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In this book, Charles Acland examines the culture that has produced
both our heightened state of awareness and the bedrock reality of
youth violence in the United States. Beginning with a critique of
statistical evidence of youth violence, Acland compares and
juxtaposes a variety of popular cultural representations of what
has come to be a perceive
In this book, Charles R. Acland examines the culture that has
produced both our heightened state of awareness and the bedrock
reality of youth violence in the United States. Beginning with a
critique of statistical evidence of youth violence, Acland compares
and juxtaposes a variety of popular cultural representations of
what has come to be a perceived crisis of American youth. After
examining the dominant paradigms for scholarly research into youth
deviance, Acland explores the ideas circulating in the popular
media about a sensational crime known as the "preppy murder" and
the confession to that crime. Arguing that the meaning of crime is
never inherent in the event itself, he evaluates other sites of
representation, including newspaper photographs (with a comparison
to the Central Park "wilding"), daytime television talk shows
(Oprah, Geraldo, and Donahue), and Hollywood youth films (in
particular River's Edge). Through a cultural studies analysis of
historical context, Acland blurs the center of our preconceptions
and exposes the complex social forces at work upon this issue in
the late 1980s and early 1990s. Acland asks of the social critic,
"How do we know that we are measuring what we say we are measuring,
and how do we know what the numbers are saying? Arguments must be
made to interpret findings, which suggests that conclusions are
provisional and, to various degrees, sites of contestation." He
launches into this gratifying book to show that beyond the
problematic category of "actual" crime, the United States has seen
the construction of a new "spectacle of wasted youth" that will
have specific consequences for the daily lives of the next
generation.
Ben-Hur (1959), Jaws (1975), Avatar (2009), Wonder Woman (2017):
the blockbuster movie has held a dominant position in American
popular culture for decades. In American Blockbuster Charles R.
Acland charts the origins, impact, and dynamics of this most
visible, entertaining, and disparaged cultural form. Acland
narrates how blockbusters emerged from Hollywood's turn to a
hit-driven focus during the industry's business crisis in the
1950s. Movies became bigger, louder, and more spectacular. They
also became prototypes for ideas and commodities associated with
the future of technology and culture, accelerating the prominence
of technological innovation in modern American life. Acland shows
that blockbusters continue to be more than just movies; they are
industrial strategies and complex cultural machines designed to
normalize the ideologies of our technological age.
Ben-Hur (1959), Jaws (1975), Avatar (2009), Wonder Woman (2017):
the blockbuster movie has held a dominant position in American
popular culture for decades. In American Blockbuster Charles R.
Acland charts the origins, impact, and dynamics of this most
visible, entertaining, and disparaged cultural form. Acland
narrates how blockbusters emerged from Hollywood's turn to a
hit-driven focus during the industry's business crisis in the
1950s. Movies became bigger, louder, and more spectacular. They
also became prototypes for ideas and commodities associated with
the future of technology and culture, accelerating the prominence
of technological innovation in modern American life. Acland shows
that blockbusters continue to be more than just movies; they are
industrial strategies and complex cultural machines designed to
normalize the ideologies of our technological age.
A nickelodeon screening a Charlie Chaplin silent classic, the
downtown arthouse cinemas that made Antonioni and Cassavetes
household names, the modern suburban megaplex and its sold-out
Friday night blockbuster: "how" American and global audiences have
viewed movies is as rich a part of cinematic history as "what"
we've seen on the silver screen. "Going to the Movies" considers
the implications of this social and cultural history through an
analysis of the diverse historical and geographical circumstances
in which audiences have viewed American cinema. Featuring a
distinguished group of film scholars--including Richard Abel,
Annette Kuhn, Jane Gaines, and Thomas Doherty--whose interests
range broadly across time and place, this volume analyzes the role
of movie theatres in local communities, the links between film and
other entertainment media, non-theatrical exhibition, and trends
arising from the globalization of audiences. Emphasizing moviegoing
outside of the northeastern United States, as well as the
complexities of race in relation to cinema attendance, "Going to
the Movies "appeals to the global citizen of cinema--locating the
moviegoing experience in its appeal to the heart and mind of the
audience, whether it's located in a South African shanty town or
the screening room of a Hollywood production lot.
The contributors to Signal Traffic investigate how the material
artifacts of media infrastructure--transoceanic cables, mobile
telephone towers, Internet data centers, and the like--intersect
with everyday life. Essayists confront the multiple and hybrid
forms networks take, the different ways networks are imagined and
engaged with by publics around the world, their local effects, and
what human beings experience when a network fails. Some
contributors explore the physical objects and industrial relations
that make up an infrastructure. Others venture into the
marginalized communities orphaned from the knowledge economies,
technological literacies, and epistemological questions linked to
infrastructural formation and use. The wide-ranging insights
delineate the oft-ignored contrasts between industrialized and
developing regions, rich and poor areas, and urban and rural
settings, bringing technological differences into focus.
Contributors include Charles R. Acland, Paul Dourish, Sarah Harris,
Jennifer Holt and Patrick Vonderau, Shannon Mattern, Toby Miller,
Lisa Parks, Christian Sandvig, Nicole Starosielski, Jonathan
Sterne, and Helga Tawil-Souri.
In Screen Traffic, Charles R. Acland examines how, since the
mid-1980s, the US commercial movie business has altered conceptions
of moviegoing both within the industry and among audiences. He
shows how studios, in their increasing reliance on revenues from
international audiences and from the ancillary markets of
television, videotape, DVD, and pay-per-view, have cultivated an
understanding of their commodities as mutating global products.
Consequently, the cultural practice of moviegoing has changed
significantly, as has the place of the cinema in relation to other
sites of leisure. Acland explores this transformation by
investigating the generation and dissemination of a new
understanding of Hollywood movies. examination of promotional
materials, entertainment news, trade publications, and economic
reports, Acland presents an array of evidence for the new
understanding of movies and moviegoing that has developed within
popular culture and the entertainment industry. In particular, he
dissects a key development: the rise of the megaplex, characterized
by large auditoriums, plentiful screens, and consumer activities
other than film viewing. He traces its genesis from the re-entry of
studios into the movie exhibition business in 1986 through to 1998,
when reports of the economic destabilization of exhibition began to
surface, just as the rise of so-called e-cinema signalled another
wave of change. Documenting the current tendency toward an
accelerated cinema culture, one that appears to arrive
simultaneously for everyone, everywhere, Screen Traffic unearths
and critiques the corporate and cultural forces contributing to the
felt internationalism of our global era.
Patronizing the Public: American Philanthropy's Transformation of
Culture, Communication, and the Humanities is the first detailed
and comprehensive examination of how American philanthropic
foundations have shaped numerous fields, including dance, drama,
education, film, film-music, folklore, journalism, local history,
museums, radio, television, as well as the performing arts and the
humanities in general. Drawing on an impressive range of archival
and secondary sources, the chapters in the volume give particular
attention to the period from the late 1920s to the late 1970s, a
crucial time for the development of philanthropic practice. To this
end, it examines how patterns and directions of funding have been
based on complex negotiations involving philanthropic family
members, elite networks, foundation trustees and officers, cultural
workers, academics, state officials, corporate interests, and the
general public. By addressing both the contours of philanthropic
power as well as the processes through which that power has been
enacted, it is hoped that this collection will reinforce and
amplify the critical study of philanthropy's history.
Patronizing the Public: American Philanthropy's Transformation of
Culture, Communication, and the Humanities is the first detailed
and comprehensive examination of how American philanthropic
foundations have shaped numerous fields, including dance, drama,
education, film, film-music, folklore, journalism, local history,
museums, radio, television, as well as the performing arts and the
humanities in general. Drawing on an impressive range of archival
and secondary sources, the chapters in the volume give particular
attention to the period from the late 1920s to the late 1970s, a
crucial time for the development of philanthropic practice. To this
end, it examines how patterns and directions of funding have been
based on complex negotiations involving philanthropic family
members, elite networks, foundation trustees and officers, cultural
workers, academics, state officials, corporate interests, and the
general public. By addressing both the contours of philanthropic
power as well as the processes through which that power has been
enacted, it is hoped that this collection will reinforce and
amplify the critical study of philanthropy's history.
A nickelodeon screening a Charlie Chaplin silent classic, the
downtown arthouse cinemas that made Antonioni and Cassavetes
household names, the modern suburban megaplex and its sold-out
Friday night blockbuster: "how" American and global audiences have
viewed movies is as rich a part of cinematic history as "what"
we've seen on the silver screen. "Going to the Movies" considers
the implications of this social and cultural history through an
analysis of the diverse historical and geographical circumstances
in which audiences have viewed American cinema. Featuring a
distinguished group of film scholars--including Richard Abel,
Annette Kuhn, Jane Gaines, and Thomas Doherty--whose interests
range broadly across time and place, this volume analyzes the role
of movie theatres in local communities, the links between film and
other entertainment media, non-theatrical exhibition, and trends
arising from the globalization of audiences. Emphasizing moviegoing
outside of the northeastern United States, as well as the
complexities of race in relation to cinema attendance, "Going to
the Movies "appeals to the global citizen of cinema--locating the
moviegoing experience in its appeal to the heart and mind of the
audience, whether it's located in a South African shanty town or
the screening room of a Hollywood production lot.
In a society that breathlessly awaits "the new" in every medium,
what happens to last year's new? Ample critical energy has gone
into the study of new media, genres, and communities. But what
becomes of discarded media? In what manner do the products of
technological change reappear as environmental problems, as "the
new" in another part of the world, as collectibles, as memories,
and as art?
Residual Media grapples with these questions and more in a
wide-ranging and eclectic collection of essays. Beginning with how
cultural change bumps along unevenly, dragging the familiar into
novel contexts, the contributors examine how leftover artifacts can
be rediscovered occupying space in storage sheds, traveling the
globe, converting to alternative uses, and accumulating in
landfills. By exploring reconfigured, renewed, recycled, neglected,
abandoned, and trashed media, the essays here combine theoretical
challenges to media history with ideas, technology, and uses that
have been left behind.
From player pianos to vinyl records, and from the typewriter to
the telephone, Residual Media is an innovative approach to the
aging of culture and reveals that, ultimately, new cultural
phenomena rely on encounters with the old.
Contributors: Jennifer Adams, DePauw U; Jody Berland, York U; Sue
Currell, U of Sussex; Maria DiCenzo, Wilfrid Laurier U; Kate Egan,
U of Wales; Lisa Gitelman, Catholic U; Alison Griffiths, CUNY;
James Hamilton, U of Georgia; James Hay, U of
Illinois--Champaign-Urbana; Michelle Henning, U of the West of
England; Lisa Parks, UC Santa Barbara; Hillegonda C. Rietveld,
South Bank U; Leila Ryan, McMaster U; John Davis, Alfred U;
Collette Snowden, U of South Australia;Jonathan Sterne, McGill U;
JoAnne Stober, National Archives, Canada; Will Straw, McGill U;
Haidee Wasson, Concordia U.
Charles R. Acland is Professor and holds the Concordia University
Research Chair in communications studies at Concordia University,
Montreal.
By exploring the use of film in mid-twentieth-century institutions,
including libraries, museums, classrooms, and professional
organizations, the essays in "Useful Cinema" show how moving images
became an ordinary feature of American life. In venues such as
factories and community halls, people encountered industrial,
educational, training, advertising, and other types of "useful
cinema." Screening these films transformed unlikely spaces,
conveyed ideas, and produced subjects in the service of public and
private aims. Such functional motion pictures helped to shape
common sense about cinema's place in contemporary life. Whether
measured in terms of the number of films shown, the size of
audiences, or the economic activity generated, the "non-theatrical
sector" was a substantial and enduring parallel to the more
spectacular realm of commercial film. In "Useful Cinema," scholars
examine organizations such as UNESCO, the YMCA, the Amateur Cinema
League, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They also consider film
exhibition sites in schools, businesses, and industries. As they
expand understanding of this" other "American cinema, the
contributors challenge preconceived notions about what cinema is.
Contributors. Charles R. Acland, Joseph Clark, Zoe Druick, Ronald
Walter Greene, Alison Griffiths, Stephen Groening, Jennifer Horne,
Kirsten Ostherr, Eric Smoodin, Charles Tepperman, Gregory A.
Waller, Haidee Wasson. Michael Zryd
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