Description
Book SynopsisMobility has long been a defining feature of modern societies, yet remarkably little attention has been paid to the various ''stopping places''_hotels, motels, and the like_that this mobility presupposes. If the paradoxical qualities of fixed places dedicated to facilitating movement have been overlooked by a variety of commentators, film-makers have shown remarkable prescience and consistency in engaging with these ''still points'' around which the world is made to turn. Hotels and motels play a central role in a multitude of films, ranging across an immensely wide variety of genres, eras, and national cinemas. Whereas previous film theorists have focused on the movement implied by road movies and similar genres, the outstanding contributions to this volume extend the recent engagement with space and place in film studies, providing a series of fascinating explorations of the cultural significance of stopping places, both on screen and off. Ranging from the mythical elegance of the Gr
Trade ReviewMoving Pictures/Stopping Places should appeal to both the structuralists and the post-structuralists among us. The editors certainly extol the multiple discourses presented in the book...This is a book that one can dip into when looking for theoretical insights into particular accommodation spaces or to explore analysis that situates the hotel and motel at the intersection of both social imaginaries and lived realities....In reading Moving Pictures/Stopping Places those working within hospitality studies should be encouraged to question the borders and boundaries in which their own particular knowledge is sought and produced. As such, this book certainly fulfills the call in the initial editorial for this journal to ‘share insights derived from various backgrounds, engage in vigorous debate and contribute to the intellectual possibilities for the investigation of hospitality’. If we are to do so, this book gainfully works towards and supports Lugosi’s aim of challenging orthodox epistemology's within hospitality and tourism studies more broadly. Thus, and to paraphrase Levi-Strauss, Moving Pictures/Stopping Places is a book that (re)presents hotels and motels as ‘good to think’. * Hospitality & Society *
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Checking In Chapter 2 Revisiting the Grand Hotel (and Its Place in the Cultural Economy of Fascist Italy) Chapter 3 Floating Hotels: Cruise Holidays and Amateur Film-making in the Inter-War Period Chapter 4 Vacancies: Hotels, Reception Desks, and Identity in American Cinema, 1929–1964 Chapter 5 The Swiss Hotel Film Chapter 6 Cinematic Topographies in Time-Space: Wim Wenders' Hotels Chapter 7 The Decay of Fiction and the Poetics of Pastness Chapter 8 'Now, Where Was I?': Memories, Motels, and Male Hysteria Chapter 9 'Just an Anonymous Room': Cinematic Hotels and Motels as Mnemonic Purgatories Chapter 10 No Sympathy for the Devil or Lobby Music: Spaces of Disjunction in Barton Fink and the The Shining and Muzak Chapter 11 Parallel Hotel Worlds Chapter 12 No Quarter(s), No Camel(s), No Exit(s): Motel Cactus and the Low Heterotopias of Seoul Chapter 13 Off the Highway: Some Notes on Stopping Places in Cinema Chapter 14 The Real of the Screen: Atom Egoyan's Speaking Parts Chapter 15 Departure: The 21st Century Hotel: Your Media/Home Away from Home
