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This collection of essays examines how New York and Los Angeles are depicted in noir and neo-noir films from the 1940s through the 21st century. These essays consider how the architectural sights and city sounds inform such films as Cotton Comes to Harlem, Drive, Kiss of Death, Naked City, and Nightcrawler, among others.
Between 1915 and 1935 the University of Chicago was the center for the production of innovative sociological research that unearthed the marginalized existence of unconventional Americans. Referred to as the Chicago school monographs by social historians, these works brought acclaim to the country's premiere graduate program in sociology. Working at the shadowy margins of the city, these Chicago school scholars dramatically examined the lives of delinquents, prostitutes, gangsters, and homeless men. Their work harmonized with narratives of proletarian and pulp fiction and the serialized newspaper accounts of urban vice and deviance. This book offers a survey of some of these key monographs such as The Unadjusted Girl, The Hobo, The Jack-Roller and The Taxi Dance Hall.
When viewers think of film noir, they often picture actors like Humphrey Bogart playing characters like Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon, the film based on the book by Dashiell Hammett. Yet film noir is a genre much richer. The authors first examine the debate surrounding the parameters of the genre and the many different ways it is defined. They discuss the Noir City, its setting and backdrop, and also the cultural (WWII) and institutional (the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and the Production Code Administration) influences on the subgenres. An analysis of the low budget and series film noirs provides information on those cult classics. With over 200 entries on films, directors, and actors, the Encyclopedia of Film Noir is the most complete resource for film fans, students, and scholars.
What is often termed 'Nordic Noir' has dominated detective fiction, film and television internationally for over two decades. But what are the parameters of this genre, both historically and geographically? What is noirish and what is northern about Nordic noir? The foreword and coda in this volume, by two internationally-bestselling writers of crime fiction in the north, Yrsa Sigurðardóttir and Gunnar Staalesen, speak to the social contract undertaken by writers of noir, while the interview with the renowned crime writer Val McDermid adds nuance to our understanding of what it is to write noir in the North. Divided into four sections Gender and Sexuality, Space and Place, Politics and Crime, and Genre and Genealogy Noir in the North challenges the traditional critical histories of noir by investigating how it functions transnationally beyond the geographical borders of Scandinavia. The essays in this book deepen our critical understanding of noir more generally by demonstrating, for example, Nordic noir's connection to fin-de-siècle literatures and to mid-century interior design, and by investigating the function of the state in crime fiction.
From one of our finest cultural historians, The Noir Forties is a vivid reexamination of America's postwar period, that "age of anxiety" characterized by the dissipation of victory dreams, the onset of the Red Scare, and a nascent resistance to the growing Cold War consensus. Richard Lingeman examines a brief but momentous and crowded time, the years between VJ Day and the beginning of the Korean War, describing how we got from there to here. It evokes the social and cultural milieu of the late forties, with the vicissitudes of the New Deal Left and Popular Front culture from the end of one hot war and the beginning of the cold one -- and, longer term, of a cold war that preoccupied the United States for the next fifty years. It traces the attitudes, sentiments, hopes and fears, prejudices, behavior, and collective dreams and nightmares of the times, as reflected in the media, popular culture, political movements, opinion polls, and sociological and psychological studies of mass beliefs and behavior.
Fully revised, updated, and extended, this compilation of interpretive essays and primary documents teaches students to read films as cultural artifacts within the contexts of actual past events. A new edition of this classic textbook, which ties movies into the broader narrative of US and film history Ten new articles which consider recently released films, as well as issues of gender and ethnicity Well-organized within a chronological framework with thematic treatments to provide a valuable resource for students of the history of American film Fourth edition includes completely new images throughout
The first three volumes of The Best Horror of the Year have been widely praised for their quality, variety, and comprehensiveness. With tales from Laird Barron, Stephen King, John Langan, Peter Straub, and many others, and featuring Datlow’s comprehensive overview of the year in horror, now, more than ever, The Best Horror of the Year provides the petrifying horror fiction readers have come to expect—and enjoy.
With the expansion of the EU and calls for a European constitution, the question of a common European identity has become increasingly pressing in recent times. However, in the face of diverse national and regional traditions – and the absence of an obvious European cultural imaginary – the forging of a strong sense of European identity proves problematic. This volume brings together case studies of national and regional images from across Europe, which together suggest emerging patterns of identification within contemporary Europe – patterns which may not necessarily amount to a European ‘identity’, but rather to a European ‘mode’ of identification. The chronological structure of the volume demonstrates the increasingly problematic nature of national collective memories and past imaginaries in light of emergent marginal voices and images, and suggests that it is both from beyond and within the national paradigm that new challenges are now reshaping the cultural imaginary of European communities.Focusing on cultural images within film, literature, national narratives and myths, museum exhibitions and architecture, this volume is of interest to a wide variety of disciplines in the humanities, and presents an interdisciplinary approach to questions of cultural memory and identity formation.
A unique compendium by an international team of contributers which opens up the reader to surprise twists of the imagination, new forms of criticism and to new ways of finding ourselves in fragments of the urban.
An award-winning cultural history of how we experience the world through art, film and architecture Atlas of Emotion is a highly original endeavor to map the cultural terrain of spatio-visual arts. In an evocative blend of words and pictures, Giuliana Bruno emphasizes the connections between “sight” and “site” and “motion” and “emotion.” In so doing, she touches on the art of Gerhard Richter and Louise Bourgeois, the filmmaking of Peter Greenaway and Michelangelo Antonioni, media archaeology and the origins of the museum, and her own journeys to her native Naples. Visually luscious and daring in conception, Bruno’s book opens new vistas and understandings at every turn.
