A Cinema of Hopelessness
A Cinema of Hopelessness

Author: Kendall R. Phillips

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-09-27

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 3030741362

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This book explores the circulation of anger and hostility in contemporary American culture with particular attention to the fantasy of refusal, a dream of rejecting all the structures of the contemporary political and economic system. Framing the question of public sentiment through the lens of rhetorical studies, this book traces the circulation of symbols that craft public feelings in contemporary popular cinema. Analyzing popular twenty-first century films as invitations to a particular way of feeling, the book delves into the way popular sentiments are circulated and intensified. The book examines dystopian films (The Purge, The Cabin in the Woods), science fiction (Snowpiercer), and superhero narratives (the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Joker). Across these varied films, an affective economy that emphasizes grief, betrayal, refusal, and an underlying rage at the seeming hopelessness of contemporary culture is uncovered. These examinations are framed in terms of ongoing political protests ranging from Occupy Wall Street, the Tea Party, Black Lives Matter, and the 6th January 2021 invasion of the US Capitol Building.

Cinema and Modernity
Cinema and Modernity

Author: Murray Pomerance

Publisher: Rutgers University Press

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0813538165

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Brings together several essays by seventeen scholars to explore the complexity of the essential connection between film and modernity. This volume shows us the significant ways that film has both grown in the context of the modern world and played a central role in reflecting and shaping our interactions with it.

The Courage of Hopelessness
The Courage of Hopelessness

Author: Slavoj Zizek

Publisher: Melville House

Published: 2018-02-06

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1612190030

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Maverick philosopher Slavoj Zizek returns to explore today's ideological, political and economic battles—and asks whether radical change is possible In these troubled times, even the most pessimistic diagnosis of our future ends with an uplifting hint that things might not be as bad as all that, that there is light at the end of the tunnel. Yet, argues Slavoj Zizek, it is only when we have admitted to ourselves that our situation is completely hopeless—that the light at the end of the tunnel is in fact the headlight of a train—that fundamental change can be brought about. Surveying the various challenges in the world today, from mass migration and geopolitical tensions to terrorism, the explosion of rightist populism and the emergence of new radical politics—all of which, in their own way, express the impasses of global capitalism—Zizek explores whether there still remains the possibility for genuine change. Today, he proposes, the only true question is,or should be, this: do we endorse the predominant acceptance of capitalism as fact of human nature, or does today's capitalism contain strong enough antagonisms to prevent its infinite reproduction? Can we, he asks, move beyond the failure of socialism, and beyond the current wave of populist rage, and initiate radical change before the train hits? “Zizek leaves no social or cultural phenomenon untheorized, and is master of the counterintuitive observation” —The New Yorker

Pictures at a Revolution
Pictures at a Revolution

Author: Mark Harris

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 522

ISBN-13: 9781594201523

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Documents the cultural revolution behind the making of 1967's five Best Picture-nominated films, including Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, The Graduate, Doctor Doolittle, In the Heat of the Night, and Bonnie and Clyde, in an account that discusses how the movies reflected period beliefs about race, violence, and identity. 40,000 first printing.

Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements
Napoleon Symphony: A Novel in Four Movements

Author: Anthony Burgess

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2014-10-13

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 0393350169

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Anthony Burgess draws on his love of music and history in this novel he called “elephantine fun” to write. A grand and affectionate tragicomic symphony to Napoleon Bonaparte that teases and reweaves Napoleon’s life into a pattern borrowed—in liberty, equality, and fraternity—from Beethoven’s Third “Eroica” Symphony, in this rich, exciting, bawdy, and funny novel Anthony Burgess has pulled out all the stops for a virtuoso performance that is literary, historical, and musical.

A Cinema of Loneliness
A Cinema of Loneliness

Author: Robert Phillip Kolker

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 532

ISBN-13: 9780195123500

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In this 20th anniversary edition, Kolker continues and expands his inquiry into the phenomenon of cinematic representation of culture by updating and revising the chapters on Kubrick, Scorsese, Altman and Spielberg.

Hopelessness
Hopelessness

Author: Salman Akhtar

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-03-26

Total Pages: 269

ISBN-13: 0429914571

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Hope is the most reliable sustainer of life. It offers the promise of something good in the future, contributes to resilience, and keeps one going. However, there are circumstances when hope dries up. This book seeks to map out such dark terrain of hopelessness. While it allows for the fact that a modicum of hopelessness might help in reducing infantile omnipotence and curtailing fixation on unrealistic goals, its focus is upon severe and clinically significant shades of hopelessness. The book opens with a broad overview of the nature, developmental origins, and technical implications of hope and hopelessness, and closes with a thoughtful summary, synthesis, and critique of the intervening essays; this summary forges both theoretically and technically significant links between the experiences of helplessness and hopelessness. Sandwiched between these opening and closing commentaries are nine essays which address the ontogenetic trajectory, phenomenological variations, cultural and literary portrayals, and clinical ramifications of sustained hopelessness.

Sculpting in Time
Sculpting in Time

Author: Andrey Tarkovsky

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 1989-04

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9780292776241

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A director reveals the original inspirations for his films, their history, his methods of work, and the problems of visual creativity

A Place of Darkness
A Place of Darkness

Author: Kendall R. Phillips

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2018-03-01

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 1477315519

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Horror is one of the most enduringly popular genres in cinema. The term “horror film” was coined in 1931 between the premiere of Dracula and the release of Frankenstein, but monsters, ghosts, demons, and supernatural and horrific themes have been popular with American audiences since the emergence of novelty kinematographic attractions in the late 1890s. A Place of Darkness illuminates the prehistory of the horror genre by tracing the way horrific elements and stories were portrayed in films prior to the introduction of the term “horror film.” Using a rhetorical approach that examines not only early films but also the promotional materials for them and critical responses to them, Kendall R. Phillips argues that the portrayal of horrific elements was enmeshed in broader social tensions around the emergence of American identity and, in turn, American cinema. He shows how early cinema linked monsters, ghosts, witches, and magicians with Old World superstitions and beliefs, in contrast to an American way of thinking that was pragmatic, reasonable, scientific, and progressive. Throughout the teens and twenties, Phillips finds, supernatural elements were almost always explained away as some hysterical mistake, humorous prank, or nefarious plot. The Great Depression of the 1930s, however, constituted a substantial upheaval in the system of American certainty and opened a space for the reemergence of Old World gothic within American popular discourse in the form of the horror genre, which has terrified and thrilled fans ever since.