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"Motion pictures Social aspects United States History 20th century."
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When the movies mattered : the New Hollywood revisited
\"Ten well respected writers on the subject of the New Hollywood look back at a golden age in American cinema\"-- Provided by publisher.
Book
Fictions Inc
Fictions Inc.explores how depictions of the corporation in American literature, film, and popular culture have changed over time. Beginning with perhaps the most famous depiction of a corporation-Frank Norris'sThe Octopus-Ralph Clare traces this figure as it shifts from monster to man, from force to \"individual,\" and from American industry to multinational \"Other.\" Clare examines a variety of texts that span the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, including novels by Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Don DeLillo, Richard Powers, and Joshua Ferris; films such asNetwork,Ghostbusters,Gung Ho,Office Space, andMichael Clayton; and assorted artifacts of contemporary media such as television'sThe Officeand the comic stripsLife Is HellandDilbert.
Paying particular attention to the rise of neoliberalism, the emergence of biopolitics, and the legal status of \"corporate bodies,\"Fictions Inc.shows that representations of corporations have come to serve, whether directly or indirectly, as symbols for larger economic concerns often too vast or complex to comprehend. Whether demonized or lionized, the corporation embodies American anxieties about these current conditions and ongoing fears about the viability of a capitalist system.
eBook
From dead ends to cold warriors : constructing American boyhood in postwar Hollywood films
\"After World War II, studies examining youth culture on the silver screen start with James Dean. But the angst that Dean symbolized-anxieties over parents, the \"Establishment,\" and the expectations of future citizen-soldiers-long predated Rebels without a Cause. Historians have largely overlooked how the Great Depression and World War II impacted and shaped the Cold War, and youth contributed to the national ideologies of family and freedom. From Dead Ends to Cold Warriors explores this gap by connecting facets of boyhood as represented in American film from the 1930s to the postwar years. From the Andy Hardy series to pictures such as The Search, Intruder in the Dust, and The Gunfighter, boy characters addressed larger concerns over the dysfunctional family unit, militarism, the \"race question,\" and the international scene as the Korean War began. Navigating the political, social, and economic milieus inside and outside of Hollywood, Peter W.Y. Lee demonstrates that continuities from the 1930s influenced the unique postwar moment, coalescing into anticommunism and the Cold War\"-- Provided by publisher.
BOOK
Nightmare alley : film noir and the American dream
Classic film noir offers more than pesky private eyes and beautiful bad girls—it explores the quest for the not-so-attainable American dream.
Winner of the CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title of the Choice ACRL
Desperate young lovers on the lam ( They Live by Night ), a cynical con man making a fortune as a mentalist ( Nightmare Alley ), a penniless pregnant girl mistaken for a wealthy heiress ( No Man of Her Own ), a wounded veteran who has forgotten his own name ( Somewhere in the Night )—this gallery of film noir characters challenges the stereotypes of the wise-cracking detective and the alluring femme fatale. Despite their differences, they all have something in common: a belief in self-reinvention. Nightmare Alley is a thorough examination of how film noir disputes this notion at the heart of the American Dream.
Central to many of these films, Mark Osteen argues, is the story of an individual trying, by dint of hard work or, more often, illicit enterprises, to overcome his or her origins and achieve material success. In the wake of World War II, the noir genre tested the dream of upward mobility and the ideas of individualism, liberty, equality, and free enterprise that accompany it.
Employing an impressive array of theoretical perspectives (including psychoanalysis, art history, feminism, and music theory) and combining close reading with original primary source research, Nightmare Alley proves both the diversity of classic noir and its potency. This provocative and wide-ranging study revises and refreshes our understanding of noir's characters, themes, and cultural significance.
eBook
Searching for new frontiers : Hollywood films in the 1960s
\"This book offers film students and general readers a survey of popular movies of the 1960s. The author explores the most important modes of filmmaking in times that were at once hopeful, exhilarating, and daunting. The text combines discussion of American social and political history and Hollywood industry changes with analysis of some of the era's most expressive movies\" -- Provided by publisher.
Book
Martin Scorsese and the American Dream
More than perhaps any other major filmmaker, Martin Scorsese has grappled with the idea of the American Dream. His movies are full of working-class strivers hoping for a better life, from the titular waitress and aspiring singer of Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore to the scrappy Irish immigrants of Gangs of New York. And in films as varied as Casino, The Aviator, and The Wolf of Wall Street, he vividly displays the glamour and power that can come with the fulfillment of that dream, but he also shows how it can turn into a nightmare of violence, corruption, and greed. This book is the first study of Scorsese's profound ambivalence toward the American Dream, the ways it drives some men and women to aspire to greatness, but leaves others seduced and abandoned. Showing that Scorsese understands the American dream in terms of a tension between provincialism and cosmopolitanism, Jim Cullen offers a new lens through which to view such seemingly atypical Scorsese films as The Age of Innocence, Hugo, and Kundun. Fast-paced, instructive, and resonant, Martin Scorsese and the American Dream illuminates an important dimension of our national life and how a great artist has brought it into focus.
eBook
Hollywood's Hawaii
Whether presented as exotic fantasy, a strategic location during World War II, or a site combining postwar leisure with military culture, Hawaii and the South Pacific figure prominently in the U.S. national imagination.Hollywood's Hawaiiis the first full-length study of the film industry's intense engagement with the Pacific region from 1898 to the present.Delia Malia Caparoso Konzett highlights films that mirror the cultural and political climate of the country over more than a century-from the era of U.S. imperialism on through Jim Crow racial segregation, the attack on Pearl Harbor and WWII, the civil rights movement, the contemporary articulation of consumer and leisure culture, as well as the buildup of the modern military industrial complex. Focusing on important cultural questions pertaining to race, nationhood, and war, Konzett offers a unique view of Hollywood film history produced about the national periphery for mainland U.S. audiences.Hollywood's Hawaiipresents a history of cinema that examines Hawaii and the Pacific and its representations in film in the context of colonialism, war, Orientalism, occupation, military buildup, and entertainment.
eBook
