Download or read book Stars Fans and Consumption in the 1950s written by Sumiko Higashi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-12-17 with total page 478 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the leading fan magazine in the postwar era, Photoplay constructed female stars as social types who embodied a romantic and leisured California lifestyle. Addressing working- and lower-middle-class readers who were prospering in the first mass consumption society, the magazine published not only publicity stories but also beauty secrets, fashion layouts, interior design tips, recipes, advice columns, and vacation guides. Postwar femininity was constructed in terms of access to commodities in suburban houses as the site of family togetherness. As the decade progressed, however, changing social mores regarding female identity and behavior eroded the relationship between idolized stars and worshipful fans. When the magazine adopted tabloid conventions to report sex scandals like the Debbie-Eddie-Liz affair, stars were demystified and fans became scandalmongers. But the construction of female identity based on goods and performance that resulted in unstable, fragmented selves remains a legacy evident in postmodern culture today.
Download or read book Star Attractions written by Tamar Jeffers McDonald and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2019-12-15 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During Hollywood’s “classic era,” from the 1920s to 1950s, roughly twenty major fan magazines were offered each month at American newsstands and abroad. These publications famously fed fan obsessions with celebrities such as Mae West and Elvis Presley. Film studies scholars often regard these magazines with suspicion; perhaps due to their reputation for purveying scandal and gossip, their frequent mingling of gushing tone, and blatant falsehood. Looking at these magazines with fresh regarding eyes and treating them as primary sources, the contributors of this collection provide unique insights into contemporary assumptions about the relationship between fan and star, performer and viewer. In doing so, they reveal the magazines to be a huge and largely untapped resource on a wealth of subjects, including gender roles, appearance and behavior, and national identity. Contributors: Emily Chow-Kambitsch, Alissa Clarke, Jonathan Driskell, Lucy Fischer, Ann-Marie Fleming, Oana-Maria Mazilu, Adrienne L. McLean, Sarah Polley, Geneviève Sellier, Michael Williams
Download or read book Helen of Troy in Hollywood written by Ruby Blondell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How a legendary woman from classical antiquity has come to embody the threat of transcendent beauty in movies and TV Helen of Troy in Hollywood examines the figure of the mythic Helen in film and television, showing how storytellers from different Hollywood eras have used Helen to grapple with the problems and dynamics of gender and idealized femininity. Paying careful attention to how the image of Helen is embodied by the actors who have portrayed her, Ruby Blondell provides close readings of such works as Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy and the Star Trek episode “Elaan of Troyius,” going beyond contextualization to lead the reader through a fundamental rethinking of how we understand and interpret the classic tradition. A luminous work of scholarship by one of today’s leading classicists, Helen of Troy in Hollywood highlights the importance of ancient myths not as timeless stories frozen in the past but as lenses through which to view our own artistic, cultural, and political moment in a new light. This incisive book demonstrates how, whether as the hero of these screen adaptations or as a peripheral character in male-dominated adventures, the mythic Helen has become symbolic of the perceived dangers of superhuman beauty and transgressive erotic agency.
Download or read book Hard Boiled Hollywood written by Jon Lewis and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2017-04-19 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two spectacular dead bodies—Elizabeth Short, known as the Black Dahlia, found dumped and posed in a vacant lot in January 1947, and Marilyn Monroe, found dead in her home in August 1962—bookend this new history of Hollywood’s postwar transition. Short’s murder called attention to the lives of the many disenfranchised in Los Angeles; she was, after all, one of them. Monroe’s death involved the entourage inhabiting her movie star orbit: quack doctors, gangsters, Hollywood celebrities, the FBI and the CIA, and, inevitably, the Kennedys. Hard-Boiled Hollywood focuses on the many lives lost at the crossroads of a dreamed-of Hollywood and the real thing following the collapse of the studio system as celebrities, moguls, mobsters, gossip mongers, and industry wannabes came into frequent contact and conflict.
Download or read book I Died a Million Times written by Robert Miklitsch and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2021-01-11 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1950s, the gangster movie and film noir crisscrossed to create gangster noir. Robert Miklitsch takes readers into this fascinating subgenre of films focused on crime syndicates, crooked cops, and capers. With the Senate's organized crime hearings and the brighter-than-bright myth of the American Dream as a backdrop, Miklitsch examines the style and history, and the production and cultural politics, of classic pictures from The Big Heat and The Asphalt Jungle to lesser-known gems like 711 Ocean Drive and post-Fifties movies like Ocean’s Eleven. Miklitsch pays particular attention to trademark leitmotifs including the individual versus the collective, the family as a locus of dissension and rapport, the real-world roots of the heist picture, and the syndicate as an octopus with its tentacles deep into law enforcement, corporate America, and government. If the memes of gangster noir remain prototypically dark, the look of the films becomes lighter and flatter, reflecting the influence of television and the realization that, under the cover of respectability, crime had moved from the underworld into the mainstream of contemporary everyday life.
Download or read book Ballet in the Cold War written by Anne Searcy and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-10-07 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "During the Cold War, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union developed cultural exchange programs, in which they sent performing artists abroad in order to generate goodwill for their countries. Ballet companies were frequently called on to serve in these programs, particularly in the direct Soviet-American exchange. This book analyzes four of the early ballet exchange tours, demonstrating how this series of encounters changed both geopolitical relations and the history of dance. The ballet tours were enormously popular. Performances functioned as an important symbolic meeting point for Soviet and American officials, creating goodwill and normalizing relations between the two countries in an era when nuclear conflict was a real threat. At the same time, Soviet and American audiences did not understand ballet in the same way. As American companies toured in the Soviet Union and vice-versa, audiences saw the performances through the lens of their own local aesthetics. Ballet in the Cold War introduces the concept of transliteration to understand this process, showing how much power viewers wielded in the exchange and explaining how the dynamics of the Cold War continue to shape ballet today"--
Download or read book The Handbook of Magazine Studies written by Miglena Sternadori and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-02-28 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A scholarly work examining the continuing evolution of the magazine—part of the popular Handbooks in Media and Communication series The Handbook of Magazine Studies is a wide-ranging study of the ways in which the political economy of magazines has dramatically shifted in recent years—and continues to do so at a rapid pace. Essays from emerging and established scholars explore the cultural function of magazine media in light of significant changes in content delivery, format, and audience. This volume integrates academic examination with pragmatic discussion to explore contemporary organizational practices, content, and cultural impact. Offering original research and fresh insights, thirty-six chapters provide a truly global perspective on the conceptual and historical foundations of magazines, their organizational cultures and narrative strategies, and their influences on society, identities, and lifestyle. The text addresses topics such as the role of advocacy in shaping and changing magazine identities, magazines and advertising in the digital age, gender and sexuality in magazines, and global magazine markets. Useful to scholars and educators alike, this book: Discusses media theory, academic research, and real-world organizational dynamics Presents essays from both emerging and established scholars in disciplines such as art, geography, and women’s studies Features in-depth case studies of magazines in international, national, and regional contexts Explores issues surrounding race, ethnicity, activism, and resistance Whether used as a reference, a supplementary text, or as a catalyst to spark new research, The Handbook of Magazine Studies is a valuable resource for students, educators, and scholars in fields of mass media, communication, and journalism.
Download or read book Audrey Hepburn written by Tom Santopietro and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2025-03-18 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the definitive tribute to the glamor and character of a beloved icon, including rarely published details, photographs and stories about the lasting impact of Audrey Hepburn's remarkable life. Academy Award-winning actress, fashion icon, ethereal beauty, wife, mother, World War II resistance activist, UNICEF champion— Audrey Hepburn transcended her era and became a global idol whose appeal continues to soar in the twenty-first century. Packed with beautiful photographs of the star at her most captivating and supplemented with incisive fashion commentary from award-winning designer Jeffrey Banks, Audrey Hepburn: A Beautiful Uncertainty is a one-of-a-kind exploration of Audrey’s glamorous image and remarkable life. Always leading with her heart, Hepburn is shown here fully captured in all her complexity: an often self-doubting but brilliant and genuinely kind woman whose style and activism changed the world. Slipping behind the scenes of Hollywood’s Golden Age, author Tom Santopietro details Audrey’s personal and professional life, from her legendary dance partnership with Fred Astaire on the classic Funny Face to her love affairs with Albert Finney and William Holden. Throughout, her life and career are juxtaposed with the lasting legacy of her iconic image and unerring fashion sensibility, as she played muse to the brilliant designer Hubert de Givenchy and inspired women from Jacqueline Onassis to Carly Simon.
Download or read book Water Lore written by Camille Roulière and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-05-19 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Located within the field of environmental humanities, this volume engages with one of the most pressing contemporary environmental challenges of our time: how can we shift our understanding and realign what water means to us? Water is increasingly at the centre of scientific and public debates about climate change. In these debates, rising sea levels compete against desertification; hurricanes and floods follow periods of prolonged drought. As we continue to pollute, canalise and desalinate waters, the ambiguous nature of our relationship with these entities becomes visible. From the paradisiac and pristine scenery of holiday postcards through to the devastated landscapes of post-tsunami news reports, images of waters surround us. And while we continue to damage what most sustains us, collective precarity grows. Breaking down disciplinary boundaries, with contributions from scholars in the visual arts, history, earth systems, anthropology, architecture, literature and creative writing, archaeology and music, this edited collection creates space for less-prominent perspectives, with many authors coming from female, Indigenous and LGBTQIA+ contexts. Combining established and emerging voices, and practice-led research and critical scholarship, the book explores water across its scientific, symbolic, material, imaginary, practical and aesthetic dimensions. It examines and interrogates our cultural construction and representation of water and, through original research and theory, suggests ways in which we can reframe the dialogue to create a better relationship with water sources in diverse contexts and geographies. This expansive book brings together key emerging scholarship on water persona and agency and would be an ideal supplementary text for discussions on the blue humanities, climate change, environmental anthropology and environmental history.
Download or read book I Wonder U written by Adilifu Nama and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2019-11-15 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revealing how he continually subverted cultural expectations, this book examines the entirety of Prince's diverse career as a singer, multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, producer, record label mogul, movie star, and director. "For the academically inclined Prince fan, it is a must read."ÐMatthew Oware, author of I Got Something to Say: Gender, Race, and Social Consciousness in Rap Musicic
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Silent Cinema written by Charlie Keil and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 825 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Silent Cinema is a collection of new scholarship that investigates the first decades of motion-picture history from diverse perspectives and methodologies. Featuring over thirty essays by leading scholars in the field, the Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of cinema's earliest years while also illuminating how cinema derived strength from competing cultural forms, becoming in the process the most influential mass medium of the early twentieth century.
Download or read book Virtuoso written by Murray Pomerance and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-05-16 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth Taylor's electrifying performance in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The milkshake scene in There Will be Blood. Leonardo DiCaprio's turn as Arnie in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? What makes these performances so special? Eloquently written and engagingly laid out, Murray Pomerance answers the tough question as to what makes an exceptional, or virtuosic performance. Pomerance intensively explores virtuosic performance in film, ranging from classical works through to contemporary production, and gives serious consideration to structural problems of dramatization and production, actorial methods and tricks, and contingencies that befall performers giving stand-out moments. Looking at more than 40 aspects of the virtuosic act, and using an approach based in careful meditation and discursion, Virtuoso moves through such themes as showing off, effacement, self-consciousness, performative collapse, spontaneity, acting as dream, acting and femininity, virtuosity and torture, secrecy, improvisation, virtuosic silence, and others; giving special attention to the labors of such figures as Fred Astaire, Johnny Depp, Marlene Dietrich, Basil Rathbone, Christopher Plummer, Leonardo DiCaprio, Alice Brady, Ethel Waters, James Mason, and dozens more. Numerous scenic virtuosities are examined in depth, from films as far-ranging as Singin' in the Rain and The Bridge on the River Kwai, and My Man Godfrey. As the first book about virtuosity in film performance, Virtuoso offers exciting new angles from which to view film both classical and contemporary.
Download or read book Hollywood s Chosen People written by Daniel Bernardi and published by Wayne State University Press. This book was released on 2012-09-17 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As studio bosses, directors, and actors, Jews have been heavily involved in film history and vitally involved in all aspects of film production. Yet Jewish characters have been represented onscreen in stereotypical and disturbing ways, while Jews have also helped to produce some of the most troubling stereotypes of people of color in Hollywood film history. In Hollywood's Chosen People: The Jewish Experience in American Cinema, leading scholars consider the complex relationship between Jews and the film industry, as Jews have helped to construct Hollywood's vision of the American dream and American collective identity and have in turn been shaped by those representations. Editors Daniel Bernardi, Murray Pomerance, and Hava Tirosh-Samuelson introduce the volume with an overview of the history of Jews in American popular culture and the American film industry. Multidisciplinary contributors go on to discuss topics such as early Jewish films and directors, institutionalized anti-Semitism, Jewish identity and gossip culture, and issues of Jewish performance on film. Contributors draw on a diverse sampling of films, from representations of the Holocaust on film to screen comedy; filmmakers and writers, including David Mamet, George Cukor, Sidney Lumet, Edward Sloman, and Steven Spielberg; and stars, like Barbra Streisand, Adam Sandler, and Ben Stiller. The Jewish experience in American cinema reveals much about the degree to which Jews have been integrated into and contribute to the making of American popular film culture. Scholars of Jewish studies, film studies, American history, and American culture as well as anyone interested in film history will find this volume fascinating reading.
Download or read book Some Kind of Mirror written by Amanda Konkle and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2019-02-04 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction: playing Marilyn Monroe -- Becoming a star: the publicity buildup and early performances -- Mrs. America: Marilyn Monroe and marriage anxiety -- "It's kinda personal and embarrassing, too": Monroe, the Kinsey Reports, and the double standard -- The actress and her method: resisting playing Marilyn Monroe -- Conclusion: a Marilyn Monroe type
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations written by Dominic McHugh and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2019-06-14 with total page 690 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hollywood's conversion to sound in the 1920s created an early peak in the film musical, following the immense success of The Jazz Singer. The opportunity to synchronize moving pictures with a soundtrack suited the musical in particular, since the heightened experience of song and dance drew attention to the novelty of the technological development. Until the near-collapse of the genre in the 1960s, the film musical enjoyed around thirty years of development, as landmarks such as The Wizard of Oz, Meet Me in St Louis, Singin' in the Rain, and Gigi showed the exciting possibilities of putting musicals on the silver screen. The Oxford Handbook of Musical Theatre Screen Adaptations traces how the genre of the stage-to-screen musical has evolved, starting with screen adaptations of operettas such as The Desert Song and Rio Rita, and looks at how the Hollywood studios in the 1930s exploited the publication of sheet music as part of their income. Numerous chapters examine specific screen adaptations in depth, including not only favorites such as Annie and Kiss Me, Kate but also some of the lesser-known titles like Li'l Abner and Roberta and problematic adaptations such as Carousel and Paint Your Wagon. Together, the chapters incite lively debates about the process of adapting Broadway for the big screen and provide models for future studies.
Download or read book Screening the Hollywood rebels in 1950s Britain written by Anna Ariadne Knight and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-28 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines issues of censorship, publicity and teenage fandom in 1950s Britain surrounding a series of controversial Hollywood films: The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause, Rock Around the Clock and Jailhouse Rock. It also explores British cinema’s commentary on juvenile delinquency through a re-examination of such British films as The Blue Lamp, Spare the Rod and Serious Charge. Taking a multi-dimensional approach, the book intersects with star studies and social history while reappraising the stardom of Marlon Brando, James Dean and Elvis Presley. By looking at the specific meanings, pleasures and uses British fans derived from these films, it provides a logical and sustained narrative for how Hollywood star images fed into and disrupted British cultural life during a period of unprecedented teenage consumerism.
Download or read book Star Gazing written by Jackie Stacey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-11-05 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a historical investigation of the pleasures of cinema, Star Gazing puts female spectators back into theories of spectatorship. Combining film theory with a rich body of ethnographic research, Jackie Stacey investigates how female spectators understood Hollywood stars in the 1940's and 1950's. Her study challenges the universalism of psychoanalytic theories of female spectatorship which have dominated the feminist agenda within film studies for over two decades. Drawing on letters and questionnaires from over three hundred keen cinema-goers, Stacey investigates the significance of certain Hollywood stars in women's memories of wartime and postwar Britain. Three key processes of spectatorship - escapism, identification and consumption - are explored in detail in terms of their multiple and changing meanings for female spectators at this time. Star Gazing demonstrates the importance of cultural and national location for the meanings of female spectatorship, giving a new direction to questions of popular culture and female desire.
