Cinema and Cultural ModernityThis volume carves a lucid path through the central debates of film and cinema studies and explores these in their social and political contexts. The book includes histories of the ways in which we view Hollywood's global dominance, up to the development of late modernity and the declaration of postmodernity. In an accessible fashion, it discusses changing theorizations of the economics, audiences, and fascinations of cinema, addressing concepts such as agency, negotiation and identification, and global popularity within contemporary cultures of celebrity, consumption and the visual. Gill Branston outlines the need for cinema study that is both sensitive to the formal textiness of films, but also less anxious about arguing for its position within broad agendas of representation. At the same time, the author links such areas to both the pleasures of consumption, which cinema so often evokes and embodies, and to the need for a new, critical politics to address the persistent inequalities of modernity, inequalities which still fuel lively interest in questions of representation. |
Contents
HOLLYWOOD HISTORIES | 6 |
Movies as culture industries | 17 |
Classical or standardized? | 29 |
Copyright | |
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actors advertising aesthetic American argued audiences authorship blockbusters body Bordwell British Film British Film Institute budget celebrated Chapter character Classical Hollywood Cinema constructed consumer contemporary contexts critical cultural debates director discourses distribution dominant Dyer economic emphases ence entertainment especially ethnic example explore fans fantasy female feminism feminist Feminist Film Theory fictions Film Studies film-making film's forms Frankfurt School genre global Gomery groups high concept Hitchcock huge identity identity politics ideological individual industry Internet involved kinds London look major male Maltby and Craven marketing meaning modern Mulvey Mulvey's narrative partly performance play pleasures political popular post-structuralist post-studio postmodern processes production psychoanalysis Pulp Fiction questions realism relation representation role screen seen semiotic sense sexuality social spectator star image status stereotypes structuralist structures studio system suggests term texts textual Thelma and Louise Toy Story usually viewers visual women