Download or read book Cinematic Mythmaking written by Irving Singer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2010-09-24 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mythic themes and philosophical probing in film as an art form, as seen in works of Preston Sturges, Jean Cocteau, Stanley Kubrick, and various other filmmakers. Film is the supreme medium for mythmaking. The gods and heroes of mythology are both larger than life and deeply human; they teach us about the world, and they tell us a good story. Similarly, our experience of film is both distant and intimate. Cinematic techniques—panning, tracking, zooming, and the other tools in the filmmaker's toolbox—create a world that is unlike reality and yet realistic at the same time. We are passive spectators, but we also have a personal relationship with the images we are seeing. In Cinematic Mythmaking, Irving Singer explores the hidden and overt use of myth in various films and, in general, the philosophical elements of a film's meaning. Mythological themes, Singer writes, perform a crucial role in cinematic art and even philosophy itself. Singer incisively disentangles the strands of different myths in the films he discusses. He finds in Preston Sturges's The Lady Eve that Barbara Stanwyck's character is not just the biblical Eve but a liberated woman of our times; Eliza Doolittle in the filmed versions of Shaw's Pygmalion is not just a statue brought to life but instead a heroic woman who must survive her own dark night of the soul. The protagonist of William Wyler's The Heiress and Anieszka Holland's Washington Square is both suffering Dido and an awakened Amazon. Singer reads Cocteau's films—including La Belle et la Bête, Orphée, and The Testament of Orpheus—as uniquely mythological cinematic poetry. He compares Kubrickean and Homeric epics and analyzes in depth the self-referential mythmaking of Federico Fellini in many of his movies, including 8½. The aesthetic and probing inventiveness in film, Singer shows us, restores and revives for audiences in the twenty-first century myths of creation, of the questing hero, and of ideals—both secular and religious—that have had enormous significance throughout the human search for love and meaning in life.
Download or read book Race War and the Cinematic Myth of America written by Eric Trenkamp and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-03-09 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Eric Trenkamp addresses a question that many American cinema fans may have asked themselves over the past 20 years – “why is everything superheroes now?” Although it might be easy to dismiss Hollywood’s last two decades of comic book movies as nothing more than overly simplified morality tales, the reality is much more complex. The pervasiveness of the comic book genre throughout American culture, Trenkamp argues, perpetuates a subtextual myth about what it means to be an “American” in the contemporary world. At the core of this myth is the image of who Hollywood considers to be the ideal American hero – the White male savior. This book explores the evolution of this ever-changing image of White superiority in American cinema, which can be traced from the earliest silent Westerns, through decades of war films, and up to the modern day comic book genre. Through provocative and engaging analysis of a wide variety of Hollywood films, Trenkamp demonstrates the industry’s history of popularizing White supremacy and the ways in which these films can act as propaganda to support various dehumanizing U.S. policies, both abroad and at home. Scholars of film studies, comic studies, genre studies, American studies, race studies, pop culture, and history will find this book particularly useful.
Download or read book The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture written by André Fischer and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-15 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Myths are a central part of our reality. But merely debunking them lets us forget why they are created in the first place and why we need them. André Fischer draws on key examples from German postwar culture, from novelists Hans Henny Jahnn and Hubert Fichte, to sculptor and performance artist Joseph Beuys, and filmmaker Werner Herzog, to show that mythmaking is an indispensable human practice in times of crisis. Against the background of mythologies based in nineteenth-century romanticism and their ideological continuation in Nazism, fresh forms of mythmaking in the narrative, visual, and performative arts emerged as an aesthetic paradigm in postwar modernism. Boldly rewriting the cultural history of an era and setting in transition, The Aesthetics of Mythmaking in German Postwar Culture counters the predominant narrative of an exclusively rational Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“coming to terms with the past”). Far from being merely reactionary, the turn toward myth offered a dimension of existential orientation that had been neglected by other influential aesthetic paradigms of the postwar period. Fischer’s wide-ranging, transmedia account offers an inclusive perspective on myth beyond storytelling and instead develops mythopoesis as a formal strategy of modernism at large.
Download or read book Classical Myth in Four Films of Alfred Hitchcock written by Mark William Padilla and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2016-09-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classical Myth in Four Films of Alfred Hitchcock presents an original study of Alfred Hitchcock by considering how his classics-informed London upbringing marks some of his films. The Catholic and Irish-English Hitchcock (1899-1980) was born to a mercantile family and attended a Jesuit college preparatory, whose curriculum featured Latin and classical humanities. An important expression of Edwardian culture at-large was an appreciation for classical ideas, texts, images, and myth. Mark Padilla traces the ways that Hitchcock’s films convey mythical themes, patterns, and symbols, though they do not overtly reference them. Hitchcock was a modernist who used myth in unconscious ways as he sought to tell effective stories in the film medium. This book treats four representative films, each from a different decade of his early career. The first two movies were produced in London: The Farmer’s Wife (1928) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934); the second two in Hollywood: Rebecca (1940) and Strangers on a Train (1951). In close readings of these movies, Padilla discusses myths and literary texts such as the Judgment of Paris, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Aristophanes’s Frogs, Apuleius’s tale “Cupid and Psyche,” Homer’s Odyssey, and The Homeric Hymn to Hermes. Additionally, many Olympian deities and heroes have archetypal resonances in the films in question. Padilla also presents a new reading of Hitchcock’s circumstances as he entered film work in 1920 and theorizes why and how the films may be viewed as an expression of the classical tradition and of classical reception. This new and important contribution to the field of classical reception in the cinema will be of great value to classicists, film scholars, and general readers interested in these topics.
Download or read book Music and Mythmaking in Film written by Timothy E. Scheurer and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2007-12-05 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work studies the conventions of music scoring in major film genres (e.g., science fiction, hardboiled detective, horror, historical romance, western), focusing on the artistic and technical methods that modern composers employ to underscore and accompany the visual events. Each chapter begins with an analysis of the major narrative and scoring conventions of a particular genre and concludes with an in-depth analysis of two film examples from different time periods. Several photographic stills and sheet music excerpts are included throughout the work, along with a select bibliography and discography.
Download or read book Religion and Myth in the Marvel Cinematic Universe written by Michael D. Nichols and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-02-22 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Breaking box office records, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has achieved an unparalleled level of success with fans across the world, raising the films to a higher level of narrative: myth. This is the first book to analyze the Marvel output as modern myth, comparing it to epics, symbols, rituals, and stories from world religious traditions. This book places the exploits of Iron Man, Captain America, Black Panther, and the other stars of the Marvel films alongside the legends of Achilles, Gilgamesh, Arjuna, the Buddha, and many others. It examines their origin stories and rites of passage, the monsters, shadow-selves, and familial conflicts they contend with, and the symbols of death and the battle against it that stalk them at every turn. The films deal with timeless human dilemmas and questions, evoking an enduring sense of adventure and wonder common across world mythic traditions.
Download or read book Philosophy Myth and Epic Cinema written by Sylvie Magerstädt and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-12-15 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Philosophy, Myth and Epic Cinema looks at the power of cinema in creating ideas that inspire our culture. Sylvie Magerstädt discusses the relationship between art, illusion and reality, a theme that has been part of philosophical debate for centuries. She argues that with the increase in use of digital technologies in modern cinema, this debate has entered a new phase. She discusses the notion of illusions as a system of stories and values that inspire a culture similar to other grand narratives, such as mythology or religion. Cinema thus becomes the postmodern “mythmaking machine” par excellence in a world that finds it increasingly difficult to create unifying concepts and positive illusions that can inspire and give hope. The author draws on the work of Friedrich Nietzsche, Siegfried Kracauer, and Gilles Deleuze to demonstrate the relevance of continental philosophy to a reading of mainstream Hollywood cinema. The book argues that our longing for illusion is particularly strong in times of crisis, illustrated through an exploration of the recent revival of historic and epic myths in Hollywood cinema, including films such as Troy, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and Clash of the Titans.
Download or read book Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema written by Martin M. Winkler and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2001-06-21 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Classical Myth and Culture in the Cinema is a collection of essays presenting a variety of approaches to films set in ancient Greece and Rome and to films that reflect archetypal features of classical literature. The diversity of content and theoretical stances found in this volume will make it required reading for scholars and students interested in interdisciplinary approaches to text and image, and for anyone interested in the presence of Greece and Rome in modern popular culture.
Download or read book Popular Culture and the Austerity Myth written by Pete Bennett and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-10-14 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary popular culture is engaged in a rich and multi-levelled set of representational relations with austerity. This volume seeks to explore these relations, to ask: how does popular culture give expression to austerity; how are its effects conveyed; how do texts reproduce and expose its mythic qualities? It provides a reading of cultural texts in circulation in the present ‘age of austerity’. Through its central focus—popular culture—it considers the impact and influence of austerity across media and textual categories. The collection presents a theoretical deconstruction of popular culture’s reproduction of, and response to, mythical expressions of ‘austerity’ in Western culture, spanning the United Kingdom, North America, Europe and the Middle East and textual events from political media discourse, music, videogames, social media, film, television, journalism, folk art, food, protest movements, slow media and the practice of austerity in everyday life
Download or read book Popular Cinema as Political Theory written by J. Nelson and published by Springer. This book was released on 2013-12-05 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book presents cinematic case studies in political realism versus political idealism, demonstrating methods of viewing popular cinema as political theory. The book appreciates political myth-making in popular genres as especially practical and accessible theorizing about politics.
Download or read book New Philosophies of Film written by Robert Sinnerbrink and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2022-07-28 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can philosophy teach us about cinema? Can cinema transform how we understand philosophy? How should we describe the competing approaches to philosophizing on film? New Philosophies of Film answers these questions by offering a lucid introduction to the exciting developments and contentious debates within the philosophy of film. Mapping out the conceptual terrain, it examines both analytic and continental approaches to cinema and puts forward a pluralist film philosophy, grounded in practical examples from film, documentaries and television series. Now thoroughly updated to showcase the most recent developments in the field, this 2nd edition features: · New chapters on phenomenology, cinematic ethics, philosophical documentary film and television as philosophy, incorporating feminist, socio-political, ethical and ecological approaches to cinema · Contemporary case studies including Carol, Roma, Melancholia, two Derrida documentaries, and the Netflix series Black Mirror · Expanded coverage of Gilles Deleuze and Stanley Cavell, two of the most influential philosophers of film · An updated bibliography, filmography and reading lists, with links to online resources to support further study Demonstrating how the film-philosophy encounter can open up new paths for thinking, New Philosophies of Film is an essential resource for putting interdisciplinary inquiry into practice.
Download or read book Representing Religion in World Cinema written by S. Plate and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious traditions have provided a seemingly endless supply of subject matter for film, from the Ten Commandments to the Mahabharata . At the same time, film production has engendered new religious practices and has altered existing ones, from the cult following of The Rocky Horror Picture Show to the 2001 Australian census in which 70,000 people indicated their religion to be 'Jedi Knight'. Representing Religion in World Cinema begins with these mutual transformations as the contributors query the two-way interrelations between film and religion across cinemas of the world. Cross-cultural and interdisciplinary by nature, this collection by an international group of scholars draws on work from religious studies, film studies, and anthropology, as well as theoretical impulses in performance, gender, ethnicity, colonialism, and postcolonialism.
Download or read book Cinema and Unconventional Warfare in the Twentieth Century written by Paul B. Rich and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-08-23 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cinematic representations of unconventional warfare have received sporadic attention to date. However, this pattern has now begun to change with the rise of insurgency and counter-insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the growing importance of jihadist terrorism in the wake of 9/11. This ground-breaking study provides a much-needed examination of global unconventional warfare in 20th-century filmmaking, with case studies from the United States, Britain, Ireland, France, Italy and Israel. Paul B. Rich examines Hollywood's treatment of counter-terrorism and counter-insurgency in the United States; British post-colonial insurgencies in Malaya and Kenya and British special operations in the Second World War; the Irish conflict before and during the Troubles; French filmmaking and the reluctance to deal with the bitter war in Algeria in the 1950s; Italian neorealism and its impact on films dealing with urban insurgency by Roberto Rossellini, Nanni Loy and Gillo Pontecorvo, and Israel and the upsurge of Palestinian terrorism. Whilst only a small number of films on these conflicts have been able to rise above stereotyping insurgents and terrorists - in some cases due to a pattern of screen orientalism - Cinema and Unconventional Warfare in the Twentieth Century stresses the positive political gains to be derived from humanizing terrorists and terrorists movements, especially in the context of modern jihadist terrorism. This is essential reading for academics, postgraduates and advanced undergraduates interested in 20th-century military history, politics and international relations, and film studies.
Download or read book The Bloomsbury Companion to Stanley Kubrick written by I.Q. Hunter and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stanley Kubrick is one of the most revered directors in cinema history. His 13 films, including classics such as Paths of Glory, 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, and The Shining, attracted controversy, acclaim, a devoted cult following, and enormous critical interest. With this comprehensive guide to the key contexts - industrial and cultural, as well as aesthetic and critical - the themes of Kubrick's films sum up the current vibrant state of Kubrick studies. Bringing together an international team of leading scholars and emergent voices, this Companion provides comprehensive coverage of Stanley Kubrick's contribution to cinema. After a substantial introduction outlining Kubrick's life and career and the film's production and reception contexts, the volume consists of 39 contributions on key themes that both summarise previous work and offer new, often archive-based, state-of-the-art research. In addition, it is specifically tailored to the needs of students wanting an authoritative, accessible overview of academic work on Kubrick.
Download or read book Terrence Malick written by Robert Sinnerbrink and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-07-11 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many critics have approached Terrence Malick's work from a philosophical perspective, arguing that his films express philosophy through cinema. With their remarkable images of nature, poetic voiceovers, and meditative reflections, Malick's cinema certainly invites philosophical engagement. In Terrence Malick: Filmmaker and Philosopher, Robert Sinnerbrink takes a different approach, exploring Malick's work as a case of cinematic ethics: films that evoke varieties of ethical experience, encompassing existential, metaphysical, and religious perspectives. Malick's films are not reducible to a particular moral position or philosophical doctrine; rather, they solicit ethically significant forms of experience, encompassing anxiety and doubt, wonder and awe, to questioning and acknowledgment, through aesthetic engagement and poetic reflection. Drawing on a range of thinkers and approaches from Heidegger and Cavell, Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, to phenomenology and moral psychology Sinnerbrink explores how Malick's films respond to the problem of nihilism the loss of conviction or belief in prevailing forms of value and meaning and the possibility of ethical transformation through cinema: from self-transformation in our relations with others to cultural transformation via our attitudes towards towards nature and the world. Sinnerbrink shows how Malick's later films, from The Tree of Life to Voyage of Time, provide unique opportunities to explore cinematic ethics in relation to the crisis of belief, the phenomenology of love, and film's potential to invite moral transformation.
Download or read book Classical Myth on Screen written by M. Cyrino and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-04-08 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of how screen texts embrace, refute, and reinvent the cultural heritage of antiquity, this volume looks at specific story-patterns and archetypes from Greco-Roman culture. The contributors offer a variety of perspectives, highlighting key cultural relay points at which a myth is received and reformulated for a particular audience.
Download or read book Romanian Cinema written by Doru Pop and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 397 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume explores the philosophical and metaphysical manifestations of contemporary cinema. Starting with the hypothesis that movies provide an experience that is both a pathway into the thinking mechanisms of modern humans and into our collective psyche, this study focuses on the elements that form the “Romanian cinematic mind” as part of the European cinema-thinking. While this book is based on specific case studies provided by recent productions in Romanian filmmaking, such as Proroca (2017) and Touch me Not (2018), it also contextualises the national cinema within the larger, European art of making movies. Offering close interpretations of the works of world-renowned directors like Cristi Puiu, Cristian Mungiu, Corneliu Porumboiu or more recently Adina Pintilie and Constantin Popescu, this book questions the “Romanianess” of their cinematic techniques, and places their philosophical roots both in a particular mode of thinking and within continental philosophy.
