Death by laughter : female hysteria and early cinema / Maggie Hennefeld.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hennefeld, Maggie, 1984- author.

Series:

Film and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Laughter in motion pictures.

Hysteria in motion pictures.

Women in motion pictures.

Comedy films--United States--History and criticism.

Comedy films.

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

Motion pictures.

United States.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

History.

Physical Description:

xiii, 352 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2024]

Summary:

"Death by Laughter reveals the untold history of female "hysterical laughter" (as both a light-hearted colloquialism and as a mirthless psychiatric symptom) from the mid-19th century through the rise of early cinema. Maggie Hennefeld argues that cinema made it possible for women to laugh hysterically as never before, but with irreversible social and political consequences. Prior to the end of the nineteenth century, "hysterical laughter" was the last thing you would ever want to experience with your body. It was primarily something that afflicted emotional, ambitious, and/or frustrated women on the cusp of a nervous breakdown. Above all, it arose from the sudden, simultaneous eruption of unresolvable mixed feelings. But all that began to change around the turn of the century when, at last, hysterical laughter was let loose upon the masses. Female enjoyment quickly became a gold standard for commercial profitability amid the popular explosion of cinematic modernity. At the same time, as always, there was intense cultural backlash and moral panic in response to the voluble escalation of women's euphoric sensation. Hennefeld traces the social politics of female enjoyment from the heyday of nineteenth-century sentimentalism to the collective carnival of early film spectatorship. Drawing on film historiography, critical comedy studies, affect theory, psychoanalysis, Hennefeld considers a wide range of subjects from obituaries of women "killed by a joke," to theories and performances of female hysteria, to the institutional deployment of movies as a recreational cure for madness"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Hysterical laughter on the brink of enjoyment

Female death by laughter (beyond enjoyment)

An all too brief history of laughter and death

Gaslighting the libido : feminist politics of madness, laughter, and power

Laughter : the forgotten symptom

Mass hysteria, collective laughter, and affective contagion

Laughter unleashed : hysterical women at the movies

The visual cure? Moving pictures as neurotic trigger and therapeutic instrument

From mouth to screen : laughing heads in the history of film

Conclusion: Laughter, hysteria, power : then and now.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN:

9780231213288

023121328X

9780231213295

0231213298

OCLC:

1411306872

Publisher Number:

99996612697