Book Description
In
Star Gazing, Jackie Stacey puts the female back into the spectator, or the girl back into girl-watching. Combining film theory with a rich body of ethnographic research, the book investigates how women viewews understood Hollywood stars in the 1940s and 50s. Stacey's study challenges the universality of psychoanalytic theories of female spectatorship, prevalent within film studies for the past 20 years.
Drawing on letters and questionnaires from over 300 filmgoers, the author investigates the significance of particular Holywood stars in women's memories of wartime and postwar Britain. Among the stars discussed by Stacey and her subjects are Doris Day, Joan Craford, Betty Grable, Ava Gardner, Deanna Durbin, Rita Hayworth, Ginger Rogers, Jennifer Jones and Dorothy L'Amour.
Three key processes of spectatorship--escapism, identification and consumption--are explored in terms of their multiple and changing meanings for women spectators of the time. Stacey's work demonstrates the importance of cultural and national location for the meanings of female spectatorship, redirecting questions of popular culture and female desire.
Book Description
Although cinema was invented in the mid-1890s, it was a decade more before the concept of a "film spectator" emerged. As the cinema began to separate itself from the commercial entertainments in whose context films initially had been shown--vaudeville, dime museums, fairgrounds--a particular concept of its spectator was developed on the level of film style, as a means of predicting the reception of films on a mass scale. In Babel and Babylon Miriam Hansen offers an original perspective on American film by tying the emergence of spectatorship to the historical transformation of the public sphere. Hansen builds a critical framework for understanding the cultural formation of spectatorship, drawing on the Frankfurt School's debates on mass culture and the public sphere. Focusing on exemplary moments in the American silent era, she explains how the concept of the spectator evolved as a crucial part of the classical Hollywood paradigm--as one of the new industry's strategies to integrate ethnically, socially, and sexually differentiated audiences into a modern culture of consumption. In this process, Hansen argues, the cinema might also have provided the conditions of an alternative public sphere for particular social groups, such as recent immigrants and women, by furnishing an intersubjective context in which they could recognize fragments of their own experience.
After tracing the emergence of spectatorship as an institution, Hansen pursues the question of reception through detailed readings of a single film, D. W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916), and of the cult surrounding a single star, Rudolph Valentino. In each case the classical construction of spectatorship is complicated by factors of gender and sexuality, crystallizing around the fear and desire of the female consumer.
Babel and Babylon recasts the debate on early American cinema--and by implication on American film as a whole. It is a model study in the field of Cinema Studies, mediating the concerns of recent film theory with those of recent film history.
Customer Reviews:
Invaluable.......2003-01-22
This is one of the best books on early cinema written by one of the best film theorists/historians on spectatorship.
Superb tour-de-force of early cinema.......2002-05-01
While some of the academic language may not be familiar to all readers, this is a superb account of early cinema that bridges the divide between film history and film theory. Hansen's argument that early cinema possessed a fundamentally different model of spectatorship--an interactive and collective one--is lucidly articulated, in addition to being wholly provocative for understanding what it means to go to the movies now. This book altered my sense of my own viewing and moviegoing practices today. An excellent book that discusses film in new ways, Babel and Babylon is both an absorbing and a fascinating reading experience.
Bring your Thesaurus.......1999-06-25
This book is a tough read. Ms. Hanson has certainly done her research, but her prose is barely understandable because she uses many words that are unfamiliar to the common reader and her sentences are a mile long. This book is only for hard-core fans of D.W. Griffith's Intolerance and Rudolph Valentino. Be warned, you will need help staying awake while you read it...
Book Description
Cinema and Spectatorship is the first book to focus on the history and role of the spectator in contemporary film studies. Judith Mayne examines how spectatorship emerged in the 1970s as one of the major preoccupations of film theorists, particularly in relation to theories of the subject drawn from psychoanalysis and semiotics. She suggests that while 1970s film theory insisted on the separation between the cinematic subject and actual film viewers, interest in spectatorship has been characterized by a very real friction between "subjects" and "viewers." She evaluates challenges to and revisions of 1970s theory, from feminist analyses of female spectatorship to historical explorations of how the film-spectator relationship is shaped by particular cultural factors.
In the first section Mayne examines three theoretical models of spectatorship: the perceptual, the institutional, and the historical. The second section presents case studies which focus on textual analysis, the "disrupting genre," "star-gazing," and finally the audience itself. Specific topics include the place of the spectator in The Picture of Dorian Gray; the construction of Bette Davis's star persona; fantasies of race and film viewing in Field of Dreams and Ghost; and gay and lesbian audiences as "critical" audiences.
Cinema and Spectatorship provides a thoruogh and accessible overview of this complex, fragmented, and often controversial area of film theory.
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Spectatorship: The Power of Looking On (Short Cuts)
Michele Aaron
Manufacturer: Wallflower Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 1905674015 |
Book Description
This book cuts a lucid path through the debate on spectatorship. It revisits the classics of Hollywood; explores films beyond the mainstream, such as Dogme 95; and shows how cinema makes a spectacle of the everyday while turning the spectacular into something commonplace. It also muses on the consequences of our sharing in or witnessing the private or intimate acts of others and our enjoyment of events that often represent a gross break with legal and social mores.
Book Description
Film and Cinema Spectatorship provides a clear and wide-ranging introduction to different debates and traditions of viewing cinema. In this new book, Jan Campbell offers a comprehensive account of the different theoretical perspectives on film and cinema spectatorship, situating these in their cultural and historical contexts. Among the perspectives covered are those of feminism, modernism and cultural studies, with chapters dedicated to important topics such as early film, stars and film aesthetics. Campbell also provides accessible explorations of the importance of key themes to film and cinema spectatorship, such as mimesis, melodrama, performance and time. The timely and comprehensive text will be essential reading for anyone interested in debates on film theory, psychoanalysis and film, and the history of cinema. This book will be of special interest to students of film studies, media studies and cultural studies.
Customer Reviews:
More specific than it seems........2006-05-13
I found the cover blurb of this book a little misleading. Chapters do end with bullet point style summaries, but this is not a book I'd recommend for anyone who isn't already familiar with the dabates it engages with - not an introductory text, in other words.
Campbell's project is quite specific - she re-reads spectatorship theory, psychoanalytic film theory, and so on through her concept of "phenomenological mimesis". This is, in effect, a phenomenology which centres on the film text rather than the embodied spectator, and Campbell retains a strong investment in psychoanalytic theory with her concept of the spectator as bound up in hysterical mimesis. Her approach is an interesting one.
Book Description
Projecting Illusion offers a systematic analysis of the impression of reality in the cinema and the pleasure it provides the film spectator. Film affords an especially compelling aesthetic experience that can be considered as a form of illusion akin to the experience of daydream and dream. Examining the concept of illusion and its relationship to fantasy in the experience of visual representation, Richard Allen situates his explanation within the context of an analytical criticism of contemporary film theory.
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Hollywood Spectatorship: Changing Perceptions of Cinema Audiences
Melvyn Stokes , and
Richard Maltby
Manufacturer: British Film Institute
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American Movie Audiences: From the Turn of the Century to the Early Sound Era
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Hollywood Abroad: Audiences and Cultural Exchange
ASIN: 0851708102 |
Book Description
Theoretical notions of the cinema spectator have been at the center of film studies and criticism over the last two decades. This book re-examines concepts of spectatorship in the light of historical accounts of audience reception exploring how historical audiences have talked about Hollywood movies, and the ways in which this word-of-mouth response has affected the reception of individual movies and Hollywood in general.
A range of international contributors examine issues as diverse as the history of historical reception studies, genre and cultural authority, audience and promotional discourses, and the degree to which the critical "talk" generated by institutions of censorship or government limited the interpretative possibilities available to audiences. The book also explores issues of race and spectatorship, including the way in which James Baldwin related to the image of Bette Davies on screen through the constraints of his own race and sexuality. Hollywood Spectatorship also looks at the modern spectator as a domestic connoisseur, how in the last decade s/he has become as much an auditor as viewer and how the arrival of new technologies has brought about a new "hyper-spectator" in effect challenging received notions of the spectator and reception.
Discussing a range of films including The Silence of the Lambs, Fantasia, All About Eve and On the Beach, Hollywood Spectatorship represents a challenging reassessment of the significance of spectatorship within film criticism and interpretation.
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Madness and Cinema: Psychoanalysis, Spectatorship and Culture
Patrick Fuery
Manufacturer: Palgrave Macmillan
ProductGroup: Book
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ASIN: 0333948262 |
Book Description
Madness and Cinema offers a radical approach to the issue of what happens when we watch films. By exploring cinema's relationship to meaning and proposing new ways to read cinema through psychoanalysis, this book develops the idea that the spectator engages in what has previously been described as an act of madness. By considering some of the key concepts from Freud and Lacan, as well as ideas from Derrida and Foucault, we are shown the common features that cinema and madness share. The film spectator is shown as the psychotic, neurotic and hysteric, as the book examines the ways in which the foundations of culture and meaning are challenged when we become the spectator of a film.
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Spectacular Passions: Cinema, Fantasy, Gay Male Spectatorships
Brett Farmer , and
Brett Farmer
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
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ASIN: 0822325594 |
Book Description
The image of the movie-obsessed gay man is a widely circulating and readily recognizable element of the contemporary cultural landscape. Using psychoanalytic theory as his guide while inflecting it with insights from both film theory and queer theory, Brett Farmer moves beyond this cliché to develop an innovative exploration of gay spectatorship. The result, Spectacular Passions, reveals how cinema has been engaged by gay men as a vital forum for “fantasmatic performance”—in this case, the production of specifically queer identities, practices, and pleasures.
Building on the psychoanalytic concept of the fantasmatic, Farmer works to depathologize gay male subjectivity. While discussing such films as Kiss of the Spider Woman, The Pirate, Suddenly Last Summer, and Sunset Boulevard, and stars ranging from Mae West to Montgomery Clift, Farmer argues that the particularities of gay men’s social and psychic positionings motivate unique receptions of and investments in film. The Hollywood musical, gay camp readings of the extravagant female star, and the explicit homoeroticism of the cinematic male body in gay fanzines are further proof, says Farmer, of how the shifting libidinal profiles of homosexual desire interact with the fantasy scenarios of Hollywood film to produce a range of variable queer meanings.
This fascinating and provocative study makes a significant new contribution to discussions of cinema, spectatorship, and sexuality. As such, it will be welcomed by those in the fields of film theory, queer theory, and cultural studies.
Customer Reviews:
not this book.......2001-03-06
The description and table of contents is NOT for this book, but for some writing text. I'd like to see a blurb about THIS book here.
Book Description
If you thought you already knew the extent of drinking on campuses across America and dismissed it as 'high-spirited,' think again. College binge drinking is more deadly than ever, and the rate of injury, rape, and death credited to it will shock you: -On campus, two of five college students binge-drink at least once per week. -More students binge-drink than use illicit drugs or smoke cigarettes. -Alcohol has been linked to half of all campus crime, including battery, rape, and theft. -The alcohol industry spends $1.8 billion a year in advertising, much of it targeted at college students. -College students spend more annually on alcohol than on soda, tea, milk, juice, coffee, and schoolbooks, combined. America's colleges are in crisis and Henry Wechsler, Ph.D., a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, will bring an understanding to readers not only of the seriousness of the problem but also how to combat it. Dying to Drink is required reading for any parent sending his or her son or daughter off to school.
Customer Reviews:
The truth about underage drinking.......2003-11-12
Few people realize that alcohol is involved in the deaths of six times more Americans under the age of 21 than all the other illicit drugs combined. Underage drinking is the #1 youth drug problem in our country, but far too many parents, teachers and administrators look the other way and view it as a rite of passage. "Dying to Drink" does an outstanding job laying out the true scope of underage drinking and its consequences. As a long-time advocate against drunk & drugged driving and underage drinking and as a state lawmaker, I believe this book is a great resource to students, schools, parents and communities. Many thanks to the authors for telling the truth about underage drinking and for giving concerned citizens guidance on how to take action.
Seeing the forest for the trees..........2003-07-07
We are so immersed in a national cult of alcohol that we can't, or won't, see the forces at work. This book peels back the façade so that we can make our own decisions about were we want to go as a society. The myth that the personal choice to abuse alcohol is a sacred right that harms only the user, is exploded. The authors put a human face on a steady stream of well-researched statistics that run throughout the book. I was afraid that this was going to be yet another preachy tome but found myself intrigued, angered, disgusted, yet often uplifted and enlightened by the vignettes presented in this lively-written narrative. Personally, I abhor cynicism and knee-jerk accusations that use conspiracy to explain away every societal ill - but the authors' indictment of the alcohol industry and its accomplices is so compelling, and upon reflection, so obvious, that the word "conspiracy" is too weak in this case. Sadly, they show that even the purity of "good science" is being prostituted by certain social-pschology academics; as a scientist I find this shocking. The ultimate obscenity is that, more than ever before, our children are being systematically used as "societal gateways" to infuse violence, tragedy, and irresponsible behavior into the bedrock of our culture. And we are willing and compliant.
Perception isn't always reality.......2003-06-19
In their efforts to rally the public to action, the authors have exaggerated the actual magnitude of alcohol abuse on American college campuses. Federal surveys consistently report a continuing decline in alcohol consumption rather than an "epidemic." Their own data fail to make the case and they are forced to use anecdotal interviews of students who do abuse alcohol. But anecdotal evidence does not constitute science or a sound basis for public policy. Their suggestions for reducing the problem consist of demonstrably ineffective policies along with some that appear to constitute unconstiitutional infringements upon personal liberties. Much more useful is H. Wesley Perkins' The Social Norms Approach to Prevening ...."
Alcohol Prohibition has Never Worked.......2003-06-15
In spite of the federally-documented continuing decline in alcohol use among American college students, the authors promote the view that there is an epidemic of collegiate alcohol abuse. They rely heavily on anecdotal rather than systematically-collected evidence to support this view. Wechsler and Wuethrich contend that this alleged dangerous epidemic requires a number of strong public policies against alcohol that are prohibitionist in nature. However, attempts to impose total abstinence on adults age 18 to 21 would not likely to be successful and would almost certainly be counter-productive. Prohibition has always been a failure and led to less frequent but heavier and more dangerous consumption..
Book Description
This digital document is an article from Journal of Studies on Alcohol, published by Alcohol Research Documentation, Inc. on November 1, 2003. The length of the article is 832 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.
Citation Details
Title: Dying to Drink: Confronting Binge Drinking on College Campuses.(Book Review)
Author: Alan Reifman
Publication:
Journal of Studies on Alcohol (Refereed)
Date: November 1, 2003
Publisher: Alcohol Research Documentation, Inc.
Volume: 64
Issue: 6
Page: 893(1)
Article Type: Book Review
Distributed by Thomson Gale
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