Mortality is a recurrent theme in films across genres, periods, nations, and directors. This book brings together an accomplished set of authors with backgrounds in film analysis, psychology, and philosophy to examine how the knowledge of death, the fear of our mortality, and the ways people cope with mortality are represented in cinema.

A comprehensive and insightful examination of the representation of diverse viewpoints and perspectives in American cinema throughout the 20th and 21st centuries America on Film: Representing Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Movies, now in its third edition, is an authoritative and lively examination of diversity issues within American cinema. Celebrated authors and academics Harry M. Benshoff and Sean Griffin provide readers with a comprehensive discussion and overview of the industrial, socio-cultural, and aesthetic factors that contribute to cinematic representations of race, class, gender, sexuality, and ability. The book incorporates several different theoretical perspectives, including film genre, auteurism, cultural studies, Orientalism, the "male gaze," feminism, and queer theory. The authors examine each selected subject via representative films, figures, and movements. Each chapter also includes an in-depth analysis of a single film to illuminate and inform its discussion of the chosen topic. America on Film fearlessly approaches and tackles several controversial areas of representation in film, including the portrayal of both masculinity and femininity in film and African- and Asian-Americans in film. It devotes the entirety of Part V to an analysis of the depiction of sex and sexuality in American film, with a particular emphasis on the portrayal of homosexuality. Topics covered include: The structure and history of American filmmaking, including a discussion of the evolution of the business of Hollywood cinema African Americans and American film, with a discussion of BlacKkKlansman informing its examination of broader issues Asian, Latin/x, and Native Americans on film Classical Hollywood cinema and class, with an in-depth examination of The Florida Project Women in classical Hollywood filmmaking, including a discussion of the 1955 film, All that Heaven Allows Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students in film, media, and diversity-related courses, the book also belongs on the shelves of anyone interested in diversity issues in the context of American studies, communications, history, or gender studies. Lastly, it's ideal for use within corporate diversity training curricula and human relations training within the entertainment industry.

Melodrama in Contemporary Film and Television debates the ways in which melodrama expresses and gives meaning to: trauma and pathos; memory and historical re-visioning; home and borders; gendered and queer relations; the family and psychic identities; the national and emerging public cultures; and morality and ethics.

This book investigates representations of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Hollywood films, and the synergies between Hollywood product, U.S. military/defense interests and U.S. foreign policy. As probably the best known of the many different intelligence agencies of the US, the CIA is an exceptionally well known national and international icon or even "brand," one that exercises a powerful influence on the imagination of people throughout the world as well as on the creative minds of filmmakers. The book examines films sampled from five decades - the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s - and explores four main issues: the relative prominence of the CIA; the extent to which these films appeared to be overtly political; the degree to which they were favorable or unfavorable to the CIA; and their relative attitude to the "business" of intelligence. A final chapter considers the question: do these Hollywood texts appear to function ideologically to "normalize" the CIA? If so, might this suggest the further hypothesis that many CIA movies assist audiences with reconciling two sometimes fundamental opposites: often gruesome covert CIA activity for questionable goals and at enormous expense, on the one hand, and the values and procedures of democratic society, on the other. This interdisciplinary book will be of much interest to students of the CIA/Intelligence Studies, media and film studies, US politics and IR/Security Studies in general.

By the 1990s the Pentagon had greatly expanded its global and imperial reach and deeply embedded itself into the commerce and ideology of Hollywood war movies, video games, television, and the private arms industry. Post-Vietnam Hollywood attempted to resurrect the 'good war.' The Pentagon, Hollywood, video games, and the arms industry were now working in tandem, all hugely profiting. As always, paying the ultimate price for this commercial success were the working-class men and women who actually fight these wars. No other media genre more sharply illustrates the contradictions of American society - notions about social class, politics, and socio-economic ideology - than the war film. American War Cinema and Media Since Vietnam examines the representations of war in feature films and documentaries, television, and war video games since Vietnam to reveal how they illustrate the complexities and contradictions of America's post-Vietnam wars of 'discretion, ' class issues, commerce, and politics.

The Frankenstein narrative is one of cinema's most durable, and it is often utilized by the studio system and the most renegade independents alike to reveal our deepest aspirations and greatest anxieties. The films have concerned themselves with demarcations of gender, race, and technology, and this new study aims to critique the more traditional interpretations of both the narrative and its sustained popularity. From James Whale's "Frankenstein" (1931) through Kenneth Branagh's "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" (1994), the story remains a nuanced and ultimately ambivalent one and is discussed here in all of its myriad terms: aesthetic, cultural, psychological, and mythic.

Beginning with an examination of the narrative's origins in the myth of the birth of Dionysus from the thigh of Zeus, "The Cinematic Rebirths of Frankenstein" goes on to consider each of the filM's many incarnations, from the Universal horror films of the thirties through the British Hammer series and beyond. Moving easily between the scholarly and the popular, the book employs both primary texts-including scripts, posters, and documentation of production histories-and a rigorous, scholarly examination of the many implications of this often-misunderstood subgenre of horror cinema.

This book offers a different take on the early history of Warner Bros., the studio renowned for introducing talking pictures and developing the gangster film and backstage musical comedy. The focus here is on the studio's sustained commitment to produce films based on stage plays. This led to the creation of a stock company of talented actors, to the introduction of sound cinema, to the recruitment of leading Broadway stars such as John Barrymore and George Arliss and to films as diverse as The Gold Diggers (1923), The Marriage Circle (1924), Beau Brummel (1924), Disraeli (1929), Lilly Turner (1933), The Petrified Forest (1936) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). Even the most crippling effects of the Depression in 1933 did not prevent Warners' production of films based on stage plays, many being transformed into star vehicles for the likes of Ruth Chatterton, Leslie Howard and Bette Davis.

Who Framed Roger Rabbit emerged at a nexus of people, technology, and circumstances that is historically, culturally, and aesthetically momentous. By the 1980s, animation seemed a dying art. Not even the Walt Disney Company, which had already won over thirty Academy Awards, could stop what appeared to be the end of an animation era. To revitalize popular interest in animation, Disney needed to reach outside its own studio and create the distinctive film that helped usher in a Disney Renaissance. That film, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, though expensive and controversial, debuted in theaters to huge success at the box office in 1988. Unique in its conceit of cartoons living in the real world, Who Framed Roger Rabbit magically blended live action and animation, carrying with it a humor that still resonates with audiences. Upon the film's release, Disney's marketing program led the audience to believe that Who Framed Roger Rabbit was made solely by director Bob Zemeckis, director of animation Dick Williams, and the visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic, though many Disney animators contributed to the project. Author Ross Anderson interviewed over 140 artists to tell the story of how they created something truly magical. Anderson describes the ways in which the Roger Rabbit characters have been used in film shorts, commercials, and merchandising, and how they have remained a cultural touchstone today.

Mediating Memory in the Museum is a contribution to an emerging field of research which is situated at the interface between memory studies and museum studies. It highlights the role of museums in the proliferation of the so-called memory boom as well as the influence of memory discourses on international trends in museum cultures. By looking at a range of museums in Germany, Britain, France and Belgium, which address a diverse spectrum of topics such as migration, difficult and dark heritage, war, slavery and the GDR, Arnold-de Simine outlines the paradigm shifts in exhibiting practices associated with the transformation of traditional history museums and heritage sites into 'spaces of memory' over the past thirty years. She probes the political and ethical claims of new museums and maps the relevance of key concepts such as 'vicarious trauma', 'secondary witnessing', 'empathic unsettlement', 'prosthetic memory' and 'reflective nostalgia' in the museum landscape.

Creating Musical Theatre features interviews with the directors and choreographers that make up today's Broadway elite. From Susan Stroman and Kathleen Marshall to newcomers Andy Blankenbuehler and Christopher Gattelli, this book features twelve creative artists, mostly director/choreographers, many of whom have also crossed over into film and television, opera and ballet. To the researcher, this book will deliver specific information on how these artists work; for the performer, it will serve as insight into exactly what these artists are looking for in the audition process and the rehearsal environment; and for the director/choreographer, this book will serve as an inspiration detailing each artist's pursuit of his or her dream and the path to success, offering new insight and a deeper understanding of Broadway today. Creating Musical Theatre includes a foreword by four-time Tony nominee Kelli O'Hara, one of the most elegant and talented leading ladies gracing the Broadway and concert stage today, as well as interviews with award-winning directors and choreographers, including: Rob Ashford (How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying); Andy Blankenbuehler (In the Heights); Jeff Calhoun (Newsies); Warren Carlyle (Follies); Christopher Gattelli (Newsies); Kathleen Marshall (Anything Goes); Jerry Mitchell (Legally Blonde); Casey Nicholaw (The Book of Mormon); Randy Skinner (White Christmas); Susan Stroman (The Scottsboro Boys); Sergio Trujillo (Jersey Boys); and Anthony Van Laast (Sister Act).

This title presents a collection that highlights some of the lesser-known films and filmmakers of the past that are being marginalized and forgotten in today's reductive popular memory of movie history.

Rock Hudson rose to stardom as the virile hero of adventure films, and he then gained a flurry of female fans by starring in melodramas, like Magnificent Obsession. He earned an Oscar nomination for his role in Giant, starred in successful romantic comedies, and had a productive television and stage career. This book provides full information about his many performances and charts his life and career up to his death from AIDS. Rock Hudson was a movie giant, one of the biggest stars Hollywood ever produced. He gained early fame as the romantic hero of adventure films and melodramas such as Magnificent Obsession (1954). He then tackled serious drama in Giant (1956), for which he earned an Academy Award nomination. With the success of Pillow Talk (1959), he entered a new genre for which he would become best known-the sex comedy. He also had a successful stage and television career. This book charts Rock Hudson's rise as a celebrity until his death from AIDS. A biography opens the volume, followed by chapters which chronicle his work in film, television, radio, and the stage. Each chapter contains descriptions of Hudson's individual performances, with entries providing cast and credit information, plot summaries, excerpts from reviews, and critical commentary. The volume also includes a listing of Hudson's awards and an annotated bibliography of additional sources of information.

Rethinking the Romance Genre examines why the romance has proven such an irresistible form for contemporary writers and filmmakers approaching global issues. Through a series of close readings informed by historical context and transnational reception, Emily S. Davis demonstrates that the generic instability of the romance makes it an especially malleable tool for representing fluid political, sexual, and racial identities and coalitions in an era of flexible global capitalism. In contemporary texts ranging from literary works to films to social media, romance facilitates a range of intimacies that offer new feminist models for understanding affinity and solidarity in the age of globalization.

Pop music stars in many of the most exciting and successful British films--from "Performance" to "Trainspotting," from "A Hard Day's Night" to H"uman Traffic." Other films using pop music might be more obscure but include many demonstrating a boldness and imagination rarely matched in other areas of British cinema.
Pop artists (David Bowie, Cliff Richard, Spice Girls, Patsy Kensit, Sex Pistols) could be said to be captured at their most iconic on celluloid. And of course there are the rare but prized cameos from a huge variety of other musicians and their songs in the most unexpected of places. This book tells the story and records the facts of the pop-film relationship decade by decade. It is the most systematic guide to where and how pop appears in British cinema.
"Pop in British Cinema" includes:
* Decade by decade commentary and systematic listings of films with pop music
* Comprehensive referencing of all British feature films using music from the 50s to the end of the century
* Illustrations and descriptions of the changing ways of using pop in British film
* Listings of "band" movies and indexes to musicians, directors, and film titles
For researchers and the curious alike this is an easy and fascinating reference source. It represents both a first history of pop music in British cinema and a mine of trivia questions for music and film buffs of all descriptions.

Cinema frequently depicts various types of work, but this representation is never straightforward. It depends on and reflects many factors, most importantly the place and time the film is made and the type of audience it addresses. In this volume, the contributors employ transnational and transhistorical perspectives to compare films from different countries, periods, and genres. Rather than prescribe a specific meaning of work, the collection explores its fuzzy edges, including sex work, criminal work, situations where the jobs' purpose is to reduce work, and other marginal types of labor. The contributors draw attention to the paradox that although there is seemingly less work to be done now than it was in the past, the central role of work in human life has not been challenged: it is seen as the human condition.

What does it mean to live as a ghost? Exploring spectrality as a potent metaphor in the contemporary British and American cultural imagination, Peeren proposes that certain subjects - migrants, servants, mediums and missing persons - are perceived as living ghosts and examines how this impacts on their ability to develop agency. From detailed readings of films (Stephen Frears's Dirty Pretty Things, Nick Broomfield's Ghosts and Robert Altman's Gosford Park), a television series (Upstairs, Downstairs) and novels (Hilary Mantel's Beyond Black, Sarah Waters's Affinity, Ian McEwan's The Child in Time and Bret Easton Ellis's Lunar Park) emerges an inventive account of how the spectral metaphor, in its association with various modes of invisibility, can signify both dispossession and empowerment. In reworking the spectral insights of, among others, Jacques Derrida, Antonio Negri and Achille Mbembe, Peeren suggests new responses to the practices of marginalization and exploitation that characterize our globalized world.

Imaginary beasts have figured prominently in literary works ever since the ancient world, when these myths were first formulated. But the nineteenth century witnessed the rise of science, the discovery of geological findings that challenged the biblical myth of creation, and the birth of Darwin's theory of evolution. Since then, monsters have evolved from supernatural creatures to natural ones endowed with exceptional size, strength, or intelligence. This book explores both literary and cinematic texts that are especially explicit in their Darwinian portrayal of monstrous beasts, though these creatures retain an archaic mythological quality. The myth of Leviathan and Behemoth, for instance, is as central to Jaws as it is to Moby-Dick; indeed, Jaws inherits the myth directly from Moby-Dick, as does King Kong. These and other monster tales, such as The Creature from the Black Lagoon and Grendel, keep the ancient myth alive and relevant by recasting it in the context of biological and cultural evolution. There is a pattern of alternating bestialization and anthropomorphism in many monster tales, suggesting that these images are being displayed in repeated attempts to define who we are in relation to animals. Thus the more beastly the monster, the more insistently we erect the old paradigm of the Ladder of Being, placing ourselves on a higher and separate rung; but the more human-like the creature, the more readily we shift to the paradigm of the Tree of Life, in which all creatures are more closely related. Since the matter of distinctions between species also involves questions of race, the monster myth is often conscripted to serve racist agendas. But more often than not, the myth has ananti-racist subtext that undercuts the hierarchy. The closing chapters of the volume consider the notion of artificial evolution in works such as The Island of Dr. Moreau, and human-machine interaction in Gravity's Rainbow. As fables of identity, monster tales dramatize our anxieties and fears about our own animal nature and provide a means of coming to terms with our evolution.

Film scholarship has largely failed to address the complex and paradoxical nature of the films of Sam Peckinpah, focusing primarily on the violence of movies such as "The Wild Bunch" and "Straw Dogs" while ignoring the poetry and gentility of lesser-known pictures including "The Ballad of Cable Hogue" and "Junior Bonner." Serving as a necessary corrective, Gabrielle Murray's "This Wounded Cinema, This Wounded Life: Violence and Utopia in the Films of Sam Peckinpah" offers a better understanding of the work of this landmark director through close readings of both his famous and less-famous works.

Placing them in their proper context--both aesthetically and mythologically--Murray eschews the usual debates about screen violence to discover the ways in which Peckinpah's films provide intense, kinetic explorations of life and death. Amid the often-discussed bloodshed, this bold new study comes to find the complicated utopian impulse that exists at the heart of even Peckinpah's most violent work.

Exploring research into mobile phone use as props to subjective identity, Norman Taylor employs concepts from Michelle Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and actor network theory to discuss the affect of mechanisms of make-believe, from celebrity culture to avatar-obsessed game players, and digital culture.

How has America censored British films? In this original, fascinating book, Anthony Slide answers this question, making full use for the first time of the recently opened US Production Code Administration files. Film by film from the 1930s through to the 1960s, he tells the inside story of the ongoing dialogue between the British film making industry and the American censors. The book shows graphically how the Production Code system operated, revealing how the censors viewed moral issues, violence, bad language and matters of decorum as well as revealing acute national differences, such as American concern over the British preoccupation with toilets. It also dispels myths, depicting chief censor Joseph Breen and his staff as knowledgeable people who sympathized with and admired the British film industry.

Since 2001, Trevor Lynch's witty, pugnacious, and profound film essays and reviews have developed a wide following among cinephiles and White Nationalists alike. Lynch deals frankly with the anti-white bias and Jewish agenda of many mainstream films, but he is even more interested in discerning positive racial messages and values, sometimes in the most unlikely places. Trevor Lynch's White Nationalist Guide to the Movies gathers together some of his best essays and reviews covering 32 movies, including his startling philosophical readings of Pulp Fiction, The Dark Knight Trilogy, and Mishima; his racialist interpretations of The Lord of the Rings and Gangs of New York; his masculinist readings of The Twilight Saga and A History of Violence; his insights into the Jewish nature of the superhero genre occasioned by Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy movies; and his hilarious demolitions of The Matrix Trilogy, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo series, and the detritus of Quentin Tarantino's long decline. Trevor Lynch's White Nationalist Guide to the Movies establishes its author as a leading cultural theorist and critic of the North American New Right. "Trevor Lynch provides us with a highly literate, insightful, and even philosophical perspective on film-one that will send you running to the video rental store for a look at some very worthwhile movies-although he is also quite willing to tell you what not to see. He sees movies without the usual blinders. He is quite aware that because Hollywood is controlled by Jews, one must typically analyze movies for their propaganda value in the project of white dispossession. Trevor Lynch's collection is a must read for anyone attempting to understand the deep undercurrents of the contemporary culture of the West." - Kevin MacDonald, author of The Culture of Critique, from the Foreword "Hollywood has been deconstructing the white race for nearly a century. Now Trevor Lynch is fighting back, deconstructing Hollywood from a White Nationalist point of view. But these essays are not just of interest to White Nationalists. Lynch offers profound and original insights into more than 30 films, including Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight, Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction, Guillermo del Toro's Hellboy, and Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York. These essays combine a cultural and philosophical sophistication beyond anything in film studies today with a lucid, accessible, and entertaining prose style. Every serious cineaste needs to read this book." - Edmund Connelly "The Hollywood movie may be the greatest vehicle of deception ever invented, and the passive white viewer is its primary target. Yet White Nationalist philosopher and film critic Trevor Lynch demonstrates that truth is to be found even in this unlikeliest of places. If American audiences could learn the kind of critical appreciation Mr. Lynch demonstrates for them, their seductive enemies in Tinseltown wouldn't stand a chance." - F. Roger Devlin, author of Alexandre Kojeve and the Outcome of Modern Thought "Trevor Lynch's White Nationalist Guide to the Movies is not some collection of vein-popping rants about Hollywood's political agendas. It's a thoughtful and engaging examination of ideas in popular films from a perspective you won't find in your local newspaper or in Entertainment Weekly. Lynch has chosen films that-in many cases-he actually enjoyed, and playfully teased out the New Right themes that mainstream reviewers can only afford to address with a careful measure of scorn. How many trees have been felled to print all of the Marxist, feminist, minority-pandering 'critiques' of contemporary celluloid over the past fifty years? Isn't it about time we read an explicitly white review of The Fellowship of the Ring, or Traditionalist take on take on The Dark Knight?" - Jack Donovan, author of The Way of Men

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

The first book-length study to critically examine the recent wave of Hitler biopics in German cinema and television. A group of international experts discuss films like "Downfall" in the context of earlier portrayals of Hitler and draw out their implications for the changing place of the Third Reich in the national historical imagination.