The Worlds of Back to the Future

The Worlds of Back to the Future PDF Author: Sorcha Ní Fhlainn
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786457651
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
A critical examination of the cultural, cinematic, and historical contexts of the Back to the Future trilogy, this book provides a multi-focal representation of the trilogy from several interdisciplinary fields, including philosophy, literature, music, pop culture, and media and gender studies. Topics include sexual symbolism in the trilogy and the oedipal plotting of the first film; nostalgia and the suburban dream in the cultural climate of the 1980s; generic play and performance throughout the trilogy; the emotional and narrative force provided by the films' renowned musical scores; the trilogy's post-modern references and allusions to the Western genre; female representations across the trilogy; and the Lacanian philosophical constructs in the characterizations of Doc Brown and George and Marty McFly.

The Worlds of Back to the Future

The Worlds of Back to the Future PDF Author: Sorcha Ní Fhlainn
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786457651
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 273

Get Book Here

Book Description
A critical examination of the cultural, cinematic, and historical contexts of the Back to the Future trilogy, this book provides a multi-focal representation of the trilogy from several interdisciplinary fields, including philosophy, literature, music, pop culture, and media and gender studies. Topics include sexual symbolism in the trilogy and the oedipal plotting of the first film; nostalgia and the suburban dream in the cultural climate of the 1980s; generic play and performance throughout the trilogy; the emotional and narrative force provided by the films' renowned musical scores; the trilogy's post-modern references and allusions to the Western genre; female representations across the trilogy; and the Lacanian philosophical constructs in the characterizations of Doc Brown and George and Marty McFly.

The Gaithers and Southern Gospel

The Gaithers and Southern Gospel PDF Author: Ryan P. Harper
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496810910
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 311

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Book Description
In The Gaithers and Southern Gospel, Ryan P. Harper examines songwriters Bill and Gloria Gaither's Homecoming video and concert series--a gospel music franchise that, since its beginning in 1991, has outperformed all Christian and much secular popular music on the American music market. The Homecomings represent "southern gospel." Typically that means a musical style popular among white evangelical Christians in the American South and Midwest, and it sometimes overlaps in style, theme, and audience with country music. The Homecomings' nostalgic orientation--their celebration of "traditional" kinds of American Christian life--harmonize well with southern gospel music, past and present. But amidst the backward gazes, the Homecomings also portend and manifest change. The Gaithers' deliberate racial integration of their stages, their careful articulation of a relatively inclusive evangelical theology, and their experiments with an array of musical forms demonstrate that the Homecoming is neither simplistically nostalgic, nor solely "southern." Harper reveals how the Gaithers negotiate a tension between traditional and changing community norms as they seek simultaneously to maintain and expand their audience as well as to initiate and respond to shifts within their fan base. Pulling from his field work at Homecoming concerts, behind the scenes with the Gaithers, and with numerous Homecoming fans, Harper reveals the Homecoming world to be a dynamic, complicated constellation in the formation of American religious identity.

The World the Sixties Made

The World the Sixties Made PDF Author: Van Gosse
Publisher: Temple University Press
ISBN: 9781592138463
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
How can we make sense of the fact that after decades of right-wing political mobilizing the major social changes wrought by the Sixties are more than ever part of American life? "The World the Sixties Made, "the first academic collection to treat the last quarter of the twentieth century as a distinct period of U.S. history, rebuts popular accounts that emphasize a conservative ascendancy. The essays in this volume survey a vast historical terrain to tease out the meaning of the not-so-long ago. They trace the ways in which recent U.S. culture and politics continue to be shaped by the legacy of the New Left's social movements, from feminism to gay liberation to black power. Together these essays demonstrate that the America that emerged in the 1970s was a nation profoundly, even radically democratized.

Post-Classical Hollywood

Post-Classical Hollywood PDF Author: Barry Langford
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748643214
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
At the end of World War II, Hollywood basked in unprecedented prosperity. Since then, numerous challenges and crises have changed the American film industry in ways beyond imagination in 1945. Nonetheless, at the start of a new century Hollywood's worldwide dominance is intact - indeed, in today's global economy the products of the American entertainment industry (of which movies are now only one part) are more ubiquitous than ever. How does today's "e;Hollywood"e; - absorbed into transnational media conglomerates like NewsCorp., Sony, and Viacom - differ from the legendary studios of Hollywood's Golden Age? What are the dominant frameworks and conventions, the historical contexts and the governing attitudes through which films are made, marketed and consumed today? How have these changed across the last seven decades? And how have these evolving contexts helped shape the form, the style and the content of Hollywood movies, from Singin' in the Rain to Pirates of the Caribbean? Barry Langford explains and interrogates the concept of "e;post-classical"e; Hollywood cinema - its coherence, its historical justification and how it can help or hinder our understanding of Hollywood from the forties to the present. Integrating film history, discussion of movies' social and political dimensions, and analysis of Hollywood's distinctive methods of storytelling, Post-Classical Hollywood charts key critical debates alongside the histories they interpret, while offering its own account of the "e;post-classical."e; Wide-ranging yet concise, challenging and insightful, Post-Classical Hollywood offers a new perspective on the most enduringly fascinating artform of our age.

Gender, Health, and Popular Culture

Gender, Health, and Popular Culture PDF Author: Cheryl Krasnick Warsh
Publisher: Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press
ISBN: 1554582539
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 438

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Book Description
Health is a gendered concept in Western cultures. Customarily it is associated with strength in men and beauty in women. This gendered concept was transmitted through visual representations of the ideal female and male bodies, and ubiquitous media images resulted in the absorption of universal standards of beauty and health and generalized desires to achieve them. Today, genuine or self-styled experts—from physicians to newspaper columnists to advertisers—offer advice on achieving optimal health. Topics in this collection are wide ranging and include childbirth advice in Victorian Australia and Cold War America, menstruation films, Canadian abortion tourism, the Pap smear, the Body Worlds exhibition, and fat liberation. Masculinity is explored among drunkards in antebellum Philadelphia and family memoirs during the 1980s AIDS epidemic. Seemingly objective public health advisories are shown to be as influenced by commercial interests, class, gender, and other social differentiations as marketing approaches are, and the message presented is mediated to varying degrees by those receiving it. This book will be of interest to scholars in women’s studies, health studies, marketing, media studies, social history and anthropology, and popular culture.

Screen Ages

Screen Ages PDF Author: John Alberti
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317650271
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
Screen Ages is a valuable guide for students exploring the complex and vibrant history of US cinema and showing how this film culture has grown, changed and developed. Covering key periods from across American cinema history, John Alberti explores the social, technological and political forces that have shaped cinematic output and the varied impacts cinema of on US society. Each chapter has a series of illuminating key features, including: ‘Now Playing’, focusing on films as cinematic events, from The Birth of a Nation to Gone with the Wind to Titanic, to place the reader in the social context of those viewing the films for the first time ‘In Development’, exploring changing genres, from the melodrama to the contemporary super hero movies, ‘The Names Above and Below the Title’, portraying the impact and legacy of central figures, including Florence Lawrence, Orson Welles and Wes Anderson Case studies, analyzing key elements of films in more depth Glossary terms featured throughout the text, to aid non-specialist students and expand the readers understanding of changing screen cultures. Screen Ages illustrates how the history of US cinema has always been and continues to be one of multiple screens, audiences, venues, and markets. It is an essential text for all those wanting to understand of power of American cinema throughout history and the challenges for its future. The book is also supported by a companion website, featuring additional case studies, an interactive blog, a quiz bank for each chapter and an online chapter, ‘Screen Ages Today’ that will be updated to discuss the latest developments in American cinema.

Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis

Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis PDF Author: Aaron Lefkovitz
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498567525
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
This book examines Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, and Miles Davis as distinctively global symbols of threatening and nonthreatening black masculinity. It centers them in debates over U.S. cultural exceptionalism, noting how they have been part of the definition of jazz as a jingoistic and exclusively American form of popular culture.

Fifty Hollywood Directors

Fifty Hollywood Directors PDF Author: Suzanne Leonard
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317593936
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 431

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Book Description
Fifty Hollywood Directors introduces the most important, iconic and influential filmmakers who worked in Hollywood between the end of the silent period and the birth of the blockbuster. By exploring the historical, cultural and technological contexts in which each director was working, this book traces the formative period in commercial cinema when directors went from pioneers to industry heavyweights. Each entry discusses a director’s practices and body of work and features a brief biography and suggestions for further reading. Entries include: Frank Capra Cecil B DeMille John Ford Alfred Hitchcock Fritz Lang Orson Welles DW Griffith King Vidor This is an indispensible guide for anyone interested in film history, Hollywood and the development of the role of the director.

Spanish Prisoner

Spanish Prisoner PDF Author: Yannis Tzioumakis
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748633707
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Despite more than a passing nod to such crowdpleasing classics as Hitchcock's North by Northwest, playwright-turned-independent filmmaker David Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner is a particularly idiosyncratic film that betrays its origin outside the Hollywood mainstream. Featuring a convoluted narrative, an excessive, often anti-classical, visual style, and belonging to the generic category of the'con game film' which often challenges the spectator's cognitive skills, The Spanish Prisoner is a film that bridges genre filmmaking withpersonal visual style, independent film production with niche distribution,and mainstream subject matter with unconventional filmic techniques.This book discusses The Spanish Prisoner as an example of contemporary American independent cinema while also using the film as a vehicle to explore several key ideas in film studies, especially in terms of aesthetics, narrative, style, spectatorship, genre and industry.

The Baseball Film in Postwar America

The Baseball Film in Postwar America PDF Author: Ron Briley
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786484799
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 221

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Book Description
This work focuses on the baseball movie genre in the years following World War II, beginning with the 1948 biopic The Babe Ruth Story and ending with the 1962 Mickey Mantle-Roger Maris vehicle Safe at Home!, when the consensus was that conflict should be limited in American society by emphasizing economic growth and a strong stand against Communism. This study of selected films indicates, however, that this strategy was not entirely effective; while offering a certain amount of nostalgia, these films could not provide shelter from the storm gathering in postwar America which challenged conventional ideas of race, gender and class and broke in the 1960s.