Download or read book Outlaw Heroes as Liminal Figures of Film and Television written by Rebecca A. Umland and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2016-04-06 with total page 294 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unlike such romanticized renegades as Robin Hood and Jesse James, there is another kind of outlaw hero, one who lives between the law and his own personal code. In times of crisis, when the law proves inadequate, the liminal outlaw negotiates between the social imperatives of the community and his innate sense of right and wrong. While society requires his services, he necessarily remains apart from it in self-preservation. The modern outlaw hero of film and television is rooted in the knight errant, whose violent exploits are tempered by his solitude and devotion to a higher ideal. In Hollywood classics such as Casablanca (1942) and Shane (1953), and in early series like The Lone Ranger (1949-1957) and Have Gun--Will Travel (1957-1963), the outlaw hero reconciles for audiences the conflicting impulses of individual freedom versus serving a larger cause. Urban westerns like the Dirty Harry and Death Wish franchises, as well as iconic action figures like Rambo and Batman, testify to his enduring popularity. This book examines the liminal hero's origins in medieval romance, his survival in the mythology of the Hollywood western and his incarnations in the urban western and modern action film.
Download or read book David Lynch and the American West written by Rob E. King, and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2023-01-19 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection convenes diverse analyses of David Lynch's newly conceived, dreamlike neo-noir representations of the American West, a first in studies of regionalism and indigeneity in his films. Twelve essays and three interviews address Lynch's image of the American West and its impact on the genre. Fans and scholars of David Lynch's work will find a study of his interpretations of the West as place and myth, spanning from his first feature film, Eraserhead (1977), through the third season of Twin Peaks in 2017. Symbols of the West in Lynch's work can be as obvious as an Odessa, Texas street sign or as subtle as the visual themes rooted in indigenous artistry. Explorations of cowboy masculinity, violence, modern frontier narratives and representations of indigeneity are all included in this collection.
Download or read book The Films of Robin Williams written by Johnson Cheu and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-05-30 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From his first appearance as Mork from Ork on the 1970s sitcom Happy Days, Robin Williams was heralded as a singular talent. In the pre-cable television era, he was one of the few performers to successfully transition from TV to film. An Oscar-winning actor and preternaturally quick-witted comedian, Williams became a cultural icon, leaving behind a large and varied body of work when he unexpectedly took his own life in 2014. This collection of new essays brings together a range of perspectives on Williams and his oeuvre, including beloved hits like Mrs. Doubtfire, Good Morning, Vietnam, Good Will Hunting, The Fisher King, Dead Poets Society and Aladdin. Contributors explore his earlier work (Mork and Mindy, The World According to Garp) and his political and satirical films (Moscow on the Hudson, Toys). Williams's darker, less well-known fare, such as Being Human, One Hour Photo, Final Cut and Boulevard, is also covered. Williams's artistry has become woven into the fabric of our global media culture.
Download or read book Outlaw Heroes in Myth and History written by Graham Seal and published by Anthem Press. This book was released on 2011-07-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is an overview and analysis of the global tradition of the outlaw hero. The mythology and history of the outlaw hero is traced from the Roman Empire to the present, showing how both real and mythic figures have influenced social, political, economic and cultural outcomes in many times and places. The book also looks at the contemporary continuations of the outlaw hero mythology, not only in popular culture and everyday life, but also in the current outbreak of global terrorism.
Download or read book Medieval Imaginaries in Tourism Heritage and the Media written by Jennifer Frost and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-08-12 with total page 263 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the pervading influence of medieval culture, through an exploration of the intersections between tourism, heritage, and imaginaries of the medieval in the media. Drawing on examples from tourist destinations, heritage sites, fictional literature, television and cinema, the book illustrates how the medieval period has consistently captured the imagination of audiences and has been reinvented for contemporary tastes. Chapters present a range of international examples, from nineteenth century Victorian notions of chivalry, knights in shining armour exemplified by King Arthur, and damsels in distress, to the imagining of the Japanese samurai as medieval knights. Other topics explored include the changing representations of medieval women, the Crusades and the Vikings, and the challenges faced by medieval cathedrals to survive economically and socially. This book offers multidisciplinary perspectives and will appeal to scholars and students across a variety of disciplines such as cultural studies, history, tourism, heritage studies, historical geography and sociology.
Download or read book Robin Hood written by Stephen Thomas Knight and published by Boydell & Brewer Ltd. This book was released on 1999 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The legends of Robin Hood are very familiar, but scholarship and criticism dealing with the long and varied tradition of the famous outlaw is as elusive as the identity of Robin himself, and is scattered in a wide range of sources, many difficult of access. This book is the first to bring together major studies of aspects of the tradition. The thirty-one studies take a variety of approaches, from archival exploration in quest of a real Robin Hood, to a political angle seeking the social meaning of the texts across time, to literary scholars concerned with origin, structures and generic variation, or moral and social significance; also included are considerations of theatre and film studies, and folklore and children's literature. Overall, the collection provides a valuable basis for further study. STEPHEN KNIGHT is Professor of English Literature at the University of Wales, Cardiff; he is well-known as an authority on the Robin Hood tradition, and has edited the recently-discovered Robin Hood Forresters Manuscript.
Download or read book Magic Monsters and Make Believe Heroes written by Douglas E. Cowan and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2019-01-29 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magic, Monsters, and Make-Believe Heroes looks at fantasy film, television, and participative culture as evidence of our ongoing need for a mythic vision—for stories larger than ourselves into which we write ourselves and through which we can become the heroes of our own story. Why do we tell and retell the same stories over and over when we know they can’t possibly be true? Contrary to popular belief, it’s not because pop culture has run out of good ideas. Rather, it is precisely because these stories are so fantastic, some resonating so deeply that we elevate them to the status of religion. Illuminating everything from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Dungeons and Dragons, and from Drunken Master to Mad Max, Douglas E. Cowan offers a modern manifesto for why and how mythology remains a vital force today.
Download or read book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind written by Julian Jaynes and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2000-08-15 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: National Book Award Finalist: “This man’s ideas may be the most influential, not to say controversial, of the second half of the twentieth century.”—Columbus Dispatch At the heart of this classic, seminal book is Julian Jaynes's still-controversial thesis that human consciousness did not begin far back in animal evolution but instead is a learned process that came about only three thousand years ago and is still developing. The implications of this revolutionary scientific paradigm extend into virtually every aspect of our psychology, our history and culture, our religion—and indeed our future. “Don’t be put off by the academic title of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Its prose is always lucid and often lyrical…he unfolds his case with the utmost intellectual rigor.”—The New York Times “When Julian Jaynes . . . speculates that until late in the twentieth millennium BC men had no consciousness but were automatically obeying the voices of the gods, we are astounded but compelled to follow this remarkable thesis.”—John Updike, The New Yorker “He is as startling as Freud was in The Interpretation of Dreams, and Jaynes is equally as adept at forcing a new view of known human behavior.”—American Journal of Psychiatry
Download or read book Hollywood Genres Formulas Filmmaking and The Studio System written by Thomas Schatz and published by McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages. This book was released on 1981-02 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central thesis of this book is that a genre approach provides the most effective means for understanding, analyzing and appreciating the Hollywood cinema. Taking into account not only the formal and aesthetic aspects of feature filmmaking, but various other cultural aspects as well, the genre approach treats movie production as a dynamic process of exchange between the film industry and its audience. This process, embodied by the Hollywood studio system, has been sustained primarily through genres, those popular narrative formulas like the Western, musical and gangster film, which have dominated the screen arts throughout this century.
Download or read book Medievalism written by Richard J. Utz and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 95 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This book is called a manifesto because it has an unapologetically political objective. Richard Utz wants to help reform the way we think about and practise our academic engagement with medieval culture, and he uses his own observations as a medievalist and medievalism-ist over the last twenty-five years to offer ways in which we might reconnect with the general public that has allowed us to become, since the late nineteenth century, a rather exclusive clan of specialists who communicate mostly with each other. The traditional academic study of the Middle Ages, after more than a century of growing and plateauing, is now on the decline. While, at least over the next five to ten years, we will still be basking in the reassuring proximity (at conferences) of thousands of others who are involved in what we do ourselves, there is a manifest discrepancy between the large number of students who request that we address their love of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and medieval-themed video and computer games, and the decreasing number of actual medievalists hired to replace retiring colleagues. We should pursue more lasting partnerships with so-called amateurs and enthusiasts for the sake of a sustainable future engagement with medieval culture. Richard Utz suggests some ways we might do this, and looks forward to "a more truly co-disciplinary, inclusive, democratic, and humanistic engagement with what we call, for better or worse, the Middle Ages"."--Bloomsbury Publishing.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Film Music written by Mervyn Cooke and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A stimulating and unusually wide-ranging collection of essays overviewing ways in which music functions in film soundtracks.
Download or read book Culture Conglomerates written by William M. Kunz and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2007 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explains conglomeration and regulation in the film and television industries, covering its history as well as the contemporary scene. Useful as a supplement for a variety of media courses, this text includes synopses of key media regulations and policies, discussion questions, a glossary, and entertaining boxed features.
Download or read book Amorous Acts written by Frances L. Restuccia and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Amorous Acts uses psychoanalytic concepts to show how queer theory is operating to put in place a non-heterosexist social order.
Download or read book Cycling and Cinema written by Bruce Bennett and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2019-04-30 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique exploration of the history of the bicycle in cinema, from Hollywood blockbusters and slapstick comedies to documentaries, realist dramas, and experimental films. Cycling and Cinema explores the history of the bicycle in cinema from the late nineteenth century through to the present day. In this new book from Goldsmiths Press, Bruce Bennett examines a wide variety of films from around the world, ranging from Hollywood blockbusters and slapstick comedies to documentaries, realist dramas, and experimental films, to consider the complex, shifting cultural significance of the bicycle. The bicycle is an everyday technology, but in examining the ways in which bicycles are used in films, Bennett reveals the rich social and cultural importance of this apparently unremarkable machine. The cinematic bicycles discussed in this book have various functions. They are the source of absurd comedy in silent films, and the vehicles that allow their owners to work in sports films and social realist cinema. They are a means of independence and escape for children in melodramas and kids' films, and the tools that offer political agency and freedom to women, as depicted in films from around the world. In recounting the cinematic history of the bicycle, Bennett reminds us that this machine is not just a practical means of transport or a child's toy, but the vehicle for a wide range of meanings concerning individual identity, social class, nationhood and belonging, family, gender, and sexuality and pleasure. As this book shows, two hundred years on from its invention, the bicycle is a revolutionary technology that retains the power to transform the world.
Download or read book Film Remakes written by NA NA and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-10-03 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book to provide a comprehensive and systematic account of the phenomenon of cinematic remaking. Drawing upon recent theories of genre and intertextuality, Film Remakes describes remaking as both an elastic concept and a complex situation, one enabled and limited by the interrelated roles and practices of industry, critics, and audiences. This approach to remaking is developed across three broad sections: the first deals with issues of production, including commerce and authors; the second considers genre, plots, and structures; and the third investigates issues of reception, including audiences and institutions.
Download or read book The Myth of the American Superhero written by John Shelton Lawrence and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 429 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the nation seems to yearn for redemption from the evils that threaten its tranquility, the authors maintain that Joseph Campbell's monomythic hero is alive and well, but significantly displaced, in American popular culture.
Download or read book Time Out Film Guide written by John Pym and published by Penguin Group. This book was released on 2001 with total page 1572 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This guide covers every aspect of world cinema from Russian silents to Ealing comedies, classic documentaries to Japanese animated films, B-movie horror and major British and American releases since 1968. More than 660 new reviews are included in the 2002 edition, which covers the 2000/2001 Oscar and Bafta awards, prizes from the Berlin, Cannes and Venice festivals and a discussion of the topic Home entertainment: where are we now? The guide also includes the cinema centenary and Time Out readers' Top One Hundred polls.
