Theodore Dreiser's dissection of the American dream, An American Tragedy, was hailed as the greatest novel of its generation. Now a classic of American literature, the story is one to which Hollywood has repeatedly returned.Hollywood's obsession with this tale of American greed, justice, religion and sexual hypocrisy stretches across the history of cinema. Some of cinema's greatest directors - Sergei Eisenstein, Josef von Sternberg and George Stevens - have attempted to bring this classic story to the screen. Subsequently, both Jean-Luc Godard and Woody Allen have returned to the story and to these earlier adaptations.Hollywood's American Tragedies is the first detailed study of this extraordinary sequence of adaptations. What it reveals is a history of Hollywood - from its politics to its cinematography - and, much deeper, of American culture and the difficulty of telling an American tragedy in the land of the American dream.

""In Your Face" is an acrobat of a book--agile, supple, daring, showy, and brave. . . . a strikingly imaginative text. . . that rarest of things, an academic text that can be read for pleasure as well as illumination."
--"New Formations"

"Merck launches into a complex analysis of the displacement of sex[uality] into representations of the face in a range of texts...a dazzling kaleidoscopic display."
--"Journal of American Studies"

At a time when "sexy" can be an adjective for anything, when sexual awareness is declared to be advancing faster in months than in the past half century, and when pundits warn of sexual overload, the actual representation of sex is still deemed confrontational, aggressive, "in your face." While critics accuse the academy of an obsession with sexuality, they also complain that nothing that appears to refer to sex really does.

In readings ranging across film, drama, opera, fine art, and critical theory, Mandy Merck considers these phenomena as well as the role of the dog in anti-porn propaganda, the unacknowledged significance of the lesbian hand, and the early retirement of the phallus. Other topics include the relationship of women's tennis and prostitution, the gendering of the wild and the tame in the age of AIDS, and the sexlessness of postmodern criticism. In Your Face ends with the face and its alleged desecration by fellatio. Germaine Greer's condemnation of Bill Clinton for "fucking the faces of little girls" is examined in the light of one of Monica Lewinsky's endearments for the President--"fuckface."

In a country whose last great Presidential scandal revolved around a key witness known only as "Deep Throat" and whose currentChief Executive works in the "Oral Office," giving head is going down in history. Analyzing the strange relationship of Linda Lovelace, Camille Paglia, and Paul de Man, In Your Face concludes by considering desire and disgust in high and low places.

An exploration of high-profile women, contemporary and historical, real and fictional, who commit violence against men, this book was originally inspired by the Bobbitt case and reactions to it. In essays on Lindy Chamberlain (the "dingo baby" case), Myra Hindley, Winnie Mandela, Lorena Bobbitt, Rosemary West, Ruth Ellis and "the Brookside Two", among others, the contributors tease out the blurred boundaries between myth and reality which always surround violent women and attempt to demolish the old either/or explanations of powerless victim or evil demon.

At a time when the expanded projection of US political, military, economic and cultural power draws intensified global concern, understanding how that country understands itself seems more important than ever. This collection of new critical essays tackles this old problem in a new way, by examining some of the hundreds of US films that announce themselves as titularly 'American'. From early travelogues to contemporary comedies, national nomination has been an abiding characteristic of American motion pictures, heading the work of Porter, Guy-Blache, DeMille, Capra, Sternberg, Vidor, Minnelli and Mankiewicz. More recently, George Lucas, Paul Schrader, John Landis and Edward James Olmos have made their own contributions to Hollywood's Americana. What does this national branding signify? Which versions of Americanism are valorized, and which marginalized or excluded? Out of which social and historical contexts do they emerge, and for and by whom are they constructed? Edited by Mandy Merck, the collection contains detailed analyses of such films as The Vanishing American, American Madness, An American in Paris, American Graffiti, American Gigolo, American Pie and many more.

At a time when the expanded projection of US political, military, economic and cultural power draws intensified global concern, understanding how that country understands itself seems more important than ever.

This collection of new critical essays tackles this old problem in a new way, by examining some of the hundreds of US films that announce themselves as titularly 'American'. From early travelogues to contemporary comedies, national nomination has been an abiding characteristic of American motion pictures, heading the work of Porter, Guy-Blache, DeMille, Capra, Sternberg, Vidor, Minnelli and Mankiewicz. More recently, George Lucas, Paul Schrader, John Landis and Edward James Olmos have made their own contributions to Hollywood's Americana.

What does this national branding signify? Which versions of Americanism are valorized, and which marginalized or excluded? Out of which social and historical contexts do they emerge, and for and by whom are they constructed?

Edited by Mandy Merck, the collection contains detailed analyses of such films as The Vanishing American, American Madness, An American in Paris, American Graffiti, American Gigolo, American Pie and many more.

First published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor and Francis, an informa company.

"The Sexual Subject" brings together writing on sexuality which has appeared in "Screen" over the past two decades. It reflects the journal's continuing engagement with questions of sexuality and signification in the cinema, an engagement which has had a profound influence on the development of academic study of film and on alternative film and video practice.
The collection opens with Laura Mulvey's classic "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" with its conjunction of semiotics and psychoanalysis, the critical approach which is most closely associated with "Screen"'s rise to international prominence. The Reader then goes on to explore the particular questions and debates which that conjunction provoked: arguments around pornography and the representation of the body; questions of the representation of femininity and masculinity, of the female spectator, and of the social subject.
Many of the writings in "The Sexual Subject" have become indispensable texts within the study of film. The purpose of the collection is not only to make the articles available to a wider readership, and to a new generation, but also to pose new conjunctions, making connections between debates and inquiries which spanned two crucial decades of film theory.
"The Sexual Subject" is intended not only for all those with an interest in film and film theory, but for anyone with a commitment to cultural theory, theories of representation, and questions of sexuality and gender.
Contributors: Homi Bhabha, Edward Buscombe, Mary Ann Doane, Richard Dyer, John Ellis, Christine Gledhill, Stephen Heath, Claire Johnston, Annette Kuhn, Alan Lovell, Laura Mulvey, Steve Neale, Claire Pajaczowska, GriseldaPollock, Jackie Stacey, Leslie Stern, Paul Willemen, Christopher Williams, Dugald Williamson.

""In Your Face" is an acrobat of a book--agile, supple, daring, showy, and brave. . . . a strikingly imaginative text. . . that rarest of things, an academic text that can be read for pleasure as well as illumination."
--"New Formations"

"Merck launches into a complex analysis of the displacement of sex[uality] into representations of the face in a range of texts...a dazzling kaleidoscopic display."
--"Journal of American Studies"

At a time when "sexy" can be an adjective for anything, when sexual awareness is declared to be advancing faster in months than in the past half century, and when pundits warn of sexual overload, the actual representation of sex is still deemed confrontational, aggressive, "in your face." While critics accuse the academy of an obsession with sexuality, they also complain that nothing that appears to refer to sex really does.

In readings ranging across film, drama, opera, fine art, and critical theory, Mandy Merck considers these phenomena as well as the role of the dog in anti-porn propaganda, the unacknowledged significance of the lesbian hand, and the early retirement of the phallus. Other topics include the relationship of women's tennis and prostitution, the gendering of the wild and the tame in the age of AIDS, and the sexlessness of postmodern criticism. In Your Face ends with the face and its alleged desecration by fellatio. Germaine Greer's condemnation of Bill Clinton for "fucking the faces of little girls" is examined in the light of one of Monica Lewinsky's endearments for the President--"fuckface."

In a country whose last great Presidential scandal revolved around a key witness known only as "Deep Throat" and whose currentChief Executive works in the "Oral Office," giving head is going down in history. Analyzing the strange relationship of Linda Lovelace, Camille Paglia, and Paul de Man, In Your Face concludes by considering desire and disgust in high and low places.

Challenging the study of both celebrity and the cinema, Mandy Merck argues that modern fame and film melodrama are part of the same worldview, one that cannot resolve the relation of personal worth to social esteem. Tracing the history of this conundrum back to the philosophy of the 17th century and the theatre of the 18th, she demonstrates its convergence in stage melodrama and its intensification in the Hollywood star system. Are today’s celebrities worth our attention? In that demand for judgement and the hope for its visual guidance, the melodramatic imagination survives – permeating not only fiction film, but documentary, the artist’s film, and our self-exhibition on social media. Examining a range of classical and contemporary films from Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (1931) to Laura Poitras’s Citizenfour (2014) , the many remakes of A Star Is Born, the compulsory exhibitionism of political celebrity and the unmasking of whistle-blowers, Merck illustrates the ways in which the cinema constantly restages the moral evaluation of prominent individuals, whether they are actors, artists, politicians or activists.

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, was met by the deepest mourning of the twentieth century. Two and a half billion people worldwide watched the funeral on television, floral tributes flooded London's royal parks and sprung up, too, in small towns in Texas, conspiracy theories ricocheted around the Internet, commemorative stamps were issued in newly communist Hong Kong. Press coverage of the death was also unprecedented in both its scale and uniformity. Yet, in an enormous welter of schmaltz, very little was said about the meaning of what had occurred-whether Tony Blair's public emoting heralded a new kind of politics; what, if anything, the anguish of so many who never knew Diana in person revealed about modern society; how the intertwining of the ideas of celebrity and victim, physical beauty and moral worth, affected people's responses; what was implied for the future of the royal family. For those perplexed by the events surrounding Diana's death, this book provides some answers. Insisting that all aspects of the affair are open to investigation, that nothing (and especially not royalty) is sacred, it brings together a group of distinguished writers whose primary interest is to analyze the death rather than lament it. Contributors: Mark Auge, Jean Baudrillard, Sarah Benton, Homi K. Bhabha, Mark Cousins, Alexander Cockburn, Richard Coles, Regis Debray, Francoise Gaillard, Peter Ghosh, Christopher Hird, Christopher Hitchens, Linda Holt, Sara Maitland, Ross McKibbin, Mandy Merck, Tom Nairn, Glen Newey, Naomi Segal, Dorothy Thompson, Francis Wheen, Judith Williamson, and Elizabeth Wilson.

Moving images of the British monarchy are almost as old as the moving image itself, dating back to an 1895 American drama, The Execution of Mary Queen of Scots. And from 1896, actual British monarchs appeared in the new 'animated photography', led by Queen Victoria. Half a century later the 1953 coronation of Elizabeth II was a milestone in the adoption of television, watched by 20 million Britons and 100 million North Americans. At the century's end, Princess Diana's funeral was viewed by 2.5 billion worldwide. In the first book length examination of film and television representations of this enduring institution, distinguished scholars of media and political history analyze the screen representations of royalty from Henry VIII to 'William and Kate'. Seventeen essays by Ian Christie, Elisabeth Bronfen, Andrew Higson, Karen Lury, Glynn Davies, Jane Landman and other international commentators examine the portrayal of royalty in the 'actuality' picture, the early extended feature, amateur cinema, the movie melodrama, the Commonwealth documentary, New Queer Cinema, TV current affairs, the big screen ceremonial and the post-historical boxed set. A long overdue contribution to film and television studies, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students of British media and political history. -- .

Challenging the study of both celebrity and the cinema, Mandy Merck argues that modern fame and film melodrama are part of the same worldview, one that cannot resolve the relation of personal worth to social esteem. Tracing the history of this conundrum back to the philosophy of the seventeenth century and the theatre of the eighteenth, she demonstrates its convergence in stage melodrama and its intensification in the Hollywood star system. Are today's celebrities worth our attention? In that demand for judgement and the hope for its visual guidance, the melodramatic imagination survives - permeating not only fiction film, but documentary, the artist's film, and our self-exhibition on social media. Examining a range of classical and contemporary films from Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (1931) to Laura Poitras's Citizenfour (2014) , the many remakes of A Star Is Born, the compulsory exhibitionism of political celebrity and the unmasking of whistle-blowers, Merck illustrates the ways in which the cinema constantly restages the moral evaluation of prominent individuals, whether they are actors, artists, politicians or activists.

In this series of provocative essays on culture, art, and film, former Screen editor Mandy Merck explores the paradoxes of sexual representation. Whether writing on romantic fiction or hardcore pornography, on robots or sex goddesses, Radclyffe Hall or the Marquis de Sade, she finds the perversions and deviances. Illustrated.

The Sexual Subject brings together writing on sexuality which has appeared in ^Screen over the past two decades. It reflects the journal's continuing engagement with questions of sexuality and signification in the cinema, an engagement which has had a profound influence on the development of the academic study of film and on alternative film and video practice.
The collection opens with Laura Mulvey's classic "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" with its conjunction of semiotics and psychoanalysis, the critical approach which is most closely associated with Screen's rise to international prominence. The reader then goes on to explore the particular questions and debates which that conjuction provoked: arguments around pornography and the represenation of the body: questions of the representation of femininity and masculinity, of the female spectator, and of the social subject.
Many of the writings in this Reader have become indispensable texts within the study of film. The purpose of the Reader is not only to make the articles available to a wider readership, and to a new generation, but also to pose new conjunctions, making connections in one volume between debates and inquiries which spanned two crucial decades of film theory.
The Sexual Subject is intended not only for all those with a particular interest in film and film theory, but for anyone with a serious commitment to cultural theory, theories of representation, and questions of sexuality and gender.

Theodore Dreiser's dissection of the American dream, An American Tragedy, was hailed as the greatest novel of its generation. Now a classic of American literature, the story is one to which Hollywood has repeatedly returned.Hollywood's obsession with this tale of American greed, justice, religion and sexual hypocrisy stretches across the history of cinema. Some of cinema's greatest directors - Sergei Eisenstein, Josef von Sternberg and George Stevens - have attempted to bring this classic story to the screen. Subsequently, both Jean-Luc Godard and Woody Allen have returned to the story and to these earlier adaptations.Hollywood's American Tragedies is the first detailed study of this extraordinary sequence of adaptations. What it reveals is a history of Hollywood - from its politics to its cinematography - and, much deeper, of American culture and the difficulty of telling an American tragedy in the land of the American dream.