Short Cuts #: The Stardom Film

Creating the Hollywood Fairy Tale

Short Cuts #: The Stardom Film
Karen McNally
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NZ$ 52.99
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NZ$ 43.72
Paperback
h216 x 140mm - 160pg
8 Dec 2020 US
International import eta 10-30 days
9780231184014
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Since the earliest days of the movie industry, Hollywood has mythologized itself through stories of stardom. A female protagonist escapes the confines of rural America in search of freedom in a western dream factory; an ambitious, conceited movie idol falls from grace and discovers what it means to embody true stardom; or a fading star confronts Hollywood' s obsession with youth by embarking on a determined mission to reclaim her lost fame. In its various forms, the stardom film is crucial to understanding how Hollywood has shaped its own identity, as well as its claim on America' s collective imagination. In the first book to focus exclusively on these modern fairy tales, Karen McNally traces the history of this genre from silent cinema to contemporary film and television to show its significance to both Hollywood and broader American culture. Drawing on extensive archival research, she provides close readings of a wide range of films, from Souls for Sale (1923) to A Star is Born (1937 and 1954) and Judy (2019), moving between fictional narratives, biopics, and those that occupy a space in between. McNally considers the genre' s core set of tropes, its construction of stardom around idealized white femininity, and its reflections on the blurred boundaries between myth, image, and reality. The Stardom Film offers an original understanding of one of Hollywood' s most enduring genres and why the allure of fame continues to fascinate us.

Adventure Movies: Cinema of the Quest
Bollywood: Gods, Glamour and Gossip
Contemporary Superhero Film, The: Projections of Power and Identity
Fantasy Cinema: Impossible Worlds on Screen
Heist Film, The: Stealing With Style
Narrative and Narration: Analyzing Cinematic Storytelling
Pop Musical, The: Sweat, Tears, and Tarnished Utopias
Psychology: Navigate Your Way Through Big Ideas
Queer Cinema: Schoolgirls, Vampires and Gay Cowboys
Science: Navigate Your Way Through Big Ideas
Short Cuts: Biopics: A Life in Pictures
Short Cuts: Film Censorship: Regulating America's Screen
Short Cuts: Film Programming: Curating for Cinemas, Festivals, Archives
Short Cuts: Film Theory: Creating a Cinematic Grammar
Short Cuts: Gangster Film, The: Fatal Success in American Cinema
Short Cuts: International Politics and Film: Space, Vision, Power
Short Cuts: Postmodernism and Film: Rethinking Hollywood's Aesthestics
Short Cuts: Prison Movies: Cinema Behind Bars
Short Cuts: Road Movie, The: In Search of Meaning
Short Cuts: Silent Cinema: Before the Pictures Got Small
Short Cuts: Sports Film, The: Games People Play
Stardom Film, The: Creating the Hollywood Fairy Tale
Suicide Bombings
Vampire Film, The: Undead Cinema

The Stardom Film is a lively and insightful introductory account of this genre from its early days to the present. In following that history, Karen McNally offers original and well-researched readings of familiar and rarely studied works. Recommended reading for anyone interested in stardom and the many complex ways Hollywood has treated it on film. -- Steven Cohan, author of Hollywood by Hollywood: The Backstudio Picture and the Mystique of Making Movies The Stardom Film is an engaging, lucid, and comprehensive study of a narrative mode that continues to exert fascination not only in U. S. cinema but around the world, both in the past and the present. McNally convincingly argues for the significance of several previously neglected films and makes the book a valuable resource for anyone interested in the tropes by which celebrity and stardom remain intertwined with our social and professional identities. -- Adrienne McLean, author of Being Rita Hayworth: Labor, Identity, and Hollywood Stardom
Karen McNally is senior lecturer in film and television studies at London Metropolitan University. She is the author of When Frankie Went to Hollywood: Frank Sinatra and American Male Identity (2008), editor of Billy Wilder, Movie-Maker: Critical Essays on the Films (2011), and coeditor of The Legacy of Mad Men: Cultural History, Intermediality, and American Television (2019).
Status: Active
ISBN-13: 9780231184014
Published: 8 Dec 2020
Published In: United States
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Format: Paperback
Height: 216mm
Width: 140mm
Pages: 160

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