The Cinema of Sofia Coppola provides the first comprehensive analysis of Coppola's oeuvre that situates her work broadly in relation to contemporary artistic, social and cultural currents. Suzanne Ferriss considers the central role of fashion - in its various manifestations - to Coppola's films, exploring fashion's primacy in every cinematic dimension: in film narrative; production, costume and sound design; cinematography; marketing, distribution and auteur branding. She also explores the theme of celebrity, including Coppola's own director-star persona, and argues that Coppola's auteur status rests on an original and distinct visual style, derived from the filmmaker's complex engagement with photography and painting. Ferriss analyzes each of Coppola's six films, categorizing them in two groups: films where fashion commands attention (Marie Antoinette, The Beguiled and The Bling Ring) and those where clothing and material goods do not stand out ostentatiously, but are essential in establishing characters' identities and relationships (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation and Somewhere). Throughout, Ferriss draws on approaches from scholarship on fashion, film, visual culture, art history, celebrity and material culture to capture the complexities of Coppola's engagement with fashion, culture and celebrity. The Cinema of Sofia Coppola is beautifully illustrated with color images from her films, as well as artworks and advertising artefacts.

This book is a collection of essays highlighting different disciplinary, topical, and practical approaches to the study of kink and popular culture. The volume is written by both academics and practitioners, bringing the essays a special perspective not seen in other volumes. Essays included examine everything from Nina Hartley fan letters to kink shibari witches to kink tourism in a South African prison. The focus is not just on kink as a sexual practice, but on kink as a subculture, as a way of living, and as a way of seeing popular culture in new and interesting ways.

Steven Spielberg is hailed as one of the most influential and commercially successful film directors in motion picture history. Through his role in developing, directing, and driving the special effects of many of the biggest blockbusters in movie history, includingJaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T., Saving Private Ryan, Jurassic Park, Schindler's List, and Minority Report, Spielberg changed the way movies are made and left an indelible mark on popular culture. This biography traces his rise from shooting films as a shy young boy with the family's 8 mm camera to his first unpaid job at Universal Studios, to the rise of DreamWorks, the studio Spielberg founded and quickly turned into a filmmaking powerhouse. While Spielberg's best work may lie ahead, this compelling biography puts his legendary career and work to date into perspective by offering analysis and commentary from fans and critics alike. Whether about an alien lost in suburbia or the battles of World War II, Spielberg has directed and produced many of the most talked about movies of the past 30 years. Students interested in the history of film and the filmmaking industry will find this biography endlessly fascinating. A timeline of significant events, a bibliography of print and electronic resources, and photographs round out this biography.

Comedy is often held to be incompatible with trauma and suffering; it triggers anxiety and moral disquiet around the pleasure we take in reading or watching another's pain. Such concern is particularly acute in relation to suffering that has assumed the status of a cultural trauma, such as that caused by the Holocaust and the Second World War. This long overdue study explores the significance of the comical in German and Austrian postwar cultural representations of suffering. It analyses how the comical challenges the expectations and ethics of representing suffering and trauma. It does so, moreover, by critically examining the conceptions of trauma and victimhood which currently enjoy so much status - such as that of trauma and the nowadays automatic validity and universal applicability of victim identity. The study focuses on the work of Ingeborg Bachmann, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, W. G. Sebald, Volker Koepp, Reinhard Jirgl, Ruth Kluger. Edgar Hilsenrath and Jonathan Littell. Comedy is often held to be incompatible with trauma and suffering; it triggers anxiety and moral disquiet around the pleasure we take in reading or watching another's pain. Such concern is particularly acute in relation to suffering that has assumed the status of a cultural trauma, such as that caused by the Holocaust and the Second World War. This long overdue study explores the significance of the comical in German and Austrian postwar cultural representations of suffering. It analyses how the comical challenges the expectations and ethics of representing suffering and trauma. It does so, moreover, by critically examining the conceptions of trauma and victimhood which currently enjoy so much status - such as that of trauma and the nowadays automatic validity and universal applicability of victim identity. The study focuses on the work of Ingeborg Bachmann, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, W. G. Sebald, Volker Koepp, Reinhard Jirgl, Ruth Kluger. Edgar Hilsenrath and Jonathan Littell.

In Australian Theatre after the New Wave, Julian Meyrick charts the history of three ground-breaking Australian theatre companies, the Paris Theatre (1978), the Hunter Valley Theatre (1976-94) and Anthill Theatre (1980-94). In the years following the controversial dismissal of Gough Whitlam's Labor government in 1975, these 'alternative' theatres struggled to survive in an increasingly adverse economic environment. Drawing on interviews and archival sources, including Australia Council files and correspondence, the book examines the funding structures in which the companies operated, and the impact of the cultural policies of the period. It analyses the changing relationship between the artist and the State, the rise of a managerial ethos of 'accountability', and the growing dominance of government in the fate of the nation's theatre. In doing so, it shows the historical roots of many of the problems facing Australian theatre today. "This is an exceptionally timely book... In giving a history of Australian independent theatre it not only charts the amazing rise and strange disappearance of an energetic, radical and dynamically democratic artistic movement, but also tries to explain that rise and fall, and how we should relate to it now." - Prof. Justin O'Connor, Monash University "This study makes a significant contribution to scholarship on Australian theatre and, more broadly... to the global discussion about the vexed relationship between artists, creativity, government funding for the arts and cultural policy." - Dr. Gillian Arrighi, The University of Newcastle, Australia