Interpreting films : studies in the historical reception of American cinema
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Interpreting films : studies in the historical reception of American cinema
（Princeton paperbacks）
Princeton University Press, c1992
- : pbk
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Note
Includes bibliographical references (p. [259]-269) and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Employing a wide range of examples from Uncle Tom's Cabin and Birth of a Nation to Zelig and Personal Best, Janet Staiger argues that a historical examination of spectators' responses to films can make a valuable contribution to the history, criticism, and philosophy of cultural products. She maintains that as artifacts, films do not contain immanent meanings, that differences among interpretations have historical bases, and that these variations are due to social, political, and economic conditions as well as the viewers' constructed images of themselves. After proposing a theory of reception study, the author demonstrates its application mainly through analyzing the varying responses of audiences to certain films at specific moments in history. Staiger gives special attention to how questions of class, gender, sexual preference, race, and ethnicity enter into film viewers' interpretations.
Her analysis reflects recent developments in post-structuralism, cognitive psychology, psychoanalysis, and cultural studies, and includes a discussion of current reader-response models in literary and film studies as well as an alternative approach for thinking about historical readers and spectators.
Table of Contents
- List of Figures and SourcesPrefacePt. 1Theoretical Concerns1Ch. 1The Use-Value of Reception Studies3Ch. 2Reception Studies in Other Disciplines16Ch. 3Reception Studies in Film and Television49Ch. 4Toward a Historical Materialist Approach to Reception Studies79Pt. 2Studies in the History of the Reception of American Films99Ch. 5Rethinking "Primitive" Cinema: Intertextuality, the Middle-Class Audience, and Reception Studies101Ch. 6"The Handmaiden of Villainy": Foolish Wives, Politics, Gender Orientation, and the Other124Ch. 7The Birth of a Nation: Reconsidering Its Reception139Ch. 8The Logic of Alternative Readings: A Star Is Born154Ch. 9With the Compliments of the Auteur: Art Cinema and the Complexities of Its Reading Strategies178Ch. 10Chameleon in the Film, Chameleons in the Audience
- or, Where Is Parody? The Case of Zelig196Epilogue210Notes213Select Bibliography259Index271
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