Film: styles and genres Books

Book SynopsisThe swimming pool frequently appears in film not merely as a setting but as a dynamic site where social, political, cultural and aesthetic forces converge. What is it about this space that has so fascinated filmmakers and what kinds of cinematic investigations does it encourage? This collection features essays by an eclectic, international range of film researchers. Amongst the works analysed are classics such as The Cameraman (1928), The Philadelphia Story (1940) and La Piscine (1969); cult hits such as The Swimmer (1968) and Deep End (1970); and more recent representations of the pool in Water Lilies (2007), Sea Point Days (2009) and Ausente (2011). The pool is considered as a realm where artifice meets nature, where public meets private, where sexualities morph and blend; and as a space that reconfigures the relationship between architecture and narrative, in which themes of pollution, spectacle and reflexivity find unique expression. Approaching the swimming pool from a wide range of methodological perspectives, the essays in this collection stake a claim for the enduring significance of this exciting cinematic space.Table of ContentsContents: Christopher Brown/Pam Hirsch: Introduction: The Cinema of the Swimming Pool – Chris O’Rourke: The Municipal Plunge: Silent Cinema and the Social Life of Swimming Pools – Sheri Chinen Biesen: Cinematic Comedy and the Swimming Pool: Gender, Class, Coming of Age and Sexual Identity from The Philadelphia Story (1940) to Legally Blonde (2001) – Alex Naylor: ‘The Anatomy of Atavism’: American Urban Modernity, Gothic Trauma and Haunted Spaces in Cat People (1942) – Edward Saunders: From Stadium to Street: Generations and Gentrification in Berlin Pool Scenes – Axel Andersson: The Artifice of Modernity: Alienation by the Pool Side in the Cinema of Michelangelo Antonioni – Christopher Brown: The Pools of The Swimmer (1968): Exurbia, Topography, Decay – François Penz: Atmosphère d’Eau Sauvage: Reflections on La Piscine (1969) – Pam Hirsch: A Dangerous Age: Deep End (1970) – Rose Hepworth: Staging Embarrassment in The Last Picture Show (1971) and Morvern Callar (2002) – Monika Keska: Filming the Splash: David Hockney’s Swimming Pools on Film – Clara Garavelli: The Swimming Pool as a Site of Subversion during the Spanish Transition: The Case of Pepito piscina (1978) – Matilda Mroz: The Aesthetics of Overflow: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Nostalghia (1983) in Duration – Micah Trippe: Urban Guerilla Playfare, or Skating through Empty Cinematic Pools in Dogtown and Z Boys (2001) – Sophie Mayer: Gutta cavat lapidem: The Sonorous Politics of Lucrecia Martel’s Swimming Pools – Emma Wilson: ‘The sea nymphs tested this miracle’: Water Lilies (2007) and the Origin of Coral – Piotr Cieplak: Swimming in Post-apartheid Cape Town: Sea Point Days (2009) – Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns: Cartographies of Desire: Swimming Pools and the Queer Gaze.

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Book SynopsisThis book offers a comprehensive study of the role of dance in a wide range of contemporary Irish plays and argues that dance can be perceived as exemplifying the re-embracement of bodily expression by the local culture. The author approaches this issue from a cultural materialist perspective, demonstrating that dance in twentieth-century Ireland was particularly prone to ideological appropriation and that, consequently, its use in contemporary drama often serves to communicate critical and revisionist approaches to the social, economic and political concerns addressed in these plays. The book makes a valuable contribution to current debates about the nature of Irish theatre, investigating recent changes to its traditional, text-based character. These are examined within two important contexts: firstly, transformations in the perception of the human body in Irish culture and, secondly, changes in the attitude of the Irish towards their past and their cultural heritage.Table of ContentsContents: Investigating Dance in Irish Drama – Irish Dance and its Transformations in the Twentieth Century – Dance in Pre-Nationalist Times – Dance in Nationalist Times – Dance in Post-Nationalist Times – The Changing Dynamics of Irish Drama and Tradition.

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Book SynopsisFrom Supernanny to Gilmore Girls, from Katie Price to Holly Willoughby, a wide range of examples of mothers and motherhood appear on television today. Drawing on questionnaires completed by mothers across the UK, this book sheds new light on the varied and diverse ways in which expectant, new and existing mothers make sense of popular representations of motherhood on television. The volume examines the ways in which these women find pleasure, empowerment, escapist fantasy, displeasure and frustration in popular depictions of motherhood. The research seeks to present the voice of the maternal audience and, as such, it takes as its starting point those maternal depictions and motherwork representations that are highlighted by this demographic, including figures such as Tess Daly and Katie Hopkins and programmes like TeenMom and Kirstie Allsopp’s œuvre.Table of ContentsContents: Media methods research: Finding audiences and giving a voice to mothers – Maternal preferences: From ordinary celebrity to the sitcom star – Emulation, not identification: Sartorial styles, domestic skills and maternal discipline – Bad mothers and poor role models: Maternal inadequacy and the problem of perfection – Conclusion: A call for maternal diversity.

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Book SynopsisMapping Cinematic Norths presents an international range of research and enquiry into the significance, representation and manipulation of depictions of the ‘North’ in cinema and television. Northern landscapes, soundscapes, characters and narratives are defined and recognized as distinctive image-spaces within film and television. However, the ‘North’ is portrayed, exploited and interpreted in divergent ways by filmmakers and film audiences worldwide, and this volume sheds new light on these varying perspectives. Bringing together the work of established and emerging academics as well as practising filmmakers, this collection offers new critical insights into the coalescence of North-ness on screen, exploring examples from Britain, Scandinavia, continental Europe, Australia and the United States. With contextual consideration and close readings, these essays investigate concepts of the North on film from generic, national, aesthetic, theoretical, institutional and archival perspectives, charting and challenging the representations and preconceptions of the idea of North-ness across cultural and cinematic heritages.

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Book SynopsisDivorce is a conspicuous character trait of modernity, commonly portrayed in texts and on screen, with its moral and social rationalisation firmly rooted in Enlightenment and Romantic thought. The aim of this volume is to bring into focus this contemporary cultural fascination by assembling the variety of academic responses it has started to create. Bringing together the reflections of scholars from the UK and North America who have worked in this domain, this study offers for the first time a genuinely wide-ranging account of the depiction of divorce across the northern hemisphere in a number of media (fiction, journalism, film and television). It reaches historically from the intellectual and legal aftermath of the Enlightenment right up to the present day. As such, the collection shows both the roots of this apparently contemporary phenomenon in nineteenth-century literary practice and the very particular ways in which divorce characterises the different narrative media of modernity.

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Book SynopsisThe papers collected in this volume are selected from the proceedings of the Love and Sexuality conference held at the University of Leeds in 2002. They bring together a cross-section of new directions in the study of love and sexuality currently being explored in French Studies. The central focus of the collection is the representation of love, desire, erotica and sexuality in the couple, in particular in relation to depictions of women. The contributions share a common concern with problematising issues of love and sexuality across various disciplines, focusing on literary texts, cinema, gender studies, theatre studies, history, visual iconography and cultural studies, and ranging from the sixteenth century to the present day.

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Book SynopsisPictures of the Mind is the first integrated study of Surrealist photography and film, assessing the impact of early experimental practice and theoretical discourse on prominent post-war trends in art house cinema. Roland Barthes’s interpretation of the photographic image, alongside Jacques Derrida’s concepts of spectrality and trace, underscore an exploration of the recurrent references to the phantomatic aspect of photography and film in Surrealist theoretical writings and practice. The analysis uses Derrida’s account of the uncanny to shed light on the Surrealist conception of photographic and film images as mental constructs, or pictures of the mind, rather than mere visual representations. This leads to a consideration of the similarities between the Surrealist conception of beauty as fixed-explosive and Gilles Deleuze’s theory of the time-image as applied to Luis Buñuel’s films. Ultimately, the impact of Surrealism on post-war cinema is assessed as part of a wider consideration of the status of photographic and filmic images in the age of digital cinema. The elaboration of an aesthetics of spectrality in early Surrealism is shown to have had lasting implications for a range of post-war filmmakers such as Chris Marker, Maya Deren, Nelly Kaplan, Federico Fellini, Andrei Tarkovsky, Jan Svankmajer, Akira Kurosawa, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Guillermo del Toro, Guy Maddin, Terry Gilliam and David Lynch.Table of ContentsCONTENTS: Spectral Bodies: Visualizing the Unconscious – Latent Images: Found Objects – Camera Obscura: From Precision Optics to Film – Postmodern Surrealism: Film in the Age of Virtual Reality.

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Book SynopsisThis is the first book to analyse the cultural representations of female identity that were created by the interaction between choreography and literary writing in German modernism. It explores the connections between dance, literature and gender discourses with a focus on a key period of the Austro-German dance scene: the years between 1900 and 1933. Drawing on influential feminist and gender theories, this book evaluates the choreographies of leading artists such as Grete Wiesenthal, Mary Wigman, Valeska Gert, Anita Berber, and the sensational ‘dream’ dancer Madeleine Guipet. In response to growing criticism of ballet, German modern dance reflected and helped shape a reassessment of images of the female, embracing both essentialist and constructionist models of femininity. It also triggered a range of literary responses from dance artists themselves and from contemporary authors – some high-profile, others less well known. This interdisciplinary work offers analyses and part-translations of texts by Alfred Döblin, Frank Wedekind and Carl Sternheim, amongst others, which have to date received little attention in Anglo-American cultural studies due to their unavailability in English.Table of ContentsContents: Feminist Perspectives – Ballet: Its Critics and Its Decline – Female Expression in Modern Dance – Radical Avantgarde Choreography – The Crisis of Modern Dance.

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Book SynopsisThis book examines Duras’s contribution to contemporary cinema. The ‘dark room’ in the collection’s title refers to one of Duras’s metaphors for the writing process, la chambre noire, as the solitary space of literary creation, the place where she struggles to project her ‘internal shadow’ onto the blank page. The dark room is also a metaphor for the film theater and, by extension, for the filmic experience. Duras rejected conventional forms of cinematic address that encourage the spectator to develop a positive identification with the film’s diegesis and narrative. Her films create unusual rapports between image and sound, diegetic and extra-diegetic elements, and textual and intertextual dimensions of cinematic representation. In doing so, they allow the film spectator to establish new connections with the screen. This collection focuses on the aesthetic, conceptual, and political challenges involved in Duras’s innovative approach to cinematic representation, from an interdisciplinar perspective including film and literary theory, psychoanalytic analysis, music theory, gender studies, and post-colonial criticism. The book opens with a theoretical introduction to Duras’s cinematic practice and its peculiar position in contemporary cinema and contemporary film theory and is divided into five parts, each one devoted to a specific aspect of Duras’s films: the interaction between literature and cinema (Part One); the reconfiguration of the cinematic gaze (Part Two) and of the image/sound relation (Part Three); the representation of history and memory (Part Four) and of cultural identity (Part Five).Table of ContentsContents: Foreword by Annette Förster – Rosanna Maule: Introduction: Marguerite Duras, la grande imagière – Madeleine Borgomano: The Image of Cinema in The Sea Wall – Catherine Dhavernas: Cinema and the Destruction of the Text in the Work of Marguerite Duras – Cécile Hanania: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Cinematic References in Marguerite Duras’s Texts – Julie Beaulieu: The Poetics of Cinematic Writing: Marguerite Duras and Maya Deren – Michelle Royer: Writing, the Writing Self and the Cinema of Marguerite Duras – Bruno Lessard: ‘Disparaître, dit-elle’: The Vanishing of Lol V. Stein as (Dis)Embodied Haunting and Invisible Spectacle – Tammy A. Kinsey: ‘You Saw Nothing’: Duras’s Cinematic Language – Dong Liang: Marguerite Duras’s Aural World: A Study of the Mise en son of India Song – Lynsey Russell-Watts: Analysing Sound and Voice: Refiguring Approaches to the Films of the ‘Indian Cycle’ – Sandy Flitterman-Lewis: Nevers, mon souvenir: Marguerite Duras, History, and the Secret Heart of Hiroshima mon amour – Thomas Stubblefield: Love and the Burden of Memory in Duras’s Ten-Thirty on a Summer Night and Moderato Cantabile – Alwin Baum: Le Ravissement de l’autre: Subjective Exile and Semiotic Subversion in Duras’s Écriture filmique – Muriel Walker: Taboo Love between Text and Image in the Works of Marguerite Duras and Assia Djebar.

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Book SynopsisThis book is the first ever full-length study of the reception of British cinema in post-war France, challenging François Truffaut’s infamous dismissal of British cinema as ‘a contradiction in terms’, a comment which has been, and still is, widely reproduced, yet has until now remained critically unexplored. A historical account, the book gathers together well-known episodes (such as Cahiers du cinéma in the 1950s) and critics (André Bazin, François Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard), along with original new material, and thus throws new light on a topic which, given the influential nature of French film criticism and cinephilia, continues to be at the core of film culture.Table of ContentsContents: Realism and ‘Impure’ cinema: the positive reception of British cinema after WWII – François Truffaut and the New Wave: the vilification of British cinema – The creation of an alternative canon: Positif, Midi-Minuit fantastique, British horror and the fantastic – The ‘return of the social’: Ken Loach in the pantheon – Contemporary press reviews – Interviews with French and British film critics Jean-Paul Török and V.F. Perkins.

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Book SynopsisThis book contributes to a growing corpus of writing on the body, bringing new perspectives to this fascinating and topical subject. Feminist, psychoanalytic and queer readings, among others, have demonstrated the extent of the functions and roles fulfilled by the body, as well as the number of critical perspectives it can serve. However, by and large, African representations of the body have been overlooked. This coherent volume brings together essays on the portrayal of the body in African art, film, literature, photography and theatre. The book includes thematically linked contributions which explore issues of power and representation, and reflects current trends in the study of the body and more broadly within the field of African Studies.Table of ContentsContents: Charlotte Baker: Introduction: Expressions of the Body in African Text and Image – Ndubuisi Ezeluomba: Powerful Representations: The Human Body in Eighteenth Century Benin Art – Fetson Kalua: Claiming the Body: Unity Dow’s The Screaming of the Innocent – Serazer Pekerman: The Framed Intimacy of Becoming-Woman: The Representation of the Mutilated Body in Ousmane Sembène’s Moolaadé – Kevin Dumouchelle: Beyond the Body Boundary: Queer(y)ing the Photographs of Rotimi Fani-Kayode and Samuel Fosso – Brenda Schmahmann: Bodily Issues as Subject Matter: Abjection in the Works of Penny Siopis and Berni Searle – Médard Djatou: The ‘Wrong’ Colour? Representations and Perceptions of Albinism among the Bamileke of Western Cameroon – John Masterson: Posing, Exposing, Opposing: Accounting for Contested (Corpo)Realities in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun – Kevin McCarron: The Powerful and the Powerless: African, African American Bodies and Imprisonment – Laura Mann: Breeze from an Open Door: Foreign Spirits, National Bodies and Egyptian Imaginative Resistance – Isabel Hollis: Metamorphoses in Migration: Fawzia Zouari’s Ce pays dont je meurs – Thomas Spreelin MacDonald: Shifting Bodies: Death and the Public Function of Post-Apartheid South African Literature – Heather Hewett: Translating Desire: Exile and Leila Aboulela’s Poetics of Embodiment – Charlotte Baker/Patricia Lund: A Visible Difference: Images of Black African People with Albinism – Natasha Gordon-Chipembere: Claiming Sarah Baartman: The Politics of Representing Black Women in the Twenty-First Century – Laurian R. Bowles: Imaging Migrant Women and the Embodied Market: Accra, Ghana – Anne Harris: Performativity, Identity and the ‘Found Girls’ of Africa: Sudanese Women Talk Education.

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Book SynopsisDiscussions of French ‘identity’ have frequently emphasised the importance of a highly centralised Republican model inherited from the Revolution. In reality, however, France also has a rich heritage of diversity that has often found expression in contingent sub-cultures marked by marginalisation and otherness – whether social, religious, gendered, sexual, linguistic or ethnic. This range of sub-cultures and variety of ways of thinking the ‘other’ underlines the fact that ‘norms’ can only exist by the concomitant existence of difference(s). The essays in this collection, which derive from the conference ‘Alienation and Alterity: Otherness in Modern and Contemporary Francophone Contexts’, held at the University of Exeter in September 2007, explore various aspects of this diversity in French and Francophone literature, culture, and cinema from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century. The contributions demonstrate that while alienation (from a cultural ‘norm’ and also from oneself) can certainly be painful and problematic, it is also a privileged position which allows the ‘étranger’ to consider the world and his/her relationship to it in an ‘other’ way.Table of ContentsContents: Helen Vassallo/Paul Cooke: Introduction – Owen Heathcote: Queer Nation, Queer Alienation? Avatars of Monsieur Vénus – Oliver Davis: Guillaume Dustan’s ‘autopornobiographie’: Is There Room for Trash in the Queer Subcultural Archive? – Brigitte Rollet : Altérité textuelle et sexuelle ? Le cinéma populaire français contemporain et l’homosexualité – Andrew Asibong: Viral Women: Singular, Collective and Progressive Infection in Hiroshima mon amour, Les Yeux sans visage and Trouble Every Day – Martin Hurcombe: Back to Spain: Commitment in Crisis in Four French Novels of the Spanish Civil War (1958-1962) – Eva Pich-Ponce : Aliénation ou la recherche de l’altérité dans Un Joualonais sa Joualonie de Marie-Claire Blais – John Kristian Sanaker/David-Alexandre Wagner : Hétérolinguisme filmique : l’exemple du cinéma de banlieue – Nicole Fayard: ‘Faire parler ces femmes […] les libérer. Parce que dans les quartiers, on ne dit rien’: Alienation, Sexual Violence and Textual Survival in the Work of Jamila Aït-Abbas, Samira Bellil, Leila and Loubna Méliane – Fiona Handyside: The Margins Don’t Have to Be Marginal: The banlieue in the Films of Eric Rohmer – Benjamin Andréo : ‘Exercices d’exorcisme’ : les sorts et glossolalies artaldiens ou la pragmatique de l’altérité – Louise Hardwick: ‘Est-ce cela être « aliéné» ?’ Alienation in Maryse Condé’s Le Cœur à rire et à pleurer – Kate Roy: A Multiple Otherness: Beginning with Difference in the Writing of Leïla Sebbar – Jeanne Hyvrard : Penser l’aliénation et l’altérité.

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Book SynopsisThis book focuses on the mother-daughter relationship as it features in a number of films from the 1990s onwards. Bringing the insights of psychoanalysis and feminism to bear on a diverse and compelling range of representations of the mother-daughter dynamic, the author addresses a range of questions relating to the social, historical and cultural conditions which go to inform the female experience. These include, in relation to Dolores Claiborne, Heavenly Creatures and The Others, an exploration of different forms of familial violence and resistance to it and in One True Thing, Stepmom and Pieces of April, questions about the construction of the ideal mother and her loss. From The Piano’s engagement with French feminism and Losing Chase’s reworking of the life and work of Virginia Woolf to the depiction of cross-racial relationships during apartheid in Friends, the films that go to make up this study all share a central concern with both the literal and symbolic forms that the mother-daughter relationship encompasses.Table of ContentsContents: Maternal aesthetics – Cross-racial surrogacy – Matricide and the ideal mother – Framing the mother – Thinking back through the Woolfian mother – The spectral mother – The death of the mother – Feminist ideology and the maternal – The mother-daughter plot.

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Book SynopsisThis work presents a detailed study of the five key ballet organisations that operated in Ireland between 1927 and 1963: the Abbey Theatre School of Ballet, the Abbey School of Ballet, the Sara Payne School and Company, the Irish Ballet Club and the National Ballet School and Company. By examining a previously neglected dimension of Irish artistic life, this study aims to provide a greater appreciation of the various roles that ballet has played in the development of Irish cultural activity. It records the rich interaction between the different dance artists and movements and their collaborators across the entire spectrum of Irish artistic endeavour, including Cecil ffrench Salkeld, F. R. Higgins, Mainie Jellett, Patrick Kavanagh, J. F. Larchet, Louis le Brocquy, Elizabeth Maconchy, Donagh MacDonagh, Brinsley MacNamara, Micheál Mac Laimmóir, Norah McGuinness, A. J. Potter, Lennox Robinson, Michael Bowles, Mary Devenport O’Neill, Anne Yeats and W. B. Yeats. This book breaks significant new ground for an area in which little published information exists. The author pieces together research on the schools and companies from interviews, ballet programmes, playbills, libretti, scores, memoirs, contemporary press reviews, literary articles and photographs, to form a fascinating narrative of the under-researched world of Irish ballet.Trade Review«(...) this book is an important contribution to dance scholarship. [...] It not only documents a lost period but also opens up other areas of scholarship and even the possibility of restaging forgotten works. Supplementing O’Brien’s painstaking research are the memories of key dancers, such as Ester Ó Brolcháin, who provide the valuable narrative behind posters and programmes.» (Michael Seaver, The Irish Times) «(...) this is an important book, and O’Brien has laid the groundwork for other researchers to further explore the artists and characters of this lost history of Irish performance.» (Sara Keating, The Sunday Business Post)Table of ContentsContents: Review of Literature – The Abbey Theatre School of Ballet – The Continuation of The Abbey School of Ballet – The Irish Ballet Club – The National Ballet School and Company – An Assessment of the Five Ballet Histories.

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Book SynopsisIn the 1990s U.S. and British adaptations of Jane Austen novels enjoyed unprecedented popularity. To find out why, one has to revise and go beyond what has dominated in the discussion of these films: the fidelity-to-the-novel-discourse and the influence-of-national-cinema-discourse. Thus, in this book film theory, film history, various kinds of film analysis (structural, feminist, Marxist) and literary analysis are combined. From these angles, the 1990s and previous Austen films are studied and compared, two of them in detail: the 1995 U.S. feature film Sense and Sensibility and the 1995 British telefilm Persuasion. This analysis shows: the 1990s Austen films, though reflecting certain features of British and Hollywood cinema and not greatly deviating from the novels, are independent works of art; also, they are products of their time, displaying, for instance, a liberal feminist attitude and criticism of class distinctions.

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Book SynopsisStriving to leave fidelity-criticism behind, this comparative analysis treats Henry James’ Portrait of a Lady and its cinematic counterpart by Jane Campion as complementary versions of Isabel’s story. The graphic integration of stills functioning as visual evidence emphasizes the dialogic quality of this comparison based on non-essentialist feminist and post-structuralist principles. Mainly focusing on literary and visual strategies employed by both media to represent wo/men on page and screen, this analysis shows how those strategies result in a non-affirmative realism preventing both novel and movie from killing their ‘ladies’ into art.Table of ContentsContents: Self-Reflexive Acts of Framing – Framing Buildings, Framing Minds - On Houses, Prisons, Convention(s) – Narcissism’s Empty Mirrors – Isabel, Osmond, and Emerson - What’s Love Got to Do With It? – Convention Incarnate: Osmond as the World’s ‘Evil Eye’ – Observing the Proprieties - Falling for Merle – Caught in Convention’s Cage – The House of Darkness – Preferring Osmond – Consummate Pieces Cosumed: The Ball of Convention – Convention Contextualized – Imperfect Closure - Perfect Endings – Non-Affirmative Realism.

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Book Synopsis«This collection of essays provides new perspectives on reading, reinterpreting, appropriating and popularising Shakespeare through the work of women – actresses, directors, designers, translators and scholars from different cultural, social and political, mostly non-English speaking, contexts. Raising a wide variety of urgent issues relating not only to Shakespeare but also to the arts, to gender matters, and to postcolonial and ethnic studies, this volume advocates both the illumination of the often neglected, forgotten and rarely appreciated women – who deserve the spotlight of attention on an international level – and the need for revisions in Shakespearean studies, which are dominated by cultural sameness of prevalently male professionals.» (Prof. Dr. habil. Bożenna Chylińska, Institute of English Studies, University of Warsaw)Table of ContentsContents: Kathryn Prince: «True Originall Copies»: Charlotte Lennox’s Shakespear Illustrated, Originality, Invention, and Eighteenth-Century Shakespeare Reception – Catherine M.S. Alexander: Shakespeare and the Unsexed Females – Anna Cetera: Woman, Thy Name is Embarrassment! The Princess and the Playwright – Nita N. Kumar: «Shakespeare Is a Black Woman»: African American Women Writers and Shakespeare – Giovanna Buonanno: Shakespeare and the Nineteenth-century Italian International Actress: Adelaide Ristori as Lady Macbeth – Krystyna Kujawińska Courtney: «Born outside the Magic Pale of the Anglo-Saxon Race»: Political and Personal Dimension of Helena Modjeska’s Contribution to Shakespeare Studies – Yoshiko Kawachi: Madame Sadayakko: The First Shakespearean Actress in Japan - On Her Contribution toward Modernizing the Stage – Rosemary Gaby: Taking Shakespeare to the Edge of the World: Leading Ladies on Tour in Colonial Australia – Deb Narayan Bandyopadhyay: «Women of Ill-fame» and Shakespeare Performance in Colonial Bengal – Laurence Wright: «Most Fearful Hard Work»: Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Marda Vanne and the «Good Companions» in South Africa – Donna Woodford-Gormley: The Woman behind the Mask: Cuban Women and Shakespeare – Anna Kamaralli: Revisionism or Fresh Vision? Silence, Speech and the Female Director – Xenia Georgopoulou: Shakespeare’s Magic Mirror: The Work of Raia Mouzenidou – Julie Sutherland: «Never Conquered nor Possessed»: Shakespeare in Native Canada and Québec in the Late Twentieth and Early Twenty-First Centuries – Margarida Gandara Rauen: On Shakespeare by Brazilian Women.

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Book SynopsisIn this study, the author examines works of German-language literature and film from the nineteenth and twentieth century in order to chart a certain kind of otherness. Common to all of the examined cultural products are aspects of gender, sexuality, a notion of home or belonging, and pressures of abjection. Other elements of identity include race and disease. The characters in the analyzed works encounter both mutual dependence and abhorrence, which complicate their experiences in space and time. This analysis demonstrates that acceptance and belonging are difficult to attain, particularly in the fraught power dynamics in these works. This book includes discussions of works by Frank Wedekind, Robert Musil, Kutluğ Ataman, and Pierre Sanoussi-Bliss.Table of ContentsContents: Othering, Abjection, and Belonging – Young Corporeality and Unstable Morality in Frank Wedekind’s Frühlings Erwachen – Discipline, Sexual Complicity, and Queer Space in Robert Musil’s Törleß – Transnationalism, Identity, and Fantasy in Kutluğ Ataman’s Lola und Bilidikid – Nation, HIV/AIDS, and Sexuality in Pierre Sanoussi-Bliss’s Zurück auf los.

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Book SynopsisSexy Girls, Heroes and Funny Losers: Gender Representations in Children’s TV around the World presents the most comprehensive study to date of gender images on children’s television. Conducted in 24 countries around the world, the study employed different methodologies and analyses. The findings illustrate how stereotypes of femininity and masculinity are constructed and promoted to children. It presents findings that may well require even the most cynical observer to admit that, despite some great strides, children’s television worldwide is still a very conservative force that needs to be reimagined and transformed!Table of ContentsContents: Maya Götz/Dafna Lemish: Preface - How It All Began – Maya Götz/Dafna Lemish: Introduction – Maya Götz/Dafna Lemish: Gender Representations in Children’s Television Worldwide: A Comparative Study of 24 Countries – Maya Götz/Margit Herche: «Wasp Waists and V-Shape Torso». Measuring the Body of the «Global» Girl and Boy in Animated Children’s Programs – Jeanne Prinsloo: Seductive Little Girls on Children’s TV: Sexualization and Gender Relations – Damien Spry: «Make Her Skinnier, Make Her Curvier»: Sexualised Girlhood in Japanese Cartoons – Maya Götz/Gunter Neubauer/Reinhard Winter: Heroes, Planners and Funny Losers: Masculinities Represented in Male Characters in Children’s TV – Elke Schlote: How Diverse Are Superheroines? Ethnically Diverse Girl Characters in Globalized Children’s TV – Dafna Lemish: «Without a Family»: Representation of Families in Children’s TV around the World – Kara Chan: Consumerism and Gender in Children’s Television – Maya Götz/Margit Herche: «What Really Annoys Me about the Way Girls and Boys Are Portrayed in Children’s Television». Children from 21 Countries Write Illustrated. Letters to TV Producers.

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Book SynopsisOut of all the media that today’s children encounter, what makes a particular TV character a child’s favorite? Based on 80 case studies, in-depth fan studies and standardized surveys with over 5,000 children between the ages six and twelve in Germany, this book elucidates how girls and boys use TV characters in their everyday lives and their identity work.Trade Review«Spanning a decade of highly innovative methodological work, this book gathers together a unique collection of studies as well as thought-provoking ideas about children’s relationships with their favorite television characters. A unique voice in the study of children and television, Maya Götz offers us a wealth of empirical findings and surprising interpretations to dig into and learn from!» (Prof. Dafna Lemish, Southern Illinois University (USA))Table of ContentsContents: Children’s Favorite TV Characters/Hero(in)es – Reception Studies – Format Studies – Qualitative/Quantitative Approach – Utility Value – Gender Perspective – Work on Identity.

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Book SynopsisThe book focuses on different uses of the concepts of utopia, dystopia, and anti-utopia. The author analyses literature, cinema, and rock music, as well as scientific and legal motifs in utopian fiction. He also considers the functions of Jewish characters in early modern utopias and looks at the utopian aspects of scientific claims of literary and cultural theories. Utopian models are also applied to the practice of literature (socialist realism) and current socio-political affairs. Among the texts and films discussed are "Utopia", "New Atlantis", "Gulliver’s Travels", "Memoirs of Signor Gaudentio di Lucca", "Nineteen Eighty-Four", "A Minor Apocalypse", "Lord of the Flies", and "Even Dwarfs Started Small".Table of ContentsUtopian fiction – Utopianism – Literary utopias and dystopias – Filmic utopias and dystopias – Anti-utopia – Rock lyrics – Jewish characters in literature – Scientific motifs in literature – "Utopia" – "New Atlantis" – "Gulliver’s Travels" – Thomas More – Francis Bacon – William Shakespeare – George Orwell – William Golding – Tadeusz Konwicki

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Book Synopsis This book examines the reverberations of key components of Ronald Reagan’s ideology in selected Hollywood blockbuster movies. The aim of this analysis is to provide a clearer understanding of the intertwinement of cinematic spectacles with neoliberalism and neoconservatism. The analysis comprises a dissection of Reagan’s presidential rhetoric and the examination of four seminal Hollywood blockbuster movies. The time range for analysis stretches from the 1980s until the 2010s. Among the key foci are filmic content as well as production and distribution contexts. It is concluded that Reagan’s political metaphors and the corporatization of film studios in the 1970s and 1980s continue to shape much of Hollywood blockbuster filmmaking.Table of ContentsBlockbusters – Movies – Ronald Reagan – Reaganism – US politics – Neoliberalism – Neoconservatism – Cultural studies – Film analysis – Hollywood – Film history – Blockbuster movies – Cinema – Technocapitalism – Action – Science fiction – US presidents – Presidential rhetoric

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Book SynopsisDas vorliegende Handbuch bietet einen umfassenden Überblick über den Stand der Filmgenreforschung. Es werden sowohl die Definitionen und die Begriffsgeschichte umfassend dargestellt, verschiedene Theorien und Ansätze, historische und lokale Perspektiven vorgestellt, als auch einzelne Filmgenres wie Western, Kriminalfilm, Gangsterfilm, Thriller, Science Fiction, Horror, Fantasy, Komödie, Melodram, Abenteuerfilm, Musical, Kriegsfilm bis hin zum erotischen Film in Einzelstudien analysiert.In dieser Multiperspektivik bildet der Band die Phänomenologie von Filmgenres quer durch die Filmgeschichte als einen umfassenden Diskurs ab, der durch Beiträge von führenden Vertreterinnen und Vertretern der deutschsprachigen Genreforschung nah an internationalen Filmbeispielen diskutiert wird.Trade Review“... Die Systematik des Bandes wie auch die Qualität der Beiträge ist auf ganzer Linie überzeugend. Zudem sind die Texte trotz ihres hohen wissenschaftlichen Anspruchs allesamt gut lesbar. Und angesichts seiner vielen verschiedenen Perspektiven und Autoren gelingt dem »Handbuch Filmgenre« eine erstaunlich konzise Darstellung seines Gegenstands. Das macht es ohne Zweifel zum Standardwerk, das man sicher immer wieder gern zur Hand nimmt ...” (Patrick Seyboth, in: epd-film.de, 26. Februar 2021)“... Es widmet sich verschiedenen Bezugsrahmen von Filmgenres und bietet eine Reihe von Zugängen. Ein Potpourri der Genretheorie, kräftig angereichert mit enzyklopädischem Wissen. Das ist informativ und auch als Sachbuch durchaus vergnüglich ...” (Dr. Uwe Breitenborn, in: tv diskurs, tvdiskurs.de, Jg. 97, Heft 3, 2021) “... Diesen Band als Mammutwerk zu bezeichnen, ist allein durch seinen Umfang und den zeitlichen Vorlauf, der in ihn gesteckt wurde, gerechtfertigt. Am Ende liegt ein umfangreiches Werk vor, das den Genre-Diskurs nicht nur gut in einem Band zusammenfasst, sondern ihn sogar noch erweitert und weitere Denkvorgänge in Kraft setzt.” (Manuel Föhl, in: MEDIENwissenschaft, Heft 2, 2021) “… Ein Standardwerk zum Thema wurde hier zweifellos geschaffen, dessen erste Zielgruppe zwar Studierende und Lehrende der Film- Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften sind, das aber auch interessierten Laien einen tiefen Einblick in Geschichte, Ästhetik und Theorie der Filmgenres bieten kann.” (film-netz.com, 15. Dezember 2020) “... Das „Handbuch Filmgenre“ ist die bislang umfassendste Darstellung der Genretheorie und bietet Studierenden, Lehrenden und Forschenden der Film- und Medienwissenschaft einen differenzierten Einstieg in die Materie.” (literaturkritik.de, Heft 11, November 2020)Table of ContentsDefinition & Begriffsgeschichte.- Film-Genre-Theorie.- Historische & lokale Perspektiven.- Filmgenres in Einzelstudien. Motive, Standardsituationen und Transformationen.

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Book SynopsisDieses Buch leistet einen Beitrag zum Verständnis der Bedeutung von Filmgenre-, Gattungs-, Stil- und Formatbezeichnungen. Es verfolgt das Ziel, einen umfassenden Überblick über die vielfältigen, oft wild wuchernden Begrifflichkeiten zu geben, die im Alltag gebräuchlich sind. Dabei beschreibt es in allgemeinverständlicher Sprache die wichtigsten Merkmale, die mit den jeweiligen Bezeichnungen verbunden sind, und arbeitet den Konsens hinsichtlich des dramaturgischen Aufbaus, der Geschichtsstruktur sowie der wiederkehrenden Ikonografie, Musik und Bildsprache heraus.Neben der Vermittlung grundlegender Informationen widmet sich das Buch auch Fragen, die aufgrund der Geläufigkeit der Begriffe oftmals als zu banal angesehen werden und klärt Detailfragen, wie etwa den Unterschied zwischen einem „Sozialdrama“ (engl. „Social Problem Film“) und einem „Social Drama“ (dt. „Gesellschaftsdrama“). Es fungiert somit als Überblick für Filminteressierte jeder Art, insbesondere aber für jene, die beruflich mit dem Thema in Verbindung stehen. Table of ContentsVorwort.- Was sind Genres?.- Wie Genres entstehen.- Der Unterschied zwischen Gattung und Genre.- Wenn Genres verschmelzen.- Die "Genre-DNA".- Keine Genrefilme?.- Genrefilm heute.- Drama (Megagenre).- Drama (Supergenre).- Komödie/Filmkomödie (Supergenre).- Fantastischer Film (Megagenre).- Spannungsfilm (Megagenre).- Nationale Genres.- Weitere Stile.- Filmgattungen.- Genre-/Gattungs-/Stilverzeichnis.- Filmverzeichnis.

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Book Synopsis

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Book SynopsisSeventy years after Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City made its dazzling appearance, Neorealism continues to be the best-known and most beloved genre in Italian film history. Through frames, documents, publicity materials, texts, original screenplays, extracts from interviews, letters and declarations, this book traces the fundamental stages of Neorealism and puts the spotlight back on that unrepeatable moment which still fascinates and moves us today, capturing the reflection of what we were and the presage of what we were to become. Text in English and Italian.

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Book SynopsisMelodrama, it is said, has expanded beyond the borders of genre and fiction to become a pervasive cultural mode. It encompasses distinct signifying practices and interpretive codes for meaning-making that help determine the parameters of identification and subject formation. From the public staging of personal suffering or the psychologization of the self in relation to consumer capitalism, to the emotionalization and sentimentalization of national politics, contributions to this volume address the following question: If melodramatic models of sense-making have become so culturally pervasive and emotionally persuasive, what is the political potential of melodramatic victimhood and where are its political limitations? This volume represents both a condensation and an expansion in the growing field of melodrama studies. It condenses elements of theory on melodrama by bringing into focus what it recognizes to be the locus for subjective identification within melodramatic narratives: the victim. On the other hand, it provides an expansion by going beyond the common methodology of primarily examining fictive works - be they from the stage, the screen or the written word - for their explicit or latent commentary on and connection to the historical contexts within which they are produced. Inspiration for the volume is rooted in a curiosity about melodramatic forms purported to increasingly characterize aspects of both the private and the social sphere in occidental and western-oriented societies.Table of ContentsIntroduction I. Cultures of Suffering and Cinematic Identities Victimhood and Melodrama: Modern, Political and Militant Thomas Elsaesser When is Melodrama 'Good'? Mega-Melodrama and Victimhood Linda Williams Melodrama and War in Hollywood Genre Cinema Hermann Kappelhoff Race Interactions: Melodrama and the Ambiguities of Colorism Christof Decker The Purloined Letter: Ophuls after Cavell Ulrike Hanstein II. Modernity and the Melodramatic Self The Melodrama of Self Eva Illouz Rousseau's Nightmare Vincent Kaufmann 'Emotional Suffering' as Universal Category? Victimhood and the Collective Imaginary Jorg Metelmann III. Collective Traumas and National Melodramas III.1 Legacies of 9/11 The Abu Ghraib Archive W. J. T. Mitchell, with an introduction by Scott Loren The Melodramatic Style of American Politics Elisabeth Anker Tears of Testimony: Glenn Beck and the Conservative Moral Occult Scott Loren III.2 Holocaust Legacies The Cultural Construction of the Holocaust Witness as a Melodramatic Hero Amos Goldberg Nation and Emotion: The Competition for Victimhood in Europe Ulrich Schmid Perspectives Interview with Christine Gledhill Scott Loren and Jorg Metelmann

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Book SynopsisThe German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II left a lasting mark on Dutch memory and culture. This book is the first to explore depictions of that period in films made a generation later, between 1962 and 1986. As Dutch public opinion towards the war altered over the postwar decades, the historical trajectory of Dutch recovery and reconstruction-political, economic, and, most complicated of all, psychological-came to be revealed, often unconsciously, in the films of the period.Table of ContentsAcknowledgements List of Illustrations Introduction 1 Representation, occupation, and Dutch war films Representing the past: the case of film Nationhood and identity Myth and memory: the re-writing of history The Netherlands and World War Two: German occupation Post-war considerations Dutch film history: an overview Dutch war films: historical and cultural perspectives 2 The image of the enemy Who is the enemy? The end of forgetting: image of the enemy in the early 1960s After the absence: war again on the agenda Growing ambiguity: portrayal of the occupiers in 1986 3 Dutch identity and 'Dutchness' Big skies, far horizons: Dutchness in early 1960s films Speaking the same language?: Blurred boundaries in 1977 Bitter cold, fading Communism: portrayals from the 1980s The legacy of the Dutch landscape, in painting, and in film 4 Life under occupation We're all in this together: images of family life in 1960s films Division, suspicion, and the war against Dutch Jews Fractured lives, crushed hopes: trauma and the disintegration of family and friends in the 1980s 5 Resistance and collaboration Irresistible resistance: heroic resistance in the 1960s Pushing the boundaries: collaboration breaks through, 1977-1978 Shattered myths, bleak truths: assimilating collaboration and resistance in the 1980s and beyond Conclusion Filmography Bibliography Glossary of Dutch and German terms Appendix Top Dutch films by box office admissions

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Book SynopsisThis book uses the potent case study of contemporary Taiwanese queer romance films to address the question of how capitalism in Taiwan has privileged the film industry at the expense of the audience's freedom to choose and respond to culture on its own terms. Interweaving in-depth interviews with filmmakers, producers, marketers, and spectators, Ya-Fong Mon takes a biopolitical approach to the question, showing how the industry uses investments in techno-science, ancillary marketing, and media convergence to seduce and control the sensory experience of the audience-yet that control only extends so far: volatility remains a key component of the film-going experience.Trade Review"The author of this book has applied a great many film theories in order to look more deeply into the affective and power dynamics between the film industry and the audience. Her method has established a new landmark for contemporary Taiwan film research." - Iying Wei, *International Journal of Asian Studies*, May 2019Table of ContentsAcknowledgements Chapter One Through the Nexus of Bodies and Things: Introduction Chapter Two Mediated Knowledge: Methodology Chapter Three Bodily Fantasy: Embodied Spectatorship and Object Intervention Chapter Four Sensory Linkage: The Politics of Genre Film Making Chapter Five Intimacy: Internet Marketing as Collaborative Production Chapter Six Indeterminacy: Control and the (Un)productive Body Chapter Seven Mediation and Connections in a Precarious Age: Conclusion Bibliography Index Notes

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