Janet Staiger

Interpreting Films

Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Employing a wide range of examples from Uncle Tom's Cabin and Birth of a Nation to Zelig and Personal Best, Janet Staiger argues that a historical examination of spectators' responses to films can make a valuable contribution to the history, criticism, and philosophy of cultural products. She maintains that as artifacts, films do not contain immanent meanings, that differences among interpretations have historical bases, and that these variations are due to social, political, and economic conditions as well as the viewers' constructed images of themselves. After proposing a theory of reception study, the author demonstrates its application mainly through analyzing the varying responses of audiences to certain films at specific moments in history. Staiger gives special attention to how questions of class, gender, sexual preference, race, and ethnicity enter into film viewers' interpretations. Her analysis reflects recent developments in post-structuralism, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies, and includes a discussion of current reader-response models in literary and film studies as well as an alternative approach for thinking about historical readers and spectators.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: Princeton University Press
• Seitenzahl: 292
• Erscheinungstermin: 23. März 1992
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 229mm x 152mm x 18mm
• Gewicht: 478g
• ISBN-13: 9780691006161
• ISBN-10: 0691006164
• Artikelnr.: 21573519

Autorenporträt

Janet Staiger

Inhaltsangabe

List of Figures and Sources
Preface
Pt. 1
Theoretical Concerns
1
Ch. 1
The Use-Value of Reception Studies
3
Ch. 2
Reception Studies in Other Disciplines
16
Ch. 3
Reception Studies in Film and Television
49
Ch. 4
Toward a Historical Materialist Approach to Reception Studies
79
Pt. 2
Studies in the History of the Reception of American Films
99
Ch. 5
Rethinking "Primitive" Cinema: Intertextuality, the Middle-Class
Audience, and Reception Studies
101
Ch. 6
"The Handmaiden of Villainy": Foolish Wives, Politics, Gender
Orientation, and the Other
124
Ch. 7
The Birth of a Nation: Reconsidering Its Reception
139
Ch. 8
The Logic of Alternative Readings: A Star Is Born
154
Ch. 9
With the Compliments of the Auteur: Art Cinema and the Complexities
of Its Reading Strategies
178
Ch. 10
Chameleon in the Film, Chameleons in the Audience; or, Where Is
Parody? The Case of Zelig
196
Epilogue
210
Notes
213
Select Bibliography
259
Index
271