Description
Book SynopsisThe Movies as a World Force is the first analysis of utopian cinema writing; situating it in its proper intellectual contexts, theology, and political philosophy; and illustrating the ways in which its utopian imagination shapes and is shaped by the era’s most prestigious film genre, the historical crowd epic.
Trade Review"
The Movies as a World Force is a significant contribution to the historical study of the American cinema of the silent era, charting an expansive but largely unacknowledged utopian discourse about history, social progress, and the massification of culture that was central to the screen practices of early Hollywood and to various middlebrow projects of linking commercialized culture to the progress of democracy. Friedman does an outstanding job of making visible the contours of this expansive and decidedly anti-modern historical tendency, describing how the cinema was its inspiration and a principal site for its articulation. This book challenges us to rethink our understanding of the emergent studio system and the function of public relations in relation to what were undoubtedly widespread beliefs in the cinema as a spiritual force of global transformation." -- Mark Lynn Anderson * author of Twilight of the Idols: Hollywood and the Human Sciences in 1920s America *
"Recommended." * Choice *
"
The Movies as a World Force is a significant contribution to the historical study of the American cinema of the silent era, charting an expansive but largely unacknowledged utopian discourse about history, social progress, and the massification of culture that was central to the screen practices of early Hollywood and to various middlebrow projects of linking commercialized culture to the progress of democracy. Friedman does an outstanding job of making visible the contours of this expansive and decidedly anti-modern historical tendency, describing how the cinema was its inspiration and a principal site for its articulation. This book challenges us to rethink our understanding of the emergent studio system and the function of public relations in relation to what were undoubtedly widespread beliefs in the cinema as a spiritual force of global transformation." -- Mark Lynn Anderson * author of Twilight of the Idols: Hollywood and the Human Sciences in 1920s America *
"Recommended." * Choice *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Motion Pictures and Modern Communion
1 Enlightened Public Opinion: Post-Reform Progressivism, Mental Science, and Gerald Stanley Lee’s “Moving-Pictures”
2 “The Occult Elements of Motion and Light”: Vachel Lindsay’s Utopia of the Mirror Screen
3 “The Motion Picture Is War’s Greatest Antidote”: Rescue as Release of Force in D. W. Griffith’s
Intolerance 4 “Everything Wooed Everything”: The Triumph of Morale Over Moralism in Rupert Hughes’s
Souls for Sale 5 “Little Grains of Sand”: Positive Thinking and Corporate Form in Douglas Fairbanks’s
The Thief of Bagdad Conclusion: Universal History and the Historicity of Film Entertainment
Notes
Index
