Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema - Brossura

Staiger, Janet

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0691006164 ISBN 13: 9780691006161

Casa editrice: Princeton University Press, 1992

Riassunto

Employing a wide range of examples from Uncle Tom's Cabin and Birth of a Nation to Zelig and Personal Best, Janet Staiger argues that a historical examination of spectators' responses to films can make a valuable contribution to the history, criticism, and philosophy of cultural products. She maintains that as artifacts, films do not contain immanent meanings, that differences among interpretations have historical bases, and that these variations are due to social, political, and economic conditions as well as the viewers' constructed images of themselves. After proposing a theory of reception study, the author demonstrates its application mainly through analyzing the varying responses of audiences to certain films at specific moments in history. Staiger gives special attention to how questions of class, gender, sexual preference, race, and ethnicity enter into film viewers' interpretations. Her analysis reflects recent developments in post-structuralism, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies, and includes a discussion of current reader-response models in literary and film studies as well as an alternative approach for thinking about historical readers and spectators.

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Contenuti

	List of Figures and Sources
	Preface
Pt. 1	Theoretical Concerns	1
Ch. 1	The Use-Value of Reception Studies	3
Ch. 2	Reception Studies in Other Disciplines	16
Ch. 3	Reception Studies in Film and Television	49
Ch. 4	Toward a Historical Materialist Approach to Reception Studies	79
Pt. 2	Studies in the History of the Reception of American Films	99
Ch. 5	Rethinking "Primitive" Cinema: Intertextuality, the Middle-Class Audience, and Reception Studies	101
Ch. 6	"The Handmaiden of Villainy": Foolish Wives, Politics, Gender Orientation, and the Other	124
Ch. 7	The Birth of a Nation: Reconsidering Its Reception	139
Ch. 8	The Logic of Alternative Readings: A Star Is Born	154
Ch. 9	With the Compliments of the Auteur: Art Cinema and the Complexities of Its Reading Strategies	178
Ch. 10	Chameleon in the Film, Chameleons in the Audience; or, Where Is Parody? The Case of Zelig	196
	Epilogue	210
	Notes	213
	Select Bibliography	259
	Index	271

Product Description

Book by Staiger Janet

Dettagli dell'edizione

• Editore: Princeton University Press
• Data di pubblicazione: 1992
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0691006164
• ISBN 13: 9780691006161
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 292
• Contatto del produttore: non disponibile
• Persona responsabile: non disponibile