature and fashion to enrich our understanding of this intriguing cinematic figure, simultaneously offering new perspectives on film. Accessible and wide-ranging, it will be of immediate interest to students and researchers working in film studies, French studies and the broader humanities, as well as cinephiles and Francophiles alike. -- .

This systematic attempt to apply Jungian theory to the analysis of films covers 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Silence of the Lambs and The Piano as well as a variety of cultural icons and products such as Madonna, Michael Jackson and televised sport. Through these and other examples, John Izod demonstrates how Jungian theory can bring new tools to film and media studies and new ways of understanding screen images and narratives.

Taking early 21st century Britain as a case study, Rethinking Holocaust Film Reception: A British Case Study presents an intervention into the scholarship on the representation of the Holocaust on film. Based on a study of audience responses to select films, Stefanie Rauch demonstrates that the reception of films about the Holocaust is a complex process that we cannot understand through textual analysis alone, but by also paying attention to individual reception processes. This book restores the agency of viewers and takes seriously their diverse responses to representations of the Holocaust. It demonstrates that viewers' interpretative resources play an important role in film reception. Viewers regard Holocaust films as a separate genre that they encounter with a set of expectations. The author highlights the implications of Britain's lessons-focused approach to Holocaust education and commemoration and addresses debates around the supposed globalization of Holocaust memory by unpacking the peculiar Britishness of viewers' responses to films about the Holocaust. A sense of emotional connection or its absence to the Holocaust and its memory speaks to divisions along ethnic, generational, and national lines.

Discover films that dared to be different, risked reputations and put careers in jeopardy. This is what happens when filmmakers take tradition and rip it up. FilmQuake introduces 50 movies that shook the cinematic world, telling the fascinating stories behind their creation, reception and legacy. From unbelievable developments in technology (Citizen Kane, 1941) to feminist triumphs (Wanda, 1970); films that kickstarted New Queer Cinema (Paris is Burning, 1990) to others that challenged lawmakers (A Short Film About Killing, 1988) - FilmQuake presents the movies that questioned boundaries, challenged the status quo and made shockwaves we are still feeling today. From film's first innovators, people like the Lumiere brothers, whose short film of a train arriving was reported to have terrified audiences in 19th century Paris, through iconoclasts like Sergei Eisenstein and Luis Bunuel, to titans of 20th century cinema like Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard, discover the stories behind the films which incontrovertably changed the course of cinema forever. Into the modern day, this book examines how filmmakers have addressed themes of prejudice and inequality, from the Black Lives Matter movement and Jordan Peele's unmissable Get Out to Bong Joon-ho's cutting study of the lives of the wealthy in Parasite, as well as innovative new cinematic techniques emerging in films like 28 Days Later and Blair Witch Project. In telling the history of cinema through the works that were truly disruptive, and explaining the context in which each was created, FilmQuake demonstrates the heart of modern film, which is to constantly question boundaries and challenge expectation. This book is from the Culture Quake series, which looks into iconic moments of culture which truly created paradigm shifts in their respective fields. Also available is ArtQuake, which tells the stories of 50 pivotal works that challenged consensus and broke daring new ground in the world of art, inspiring shock and scandal as they did so, but ultimately cementing themselves as truly great works of modern art.

Star Trek emerged against a cultural backdrop of Dylan, mini-skirts, bellbottoms and VW vans; flourishing a culture of Michael Jackson, big-hair and environmentalism; expanding during a culture of emerging-computers, greed and religious revitalization. Star Trek survived the culture shock after 9/11, and experienced a revival in the new culture of yoga pants, hybrid cars, and solar panels. Fifty plus years later, through rapid culture change, Star Trek is alive and well, voyaging through space and time. Which allows us to wonder, why is that? Star Trek kept its core features while adapting to contemporary culture. The Voyages of Star Trek: A Space-Time Continuum explores how understanding human behavior and culture change through space and time is an important discipline that can affect impactful media, such as Star Trek. The authors, K. M. Heath and A.S. Carlisle, investigate the enduring appeal of the phenomenon of Star Trek and how it mirrored, foreshadowed, and adapted to contemporary American culture from 1966 to the present. First looking at the evolution of Star Trek by tying the dramatic storylines of episodes and movies to events and developments in America, then assessing the extent to which the image of Star Trek is actually reflected on the screen from "snapshots" of randomly selected episodes and of all the movies. The Voyages of Star Trek: A Space-Time Continuum successfully looks at the cultural impact of Star Trek beyond what it did for its own franchise. Star Trek has a bright future among the stars, and has truly gone where few franchises have gone before.

This book is a carefully selected, thematically arranged collection of eyewitness accounts of seeing motion pictures - from the 1890s to the present day, and from countries across the globe. Included are essays, diaries, memoirs, travel accounts, oral history interviews, poems and extracts from novels. These verbatim accounts - from both professional and amateur writers - have been selected not only for what they tell us about the historical experience of cinema in many countries, but also for their literary value. Here is evocative testimony that shows how deeply cinema touches emotional needs, and the huge impact that the cinema has had on modern society. While most film history studies are centred on films or those who produce them, Picturegoers puts the voices of the audience first. It analyses and celebrates the audience's point of view, shaped by time, experience and place, providing a rich, entertaining portrait of a medium that became so transformative precisely because anyone, rich or poor, educated or not, could share in it. The book will appeal to scholars interested in the relationship between cinema and society, those engaged in audience studies, and general readers interested in world cinema history.

Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice presents the most current international scholarship on the complexity and subversive potential of women's comedic speech, literature, and performance. Earlier comedy theorists such as Freud and Bergson did not envision women as either the agents or audiences of comedy, only as its targets. Only more recently have scholarly studies of comedy begun to recognize and historicize women's contributions to-and political uses of-comedy. The essays collected here demonstrate the breadth of current scholarship on gender and comedy, spanning centuries of literature and a diversity of methodologies. Through a reconsideration of literary, theatrical, and mass media texts from the Classical period to the present, Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice responds to the historical marginalization and/or trivialization of both women and comedy. The essays collected in this volume assert the importance of recognizing the role of women and comedy in order to understand these texts, their historical contexts, and their possibilities and limits as models for social engagement. In the spirit of comedy itself, these analyses allow for opportunities to challenge and reevaluate the theoretical approaches themselves.

Widespread law enforcement or formal policing outside of cities appeared in the early 20th century around the same time the early film industry was developing -the two evolved in tandem, intersecting in meaningful ways. Much scholarship has focused on portrayals of the criminal in early American cinema, yet little has been written about depictions of the criminal's antagonist. This history examines how different on-screen representations shifted public perception of law enforcement -initially seen as a suspicious or intrusive institution, then as a power for the common good.

A collection of essays on fifteen feature-length silent films and two silent serial features. The aims of the collection are threefold: to provide detailed accounts of a wide array of films produced between the early 1910s and the early 1930s; to focus principally on films that may be well-known but that have rarely been discussed in detail; and hence to appeal to those interested in film style and its history. Outstanding group of contributors - see details on Author Biography page - all are acknowledged and well-regarded scholars in the field, many of whom have established international reputations for their work in this area and a world-renowned editor.

A Critical Companion to Stanley Kubrick offers a thorough and detailed study of the works of Stanley Kubrick. Labeled a recluse, a provocateur, and a perfectionist, Kubrick remains one of the greatest legends of cinema who continues to influence contemporary filmmakers and visual culture. An unequaled visionary, Kubrick revolutionized film genres, the use of music in film, narrative pacing and structure, and depictions of war and violence. This book delves into the complexities of his work and examines the wide range of topics and the multiple interpretations that his films inspire. The eighteen chapters in this book use different methodologies, explore new trends of research in film studies, providing a series of unique and novel perspectives on all of Kubrick's thirteen feature films, from Fear and Desire (1953) to Eyes Wide Shut (1999), as well as his work on A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg, 2001).

This remarkable journey through the Hammer vault includes props, annotated script pages, unused poster artwork, production designs, rare promotional material and private correspondence. Hundreds of rare and previously unseen stills help to create a rich souvenir of Hammer's legacy, from the X certificate classics of the 1950s to the studio's latest productions. This new updated edition includes an extra chapter covering the years 2010.

A unique and wide-ranging analysis of the aesthetic and emotional impact of lighting in cinema. Lara Thompson looks at the way light informs the cinematic experience, from constructing star identities, sculpting natural light and creating imaginary worlds, to the seductive power of darkness, fading representations of the past and arresting twilight encounters. This groundbreaking and accessible introductory study offers a unique insight into the way illumination has transcended its diffuse functional boundaries and been elevated to a position of narrative and emotional importance, transforming it from an unobtrusive element of film style to an expressive and essential component. It includes analyses of over fifty renowned international films, discussed in inventive and illuminating combinations, from cinema's earliest moments to its most recent digital manifestations. -- .

This unique and timely collection examines childhood and the child character throughout Stephen King's works, from his early novels and short stories, through film adaptations, to his most recent publications. King's use of child characters within the framework of horror (or of horrific childhood) raises questions about adult expectations of children, childhood, the American family, child agency, and the nature of fear and terror for (or by) children. The ways in which King presents, complicates, challenges, or terrorizes children and notions of childhood provide a unique lens through which to examine American culture, including both adult and social anxieties about children and childhood across the decades of King's works.

Prolific American film producer Amedee J. Van Beuren (1879-1938) did not start out in the film industry. After decades spent in business and advertising, Van Beuren turned his intellect and creativity towards acquiring a foothold in film and began building his empire. He is best known to animation fans for his bizarre cartoons of the 1920s and 1930s, featuring such zanies as Molly Moo Cow, Cubby Bear and Tom and Jerry (not the cat-and-mouse duo). But the majority of the 1,499 films produced by Van Beuren between 1918 and 1937 were live-action short subjects--travelogues, comedies, musicals, sports reels and more. His roster of star performers included Bert Lahr, Shemp Howard, Ethel Waters and (indirectly) Charlie Chaplin. Van Beuren also made several feature films starring legendary big-game hunter Frank Buck, and a 12-episode serial headlining horror icon Lon Chaney, Jr. Capped by a complete list of his films, this engrossing chronicle of Amedee Van Beuren's vast output is the first all-inclusive history of one of moviedom's most successful and least-known filmmakers.

The chapters collected in this volume shed light on the areas of interaction between film studies and heavy metal research, exploring how the audio-visual medium of film relates to, builds on and shapes metal culture. At one end of the spectrum, metal music serves as a form of ambient background in horror films that creates an intense and somewhat threatening atmosphere; at the other end, the high level of performativity attached to the metal spectacle is emphasized. Alongside these tendencies, the recent and ongoing wave of metal documentaries has taken off, relying on either satire or hagiography.

Strippers, zombies, fugitives and jewel thieves. These were just some of the characters who inhabited the weird, wild films of director Stephen C. Apostolof in the 1960s and 1970s. But Apostolof's own life was every bit as improbable as the plots of his lurid movies. Escaping the clutches of the communists in his native Bulgaria, he came to America in 1952 and decided on a whim to reinvent himself as a Hollywood filmmaker, right down to the cigars, sunglasses and Cadillacs. He produced a string of memorable sexploitation classics, including the infamous Orgy of the Dead. Along the way, he married three times, fathered five children and forged a personal and professional relationship with the notorious Ed Wood, Jr. Drawing on rare archival material and interviews with those who knew him best, this first biography of Apostolof chronicles the life and career of a cult film legend.

How should we understand film authorship in an era when the idea of the solitary and sovereign auteur has come under attack, with critics proclaiming the death of the author and the end of cinema? The Bressonians provides an answer in the form of a strikingly original study of Bresson and his influence on the work of filmmakers Jean Eustache and Maurice Pialat. Extending the discourse of authorship beyond the idea of a singular visionary, it explores how the imperatives of excellence function within cinema's pluralistic community. Bresson's example offered both an artistic legacy and a creative burden within which filmmakers reckoned in different, often arduous, and altogether compelling ways.

From Audrey Hepburn in Givenchy, to sharp-suited gangsters in Tarantino movies, clothing is central to film. In Undressing Cinema, Stella Bruzzi explores how far from being mere accessories, clothes are key elements in the construction of cinematic identities, and she proposes new and dynamic links between cinema, fashion and costume history, gender, queer theory and psychoanalysis.
Bruzzi uses case studies drawn from contemporary popular cinema to reassess established ideas about costume and fashion in cinema, and to challenge conventional interpretations of how masculinity and femininity are constructed through clothing. Her wide-ranging study encompasses:
* haute couture in film and the rise of the movie fashion designer, from Givenchy to Gaultier
* the eroticism of period costume in films such as The Piano and The Age of Innocence
* clothing the modern femme fatale in Single White Female, Disclosure and The Last Seduction
* generic male chic in Goodfellas, Reservoir Dogs, and Leon
* pride, costume and masculinity in `Blaxploitation' films, Boyz `N The Hood and New Jack City
* drag and gender confusion in cinema, from the unerotic cross-dressing of Mrs Doubtfire to the eroticised ambiguity of Orlando.

eBook available with sample pages: HB:0415139562