Melodrama & Modernity - Early Sensational Cinema & It′s Contexts

Erscheinungsjahr 2001
ISBN: 978-0-231-11329-8
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 256 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 177 mm x 239 mm, Gewicht: 644 g

Reihe: Film and Culture Series

In this groundbreaking investigation into the nature and meanings of melodrama in American culture between 1880 and 1920, Ben Singer offers a challenging new reevaluation of early American cinema and the era that spawned it. Singer looks back to the sensational or "blood and thunder" melodramas (e.g., The Perils of Pauline, The Hazards of Helen, etc.) and uncovers a fundamentally modern cultural expression, one reflecting spectacular transformations in the sensory environment of the metropolis, in the experience of capitalism, in the popular imagination of gender, and in the exploitation of the thrill in popular amusement. Written with verve and panache, and illustrated with 100 striking photos and drawings, Singer's study provides an invaluable historical and conceptual map both of melodrama as a genre on stage and screen and of modernity as a pivotal idea in social theory.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Singer, Ben

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Filmwissenschaft, Fernsehen, Radio Filmtheorie, Filmanalyse

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction1. Meanings of Modernity2. Meanings of Melodrama3. Sensationalism and the World of Urban Modernity4. Making Sense of the Modernity Thesis5. Melodrama and the Consequences of Capitalism6. Ten-Twenty-Thirty Melodrama: Boom and Bust7. "Child of Commerce! Bastard of Art!'': Early Film Melodrama8. Power and Peril in the Serial-Queen Melodrama9. Marketing Melodrama: Serials and IntertextualityConclusion

Über Autor(innen)

Ben Singer is assistant professor of film studies at University of Wisconsin - Madison.