Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its ContextsColumbia University Press, 5 abr 2001 - 256 páginas 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. |
Índice
List of Illustrations | ix |
Acknowledgments | xiii |
Introduction | 1 |
Meanings of Modernity | 17 |
Meanings of Melodrama | 37 |
Sensationalism and the World of Urban Modernity | 59 |
Making Sense of the Modernity Thesis | 101 |
Melodrama and the Consequences of Capitalism | 131 |
Child of Commerce Bastard of Art Early Film Melodrama | 189 |
Power and Peril in the SerialQueen Melodrama | 221 |
Marketing Melodrama Serials and Intertextuality | 263 |
Conclusion | 289 |
Notes | 297 |
331 | |
357 | |
361 | |
Otras ediciones - Ver todo
Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts Ben Singer Vista previa restringida - 2001 |
Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts Ben Singer No hay ninguna vista previa disponible - 2001 |
Términos y frases comunes
action Adventures of Kathlyn advertising aesthetic American audience Benjamin Bordwell Brooklyn Daily Eagle capitalist century changes chapter classical critics cultural death Diamond diegetic drama Early Film Edison environment episode example exhibitors experience Exploits of Elaine feature films female Fiction tie-in genre Girl Harvard Theatre Collection Hazards of Helen Helen Holmes hero heroine Hollywood human ibid individual intertextual Kalem Kracauer Lumberlands Magazine melo melodra metropolis million mobility mode modernity thesis moral motif Motion Picture Moving Picture World narrative newspaper nickelodeon Owen Davis Pathé pathos Pearl White perceptual Perils of Pauline Photoplay play popular amusement popular-priced producers publicity released RINGLING Ruth scene screen sensational melodrama sensationalism sense sensory serial films serial-queen melodrama shocks Simmel situation social society spectacle spectators stage melodrama stimuli stress Teens theaters thrill tion trade journal urban modernity Vardac villain women York Dramatic Mirror York World Zudora