Interpreting Films : : Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema / / Janet Staiger.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Staiger, Janet,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2021]; ©1992
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (290 p.)

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

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures and Sources -- Preface -- PART ONE: THEORETICAL CONCERNS -- Chapter One The Use-Value of Reception Studies -- Chapter Two Reception Studies in Other Disciplines -- Chapter Three Reception Studies in Film and Television -- Chapter Four Toward a Historical Materialist Approach to Reception Studies -- PART TWO: STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE RECEPTION OF AMERICAN FILMS -- Chapter Five Rethinking "Primitive" Cinema: Intertextuality, the Middle-Class Audience, and Reception Studies -- Chapter Six 'The Handmaiden of Villainy": Foolish Wives, Politics, Gender Orientation, and the Other -- Chapter Seven The Birth of a Nation: Reconsidering Its Reception -- Chapter Eight The Logic of Alternative Readings: A Star Is Born -- Chapter Nine With the Compliments of the Auteur: Art Cinema and the Complexities of Its Reading Strategies -- Chapter Ten Chameleon in the Film, Chameleons in the Audience; or, Where Is Parody? The Case ofZelig -- Epilogue -- Notes -- Select Bibliography -- Index