American cinema and the southern imaginary / edited by Deborah E. Barker and Kathryn McKee.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Barker, Deborah, 1955-

McKee, Kathryn B.

Series:

New southern studies.

New southern studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures and history.

Race relations in motion pictures.

African Americans in motion pictures.

Memory in motion pictures.

Southern States--In motion pictures.

Southern States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (388 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Athens [Ga.] : University of Georgia Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Employing innovations in media studies, southern cultural studies, and approaches to the global South, this collection of essays examines aspects of the southern imaginary in American cinema and offers fresh insight into the evolving field of southern film studies. In their introduction, Deborah Barker and Kathryn McKee argue that the southern imaginary in film is not contained by the boundaries of geography and genre; it is not an offshoot or subgenre of mainstream American film but is integral to the history and the development of American cinema. Ranging from the silent era to the present and considering Hollywood movies, documentaries, and independent films, the contributors incorporate the latest scholarship in a range of disciplines. The volume is divided into three sections: "Rereading the South" uses new critical perspectives to reassess classic Hollywood films; "Viewing the Civil Rights South" examines changing approaches to viewing race and class in the post-civil rights era; and "Crossing Borders" considers the influence of postmodernism, postcolonialism, and media studies on recent southern films. The contributors to American Cinema and the Southern Imaginary complicate the foundational term "southern," in some places stretching the traditional boundaries of regional identification until they all but disappear and in others limning a persistent and sometimes self-conscious performance of place that intensifies its power.

Contents:

Introduction: the southern imaginary / Deborah E. Barker and Kathryn McKee

Rereading the Hollywood South. The celluloid war before the birth: race and history in early American film / Robert Jackson

Mammy's "mules" and the rules of marriage in Gone with the Wind / Riché Richardson

Bodies and expectations: chain gang discipline / Leigh Anne Duck

The postwar cinematic South: realism and the politics of liberal consensus / Chris Cagle

A "professional southerner" in the Hollywood studio system: Lamar Trotti at work, 1934-1952 / Matthew H. Bernstei

Viewing the civil rights South. Black passing and white pluralism: imitation of life in the civil rights struggle / Ryan DeRosa

Remembering Birmingham Sunday: Spike Lee's 4 little girls / Valerie Smith

Exploitation movies and the freedom struggle of the 1960s / Sharon Monteith

Crossing borders. Mapping out a postsouthern cinema: three contemporary films / Jay Watson

The native screen: American Indians in contemporary southern film / Melanie R. Benson

The city that Déjà vu forgot: memory, mapping, and the Americanization of New Orleans / Briallen Hopper

Humid time: independent film, gay sexualities, and southernscapes / R. Bruce Brasell

Papa Legba and the liminal spaces of the Blues: roots music in Deep South film / Christopher J. Smith

Revamping the South: thoughts on labor, relationality, and southern representation / Tara McPherson.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-283-03120-5

9786613031204

0-8203-3724-2

OCLC:

706078532