Split Screen Nation (Paperback)

Susan Courtney

ISBN 10: 0190459972 / ISBN 13: 9780190459970

Editore: Oxford University Press Inc, New York, 2017

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Paperback. Split Screen Nation traces an oppositional dynamic between the screen West and the screen South that was unstable and dramatically shifting in the decades after WWII, and has marked popular ways of imagining the U.S. ever since. If this dynamic became vivid in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012), itself arguably a belated response to Easy Rider (1969), this book helps us understand those films, and much more, through an eclectichistory of U.S. screen media from the postwar era. It deftly analyzes not only Hollywood films and television, but also educational and corporate films, amateur films (aka "home movies"), and military and civil defense filmsfeaturing "tests" of the atomic bomb in the desert. Attentive to sometimes profoundly different contexts of production and consumption shaping its varied examples, Split Screen Nation argues that in the face of the Cold War and the civil rights struggle an implicit, sometimes explicit, opposition between the screen West and the screen South nonetheless mediated the nation's most paradoxical narratives--namely, "land of the free"/land of slavery, conquest, and segregation. Whereasconfronting such contradictions head-on could capsize cohesive conceptions of the U.S., by now familiar screen forms of the West and the South split them apart to offer convenient, discrete, and consequentialimaginary places upon which to collectively project avowed aspirations and dump troubling forms of national waste. Pinpointing some of the most severe yet understudied postwar trends fueling this dynamic--including non-theatrical film road trips, feature films adapted from Tennessee Williams, and atomic test films--and mining their potential for more complex ways of thinking and feeling the nation, Split Screen Nation considers how the vernacular screen forms at issue have helped shapehow we imagine not only America's past, but also the limits and possibilities of its present and future. Analyzing an eclectic history of film and related media, Split Screen Nation argues that popular visions of the American West and the American South must be thought in relation to one another if we are to fully understand the marks both have left on popular ways of imagining the U.S. This item is printed on demand. Shipping may be from our UK warehouse or from our Australian or US warehouses, depending on stock availability.

Codice articolo 9780190459970

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Split Screen Nation (Paperback)
• Editore: Oxford University Press Inc, New York
• Data di pubblicazione: 2017
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 0190459972
• ISBN 13: 9780190459970
• Rilegatura: Paperback
• Condizione: new

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

Split Screen Nation traces an oppositional dynamic between the screen West and the screen South that was unstable and dramatically shifting in the decades after WWII, and has marked popular ways of imagining the U.S. ever since. If this dynamic became vivid in Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained (2012), itself arguably a belated response to Easy Rider (1969), this book helps us understand those films, and much more, through an eclectic history of U.S. screen media from the postwar era. It deftly analyzes not only Hollywood films and television, but also educational and corporate films, amateur films (aka "home movies"), and military and civil defense films featuring ¨tests" of the atomic bomb in the desert. Attentive to sometimes profoundly different contexts of production and consumption shaping its varied examples, Split Screen Nation argues that in the face of the Cold War and the civil rights struggle an implicit, sometimes explicit, opposition between the screen West and the screen South nonetheless mediated the nation's most paradoxical narratives -- namely, "land of the free"/land of slavery, conquest, and segregation. Whereas confronting such contradictions head-on could capsize cohesive conceptions of the U.S., by now familiar screen forms of the West and the South split them apart to offer convenient, discrete, and consequential imaginary places upon which to collectively project avowed aspirations and dump troubling forms of national waste. Pinpointing some of the most severe yet understudied postwar trends fueling this dynamic -- including non-theatrical film road trips, feature films adapted from Tennessee Williams, and atomic test films -- and mining their potential for more complex ways of thinking and feeling the nation, Split Screen Nation considers how the vernacular screen forms at issue have helped shape how we imagine not only America's past, but also the limits and possibilities of its present and future.

Informazioni sull'autore

Susan Courtney is an associate professor of Film and Media Studies and English at the University of South Carolina. There she also co-founded the Orphan Film Symposium and has directed the program in Film and Media Studies. She is the author of Hollywood Fantasies of Miscegenation: Spectacular Narratives of Gender and Race, 1903-1967 (2005).