The wow climax : tracing the emotional impact of popular culture / Henry Jenkins.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jenkins, Henry, 1958-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Popular culture--United States.

Popular culture--United States--Psychological aspects.

Emotions--Social aspects--United States.

Affect (Psychology)--United States.

Aesthetics--Social aspects--United States.

Mass media--Social aspects--United States.

Mass media--United States--Psychological aspects.

United States--Social conditions--1933-1945.

United States--Social conditions--1945-.

Physical Description:

vi, 285 p. : ill.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, c2007.

New York, NY : New York University Press, [2006]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Henry Jenkins at Authors@Google (video)Vaudevillians used the term "the wow climax" to refer to the emotional highpoint of their acts-a final moment of peak spectacle following a gradual building of audience's emotions. Viewed by most critics as vulgar and sensationalistic, the vaudeville aesthetic was celebrated by other writers for its vitality, its liveliness, and its playfulness.The Wow Climax follows in the path of this more laudatory tradition, drawing out the range of emotions in popular culture and mapping what we might call an aesthetic of immediacy. It pulls together a spirited range of work from Henry Jenkins, one of our most astute media scholars, that spans different media (film, television, literature, comics, games), genres (slapstick, melodrama, horror, exploitation cinema), and emotional reactions (shock, laughter, sentimentality). Whether highlighting the sentimentality at the heart of the Lassie franchise, examining the emotional experiences created by horror filmmakers like Wes Craven and David Cronenberg and avant garde artist Matthew Barney, or discussing the emerging aesthetics of video games, these essays get to the heart of what gives popular culture its emotional impact.

Contents:

Games, the new lively art

Monstrous beauty and mutant aesthetics : rethinking Matthew Barney's relation to the horror genre

Death-defying heroes

Never trust a snake : WWF wrestling as masculine melodrama

Exploiting feminism in Stephanie Rothman's Terminal Island

"You don't say that in English!" : the scandal of Lupe Velez

"Going bonkers!" : children, play, and Pee-Wee

"Complete freedom of movement" : video games as gendered play spaces

"Her suffering aristocratic majesty" : the sentimental value of Lassie.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 247-272) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 03. Jul 2024)

ISBN:

9780814743119

0814743110

9780814743706

0814743706

9781435600355

1435600355

OCLC:

173511444