Comedy is a powerful contemporary source of influence and information. In the still-evolving digital era, the opportunity to consume and share comedy has never been as available. And yet, despite its vast cultural imprint, comedy is a little-understood vehicle for serious public engagement in urgent social justice issues – even though humor offers frames of hope and optimism that can encourage participation in social problems. Moreover ...
The king of radio comedy from the Great Depression through the early 1950s, Jack Benny was one of the most influential entertainers in twentieth-century America. A master of comic timing and an innovative producer, Benny, with his radio writers, developed a weekly situation comedy to meet radio’s endless need for new material, at the same time integrating advertising into the show’s humor. Through the character of the vain, c ...
"…the best extant map of our sonic shadowlands, and it has changed how I listen."<B>—Alex Ross, <I>The New Yorker</I></B><BR />  <BR /> "…an essential survey of contemporary music."<B>—<I>New York Times</I></B><BR />  <BR /> "…sharp, provacative and always on the money. The listenin ...
Andre Bazin’s writings on cinema are among the most influential reflections on the medium ever written. Even so, his critical interests ranged widely and encompassed the «new media» of the 1950s, including television, 3D film, Cinerama, and CinemaScope. Fifty-seven of his reviews and essays addressing these new technologies—their artistic potential, social influence, and relationship to existing art forms—have been translated here for the first ...
Since the mid-1980s, US audiences have watched the majority of movies they see on a video platform, be it VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, Video On Demand, or streaming media. Annual video revenues have exceeded box office returns for over twenty-five years. In short, video has become the structuring discourse of US movie culture. <i>Killer Tapes and Shattered Screens</i> examines how prerecorded video reframes the premises and promises of motion ...
Michelangelo Antonioni, who died in 2007, was one of cinema’s greatest modernist filmmakers. The films in his black and white trilogy of the early 1960s—<i>L’avventura, La Notte, L‘eclisse</i>—are justly celebrated for their influential, gorgeously austere style. But in this book, Murray Pomerance demonstrates why the color films that followed are, in fact, Antonioni’s greatest works. Writing in an accessible style that evokes Antoni ...
This book re-presents voices of resistance from across the globe to document the communicative processes, practices, and frameworks through which neoliberal global policies are currently being defied. Based on examples, case studies, and ethnographic reports, Voices of Resistance serves as a space for engaging various perspectives from the global margins in dialogue. The emphasis of the book is on the core idea that creating spaces for listening ...
