In 1914, the Ford Motor Company opened its Motion Picture Laboratory, an in-house operation that produced motion pictures to educate its workforce and promote its products. Just six years later, Ford films had found their way into schools and newsreels, travelogues, and even feature films in theaters across the country. It is estimated that by 1961, the company's movies had captured an audience of sixty-four million people. This study of Ford's corporate film program traces its growth and rise in prominence in corporate America. Drawing on nearly three hundred hours of material produced between 1914 and 1954, Timothy Johnson chronicles the history of Ford's filmmaking campaign and analyzes selected films, visual and narrative techniques, and genres. He shows how what began as a narrow educational initiative grew into a global marketing strategy that presented a vision not just of Ford or corporate culture but of American life more broadly. In these films, Johnson uncovers a powerful rhetoric that Ford used to influence American labor, corporate style, production practices, road building, suburbanization, and consumer culture. The company's early and continued success led other corporations to adopt similar programs. Persuasive and thoroughly researched, Rhetoric, Inc. documents the role that imagery and messaging played in the formation of the modern American corporation and provides a glimpse into the cultural turn to the economy as a source of entertainment, value, and meaning.

Mercy and Justice and Other Christian Skits by Samuel Williams is book number three in a four-book series of plays and skits. This book contains several of Williams' most powerful and relevant Christian-based skits. Readers are sure to be enlightened, entertained and glued to their seats as the writer magically takes them through a litany of experinces that are sure to permanently and positively change the fundamental way that they see today's world. Parents and students alike everywhere should take the time to read each of these skits as each teaches a vital and powerful lesson in its own way. This book is an extemely powerful tool to have in your private, professional and spiritual lives. Clearly it is a well of wisdom and insight among today's dry and wantom offerings. Though short, it is equally as powerful as any of the other books of plays. This quick-read will keep you spellbound from start to finish, so don't pick it up until you're sure you have nothing pressing to attend to.

This intriguing volume sheds light on the diverse world of collecting film- and media-related materials. Lucy Fischer's introduction explores theories of collecting and representations of collecting and collections in film, while arguing that collections of film ephemera and other media-related collections are an important way in to understanding the relationship between material culture and film and media studies; she notes that the collectors have various motivations and types of collections. In the eleven chapters that follow, media studies scholars analyze a variety of fascinating collected materials, from Doris Day magazines to Godzilla action figures and LEGOs. While most contributors discuss their personal collections, some also offer valuable insight into specific collections of others. In many cases, collections that began as informal and personal have been built up, accessioned, and reorganized to create teaching and research materials which have significantly contributed to the field of film and media studies. Readers are offered glimpses into diverse collections comprised of films, fan magazines, records, comics, action figures, design artifacts, costumes, props- including Buffy the Vampire Slayer costumes, Planet of the Apes publicity materials, and Amazing Spider Man comics. Recollecting Collecting interrogates and illustrates the meaning and practical nature of film and media collections while also considering the vast array of personal and professional motivations behind their assemblage.

In its exploration of puppetry and animation as the performative media of choice for mastering the art of illusion, To Embody the Marvelous engages with early modern notions of wonder in religious, artistic, and social contexts. From jointed, wood-carved figures of Christ, saintly marionettes that performed hagiographical dramas, experimental puppets and automata in Cervantes' Don Quixote, and the mechanical sets around which playwright CalderOn de la Barca devised secular magic shows to deconstruct superstitions, these historical and fictional artifacts reenvisioned religious, artistic, and social notions that led early modern society to critically wrestle with enchantment and disenchantment. The use of animated performance objects in Spanish theatrical contexts during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries became one of the most effective pedagogical means to engage with civil society. Regardless of social strata, readers and spectators alike were caught up in a paradigm shift wherein belief systems were increasingly governed by reason-even though the discursive primacy of supernatural doxa and Christian wonder remained firmly entrenched. Thanks to their potential for motion, religious and profane puppets, automata, and mechanical stage props deployed a rationalized sense of wonder that illustrates the relationship between faith and reason, reevaluates the boundaries of fiction in art and entertainment cultures, acknowledges the rise of science and technology, and questions normative authority.

Is it ever morally wrong to enjoy fantasizing about immoral things? Many video games allow players to commit numerous violent and immoral acts. But, should players worry about the morality of their virtual actions? A common argument is that games offer merely the virtual representation of violence. No one is actually harmed by committing a violent act in a game. So, it cannot be morally wrong to perform such acts. While this is an intuitive argument, it does not resolve the issue. Focusing on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies, Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy advances debates about the ethical criticism of art, not only by shining light on the interesting and under-examined case of virtual fantasies, but also by its novel application of a virtue ethical account. Video games are works of fiction that enable players to entertain a fantasy. So, a full understanding of the ethical criticism of video games must focus attention on why individual players are motivated to entertain immoral and violent fantasies. Video Games, Violence, and the Ethics of Fantasy engages with debates and critical discussions of games in both the popular media and recent work in philosophy, psychology, media studies, and game studies.