Search results for ""Elisabeth Bronfen" "Crossmappings: On Visual Culture""
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Cinema's Melodramatic Celebrity: Film, Fame, and
Book SynopsisChallenging 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.Trade ReviewIt was an exhilarating read, in its hugely impressive range of references, the unexpected connections it made, and the wide range of films it considered. This is a major study which advances the theorization of melodrama, celebrity culture, and the relationship between the two. -- Sue Thornham, Professor of Media and Film Studies , University of Sussex, UKHere is one of the most astute uses of melodrama theory to analyze popular fiction film, documentary, and television as well as events in popular circulation to have been produced in recent years. It is a work of subtle wit and sharp insight that carries over a tradition at the same time that it supplements it significantly. -- Jane Gaines, Professor of Film, University of Columbia, USAMandy Merck’s exploration of the charms and pitfalls of a self-worth to be gained through the public attention celebrity affords in our media saturated culture is truly an eye-opener. Witty yet scrupulous in its analysis of texts ranging from Rousseau’s theatrical melodrama Pygmalion to Dreiser’s stardom novel Sister Carrie, from the renown tramp in Chaplin’s City Lights to royal prestige in Frears’ The Queen, and culminating in the news notoriety of former congressman Anthony Weiner and whistleblower Edward Snowden, it dissects the long cultural history that has made fame such an interesting thing – on the page, the stage, the screen and in politics. -- Elisabeth Bronfen, author of Crossmappings. On Visual CultureTable of ContentsTOC List of Figures Acknowledgements 1. Personal Worth and Public Attention 2. The Drama of a Recognition: City Lights 3. Imitations of Celebrity 4. Women’s Pictures 5. Melotrauma 6. Melodrama, Celebrity, The Queen 7. Home from the Hill: Weiner 8. Unmasked: Hacktivism, Anonymity and Celebrity Notes References Index
£28.99
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Cinema's Melodramatic Celebrity: Film, Fame, and
Book SynopsisChallenging 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.Trade ReviewThe book makes a worthwhile study for a diverse range of readers—it is indicated not only for an academic audience, but also for cinephiles who would enjoy a pleasant read recalling the moments of every film and its celebrity’s anecdotes addressed in the book. * Comparative Cinema *It was an exhilarating read, in its hugely impressive range of references, the unexpected connections it made, and the wide range of films it considered. This is a major study which advances the theorization of melodrama, celebrity culture, and the relationship between the two. -- Sue Thornham, Professor of Media and Film Studies , University of Sussex, UKHere is one of the most astute uses of melodrama theory to analyze popular fiction film, documentary, and television as well as events in popular circulation to have been produced in recent years. It is a work of subtle wit and sharp insight that carries over a tradition at the same time that it supplements it significantly. -- Jane Gaines, Professor of Film, University of Columbia, USAMandy Merck’s exploration of the charms and pitfalls of a self-worth to be gained through the public attention celebrity affords in our media saturated culture is truly an eye-opener. Witty yet scrupulous in its analysis of texts ranging from Rousseau’s theatrical melodrama Pygmalion to Dreiser’s stardom novel Sister Carrie, from the renown tramp in Chaplin’s City Lights to royal prestige in Frears’ The Queen, and culminating in the news notoriety of former congressman Anthony Wiener and whistleblower Edward Snowden, it dissects the long cultural history that has made fame such an interesting thing – on the page, the stage, the screen and in politics. -- Elisabeth Bronfen, author of Crossmappings. On Visual CultureTable of ContentsTOC List of Figures Acknowledgements 1. Personal Worth and Public Attention 2. The Drama of a Recognition: City Lights 3. Imitations of Celebrity 4. Women’s Pictures 5. Melotrauma 6. Melodrama, Celebrity, The Queen 7. Home from the Hill: Weiner 8. Unmasked: Hacktivism, Anonymity and Celebrity Notes References Index
£100.00
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC Crossmappings: On Visual Culture
Book SynopsisThe great, influential cultural critic, Elisabeth Bronfen, sets out in this book a conversation between literature, cinema and visual culture. The crossmappings facilitated in and between these essays address the cultural survival of image formulas involving portraiture and the uncanny relation between the body and its visual representability, the gendering of war, death and the fragility of life, as well as sovereignty and political power. Each chapter tracks transformations that occur as aesthetic figurations travel from one historical moment to another, but also from one medium to another. Many prominent artists are discussed during these journeys into the cultural imaginary, include Degas, Francesca Woodman, Cindy Sherman, Paul McCarthy, Eva Hesse, Louise Bourgeois, Wagner, Picasso, and Shakespeare, as well as classic Hollywood's film noir and melodrama and the TV series, The Wire and House of Cards.Trade ReviewBrilliant essays on the female nude, on images not just of chess games but of chess queens in recent film and television ... full of marvelous and disturbing ideas ... Summing Up: Recommended. * CHOICE *This is a very important, relevant book for today’s world. Bronfen is one of the very rare scholars who, in accessible prose, offers in-depth analyses of the interactions between “high” art and “popular” visual culture, focusing on the socio-political relevance of that crossover. Analysing literature, cinema, television series and other works of popular fiction, from present to past and back, Bronfen is a brilliant “image-thinker”, and so makes a strong case for the urgent necessity of the Humanities in today’s world. * Mieke Bal, Independent scholar affiliated with the Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA) and video artist *Table of ContentsIntroduction. Crossmappings. Visual Readings as a Critical Intervention in the Cultural Imaginary Part I. Travelling Image Formulas Chapter 1. Facing Defacement. Degas' Portraits of Women Chapter 2. Naked Touch. Disfiguration, Recognition and the Female Nude Chapter 3. Leaving an Imprint. Francesca Woodman's Photographic tableaux vivants Chapter 4. Pop Cinema. Hollywood's Critical Engagement with America's Culture of Consumption Chapter 5. Hitler Goes Pop. Totalitarianism, Avant-Garde Aesthetics and Hollywood Entertainment Chapter 6. Simulations of the Real. Paul McCarthy's Performance Disasters Chapter 7. Wagner's Isolde in Hollywood Chapter 8. Shakespeare's Wire Chapter 9. Queen of Chess. On Serial Reading Part II: Gendering the Uncanny, Imaging Death Chapter 10. The Horror of the Familiar. Freud's Thoughts on Femininity and the Uncanny Chapter 11. Gendering Curiosity. The Double Games of Siri Hustvedt, Paul Auster and Sophie Calle Chapter 12. The Other Self of the Imagination: Cindy Sherman's Hysterical Performance Chapter 13. Eva Hesse's Spectral Bride and her Uncanny Double Chapter 14. Wounds of Wonder. Diane Arbus, Nan Goldin, Nabuyoshi Araki Chapter 15. The Fragility of the Quotidien. Eija-Liisa Ahtila's Work with Death Chapter 16. Picasso's War Women Chapter 17. Contending with the Father. Louise Bourgeois and her Aesthetics of Reparation Notes Index
£95.00
Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) Shakespeare and Seriality
Book SynopsisElisabeth Bronfen is Professor Emerita of English and American Studies at the University of Zurich, Switzerland and Global Distinguished Professor at NYU. She is the author of several books including Serial Shakespeare. An Infinite Variety of Appropriations in American T.V. Drama (2020), Night Passages. Philosophy, Literature, and Film (2013) and Crossmappings. On Visual Culture (2018). Christina Wald is Professor of English Literature and Director of the Centre for Cultural Inquiry at the University of Konstanz, Germany. She is the author of several books including Shakespeare's Serial Returns in Complex TV (2020). Her work has appeared in journals including Shakespeare Survey, Shakespeare, Shakespeare Bulletin, Modern Drama, Adaptation, Anglia, The Journal of Commonwealth Literature and Classical Receptions Journal.
£999.99
