Cinema and Cultural Modernity [Hardcover]

Gill Branston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2, 2001 | ISBN-10: 033520077X | ISBN-13: 978-0335200771 | Edition: 1

This volume carves a lucid path through the central debates of film and cinema studies and explores these in their social and political contexts. The book includes histories of the ways in which we view Hollywood's global dominance, up to the development of late modernity and the declaration of "postmodernity". In an accessible fashion, it discusses changing theorizations of the economics, audiences, and fascinations of cinema, addressing concepts such as agency, negotiation and identification, and global "popularity" within contemporary cultures of celebrity, consumption and the visual. Gill Branston outlines the need for cinema study that is both sensitive to the formal "textiness" of films, but also less anxious about arguing for its position within broad agendas of representation. At the same time, the author links such areas to both the pleasures of consumption, which cinema so often evokes and embodies, and to the need for a new, critical politics to address the persistent inequalities of modernity, inequalities which still fuel lively interest in questions of representation.

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About the Author

Gill Branston lectures and researches in Film Studies in the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies at Cardiff University. She has published widely in the areas of Film and Television Studies and most recently completed the second edition of the very successful textbook, The Media Student's Book (1999), with Roy Stafford. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Open University Press; 1 edition (March 2, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 033520077X
• ISBN-13: 978-0335200771
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,431,173 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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0 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars HORRIBLE, December 9, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Cinema and Cultural Modernity (Hardcover)

This text was EXTREMELY difficult to read and should not be considered by anyone who got below a 1550 on the SAT's. I could not wait to sell this incoherent garbage back to my college bookstore after the class was over. Good Riddance!