Bad : infamy, darkness, evil, and slime on screen / edited by Murray Pomerance.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Pomerance, Murray, 1946-

Series:

SUNY series, cultural studies in cinema/video

The SUNY series, cultural studies in cinema/video

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Good and evil in motion pictures.

Sensationalism in motion pictures.

Social problems in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

xviii, 357 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [2004]

Summary:

Violence and corruption sell big, especially since the birth of action cinema, but even from cinema's earliest days, the public has been delighted to be stunned by screen representations of negativity in all its forms--evil, monstrosity, corruption, ugliness, villainy, and darkness. Bad examines the long line of thieves, rapists, varmints, codgers, dodgers, manipulators, exploiters, conmen, killers, vamps, liars, demons, cold-blooded megalomaniacs, and warmhearted flakes that populate cinematic narrative. From "Nosferatu to The Talented' Mr. Ripley, the contributors consider a wide range of genres and use a variety of critical approaches to examine evil, villainy, and immorality in twentieth-century film.

Contents:

Flickers: on cinema's power for evil / Tom Gunning

Monstrosity and the bad-white-body film / Gwendolyn Audrey Foster

Beyond the thin line of black and blue: movies and police misconduct in Los Angeles / Aaron Baker

Genocidal spectacles and the ideology of death / Christopher Sharrett

Bad, worse, worst: 8mm and Hollywood's bad boys of porn / Peter Lehman

Toxic corps: rage against the corporate state / Kirby Farrell

Ghost World of neoliberalism: abandoning the abandoned generation / Henry A. Giroux

How will I get my opium? Jean Cocteau and the treachery of friendship / Wheeler Winston Dixon

Sweeter the kitten the sharper the claws: Russ Meyer's bad girls / Kristen Hatch

Wanted for murder: the strange case of Eric Portman / Tony Williams

Arch archenemies of James Bond / Steven Woodward

From Fu Manchu to M. Butterfly and Irma Vep: cinematic incarnations of Chinese villainy / Gina Marchetti

On the bad goodness of Born to Be Bad: auteurism, evaluation, and Nicholas Ray's outsider cinema / Dana Polan

Villain in Hitchcock: Does He Look Like a Wrong One to You? / William Rothman

Evil medieval: gender, sexuality, miscegenation, and assimilation in Cat People / Alexander Doty and Patricia Clare Ingham

Wicked old ladies from Europe: Jeanne Moreau and Marlene Dietrich on the screen and live / E. Ann Kaplan

Darkness visible: images of Nazis in American film / Lester D. Friedman

Whole fucking world warped around me: bad kids and worse contexts / Cynthia Fuchs

Searching for blobby fissures: slime, sexuality, and the grotesque / Rebecca Bell-Metereau

Crazy like a prof: mad science and the transgressions of the rational / Ina Rae Hark

Tom Ripley's talent / Murray Pomerance.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0791459403

079145939X

OCLC:

51647903