Download or read book Buffy Ballads and Bad Guys Who Sing written by Kendra Preston Leonard and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2010-11-16 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When writer and director Joss Whedon created the character Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he could hardly have expected the resulting academic interest in his work. Yet almost six years after the end of Buffy on television, Buffy studies—and academic work on Whedon's expanding oeuvre—continue to grow. Now with three hugely popular television shows, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly, and the film Serenity all available on DVD, scholars are evaluating countless aspects of the Whedon universe (or "Whedonverse"). Buffy, Ballads, and Bad Guys Who Sing: Music in the Worlds of Joss Whedon studies the significant role that music plays in these works, from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the internet musical Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. Kendra Preston Leonard has collected a varying selection of essays that explore music and sound in Joss Whedon's works. The essays investigate both diegetic and non-diegetic music, considering music from various sources, including the shows' original scores, music performed by the characters themselves, and music contributed by such artists as Michelle Branch, The Sex Pistols, and Sarah McLachlan, as well as classical composers like Camille Saint-Saëns and Johannes Brahms. The approaches incorporate historical and theoretical musicology, feminist and queer musicology, media studies, cultural history, and interdisciplinary readings. The book also explores the compositions written by Whedon himself: the theme music for Firefly, and two fully integrated musicals, the Buffy episode "Once More, With Feeling" and Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog. With several musical examples, a table with a full breakdown of the Danse Macabre scene from the acclaimed Buffy episode "Hush," and an index, this volume will be fascinating to students and scholars of science-fiction, television, film, and popular culture.
Download or read book Joss Whedon and Race written by Mary Ellen Iatropoulos and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-11-10 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joss Whedon is known for exploring philosophical questions through socially progressive narratives in his films, television shows and comics. His work critiques racial stereotypes, sometimes repudiating them, sometimes reinvesting in them (sometimes both at once). This collection of new essays explores his representations of racial power dynamics between individuals and institutions and how the Whedonverse constructs race, ethnicity and nationality relationships.
Download or read book The Vampire in Folklore History Literature Film and Television written by and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-09-18 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This comprehensive bibliography covers writings about vampires and related creatures from the 19th century to the present. More than 6,000 entries document the vampire's penetration of Western culture, from scholarly discourse, to popular culture, politics and cook books. Sections by topic list works covering various aspects, including general sources, folklore and history, vampires in literature, music and art, metaphorical vampires and the contemporary vampire community. Vampires from film and television--from Bela Lugosi's Dracula to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood and the Twilight Saga--are well represented.
Download or read book The Whedonverse Catalog written by Don Macnaughtan and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-06-04 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Director, producer and screenwriter Joss Whedon is a creative force in film, television, comic books and a host of other media. This book provides an authoritative survey of all of Whedon's work, ranging from his earliest scriptwriting on Roseanne, through his many movie and TV undertakings--Toy Story, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly/Serenity, Dr. Horrible, The Cabin in the Woods, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.--to his forays into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The book covers both the original texts of the Whedonverse and the many secondary works focusing on Whedon's projects, including about 2000 books, essays, articles, documentaries and dissertations.
Download or read book Sounds of Fear and Wonder written by Janet K. Halfyard and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2016-06-20 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Characters and plot developments, similarly, are enhanced by their musical accompaniment. The different scoring strategies employed in supernatural and horror-based genres, comprising for example True Blood and Supernatural, are considered alongside cult shows set in our reality, such as Dexter, The Sopranos and 24. These discussions are complimented by in-depth case studies of musical approaches in two high-profile series: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Hannibal. Written from a musicological standpoint but fully accessible to non-musicologists, the book significantly advances television and music studies.
Download or read book Bewitched Again written by Julie D. O’Reilly and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-07-25 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Starting in 1996, U.S. television saw an influx of superhuman female characters who could materialize objects like Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, defeat evil like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and have premonitions like Charmed's Phoebe. The extraordinary abilities of these women showed resistance to traditional gender roles, although these characters experienced infringements on their abilities in ways superpowered men did not. Supernaturally powerful women and girls have remained on television, including the heavenly connected Grace (of Saving Grace), telepathic Sookie (of True Blood), and magical Cassie (of The Secret Circle). These more recent characters also face numerous constraints on their powers. As a result, superpowers become a narrative technique to diminish these characters, a technique that began with television's first superpowered woman, Samantha (of Bewitched). They all illustrate a paradox of women's power: are these characters ever truly powerful, much less superpowerful, if they cannot use their abilities fully? The superwoman has endured as a metaphor for women trying to "have it all"; therefore, the travails of these television examples parallel those of their off-screen counterparts.
Download or read book The Comics of Joss Whedon written by Valerie Estelle Frankel and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2015-06-08 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A great deal of scholarship has focused on Joss Whedon's television and film work, which includes Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, The Cabin in the Woods and The Avengers. But Whedon's work in the world of comics has largely been ignored. He created his own dystopian heroine, Fray, assembled the goofy fannish heroes of Sugarshock, and wrote arcs for Marvel's Astonishing X-Men and Runaways. Along with The Avengers, Whedon's contributions to the cinematic Universe include: script doctoring the first X-Men film, writing a ground-shaking Wonder Woman screenplay, and co-creating ABC's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Today, Whedon continues the Buffy and Firefly stories with innovative comics that shatter the rules of storytelling and force his characters to grow through life-altering conflicts. This collection of new essays focuses on Whedon's comics work and its tie-ins with his film and television productions, emphasizing his auteurism in crossing over from panel to screen to panel. Essays focus on the comic inspirations and subversive tropes of the Whedonverse, as well as character changes and new interpretations.
Download or read book Sexualities in the Works of Joss Whedon written by Lewis Call and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2020-05-26 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Joss Whedon's works, across all media including television, film, musicals, and comic books, are known for their commitment to gender and sexual equality. They have always encouraged their audiences to love whomever, and however, they wish. This book is a history of the sexualities represented in the works of Joss Whedon and it covers all of Whedon's genres, including fantasy, horror, science fiction, westerns, superhero stories, and Shakespearean comedy. Unique for its consideration of the entire arc of Whedon's two-decade career, from the beginning of Buffy the Vampire Slayer's first season in 1997 through the conclusion of its twelfth (comic book) season in 2018, this book examines in detail both better-known queer sexualities of the LGBTQ+ spectrum, and lesser-known non-normative sexualities. The book includes chapters on Whedon's sexually dominant women and submissive men, sexual pluralism on Firefly, disabled sexualities in Whedon's superhero narratives, zoophilia in Buffy, queer and heteronormative sexualities in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, the subversion of the sexual tropes of slasher films in The Cabin in Woods, and dominance and submission in Whedon's Much Ado About Nothing.
Download or read book Re Locating the Sounds of the Western written by Kendra Preston Leonard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Re-Locating the Sounds of the Western examines the use and function of musical tropes and gestures traditionally associated with the American Western in new and different contexts ranging from Elizabethan theater, contemporary drama, space opera and science fiction, Cold War era European filmmaking, and advertising. Each chapter focuses on a notable use of Western musical tropes, textures, instrumentation, form, and harmonic language, delving into the resonance of the music of the Western to cite bravura, machismo, colonisation, violence, gender roles and essentialism, exploration, and other concepts.
Download or read book Joss Whedon written by Amy Pascale and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2014-08-01 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the cult favorite Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which netted four million viewers per episode, to the summer blockbuster The Avengers, which amassed a box office of $1.5 billion, Joss Whedon has made a name for himself in Hollywood for his penchant for telling meaningful, personal tales about love, death, and redemption even against the most dramatic and larger-than-life backdrops. This biography follows his development from a creative child and teenager who spent years away from his family at an elite English public school, through his early successes—which often turned into frustrating heartbreak in both television (Roseanne) and film (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)—to his breakout turn as the creator, writer, and director of the Buffy television series. Extensive, original interviews with Whedon's family, friends, collaborators, and stars—and with the man himself—offer candid, behind-the-scenes accounts of the making of groundbreaking series such as Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse, as well as new stories about his work with Pixar writers and animators during the creation of Toy Story. Most importantly, however, these conversations present an intimate and revealing portrait of a man whose creativity and storytelling ability have manifested themselves in comics, online media, television, and film.
Download or read book Reading Joss Whedon written by Rhonda V. Wilcox and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2014-05-16 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In an age when geek chic has come to define mainstream pop culture, few writers and producers inspire more admiration and response than Joss Whedon. From Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Much Ado About Nothing, from Dr. Horrible’s Sing–Along Blog to The Avengers, the works of Whedon have been the focus of increasing academic attention. This collection of articles represents some of the best work covering a wide array of topics that clarify Whedon’s importance, including considerations of narrative and visual techniques, myth construction, symbolism, gender, heroism, and the business side of television. The editors argue that Whedon’s work is of both social and aesthetic significance; that he creates “canonical television.” He is a master of his artistic medium and has managed this success on broadcast networks rather than on cable. From the focus on a single episode to the exploration of an entire season, from the discussion of a particular narrative technique to a recounting of the history of Whedon studies, this collection will both entertain and educate those exploring Whedon scholarship for the first time and those planning to teach a course on his works.
Download or read book Girls in Contemporary Vampire Fiction written by Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-05-08 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the narratives of girlhood in contemporary YA vampire fiction, bringing into the spotlight the genre’s radical, ambivalent, and contradictory visions of young femininity. Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska considers less-explored popular vampire series for girls, particularly those by P.C. and Kristin Cast and Richelle Mead, tracing the ways in which they engage in larger cultural conversations on girlhood in the Western world. Mapping the interactions between girl and vampire corporealities, delving into the unconventional tales of vampire romance and girl sexual expressions, examining the narratives of women and violence, and venturing into the uncanny vampire classroom to unmask its critique of present-day schooling, the volume offers a new perspective on the vampire genre and an engaging insight into the complexities of growing up a girl.
Download or read book Postmodern Vampires written by Sorcha Ní Fhlainn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-04-25 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Postmodern Vampires: Film, Fiction, and Popular Culture is the first major study to focus on American cultural history from the vampire’s point of view. Beginning in 1968, Ní Fhlainn argues that vampires move from the margins to the centre of popular culture as representatives of the anxieties and aspirations of their age. Mapping their literary and screen evolution on to the American Presidency, from Richard Nixon to Donald Trump, this essential critical study chronicles the vampire’s blood-ties to distinct socio-political movements and cultural decades in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Through case studies of key texts, including Interview with the Vampire, The Lost Boys, Blade, Twilight, Let Me In, True Blood and numerous adaptations of Dracula, this book reveals how vampires continue to be exemplary barometers of political and historical change in the American imagination. It is essential reading for scholars and students in Gothic and Horror Studies, Film Studies, and American Studies, and for anyone interested in the articulate undead.
Download or read book Joss Whedon s Big Damn Movie written by Frederick Blichert and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2018-03-19 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Joss Whedon's television show Firefly (2002-2003) was cancelled, devoted fans cried foul and demanded more--which led to the 2005 feature film Serenity. Both the series and the film were celebrated for their melding of science fiction and western iconography, dystopian settings, underdog storylines, and clever fast-paced dialogue. Firefly has garnered a great deal of scholarly attention--less so, Serenity. This collection of new essays, the first focusing exclusively on the film, examines its depictions of race, ableism, social engineering and systems of power, and its status as a crime film, among other topics.
Download or read book Broadway in the Box written by Kelly Kessler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It was as if American television audiences discovered the musical in the early 21st century. In 2009 Glee took the Fox Network and American television by storm with the unexpected unification of primetime programming, awkward teens, and powerful voices spontaneously bursting into song. After raking in the highest rating for a new show in the 2009-2010 season, Glee would continue to cultivate rabid fans, tie-in soundtracks and merchandising, and a spinoff reality competition show until its conclusion in 2015. Alongside Glee, NBC and Fox would crank up musical visibility with the nighttime drama Smash and a string of live musical productions. Then came ABC's comedic fantasy musical series Galavant and the CW's surprise Golden Globe darling Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. Television and the musical appeared to be a perfect match. But, as author Kelly Kessler illustrates, television had at that point been carrying on a sixty-year, symbiotic love affair with the musical. From Rodgers and Hammerstein's appearance on the first Toast of the Town telecast and Mary Martin's iconic Peter Pan airings to Barbra Streisand's 1960s CBS specials, The Carol Burnett Show, Cop Rock, Great Performances, and a string of one-off musical episodes of sitcoms, nighttime soaps, fantasy shows, and soap operas, television has always embraced the musical. Kessler shows how the form is written across the history of American television and how its various incarnations tell the stories of shifting American culture and changing television, film, and theatrical landscapes. She recounts and explores this rich, decades-long history by traversing musicals, stars, and sounds from film, Broadway, and Las Vegas to the small screen.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies written by David Neumeyer and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 697 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Film Music Studies gathers two dozen original essays that chart the history and current state of interdisciplinary scholarship on music in audiovisual media, focusing on four areas: history, genre and medium, analysis and criticism, and interpretation.
Download or read book Television Storyworlds as Virtual Space written by M. King Adkins and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2018-09-15 with total page 171 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Television Storyworlds as Virtual Space examines television as a series of virtual realities viewers enter and explore one episode at a time. Drawing on specific examples, from Westworld to Green Acres, Twin Peaks to Fargo, it illustrates how each of these worlds invites us in, encourages us to move about within it, and constantly pushes against its own boundaries so that its universe continually expands and develops. Specific chapters consider the importance of title sequences in helping us enter these storyworlds, how children’s television educates us in using virtual reality, and the centrality of the post-apocalyptic series to the TV landscape. Ultimately, the book situates television as part of an artistic continuum, one that stretches back as far as cave paintings, but that also anticipates the digitally-based virtual reality that lies just on the horizon.
