In "Picturing American Modernity," Kristen Whissel investigates the
relationship between early American cinema and the experience of
technological modernity. She demonstrates how between the late
1890s and the eve of the First World War moving pictures helped the
U.S. public understand the possibilities and perils of new forms of
"traffic" produced by industrialization and urbanization. As more
efficient ways to move people, goods, and information transformed
work and leisure at home and contributed to the expansion of the
U.S. empire abroad, silent films presented compelling visual
representations of the spaces, bodies, machines, and forms of
mobility that increasingly defined modern life in the United States
and its new territories.
Whissel shows that by portraying key events, achievements, and
anxieties, the cinema invited American audiences to participate in
the rapidly changing world around them. Moving pictures provided
astonishing visual dispatches from military camps prior to the
outbreak of fighting in the Spanish-American War. They allowed
audiences to delight in images of the Pan-American Exposition, and
also to mourn the assassination of President McKinley there. One
early film genre, the reenactment, presented spectators with
renditions of bloody battles fought overseas during the
Philippine-American War. Early features offered sensational
dramatizations of the scandalous "white slave trade," which was
often linked to immigration and new forms of urban work and
leisure. By bringing these frequently distant events and anxieties
"near" to audiences in cities and towns across the country, the
cinema helped construct an American national identity for the
machine age.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
