Middlebrow cinema / edited by Sally Faulkner.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Faulkner, Sally, 1974- editor.

Series:

Remapping world cinema : regional tensions and global transformations.

Remapping world cinema : regional tensions and global transformations

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Social aspects.

Motion pictures.

Physical Description:

xiv, 224 pages ; 25 cm.

Place of Publication:

London ; New York : Routledge, 2016.

Summary:

Middlebrow Cinema challenges an often uninterrogated hostility to middlebrow culture that frequently dismisses it as conservative, which it often is not, and feminized or middle-class, which it often is. The volume defines the term relationally against shifting concepts of 'high' and 'low', and considers its deployment in connection with text, audience and institution. In exploring the concept of the middlebrow, this book recovers films that were widely meaningful to contemporary audiences, yet sometimes overlooked by critics interested in popular and arthouse extremes. It also addresses the question of socially mobile audiences, who might express their aspirations through film watching, and traces the cultural consequences of the movement of films across borders and between institutions. The first study of its kind, the volume comprises 11 original essays that test the purchase of the term 'middlebrow' across cultures, including those of Europe, Asia and the Americas, from the 1930s to the present day. Middlebrow Cinema brings into view a popular and aspirational - and thus especially relevant and dynamic - area of film and film culture. Ideal for students and researchers in this area, this book: remaps 'popular' and 'arthouse' approaches; explores British, Chinese, French, Indian, Mexican, Spanish 'national' cinemas alongside Continental, Hollywood, queer, transnational cinemas; analyses biopic, heritage, historical film, melodrama, musical, sex comedy genres. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Mapping middlebrow 13

1 Hollywood middlebrow: a dialectical approach to 1940s cinema / Chris Cagle Cagle, Chris 15

2 Middlebrow taste: towards a new middle class - a certain tendency of 1950s French cinema / Susan Hayward Hayward, Susan 33

3 Mumbai middlebrow: ways of thinking about the middle ground in Hindi cinema / Rachel Dwyer Dwyer, Rachel 51

Part II Case studies 69

4 Time and the middlebrow in 1940s British cinema / Lawrence Napper Napper, Lawrence 71

5 Rehearsing for democracy in dictatorship Spain: middlebrow period drama 1970-77 / Sally Faulkner Faulkner, Sally 88

6 The Mexican romantic sex comedy: the emergence of Mexican middlebrow filmmaking in the 1990s / Deborah Shaw Shaw, Deborah 107

7 Wealth and justice: contemporary Chinese middlebrow cinema / Ting Guo Guo, Ting 122

8 Counter-heritage, middlebrow and the fiction patrimoniale: refraining 'middleness' in the contemporary French historical film / Will Higbee Higbee, Will 139

9 Radical politics, middlebrow cinema: Salvador (Puig Antich) and the search for a new consensus / Belén Vidal Vidal, Belén 156

Part III Middlebrow across borders 179

10 'Kings of the Middle Way': continental cinema on British screens / Lucy Mazdon Mazdon, Lucy 181

11 Hypotheses on the queer middlebrow / Rosalind Galt Galt, Rosalind, Karl Schoonover Schoonover, Karl 196.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781138777125

1138777129

9781138777132

1138777137

OCLC:

911799521