Beyond the Stars 3


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




Material World


Book Description

A photo-journey through the homes and lives of 30 families, revealing culture and economic levels around the world.




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.




Hollywood's West


Book Description

Hollywood’s West examines popular perceptions of the frontier as a defining feature of American identity and history. Seventeen essays by prominent film scholars illuminate the allure of life on the edge of civilization and analyze how this region has been represented on big and small screens. Differing characterizations of the frontier in modern popular culture reveal numerous truths about American consciousness and provide insights into many classic Western films and television programs, from RKO’s 1931 classic Cimarron to Turner Network Television’s recent made-for-TV movies. Covering topics such as the portrayal of race, women, myth, and nostalgia, Hollywood’s West makes a significant contribution to the understanding of how Westerns have shaped our nation’s opinions and beliefs—often using the frontier as metaphor for contemporary issues.




Food in Film


Book Description

Using an interdisciplinary approach combining film, semiotics, social-anthropology and history, this book examines food sciences in selected films to reveal food's power to direct and impose values and beliefs, to understand how dining venues may become sites of social contests and to reveal how food communicated values and beliefs to individuals, to micro communities and to American Society.




Pursuing Happiness: Reading American Romance as Political Fiction


Book Description

The dominance of popular romance in the United States fiction market suggests that its trends and themes may reflect the politics of a significant proportion of the population. 'Pursuing Happiness' explores some of the choices, beliefs and assumptions which shape the politics of American Romance novels. In particular, it focuses on what romances reveal about American attitudes towards work, the West, race, gender, community cohesion, ancestral “roots” and a historical connection (or lack of it) to the land.




Hitchcock's Motifs


Book Description

Among the abundant Alfred Hitchcock literature, Hitchcock's Motifs has found a fresh angle. Starting from recurring objects, settings, character-types and events, Michael Walker tracks some forty motifs, themes and clusters across the whole of Hitchcock's oeuvre, including not only all his 52 extant feature films but also representative episodes from his TV series. Connections and deeper inflections that Hitchcock fans may have long sensed or suspected can now be seen for what they are: an intricately spun web of cross-references which gives this unique artist's work the depth, consistency and resonance that justifies Hitchcock's place as probably the best know film director ever. The title, the first book-length study of the subject, can be used as a mini-encyclopaedia of Hitchcock's motifs, but the individual entries also give full attention to the wider social contexts, hidden sources and the sometimes unconscious meanings present in the work and solidly linking it to its time and place.




The Stuff of Science Fiction


Book Description

While students and general readers typically cannot relate to esoteric definitions of science fiction, they readily understand the genre as a literature that characteristically deals with subjects such as new inventions, space, robot and aliens. This book looks at science fiction in precisely this manner, with twenty-one chapters that each deal with a subject that is repeatedly addressed in science fiction of recent centuries. Based on a packet of original essays that the author assembled for his classes, the book could serve as a supplemental textbook in science fiction classes, but also contains material of interest to science fiction scholars and others devoted to the genre. In some cases, chapters offer thorough surveys of numerous works involving certain subjects, such as imagined vehicles, journeys beneath the Earth and undersea adventures, discovering intriguing patterns in the ways that various writers developed their ideas. When comprehensive coverage of ubiquitous topics such as robots, aliens and the planet Mars is impossible, chapters focus on major themes referencing selected texts. A conclusion discusses other science fiction subjects that were omitted for various reasons, and a bibliography lists additional resources for the study of science fiction in general and the topics of each chapter.




Fashion Crimes


Book Description

Fashion is widely recognised as a site for social acceptance and rejection, and as a signifier of personal identity. What happens when people stray from 'appropriate' dress codes or associate garments with 'respectability' or deviance? How does fashion relate to criminality? In this interdisciplinary volume, leading scholars propose new ways of seeing everyday dress and the body in public space. Garments and individual or group wearers are used as case studies to explore the codification of clothing as criminal – hoodies, trench-coats, Norwegian Lustkoffe sweaters, low-slung trousers and Hip Hop styling are all untangled as garments with criminal significance. The book questions the point at which morality as a form of social control meets criminality, and suggests ways to renegotiate established dress codes and terms such as 'suitability' and 'glamour' through the study of what people wear in response to notions of criminality.




Media Resistance


Book Description

This book is open access under a CC BY license. New media divide opinion; many are fascinated while others are disgusted. This book is about those who dislike, protest, and try to abstain from media, both new and old. It explains why media resistance persists and answers two questions: What is at stake for resisters and how does media resistance inspire organized action? Despite the interest in media scepticism and dislike, there seems to be no book on the market discussing media resistance as a phenomenon in its own right. This book explores resistance across media, historical periods and national borders, from early mass media to current digital media. Drawing on cases and examples from the US, Britain, Scandinavia and other countries, media resistance is discussed as a diverse phenomenon encompassing political, professional, networked and individual arguments and actions.