Beyond the Stars: Locales in American popular film


Book Description

One of five volumes devoted to exploring some of the peripheral aspects of American films. Essays describe the depiction of such geographical and conceptual places as Arizona and the Arabic world, such public and ritual spaces as churches and western saloons, and such private arenas and commonplace spaces as the men's room and poolsides. Not illustrated. No index. Paper edition (unseen), $18.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR




Beyond the Stars: Themes and ideologies in American popular film


Book Description

The third of five volumes of new scholarship on American movie conventions. The 19 essays explore cinematic representations of such material items as food, weapons, clothing, tools, technology, and art and literature. Not illustrated. No index. Paper edition (unseen), $13.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.




Beyond the Stars: Stock characters in American popular film


Book Description

The third of five volumes of new scholarship on American movie conventions. The 19 essays explore cinematic representations of such material items as food, weapons, clothing, tools, technology, and art and literature. Not illustrated. No index. Paper edition (unseen), $13.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.




Beyond the Stars: Plot conventions in American popular film


Book Description

The third of five volumes of new scholarship on American movie conventions. The 19 essays explore cinematic representations of such material items as food, weapons, clothing, tools, technology, and art and literature. Not illustrated. No index. Paper edition (unseen), $13.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.




Projecting Ethnicity and Race


Book Description

This comprehensive annotated bibliography reviews nearly 500 English-language studies published between 1915 and 2001 that examine the depiction of ethnic, racial, and national groups as portrayed in United States feature films from the inception of cinema through the present. Coverage includes books, reference works, book chapters within larger works, and individual essays from collections and anthologies. Concise annotations provide content summaries; unique features; major films and filmmakers discussed; and useful information on related titles, purpose, and intended readership. The studies included range from specialized scholarly treatises to popular illustrated books for general readers, making ^IProjecting Ethnicity and Race^R an invaluable resource for researchers interested in ethnic and racial film imagery. Entries are arranged alphabetically by title for easy access, while four separate indexes make the work simple to navigate by author, subject, gender, race, ethnic group, nationality, country, religion, film title, filmmaker, performer, or theme. Although the majority of studies published examine images of African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Asians in film, the volume contains studies of groups including Africans, Arabs, the British, Canadians, South Sea Islanders, Tibetans, Buddhists, and Muslims—making it a unique reference book with a wide range of uses for a wide range of scholars.




African Women's Unique Vulnerabilities to HIV/AIDS


Book Description

This is an in-depth look at the biomedical, socio-cultural, economic, legal and political, and educational vulnerabilities faced by the population that is most vulnerable to the risk of contracting HIV/AIDS: African women.




The Girls in the Back Room


Book Description

The first comprehensive study of lesbian bars sheds light on this often overlooked aspect of gay subculture, focusing on the erotic, romantic, and social interactions that happen in such places. Simultaneous. (Social Science)




Wax Museum Movies


Book Description

Spanning over a century of cinema and comprised of 127 films, this book analyzes the cinematic incarnations of the "uncanniest place on earth"--wax museums. Nothing is as it seems at a wax museum. It is a place of wonder, horror and mystery. Will the figures come to life at night, or are they very much dead with corpses hidden beneath their waxen shells? Is the genius hand that molded them secretly scarred by a terrible tragedy, longing for revenge? Or is it a sinner's sanctum, harboring criminals with countless places to hide in plain sight? This chronological analysis includes essential behind the scenes information in addition to authoritative research comparing the creation of "real" wax figures to the "reel" ones seen onscreen. Publicly accessible or hidden away in a maniac's lair, wax museums have provided the perfect settings for films of all genres to thrillingly play out on the big screen since the dawn of cinema.




Popular Stories and Promised Lands


Book Description

Popular culture stories--found in comic strips, TV programs, magazines, and movies--gain their popularity by evoking our desires and anxieties. Aden offers a well-constructed argument that creating a sense of place (and with it a sense of personal identity and community) serves as an important enticement for many popular cultures works. . . . Aden handles contemporary theory deftly and] does an excellent job of identifying many of the tensions present in 20th-century America. --Quarterly Journal of Speech Stories encountered at the movies, on television, and in popular magazines are treated as reflections of the popular culture. . . . Believing that the American experience has been guided by a 'normative narrative' or 'grand narrative' that constitutes the 'American dream, ' Aden holds that stories can be used to extract the 'rules' of a narrative, determine the direction, and identify conceptions of the 'promised lands' for a culture. --Critical Studies in Mass Communication




Monster Culture in the 21st Century


Book Description

In the past decade, our rapidly changing world faced terrorism, global epidemics, economic and social strife, new communication technologies, immigration, and climate change to name a few. These fears and tensions reflect an evermore-interconnected global environment where increased mobility of people, technologies, and disease have produced great social, political, and economical uncertainty. The essays in this collection examine how monstrosity has been used to manage these rising fears and tensions. Analyzing popular films and televisions shows, such as True Blood, Twilight, Paranormal Activity, District 9, Battlestar Galactica, and Avatar, it argues that monstrous narratives of the past decade have become omnipresent specifically because they represent collective social anxieties over resisting and embracing change in the 21st century. The first comprehensive text that uses monstrosity not just as a metaphor for change, but rather a necessary condition through which change is lived and experienced in the 21st century, this approach introduces a different perspective toward the study of monstrosity in culture.