Download or read book Buffoon Men written by Scott Balcerzak and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film scholars and fans have used distinctive terms to describe the Classic Hollywood comedian: He is a "trickster," a "rebel," or a "buffoon." Yet the performer is almost always described as a "he." In Buffoon Men: Classic Hollywood Comedians and Queered Masculinity, Scott Balcerzak reads the performances of notable comedians such as W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Jack Benny, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, and Bud Abbott and Lou Costello through humor and queer theory to expose a problematic history of maleness in their personas. He argues that contrary to popular notions of Classic Hollywood history, these male comedians rearranged or, at times, rejected heteronormative protocols. Balcerzak begins by defining the particular buffoonish masculinity portrayed by early film comedians, a gender and genre construct influenced by the cultural anxieties of the 1930s and '40s. In chapter 1, he considers the onscreen pairing of W. C. Fields and Mae West to identify a queered sexuality and drag persona in Fields's performance, while in chapter 2 he examines the two major constructions of Fields's film persona-the confidence man and the husband-to show Fields to be a conflicted and subversive figure. In chapter 3, Balcerzak considers the assimilation and influence of Eddie Cantor as a Jewish celebrity, while he turns to the cross-media influence of Jack Benny's radio persona in chapter 4. In Chapters 5 and 6, he moves beyond the individual performer to examine the complex masculine brotherhood of comedy duos Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey. Buffoon Men shows that the complicated history of the male comedian during the early sound era has much to tell us about multimedia comedic stars today. Fans and scholars of film history, gender studies, and broadcast studies will appreciate Balcerzak's thorough exploration of the era's fascinating gender constructs.
Download or read book Questioning Gender written by Robyn Ryle and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 890 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A one-of-a-kind text designed to launch readers into a thoughtful encounter with gender issues. Questioning Gender: A Sociological Exploration, Third Edition serves as a point-of-departure for productive conversations about gender, and as a resource for exploring answers to many of those questions. Rather than providing definitive answers, this unique book exposes readers to some of the best scholarship in the field that will lead them to question many of their assumptions about what is normal and abnormal. The author uses both historical and cross-cultural approaches—as well as a focus on intersectionality and transgender issues—to help students understand the socially constructed nature of gender.
Download or read book Without Proof Or Evidence written by O. K. Bouwsma and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2004-03-01 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Without Proof or Evidence O. K. Bouwsma weaves through the central topics of Western religion: the rationality of religious belief, the nature of Christianity, the promise of eternal life, the definition of faith, and proofs of the existence of God. When he works with the problems of Descartes or Moore or Wittgenstein, surveying the marketplace of language in which we all have commerce, he has the familiarity of an experienced trader. But in his work with the problems of Anselm or Nietzsche or Kierkegaard, in which the Scriptures move between background and foreground, there is another dimension, a concern with whether the Scriptures have been properly understood, what such an understanding might be, and how it affects someone who so understands them.
Download or read book The Living Age written by and published by . This book was released on 1854 with total page 662 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Littell s Living Age written by and published by . This book was released on 1854 with total page 674 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The London Mercury written by and published by . This book was released on 1928 with total page 710 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Jack Benny and the Golden Age of American Radio Comedy written by Kathryn Fuller-Seeley and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Jack Benny became one of the most influential entertainers of the 20th century--by being the top radio comedian, when the comics ruled radio, and radio was the most powerful and pervasive mass medium in the US. In 23 years of weekly radio broadcasts, by aiming all the insults at himself, Benny created Jack, the self-deprecating "Fall Guy" character. He indelibly shaped American humor as a space to enjoy the equal opportunities of easy camaraderie with his cast mates, and equal ego deflation. Benny was the master of comic timing, knowing just when to use silence to create suspense or to have a character leap into the dialogue to puncture Jack's pretentions. Jack Benny was also a canny entrepreneur, becoming one of the pioneering "showrunners" combining producer, writer and performer into one job. His modern style of radio humor eschewed stale jokes in favor informal repartee with comic hecklers like his valet Rochester (played by Eddie Anderson) and Mary Livingstone his offstage wife. These quirky characters bouncing off each other in humorous situations created the situation comedy. In this career study, we learn how Jack Benny found ingenious ways to sell his sponsors' products in comic commercials beloved by listeners, and how he dealt with the challenges of race relations, rigid gender ideals and an insurgent new media industry (TV). Jack Benny created classic comedy for a rapidly changing American culture, providing laughter that buoyed radio listeners from 1932's depths of the Great Depression, through World War II to the mid-1950s"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book Buffoon written by Anosh Irani and published by House of Anansi. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Three-time Governor General’s Literary Award–shortlisted author and playwright Anosh Irani’s critically acclaimed one-man show Buffoon is a masterclass of tragicomic theatre. Born to circus folk who prefer trapezing over parenting, Felix quickly learns to turn life’s misfortunes into jokes. His longing for family and home is piqued at the tender age of seven when he falls hopelessly in love with an older woman, the beguiling Aja, who is eight. In the process, a clown is born, and we watch him grow into a middle-aged buffoon. Over time, Felix stops waiting for someone else to love him; his journey becomes one of loving himself. A story of love, loss, and the fate that binds us, Buffoon is a gut-wrenching one-man show that expertly walks the tightrope between heartbreak and hilarity.
Download or read book Tamil Geographies written by Martha Ann Selby and published by SUNY Press. This book was released on 2008-05-22 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How perceptions of land and space influence social and aesthetic conditions in the Tamil region of India.
Download or read book Beyond Method written by Scott Balcerzak and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-25 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stella Adler (1901–92) trained many well-known American actors yet throughout much of her career, her influence was overshadowed by Lee Strasberg, director of the Actors Studio. In Beyond Method: Stella Adler and the Male Actor, Scott Balcerzak focuses on Adler’s teachings and how she challenged Strasberg’s psychological focus on the actor’s "self" by promoting an empathetic and socially engaged approach to performance. Employing archived studio transcripts and recordings, Balcerzak examines Adler’s lessons in technique, characterization, and script analysis as they reflect the background of the teacher—illustrating her time studying with Constantin Stanislavski, her Yiddish Theatre upbringing, and her encyclopedic knowledge of drama. Through this lens, Beyond Method resituates the performances of some of her famous male students through an expansive understanding of the discourses of acting. The book begins by providing an overview of the gender and racial classifications associated with the male "Method" actor and discussing white maleness in the mid-twentieth century. The first chapter explores the popular press’s promotion of "Method" stars during the 1950s as an extension of Strasberg’s rise in celebrity. At the same time, Adler’s methodology was defining actor performance as a form of social engagement—rather than just personal expression—welcoming an analysis of onscreen masculinity as culturally-fluid. The chapters that follow serve as case studies of some of Adler’s most famous students in notable roles—Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and The Missouri Breaks (1976), Robert De Niro in Taxi Driver (1976), Henry Winkler in Happy Days (1974–84), and Mark Ruffalo in The Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015). Balcerzak concludes that the presence of Adler altered the trajectory of onscreen maleness through a promotion of a relatively complex view of gender identity not found in other classrooms. Beyond Method considers Stella Adler as not only an effective teacher of acting but also an engaging and original thinker, providing us a new way to consider performances of maleness on the screen. Film and theater scholars, as well as those interested in gender studies, are sure to benefit from this thorough study.
Download or read book A Dictionary of the English Language in which the Words are Deduced from Their Originals and Illustrated in Their Different Significations Together with a History of the Language and an English Grammar By Samuel Johnson Whith Numerous Corrections and with the Addition of Several Thousand Words by the Rev H J Todd In Four Volumes Vol 1 4 written by and published by . This book was released on 1818 with total page 1086 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema written by Ronald Gregg and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-12 with total page 816 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term "queer cinema" is often used to name at least three cultural events: 1) an emergent visual culture that boldly identifies as queer; 2) a body of narrative, documentary, and experimental work previously collated under the rubric of homosexual or lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) cinema; 3) a means of critically reading and evaluating films and other visual media through the lens of sexuality. By this expansive account, queer cinema encompasses more than a century of filmmaking, film criticism, and film reception, and the past twenty-five years have seen the idea of "queer cinema" expand further as a descriptor for a global arts practice. As the first of its kind, The Oxford Handbook of Queer Cinema treats these three currents as art and critical practice, bringing the canon of queer cinema together with a new generation of makers and scholars. The Handbook's contributors include scholars who research the worldwide canon of queer cinema, those who are uniquely positioned to address three decades of its particular importance, and those best positioned to ponder the forms it is taking or may take in our new century, namely digital media that moves in new circuits. In eight sections, they explore the many forms that queer cinema takes across time, discussing narrative, experimental, documentary, and genre filmmaking, including pornography. Likewise, although the study of cinema and media is not restricted to a single method, chapters showcase the unique combination of textual analysis, industrial and production history, interpretation, ethnography, and archival research that this field enables. For example, chapters analyze the ways in which queer cinema both is and is not self-evidently an object for study by examining films that reinforce negative understandings of queerness alongside those that liberate the subject; and by naming the films that are newly queered, while noting that many queerly-made texts await discovery. Finally, chapters necessarily assert that queer cinema is not an Anglophone phenomenon, nor is it restricted to the medium of film.
Download or read book The spectator 6 written by and published by . This book was released on 1776 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Outlook written by and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 634 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia The Century dictionary prepared under the superintendence of William Dwight Whitney written by William Dwight Whitney and published by . This book was released on 1903 with total page 918 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book A Compendious and Comprehensive Law Dictionary written by Thomas Walter Williams and published by . This book was released on 1816 with total page 1034 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Comedy for Animators written by Jonathan Lyons and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2015-11-19 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While comedy writers are responsible for creating clever scripts, comedic animators have a much more complicated problem to solve: What makes a physical character funny? Comedy for Animators breaks down the answer by exploring the techniques of those who have used their bodies to make others laugh. Drawing from traditions such as commedia dell’arte, pantomime, Vaudeville, the circus, and silent and modern film, animators will learn not only to create funny characters, but also how to execute gags, create a comic climate, and use environment as a character. Whether you’re creating a comic villain or a bumbling sidekick, this is the one and only guide you need to get your audience laughing! Explanation of comedic archetypes and devices will both inspire and inform your creative choices Exploration of various modes of storytelling allows you to give the right context for your story and characters Tips for creating worlds, scenarios, and casts for your characters to flourish in Companion website includes example videos and further resources to expand your skillset--check it out at www.comedyforanimators.com! Jonathan Lyons delivers simple, fun, illustrated lessons that teach readers to apply the principles of history’s greatest physical comedians to their animated characters. This isn’t stand-up comedy—it’s the falling down and jumping around sort!
