The book offers an in-depth analysis of several important theories of social class and stratification, both past and present. This critique is underpinned by a single, coherent analytic framework organised around the notion of ownership. This original approach allows the book to offer alternative treatments of the issues dealt with by the thinkers discussed here. The central argument here is that there are only two classical theories of social class, namely those developed by Marx and Weber, and this clear systematisation of the main attributes of approaches to class and stratification makes it possible to see that many theories traditionally considered as class ones refer, in fact, to social stratification.
Donated to the Library of Congress in the mid-1960s, Groucho Marx's correspondence was first crafted into this celebration of wit and wisdom in 1967. Reissued today with his original letters and humor intact, The Groucho Letters exposes one of the twentieth century's most beloved comedian's private insights into show biz, politics, business, and, of course, his illustrious personal life. Included are Marx's conversations with such noted personalities as E. B. White, Fred Allen, Goodman Ace, Nunnally Johnson, James Thurber, Booth Tarkington, Alistair Cooke, Harry Truman, Irving Berlin, and S. J. Perelman. To Confidential Magazine Gentlemen: If you continue to publish slanderous pieces about me, I shall feel compelled to cancel my subscription. Sincerely, Groucho Marx
This inspired bio musical about The One and Only begins with Groucho as an old man doing his famous Carnegie Hall show. It then goes back to the beginnings of the Marx Brothers and their struggles to make it in vaudeville, their rise to stardom and their eventual break up. All classic Groucho songs are included. One actor plays Groucho, another plays Chico and Harpo, and one actress plays all the wives, girlfriends and Margaret Dumont. A hit in New York, across the U.S. and in London, this show will delight Marx Brothers fans and the as yet uninitiated.
Behind the scenes at the legendary Warner Brothers film studio, where four immigrant brothers transformed themselves into the moguls and masters of American fantasy Warner Bros charts the rise of an unpromising film studio from its shaky beginnings in the early twentieth century through its ascent to the pinnacle of Hollywood influence and popularity. The Warner Brothers—Harry, Albert, Sam, and Jack—arrived in America as unschooled Jewish immigrants, yet they founded a studio that became the smartest, toughest, and most radical in all of Hollywood. David Thomson provides fascinating and original interpretations of Warner Brothers pictures from the pioneering talkie The Jazz Singer through black-and-white musicals, gangster movies, and such dramatic romances as Casablanca, East of Eden, and Bonnie and Clyde. He recounts the storied exploits of the studio’s larger-than-life stars, among them Al Jolson, James Cagney, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Humphrey Bogart, James Dean, Doris Day, and Bugs Bunny. The Warner brothers’ cultural impact was so profound, Thomson writes, that their studio became “one of the enterprises that helped us see there might be an American dream out there.”
Born Julius Marx in 1890, the brilliant comic actor who would later be known as Groucho was the most verbal of the famed comedy team, the Marx Brothers, his broad slapstick portrayals elevated by ingenious wordplay and double entendre. In his spirited biography of this beloved American iconoclast, Lee Siegel views the life of Groucho through the lens of his work on stage, screen, and television. The author uncovers the roots of the performer’s outrageous intellectual acuity and hilarious insolence toward convention and authority in Groucho’s early upbringing and Marx family dynamics. The first critical biography of Groucho Marx to approach his work analytically, this fascinating study draws unique connections between Groucho’s comedy and his life, concentrating primarily on the brothers’ classic films as a means of understanding and appreciating Julius the man. Unlike previous uncritical and mostly reverential biographies, Siegel’s “bio-commentary” makes a distinctive contribution to the field of Groucho studies by attempting to tell the story of his life in terms of his work, and vice versa.
In recent years, lesbians and gay men have developed a new, aggressive style of politics. At the same time, innovative intellectual energies have made queer theory an explosive field of study. In "Fear of a Queer Planet", Michael Warner draws on emerging new queer politics, and shows how queer activists have come to challenge basic assumptions about the social and political world. Existing traditions of theory - Marxism, cultural studies, psychoanalysis, anthropology, legal theory, nationalism, and antinationalism - have too often presupposed a heterosexual society, as the essays in this volume demonstrate. "Fear of a Queer Planet" suggests a new agenda for social theory. It moves beyond the idea that lesbians and gay men share a minority identity and special interests and that their issues can be subordinated to more general social conflicts. Instead, Warner and the other contributors to this volume show that queer sexualities take many forms, are the subject of many kinds of conflict and struggles, and must be taken as a starting point in thinking about cultural politics. This collection explores the impact of ACT UP, Queer Nation, multiculturalism, the new religious right, outing, queerness, postmodernism, and other shifts in the politics of sexuality. The authors featured speak from different backgrounds of gender, race, nationality, and discipline. Together, they show how struggles over sexuality have profound implications for progressive politics, social theory, and cultural studies. Michael Warner has written extensively on censorship and the public sphere, the construction of American literary history, and the social and political implication of literary theories. He is author of "The Letter of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America" and co-editor of "The Origins of Literary Studies in America: A Documentary Anthology".
Feeling Backward weighs the costs of the contemporary move to the mainstream in lesbian and gay culture. While the widening tolerance for same-sex marriage and for gay-themed media brings clear benefits, gay assimilation entails other losses--losses that have been hard to identify or mourn, since many aspects of historical gay culture are so closely associated with the pain and shame of the closet. Feeling Backward makes an effort to value aspects of historical gay experience that now threaten to disappear, branded as embarrassing evidence of the bad old days before Stonewall. It looks at early-twentieth-century queer novels often dismissed as "too depressing" and asks how we might value and reclaim the dark feelings that they represent. Heather Love argues that instead of moving on, we need to look backward and consider how this history continues to affect us in the present. Through elegant readings of Walter Pater, Willa Cather, Radclyffe Hall, and Sylvia Townsend Warner, and through stimulating engagement with a range of critical sources, Feeling Backward argues for a form of politics attentive to social exclusion and its effects.
The historical novel has been one of the most important forms of women's reading and writing in the twentieth century, yet it has been consistently under-rated and critically neglected. In the first major study of British women writers' use of the genre, Diana Wallace tracks its development across the century. She combines a comprehensive survey with detailed readings of key writers, including Naomi Mitchison, Georgette Heyer, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Margaret Irwin, Jean Plaidy, Mary Renault, Philippa Gregory and Pat Barker.
There is increasing pressure on the humanities to justify their value and on criminology to undertake interdisciplinary research. In this book, Rafe McGregor establishes a new interdisciplinary methodology, ‘criminological criticism’, harnessing the synergy between literary studies and critical criminology to produce genuine interventions in social reality. McGregor practices criminological criticism on George Miller’s ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’, Prime Video’s ‘Carnival Row’ and J.K. Rowling’s ‘The Cuckoo’s Calling’, demonstrating how these popular allegories provide insights into the harms of sexism, racism and class prejudice. This book proposes a model for collaboration between literary studies and critical criminology that is beneficial to the humanities, the social sciences and society.
