Noir urbanisms : dystopic images of the modern city / edited by Gyan Prakash.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Prakash, Gyan.

Series:

Publications in Partnership with the Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University

Publications in Partnership with the Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University ; 3

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Film noir--History and criticism.

Film noir.

Cities and towns in motion pictures.

City and town life in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (286 p.)

Edition:

Course Book

Place of Publication:

Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2010.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Dystopic imagery has figured prominently in modern depictions of the urban landscape. The city is often portrayed as a terrifying world of darkness, crisis, and catastrophe. Noir Urbanisms traces the history of the modern city through its critical representations in art, cinema, print journalism, literature, sociology, and architecture. It focuses on visual forms of dystopic representation--because the history of the modern city is inseparable from the production and circulation of images--and examines their strengths and limits as urban criticism. Contributors explore dystopic images of the modern city in Germany, Mexico, Japan, India, South Africa, China, and the United States. Their topics include Weimar representations of urban dystopia in Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis; 1960's modernist architecture in Mexico City; Hollywood film noir of the 1940's and 1950's; the recurring fictional destruction of Tokyo in postwar Japan's sci-fi doom culture; the urban fringe in Bombay cinema; fictional explorations of urban dystopia in post apartheid Johannesburg; and Delhi's out-of-control and media-saturated urbanism in the 1980's and 1990's. What emerges in Noir Urbanisms is the unsettling and disorienting alchemy between dark representations and the modern urban experience. In addition to the editor, the contributors are David R. Ambaras, James Donald, Rubén Gallo, Anton Kaes, Ranjani Mazumdar, Jennifer Robinson, Mark Shiel, Ravi Sundaram, William M. Tsutsui, and Li Zhang.

Contents:

Front matter

Contents

Introduction. Imaging the Modern City, Darkly / Prakash, Gyan

Modernism and Urban Dystopia

Chapter 1. The Phantasm of the Apocalypse

Chapter 2. Sounds Like Hell / Donald, James

Chapter 3. Tlatelolco / Gallo, Rubén

The Aesthetics of the Dark City

Chapter 4. A Regional Geography of Film Noir / Shiel, Mark

Chapter 5. Oh No, There Goes Tokyo / Tsutsui, William M.

Chapter 6. Postsocialist Urban Dystopia? / Zhang, Li

Chapter 7. Friction, Collision, and the Grotesque / Mazumdar, Ranjani

Imaging Urban Crisis

Chapter 8. Topographies of Distress / Ambaras, David R.

Chapter 9. Living in Dystopia / Robinson, Jennifer

Chapter 10. Imaging Urban Breakdown / Sundaram, Ravi

Contributors

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786612692284

9781282692282

1282692283

9781400836628

140083662X

OCLC:

655319474