Spectacular Narratives

Author : Geoff King
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN 13 : 0857716972
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Spectacular Narratives written by Geoff King and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2000-11-24 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the appeal of the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster? The sheer scale and impact of big special effects sequences is part of the attraction of films such as Independence Day, Jurassic Park, Titanic or Mission Impossible. But they also offer other appeals, including the dynamics of narrative. Spectacular Narratives is the first serious book-length treatment of the contemporary blockbuster, including the digital-effects-based spectacle, space fictions, the action film, war spectaculars, the recent wave of disaster movies and films evoking new technologies such as virtual reality. Consideration is also given to the impact of profitable spin-offs such as film-related theme park rides and computer games. Geoff King argues against the view that an emphasis on the spectacular has led to an erosion of the importance of narrative in Hollywood. Instead, he suggests, even the most spectacular and effects-led contemporary blockbuster offers a blend of appeals, mixing elements of spectacle and narrative. Narrative is explored at the levels of both linear story-telling and underlying thematic patterns, a particular emphasis being placed on the persistence of elements of the myth/ideology of the American frontier. Close textual analysis is combined with consideration of the industrial and social contexts of contemporary Hollywood in a readable, original and rewarding book on the cinema that dominates markets across the globe.

Author : Giorgio Mariani
Publisher : American University Studies
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.45/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Spectacular Narratives written by Giorgio Mariani and published by American University Studies. This book was released on 1992 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite Stephen Crane's great interest in social themes of his time, few critics have analyzed the historical and political significance of his work. This book demonstrates that only an analysis capable of grasping the politics of Crane's texts can adequately account for their stylistic and aesthetic qualities. Focusing on Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and The Red Badge of Courage, as well as on seldom studied bestsellers of the American 1890s such as R.H. Davis's Soldiers of Fortune and F.M. Crawford's Via Crucis, it offers new insights into the formal and ideological relationship of Crane's fiction to popular literature.

Author : Susan Courtney
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691240221
Total Pages : 399 pages
Book Rating : 4.20/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation written by Susan Courtney and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 399 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation analyzes white fantasies of interracial desire in the history of popular American film. From the first interracial screen kiss of 1903, through the Production Code's nearly thirty-year ban on depictions of "miscegenation," to the contemplation of mixed marriage in Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), this book demonstrates a long, popular, yet underexamined record of cultural fantasy at the movies. With ambitious new readings of well-known films like D.W. Griffith's 1915 epic The Birth of a Nation and of key forgotten films and censorship documents, Susan Courtney argues that dominant fantasies of miscegenation have had a profound impact on the form and content of American cinema. What does it mean, Courtney asks, that the image of the black rapist became a virtual cliché, while the sexual exploitation of black women by white men under slavery was perpetually repressed? What has this popular film legacy invited spectators to remember and forget? How has it shaped our conceptions of, and relationships to, race and gender? Richly illustrated with more than 140 images, Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation carefully attends to cinematic detail, revising theories of identity and spectatorship as it expands critical histories of race, sex, and film. Courtney's new research on the Production Code's miscegenation clause also makes an important contribution, inviting us to consider how that clause was routinely interpreted and applied, and with what effects.

Author : Geoff King
Publisher :
ISBN 13 : 9780755699315
Total Pages : 213 pages
Book Rating : 4.19/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Spectacular Narratives written by Geoff King and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What makes today's Hollywood films so successful? Is it the sheer scale of special effects that gives films like "Jurassic Park" or "The Matrix" their mass audience appeal? Geoff King looks at the underexplored dynamic relationship between narrative and spectacle in contemporary Hollywood cinema. He uses the myth of the American frontier against a range of Hollywood filmsand drawes examples from the digital-effects-based and virtual-reality spectacles, space fictions, action films, war epics and disaster films that now dominate cinema.

Author : Jesse Sullivan
Publisher : Big Dreams Kids Books
ISBN 13 : 9781953429131
Total Pages : 290 pages
Book Rating : 4.30/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Spectacular Stories for Curious Kids written by Jesse Sullivan and published by Big Dreams Kids Books. This book was released on 2021-09 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DISCOVER, WONDER, EXPLORE, IMAGINE You have found the book that is a wild, whirling tornado of breathless fascination. This book, a gift for kids who revel in reading (or even those who find it tedious) is a most extraordinary, gratifying, daring affair, teeming with life and vivid stories, abundantly complete with diverse and unique marvels for the young mind, the whole forming a blazing vision of breathtaking splendor that will astonish, inspire, and capture the imagination of young readers everywhere. Each story is an adventure, each tale a discovery. Each page is dripping with captivating tales from history and scientific wonders, all of which have been specifically curated and written for YOUNG READERS. The purpose of this book is to fascinate but also to empower and uplift. These 100 stories filling over 280 pages will inspire awe and fascination in both reluctant readers as well as budding aficionados of the written word. You will be amazed at what your child excitedly learns from a book like this. Get this book today and ignite your child's curiosity. ★ Fascination is an incredible gift. ★

Author : Andrew Elliot
Publisher : Edinburgh University Press
ISBN 13 : 1474402852
Total Pages : 224 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Return of the Epic Film written by Andrew Elliot and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-05 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With the success of Gladiator, both critics and scholars enthusiastically announced the return of a genre which had lain dormant for thirty years. However, this return raises important new questions which remain unanswered. Why did the epic come back, and why did it fall out of fashion? Are these the same kinds of epics as the 1950s and 60s, or are there aesthetic differences? Can we treat Kingdom of Heaven, 300 and Thor indiscriminately as one genre? Are non-Western histories like Hero and Mongol epics, too? Finally, what precisely do we mean when we talk about the return of the epic film, and why are they back? The Return of the Epic Film offers a fresh way of thinking about a body of films which has dominated our screens for a decade. With contributions from top scholars in the field, the collection adopts a range of interdisciplinary perspectives to explore the epic film in the twenty-first century.

Author : Jonathan Elmore
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1793619204
Total Pages : 179 pages
Book Rating : 4.04/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction written by Jonathan Elmore and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-04-01 with total page 179 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fiction and the Sixth Mass Extinction is one of the first works to focus specifically on fiction’s engagements with human driven extinction. Drawing together a diverse group of scholars and approaches, this volume pairs established voices in the field with emerging scholars and traditionally recognized climate fiction ('cli-fi') with texts and media typically not associated with Anthropocene fictions. The result is a volume that both engages with and furthers existing work on Anthropocene fiction as well as laying groundwork for the budding subfield of extinction fiction. This volume takes up the collective insistence on the centrality of story to extinction studies. In various and disparate ways, each chapter engages with the stories we tell about extinction, about the extinction of animal and plant life, and about the extinction of human life itself. Answering the call to action of extinction studies, these chapters explore what kinds of humanity caused this event and what kinds may live through it; what cultural assumptions and values led to this event and which ones could lead out of it; what relationships between human life and this planet allowed the sixth mass extinction and what alternative relationships could be possible.

Author : Susan G. Davis
Publisher : Univ of California Press
ISBN 13 : 052091953X
Total Pages : 328 pages
Book Rating : 4.32/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Spectacular Nature written by Susan G. Davis and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-09-01 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the story of Sea World, a theme park where the wonders of nature are performed, marketed, and sold. With its trademark star, Shamu the killer whale—as well as performing dolphins, pettable sting rays, and reproductions of pristine natural worlds—the park represents a careful coordination of shows, dioramas, rides, and concessions built around the theme of ocean life. Susan Davis analyzes the Sea World experience and the forces that produce it: the theme park industry; Southern California tourism; the privatization of urban space; and the increasing integration of advertising, entertainment, and education. The result is an engaging exploration of the role played by images of nature and animals in contemporary commercial culture, and a precise account of how Sea World and its parent corporation, Anheuser-Busch, succeed. Davis argues that Sea World builds its vision of nature around customers' worries and concerns about the environment, family relations, and education. While Davis shows the many ways that Sea World monitors its audience and manipulates animals and landscapes to manufacture pleasure, she also explains the contradictions facing the enterprise in its campaign for a positive public identity. Shifting popular attitudes, animal rights activists, and environmental laws all pose practical and public relations challenges to the theme park. Davis confronts the park's vast operations with impressive insight and originality, revealing Sea World as both an industrial product and a phenomenon typical of contemporary American culture. Spectacular Nature opens an intriguing field of inquiry: the role of commercial entertainment in shaping public understandings of the environment and environmental problems.

Author : Marc Gallicchio
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822390523
Total Pages : 349 pages
Book Rating : 4.27/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Unpredictability of the Past written by Marc Gallicchio and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2007-08-21 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Unpredictability of the Past, an international group of historians examines how collective memories of the Asia-Pacific War continue to affect relations among China, Japan, and the United States. The contributors are primarily concerned with the history of international relations broadly conceived to encompass not only governments but also nongovernmental groups and organizations that influence the interactions of peoples across the Pacific. Taken together, the essays provide a rich, multifaceted analysis of how the dynamic interplay between past and present is manifest in policymaking, popular culture, public commemorations, and other arenas. The contributors interpret mass media sources, museum displays, monuments, film, and literature, as well as the archival sources traditionally used by historians. They explore how American ideas about Japanese history shaped U.S. occupation policy following Japan’s surrender in 1945, and how memories of the Asia-Pacific War influenced Washington and Tokyo policymakers’ reactions to the postwar rise of Soviet power. They investigate topics from the resurgence of Pearl Harbor images in the U.S. media in the decade before September 11, 2001, to the role of Chinese war museums both within China and in Chinese-Japanese relations, and from the controversy over the Smithsonian Institution’s Enola Gay exhibit to Japanese tourists’ reactions to the USS Arizona memorial at Pearl Harbor. One contributor traces how a narrative commemorating African Americans’ military service during World War II eclipsed the history of their significant early-twentieth-century appreciation of Japan as an ally in the fight against white supremacy. Another looks at the growing recognition and acknowledgment in both the United States and Japan of the Chinese dimension of World War II. By focusing on how memories of the Asia-Pacific War have been contested, imposed, resisted, distorted, and revised, The Unpredictability of the Past demonstrates the crucial role that interpretations of the past play in the present. Contributors. Marc Gallicchio, Waldo Heinrichs, Haruo Iguchi, Xiaohua Ma, Frank Ninkovich, Emily S. Rosenberg, Takuya Sasaki, Yujin Yaguchi, Daqing Yang

Author : Nils Bothmann
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 3658240784
Total Pages : 344 pages
Book Rating : 4.83/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Action, Detection and Shane Black written by Nils Bothmann and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-11-11 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nils Bothmann applies antiessentialist genre theory to study the fusion of the action and the detection genre in the hybrid genre of detAction, focusing on the work of screenwriter and director Shane Black. After providing antiessentialist definitions of all three genres, the author undertakes close readings of Black’s work in order to analyze depictions of race and gender as well as the role of intermediality and genre hybridity in detAction.​