Martin Barker, Thomas Austin

From Antz to Titanic

Reinventing Film Analysis

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Everybody analyses films. Ordinary viewers, chatting on the way home afterwards. Reviewers, telling us just enough to tempt or put off. Critics, 'situating' films for us. Moralists, hunting for the (harmful) message. So what exactly is it that film academics do that's different? Martin Barker and Thomas Austin provide a jargon-free, accessible and student-friendly introduction to film analysis. They begin with a discussion about audience and a detailed case-study on four conflicting analyses of Capra's It's A Wonderful Life. The authors examine a range of popular Hollywood films in a variety of genres, including Titanic, Deep Impact, Sleepless in Seattle, The Lion King, Starship Troopers and The Usual Suspects, and provide vivid demonstrations of what can and can't be achieved with close textual analysis. The book ends by proposing a list of measures for assessing the adequacy of film analyses: measures intended to lay the basis of a way of doing film analysis which goes beyond theoretically predetermined and often obscurantist assertions. Explicitly rejecting much of the theoretical baggage that dogs contemporary film analysis, Barker and Austin strip the subject down to its bare essentials. The result is a provocative and timely re-examination of many of the basic tenets in film theory and analysis.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Pluto Press
• Seitenzahl: 232
• Erscheinungstermin: 20. Juni 2000
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 216mm x 140mm x 14mm
• Gewicht: 333g
• ISBN-13: 9780745315799
• ISBN-10: 0745315798
• Artikelnr.: 22034705

Autorenporträt

Martin Barker was a British scholar of media and cultural studies. He was Emeritus Professor at Aberystwyth University. Over the course of his career he has written or co-edited fifteen books, including A 'Toxic Genre' and From Antz to Titanic. He was known for being one of the pioneers behind the concept of cultural racism, which he termed 'new racism'.