Although the iconic television series Father Knows Best (CBS 1954-55; NBC 1955-58; CBS 1958-60) has enjoyed a long history in rerun syndication and an enduring fan base, it is often remembered as cultural shorthand for 1950s-era conformism and authoritarianism. In this study of Father Knows Best, author Mary R. Desjardins examines the program, its popularity, and its critical position within historical, industrial, and generic contexts to challenge oversimplified assumptions about the show's use of comedy and melodrama in exploring the place of family in mid-twentieth-century American society. Desjardins begins by looking at Father Knows Best within media and production contexts, including its origin on radio, its place in the history of Screen Gems telefilm production, and its roots in the backgrounds and creative philosophies of co-producer Eugene Rodney and star-producer Robert Young. She goes on to examine the social contexts for the creation and reception of the series, especially in the era's emphasis on family togetherness, shared parenting by both father and mother, and generational stages of the life cycle. Against this background, Desjardins also discusses several Father Knows Best episodes in-depth to consider their treatment of conflicts over appropriate gender roles for women. She concludes by exploring how the series' cast participated in reevaluations of the Anderson family's meaning in relation to "e;real families"e; of the fifties, through television specials, talk show appearances, magazine and book interviews, and documentaries. Blending melodrama and comedy, naturalistic acting, and stylized cinematic visuals, Father Knows Best dramatized ideological tensions in the most typical situations facing the American family. Scholars of mid-century American popular culture and film history as well as fans of the show will appreciate Desjardin's measured analysis.
Examines how psychological and physical suffering, as portrayed on screen and experienced in personal lives, has affected the images, performances, and fortunes of stars from the 1940s to present.
The meaning of citizenship and the way that it is expressed by an individual varies with age, develops over time, and is often learned by interacting with members of other generations. In Generations, Richard Marback presents contributions that explore this temporal dimension of membership in political communities through a variety of rich disciplinary perspectives.
Vladimir Jabotinsky's famous autobiography, published in English for the first time.
In its intimate joining of self and machine, video gaming works to extend the body into a fluid, dynamic, unstable, and discontinuous entity. While digital gaming and culture has become a popular field of academic study, there has been a lack of sustained philosophical analysis of this direct gaming experience. In Parables of the Posthuman: Digital Realities, Gaming, and the Player Experience, author Jonathan Boulter addresses this gap by analyzing video games and the player experience philosophically. Finding points of departure in phenomenology and psychoanalysis, Boulter argues that we need to think seriously about what it means to enter into a relationship with the game machine and to assume (or to have conferred upon you) a machinic, posthuman identity. Parables of the Posthuman approaches the experience of gaming by asking: What does it mean for the player to enter the machinic "e;world"e; of the game? What forms of subjectivity does the game offer to the player? What happens to consciousness itself when one plays? To this end, Boulter analyzes the experience of particular role-playing video games, including Fallout 3, Half-Life 2, Bioshock, Crysis 2, and Metal Gear Solid 4. These games both thematize the idea of the posthuman-the games are "e;about"e; subjects whose physical and intellectual capacities are extended through machine or other prosthetic means-and also enact an experience of the posthuman for the player, who becomes more than what he was as he plays the game. Boulter concludes by exploring how the game acts as a parable of what the human, or posthuman, may look like in times to come. Academics with an interest in the intersection of philosophy, psychoanalysis, and popular culture forms and video gamers with an interest in thinking about the implications of gaming will enjoy this volume.
A transnational and interdisciplinary look at the trials of Jews accused of collaborating with the Nazis.
This work approaches Frances Harper as a feminist and as a writer. The author, Melba Boyd, reflects upon the impact of Harper's legacy on another artist/activist - herself.
With the end of apartheid, South African cinema is at a turning point. But how can there be a discussion of national cinema when only the elite minority has so far participated in it? This collection looks at a film industry which has excluded its own black majority and how it will overcome this.
This study analyses the relationship between two powerful forces - church organizations and urban politics - within New York City and Detroit from the late 19th through the 20th century.
While the number of Asians in Michigan was small for a good portion of the state's history, many Asian-derived communities have settled in the area and grown significantly over time. In Asian Americans in Michigan: Voices from the Midwest, editors Sook Wilkinson and Victor Jew have assembled forty-one contributors to give an intimate glimpse into Michigan's Asian-American communities, creating a fuller picture of these often overlooked groups. Accounts in the collection come from a range of perspectives, including first-generation immigrants, those born in the United States, and third- and fourth-generation Americans of Asian heritage. In five sections, contributors consider the historical and demographic origins of Michigan's Asian American communities, explore their experiences in memory and legacy keeping, highlight particular aspects of community culture and heritage, and comment on prospects and hopes for the future. This volume's vibrant mix of contributors trace their ancestries back to East Asia (China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan), South Asia (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan), and Southeast Asia (Cambodia, Laos, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Hmong). Though each contributor writes from his or her unique set of experiences, Asian Americans in Michigan also reveals universal values and memories held by larger communities. Asian Americans in Michigan makes clear the significant contributions by individuals in many fields-including art, business, education, religion, sports, medicine, and politics-and demonstrates the central role of community organizations in bringing ethnic groups together and preserving memories. Readers interested in Michigan history, sociology, and Asian American studies will enjoy this volume.
From Paul Verhoeven's The Cold Heart in 1950 to Konrad Petzold's The Story of the Goose Princess and Her Loyal Horse Falada in 1989, East Germany's state-sponsored film company, DEFA (Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft), produced over forty feature-length, live-action fairy-tale films based on nineteenth-century folk and literary tales. While many of these films were popular successes and paved the way for the studio's other films to enter the global market, DEFA's fairy-tale corpus has not been studied in its entirety. In The Politics of Magic: DEFA Fairy-Tale Films, Qinna Shen fills this gap by analyzing the films on thematic and formal levels and examining their embedded agendas in relation to the cultural politics of the German Democratic Republic. In five chapters, Shen compares the films with earlier print versions of the same stories and analyzes revisions made in DEFA's film adaptations. She also distinguishes the DEFA fairy-tale films from National Socialist, West German, and Disney adaptations of the same tales. Her archival work reconstitutes the cultural-historical context in which films were produced and received, and incorporates the films into the larger narrative of DEFA. For the first time, the banned DEFA fairy-tale comedy, The Robe (1961/1991), is discussed in depth. The book's title The Politics of Magic is not intended to suggest that DEFA fairy-tale films were merely mouthpieces of official ideology and propaganda. On the contrary, Shen shows that the films run the gamut from politically dogmatic to implicitly subversive, from kitschy to experimental. She argues that the fairy-tale cloak permitted them to convey ideology in a subtle, indirect manner that allowed viewers to forget Cold War politics for a while and to delve into a world of magic where politics took on an allegorical form. The fact that some DEFA fairy-tale films developed an international audience (particularly The Story of Little Mook and Three Hazelnuts for Cinderella) not only attests to these films' universal appeal but also to the surprising marketability of this branch of GDR cinema and its impact beyond the GDR's own narrow temporal and geographic boundaries. Shen's study will be significant reading for teachers and students of folklore studies and for scholars of German, Eastern European, cultural, film, media, and gender studies.
One of the most successful series of its time, Have Gun-Will Travel became a cultural phenomenon in the late 1950s and made its star, Richard Boone, a nationwide celebrity. The series offered viewers an unusual hero in the mysterious, Shakespeare-spouting gunfighter known only as "e;Paladin"e; and garnered a loyal fan base, including a large female following. In Have Gun-Will Travel, film scholar Gaylyn Studlar draws on a remarkably wide range of episodes from the series' six seasons to show its sophisticated experimentation with many established conventions of the Western. Studlar begins by exploring how the series made the television Western sexy, speaking to mid-twentieth century anxieties and aspirations in the sexual realm through its "e;dandy"e; protagonist and more liberal expectations of female sexuality. She also explores the show's interest in a variety of historical issues and contemporaneous concerns-including differing notions of justice and the meaning of racial and cultural difference in an era marked by the civil rights movement. Through a production history of Have Gun-Will Travel, Studlar provides insight into the television industry of the late 1950s and early 1960s, showing how, in this transition period in which programming was moving from sponsor to network control, the series' star exercised controversial influence on his show's aesthetics. Because Have Gun-Will Travel was both so popular and so different from its predecessors and rivals, it presents a unique opportunity to examine what pleasures and challenges television Westerns could offer their audiences. Fans of the show as well as scholars of TV history and the Western genre will enjoy this insightful volume.
Explores the proliferation of humor in recent cinema of the Middle East and its possible ramifications for cinematic representation, art, and politics.
A David and Goliath conservation story set on Lake Michigan.
Critics rarely associate popular film with German cinema, despite the international success of films including ""Das Boot"" and ""Run Lola Run"". The essays here re-examine German popular film production along with larger cultural, historical and political meanings suggested by the term ""popular"".
This text explores the transformation in Europe from 1750 to 1870, looking at the lives of European Jews who experienced the shift from segregation on the margins of early modern society to integration in the modern nation state.
A study of the cinematic traditions and film practices in the black Diaspora. It includes essays by film scholars, film critics and film-makers, whose critical readings challenge assumptions of colonialist and ethnocentric discourses about the Third World, Hollywood and European cinemas.
Explores what happens when fairy tale, a narrative genre that revels in variation, joins the flow of television experience. Looking in detail at programmes from Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the UK, and the US, this volume's twenty-three international contributors demonstrate the wide range of fairy tales that make their way into televisual forms.
His Very Silence Speaks addresses larger issues such as the human relationship to animals and nature, cross-cultural differences in the ways animals are perceived, and the symbolic use of living and legendary animals in human cognition and communication.
A systematic study of various factors in the international reception of Grimms' fairy tales.
Explores the popular cultural phenomenon of "bromance" in film and television and its oppositions between homosexual and homosocial behavior.
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