Movies and Mass CultureJohn Belton Rutgers University Press, 1996 - 279 pages Movies and Mass Culture looks at the ways in which American identity shapes and is shaped by motion pictures. Movies serve not only as texts that document who we think we are or were, but they also reflect changes in our self-image, tracing the transformation from one kind of America to another. They assist audiences in negotiating major changes in identity, carrying them across difficult periods of cultural transition so that a more or less coherent national identity again emerges. Films thus help their viewers to span the gaps and fissures that cultural changes cause, allowing passage over any disjointedness that in some way might disrupt our sense of what we believe in as a nation. This volume examines this process, illustrating the ways in which films aided America's transition from an agrarian to an industrial economy; from a nation of producers to one of consumers; and from a community of individuals to a mass society. |
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Contents
Introduction | 1 |
D W Griffith and | 25 |
The Carole Lombard in Macys Window | 95 |
The Commodity Form inof | 119 |
The Production Code | 135 |
Notes on Film Noir | 153 |
The Absent Family of Film Noir | 171 |
Postmodernism and Consumer Society | 185 |
Fantasy and Ideology in | 203 |
New U S Black Cinema | 231 |
Black Female Spectators | 247 |
Select Bibliography | 265 |
Contributors | 271 |
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Common terms and phrases
advertising Afro Afro-American American films Apocalyptic Cinema audience become bell hooks Berkeley's black cinema black female spectators black women Blade Runner camera Carole Lombard character Charles Eckert classical Hollywood cinema commodity consumer contemporary crime critical Crowd D. W. Griffith Deal Depression desire director dominant Double Indemnity early economy essay evil Fantasy and Ideology feminist film noir film's filmmakers Fredric Jameson gangster Gun Crazy hero identity individual industry John Belton Lary living Lombard in Macy's look Macy's Macy's Window Martin Rubin Mary Ann Doane mass culture modern MOMAFL moral motion picture movement narrative Nation Oppositional Gaze Paul Schrader period Photo political populist postmodernism present press book Production Code progressive progressivism race reform relations relationship Robin Wood scene screen sense sexual social society Spielberg Star Wars story Street studio style theater theme tie-ups tion tradition viewers woman York
References to this book
Florence Lawrence, the Biograph Girl: America's First Movie Star Kelly R. Brown No preview available - 1999 |
Projecting Ethnicity and Race: An Annotated Bibliogaphy of Studies on ... Marsha J. Hamilton,Eleanor S. Block No preview available - 2003 |