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.

After Hitchcock

After Hitchcock PDF Author: David Boyd
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 029278323X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
Alfred Hitchcock is arguably the most famous director to have ever made a film. Almost single-handedly he turned the suspense thriller into one of the most popular film genres of all time, while his Psycho updated the horror film and inspired two generations of directors to imitate and adapt this most Hitchcockian of movies. Yet while much scholarly and popular attention has focused on the director's oeuvre, until now there has been no extensive study of how Alfred Hitchcock's films and methods have affected and transformed the history of the film medium. In this book, thirteen original essays by leading film scholars reveal the richness and variety of Alfred Hitchcock's legacy as they trace his shaping influence on particular films, filmmakers, genres, and even on film criticism. Some essays concentrate on films that imitate Hitchcock in diverse ways, including the movies of Brian de Palma and thrillers such as True Lies, The Silence of the Lambs, and Dead Again. Other essays look at genres that have been influenced by Hitchcock's work, including the 1970s paranoid thriller, the Italian giallo film, and the post-Psycho horror film. The remaining essays investigate developments within film culture and academic film study, including the enthusiasm of French New Wave filmmakers for Hitchcock's work, his influence on the filmic representation of violence in the post-studio Hollywood era, and the ways in which his films have become central texts for film theorists.

Harrison Ford

Harrison Ford PDF Author: Virginia Luzón-Aguado
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350152439
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 329

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Book Description
Harrison Ford is known for such iconic roles as Han Solo, Indiana Jones and Rick Deckard - but his career of 50 years (and counting) encompasses a plethora of other thought-provoking roles. His off-screen persona has been no less intriguing. Covering a wide timespan, this book assesses Harrison Ford as 'star' from the difficult Hollywood studio years where he began, his blockbusters of the 1980s, through to the impact of ageist culture on his artistry of recent years. The author argues that Ford has generally been seen as a potent, irresistible combination of tradition and modernity. He is an actor who both reflects and utilises changing ideas about American masculinity in the context of Hollywood film production: particular male types are revealed as much in his trademark trustworthy hero act as in his more fallible, less conservative and therefore commercially riskier characters. Luzon Aguado explores these particular star identities and every fluctuation in between. She gives due attention to his much-neglected acting abilities while examining the crucial interplay between star persona and the constraints and conventions of genre. Going beyond standard accounts of Ford's production and pinpointing overlooked aspects of his work, and the creation of the star through cultural artefacts like magazine interviews and advertising campaigns, this book reveals the depth and dimensions of the enduring American screen legend that is Harrison Ford.

Sex and Sexuality in a Feminist World

Sex and Sexuality in a Feminist World PDF Author: Katherine A. Hermes
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443804266
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 460

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Book Description
Sex and sexuality are topics that have defined feminism since its inception. What has changed is that there is now a generation of feminists and scholars who are comfortable not only to write in their own disciplines but who incorporate feminist ideas in their research. This book assembles a variety of essays, most of which were written especially for this collection, that negotiate sex and sexuality in historical contexts as well as in contemporary times. There is a common ground of history and (popular) culture among the articles. While different theories of feminism operate in these essays, feminist lenses have allowed the reevaluation of familiar topics from early religious practices to medieval literature to current films and advertising. The authors represented in this collection range from established feminist and gender scholars to those who employ feminist theoretical frameworks in their respective disciplines.

Home Front Heroes

Home Front Heroes PDF Author: Elizabeth Abele
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476612110
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
This book traces the effects of the feminist and civil rights movements in the construction of Hollywood action heroes. Starting in the late 1980s, action blockbusters regularly have featured masculine figures who choose love and community over the path of the stoic loner committed solely to duty. The American heroic quest of the past 25 years increasingly has involved a reclamation of home, creating a place for the Hero at the hearth, part of a more intimate community with less restrictive gender and racial boundaries. The author presents pieces of contemporary popular culture that create the complex mosaic of the present-day American heroic ideal. Hollywood popular films are examined that best represent the often painful shift from traditional heroic masculinity to a masculinity that is less "exceptional" and more vulnerable. There are also chapters on how issues of race and gender intersect with the new masculinity and on subgenres of 1990s films that also developed this postfeminist masculinity.

Fathers on Film

Fathers on Film PDF Author: Katie Barnett
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350120871
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 246

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Book Description
The father is an enduring and iconic figure in Hollywood cinema and in the 1990s, narratives of redemptive fatherhood featured prominently in some of the decade's most popular films like Kindergarten Cop (1990), Mrs Doubtfire (1993), Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lion King (1994). Interpreting such films through the lens of feminist and queer theory, along with masculinity studies and psychoanalysis, Katie Barnett offers an insightful and interdisciplinary discussion of cinematic fathers. Barnett reveals that the father figure is often portrayed as one that invests in and is part of a discourse of reproductive futurism. This plays out across a range of genres including rom-coms, fantasy, sci-fi, drama, and disaster. By exploring both blockbuster and more low-budget films of the 1990s, Barnett explores the figure of the father against the crisis of masculinity in the United States, and indeed more globally, at this time.

Subverting Mainstream Narratives in the Reagan Era

Subverting Mainstream Narratives in the Reagan Era PDF Author: Ashley M. Donnelly
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319768190
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
Subverting Mainstream Narratives in the Reagan Era explores how artists, novelists, and directors were able to present narratives of strong dissent in popular culture during the Reagan Era. Using but subverting the tools of mainstream novels and films, these visionaries’ works were featured alongside other books in major bookstores and promoted alongside blockbusters in movie theatres across the country. Ashley M. Donnelly discusses how the artists accomplished this, why it is so important, and how new artists can use these techniques in today’s homogenous and mundane media.

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.