Skyscraper cinema : architecture and gender in American film / Merrill Schleier.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Schleier, Merrill.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Skyscrapers in motion pictures.

Sex role in motion pictures.

Masculinity in motion pictures.

Social classes in motion pictures.

Motion pictures--United States--History--20th century.

Motion pictures.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (388 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Whether tall office buildings, high-rise apartments, or lofty hotels, skyscrapers have been stars in American cinema since the silent era. Cinema's tall buildings have been variously represented as unbridled aspiration, dens of iniquity and eroticism, beacons of democracy, and well-oiled corporate machines. Considering their intriguing diversity, Merrill Schleier establishes and explains the impact of actual skyscrapers on America's ideologies about work, leisure, romance, sexual identity, and politics as seen in Hollywood movies. Schleier analyzes cinematic works in which skyscrapers are an i

Contents:

Introduction: Constructing the American skyscraper film

From stumbling blocks to stepping stones : Harold Lloyd's skyscraper films

Icons of exploitation : gender and class disharmony in the Depression-era skyscraper office

Masculine heroes, modernism, and political ideology in The fountainhead and The big clock

Mid-century corporate renewal and gender realignment in Executive suite and Desk set

Postscript: Recent skyscraper films.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 283-344) and index.

ISBN:

0-8166-6623-7

OCLC:

320841196