Zeppo was the Marx Brother who didn't want to go into the family business. A juvenile delinquent in his teen years, before joining his brothers on stage, Zeppo balanced two careers: auto mechanic and petty criminal. Even after getting dragged into the world of entertainment-for sixteen years, he did his familial duty as as a vaudeville, Broadway, ......
Originally appearing as a comic book in the 1960s, X-Men has been a cultural touchpoint for decades. Since the release of the first film in 2000, the series has enjoyed an even greater transnational presence. With each successive film, the franchise has secured its place within global popular culture, becoming one of the most profitable and ......
Writing Australian History on Screen reveals the depths in Australian history from convict times to the present day. The essays convey perspectives of Australian history on screen taken from an Australian viewpoint in a way that offers insights and an understanding of the unique Australian history and sense of identity.
Drawing on texts and theorists of Greek myth, psychoanalysis, and masculinities, Susan Mackey-Kallis and Brian Johnston develop and offer a model of rhetorical and mythic criticism to analyze popular American film. In this book, Mackey-Kallis and Johnston focus their analysis on films that point to the need for father atonement, ego-decentering, ......
This book looks at Wonder Woman's creation, mysterious identity, and deep roots in the feminist movement, as well as the cultural and psychological impact she has had on five generations of fans from the Baby Boomers through to today.
War has been depicted in cinema for more than a century, from early silent films to more recent blockbusters such as Saving Private Ryan and Lone Survivor. Most war films, especially combat films, are about men engaged in battle. But while Hollywood has reinforced the cultural stereotype of war as a man's job, women have not been completely ......
Women and Comedy: History, Theory, Practice brings together leading researchers from Canada, the United States, and Europe in an interdisciplinary collection of essays to chart the future of critical inquiry in gender and comedy studies.
Wicked Leadership in Film offers a novel theory of how leaders can contend with so-called "wicked problems," a class of important, entrenched, and far-reaching political and social challenges (such as climate change or mental illness) that resist ordinary policies and problem solving. Bruce Peabody's relational theory is built on two central ......
What Harper Lee's Book and the Iconic American Film Mean to Us Today
With 40 million copies sold, To Kill a Mockingbird's poignant but clear-eyed examination of human nature has cemented its status as a global classic. Tom Santopietro's book, Why To Kill a Mockingbird Matters, takes a 360 degree look at the Mockingbird phenomenon both on page and screen.
Everyone seems to know what film noir is, but scholars and critics cannot agree on any definition. Some go so far as to insist that there is no such thing. What is Film Noir? claims that this confusion arises from the fact that film noir is both a genre and a period style, and as such is unique in the history of Hollywood. The genre, now known as ......
Movie studios are the wondrous, almost magical locales where not just films, but legends, are created. Unfortunately, these celebrity playgrounds are, and always have been, largely hidden from public view. Although some movie studios offer tours, few guests from outside the Hollywood community have ever been witness to the artistry, politics, and ......
Reconsidering the dynamics of perceptionUsing cinema to explore the visual aspects of alterity, Randall Halle analyzes how we become cognizant of each other and how we perceive and judge another person in a visual field. Halle draws on insights from philosophy and recent developments in cognitive and neuroscience to argue that there is no pure ......
Reconsidering the dynamics of perceptionUsing cinema to explore the visual aspects of alterity, Randall Halle analyzes how we become cognizant of each other and how we perceive and judge another person in a visual field. Halle draws on insights from philosophy and recent developments in cognitive and neuroscience to argue that there is no pure ......
This collection of essays examines how New York and Los Angeles are depicted in noir and neo-noir films from the 1940s through the 21st century. These essays consider how the architectural sights and city sounds inform such films as Cotton Comes to Harlem, Drive, Kiss of Death, Naked City, and Nightcrawler, among others.
In this book, ten experts in philosophy of film explore the importance of transcendence for cinema as an art form in the films of the great directors, David Cronenberg, Karl Theodor Dreyer, Federico Fellini, Werner Herzog, Stanley Kubrick, David Lynch, Terrence Malick, Yasujiro Ozu, and Martin Scorsese.
Idioms, Words, and Quotes from Hollywood to Broadway That Have Changed
The language of Hollywood resonates beyond the stage and screen because it often has inherent drama-or comedic effect. This volume contains a combination of approximately 100 expertly researched essays on words, phrases and idioms made famous by Hollywood along with the stories behind 30 or so of the most iconic-and ultimately often used-quotes ......
Richard Wright's dramatic imagination guided the creation of his masterpieces Native Son and Black Boy and helped shape Wright's long-overlooked writing for theater and other performative mediums. Drawing on decades of research and interviews with Wright's family and Wright scholars, Bruce Allen Dick uncovers the theatrical influence on Wright's ......
Richard Wright's dramatic imagination guided the creation of his masterpieces Native Son and Black Boy and helped shape Wright's long-overlooked writing for theater and other performative mediums. Drawing on decades of research and interviews with Wright's family and Wright scholars, Bruce Allen Dick uncovers the theatrical influence on Wright's ......
MST3K, RiffTrax, and the History of Heckling at the Movies
The Worst We Can Find looks at how "riffing" of films came about, the history of the shows, and why what could be an annoying habit in the theater has become a long-lasting franchise in entertainment over the years.
With mingled reverence and wry humor, best-selling author Tom Santopietro embarks on an investigation to decode the enduring power of a landmark movie.
Pneumatological Reflections on Contemporary Cinema
The Spirit and the Screen explores pertinent pneumatological issues that arise in film and asks how Christian convictions and experiences of the Spirit might shape the way one thinks about films and film-making.
American women who contributed their talents to the silent film industry are still largely unrecognized, in spite of their great influence. This book details the lives and careers of America's first women directors, unveiling the history of those who, with little recognition, helped pave the way for females in the film industry today.
This book tracks the changing of the guard in the 1970s from the classic Hollywood studio system to a new generation of filmmakers who made personal movies targeted primarily to a thirty-and-under youth audience. These filmmakers reinvented the content and aesthetics of the medium to show that movies can be more than entertainment.
This book argues that the medicalization of pregnancy and childbirth traumatizes pregnant people in various ways, using a select group of horror films to portray this trauma on a visceral level. This analysis allows audiences to identify and empathize with pregnant people who are victims of the medicalized pregnancy process.
In The Queer Coming of Age Film Genre, Brad J. Windhauser argues for the existence of this genre and, using a genre and queer theory lens, investigates how the initial, classic cluster of this genre's films represent the unique issues experienced by queer people - including trans, non-binary, and intersex individuals - coming of age in society in ......
The Paths of Zatoichi charts the history and continuing influence of the Japanese film and TV franchise about Zatoichi the blind swordsman, both within the Japanese media industriesand within global popular culture.
In The Othering of Women in Silent Film: Cultural, Historical, and Literary Contexts, Barbara Tepa Lupack explores the rampant racial and gender stereotyping in early cinema and demonstrates how that imagery helped shape American attitudes and practices.
Universal Studios produced some of the most famous movie monsters in history, including Dracula, Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, and The Wolf Man. This book provides a fascinating look at each of the key films produced by Universal from 1931 through 1956 and discusses the continued impact of the films today.
In this book, Nadia Salem examines and questions the enduring relevance of the monomyth, or the hero's journey, for storytellers and their audiences. Created by Joseph Campbell and largely popularized by George Lucas, the hero's journey has come to define mythic quests for all. However, in recent years, this genderless paradigm has lost its appeal ......
The story of racial hierarchy in the American film industry The #OscarsSoWhite campaign, and the content of the leaked Sony emails which revealed, among many other things, that a powerful Hollywood insider didn't believe that Denzel Washington could "open" a western genre film, provide glaring evidence that the opportunities for people of color ......
The story of racial hierarchy in the American film industry The #OscarsSoWhite campaign, and the content of the leaked Sony emails which revealed, among many other things, that a powerful Hollywood insider didn't believe that Denzel Washington could "open" a western genre film, provide glaring evidence that the opportunities for people of color ......
