Middleton Documentary's Awkward Turn

Cringe Comedy and Media Spectatorship
Erscheinungsjahr 2013
ISBN: 978-1-317-95219-0
Verlag: CRC Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten

Reihe: Routledge Research in Cultural and Media Studies

Despite the prominence of "awkwardness" as cultural buzzword and descriptor of a sub-genre of contemporary film and television comedy, it has yet to be adequately theorized in academic film and media studies. Documentary’s Awkward Turn contributes a new critical paradigm to the field by presenting an analysis of awkward moments in documentary film and other reality-based media formats. It examines difficult and disrupted encounters between social actors on the screen, between filmmaker and subject, and between film and spectator. These encounters are, of course, often inter-connected. Awkward moments occur when an established mode of representation or reception is unexpectedly challenged, stalled, or altered: when an interviewee suddenly confronts the interviewer, when a subject who had been comfortable on camera begins to feel trapped in the frame, when a film perceived as a documentary turns out to be a parodic mockumentary. This book makes visible the ways in which awkwardness connects and subtends a range of transformative textual strategies, political and ethical problematics, and modalities of spectatorship in documentary film and media from the 1970s to the present.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Middleton, Jason

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstformen, Kunsthandwerk Installations-, Aktions-, Computer- und Videokunst
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Mediensoziologie
• Sozialwissenschaften Medien- und Kommunikationswissenschaften Medienwissenschaften
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Freizeitsoziologie, Konsumsoziologie, Alltagssoziologie, Populärkultur
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Populärkultur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction. Awkward Moments 1. Awkward Aesthetics: Michael Moore and Christopher Guest 2. Awkwardly Reflected: Mirroring Anti-Celebrity in the Portrait Film 3. Awkward Satire: Comedies of Deception 4. Awkward Extremes: Reaction Videos and the "Reactive Gaze" 5. Awkward Moments, Endless Days: Feeling Time in The Office

Über Autor(innen)

Jason Middleton is Assistant Professor in the English Department and the Graduate Program in Visual and Cultural Studies, and Director of the Program in Film and Media Studies, at the University of Rochester, USA. He is co-editor of the book Medium Cool: Music Videos from Soundies to Cellphones (2007).