Spectacle of property : the house in American film / John David Rhodes.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rhodes, John David, 1969- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures and architecture.

Home in motion pictures.

Architecture in motion pictures.

Motion pictures, American.

Motion pictures--United States--History.

Motion pictures.

Dwellings in motion pictures.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (268 pages) : illustrations

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2017.

Summary:

Much of our time at the movies is spent in other people's homes. Cinema is, after all, often about everyday life. Spectacle of Property is the first book to address the question of the ubiquitous conjuncture of the moving image and its domestic architecture. Arguing that in cinema we pay to occupy spaces we cannot occupy, John David Rhodes explores how the house in cinema both structures and criticizes fantasies of property and ownership. Rhodes tells the story of the ambivalent but powerful pleasure we take in looking at private property onscreen, analyzing the security and ease the house promises along with the horrible anxieties it produces. He begins by laying out a theory of film spectatorship that proposes the concept of the "spectator-tenant," with reference to films such as Gone with the Wind and The Magnificent Ambersons . The book continues with three chapters that are each occupied with a different architectural style and the films that make use of it: the bungalow, the modernist house, and the shingle style house. Rhodes considers a variety of canonical films rarely analyzed side by side, such as Psycho in relation to Grey Gardens and Meet Me in St. Louis . Among the other films discussed are Meshes of the Afternoon , Mildred Pierce , A Star Is Born , Killer of Sheep , and A Single Man . Bringing together film history, film theory, and architectural history as no book has to date, Spectacle of Property marks a new milestone in examining cinema's relationship to realism while leaving us vastly more informed about, if less at home inside, the houses we occupy at the movies.

Contents:

Introduction: the house as medium

Cinema's short-term tenancy: a materialist theory of film spectatorship

Wrong life: bungalow aesthetics in and against Hollywood

All too easy: the modernist house and effortless appropriation

Between the past and the present: nostalgia and the cinema of stick and shingle style architecture

Coda. from porch to attic: condemned to property in New Orleans.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

1-4529-5598-0

OCLC:

1008769404