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Spectatorship and Film Theory: The Wayward Spectator
by Carlo ComanducciThis book interrogates the relation between film spectatorship and film theory in order to criticise some of the disciplinary and authoritarian assumptions of 1970s apparatus theory, without dismissing its core political concerns. Theory, in this perspective, should not be seen as a practice distinct from spectatorship but rather as an integral aspect of the spectator’s gaze. Combining Jacques Rancière’s emancipated spectator with Judith Butler’s queer theory of subjectivity, Spectatorship and Film Theory foregrounds the contingent, embodied and dialogic aspects of our experience of film. Erratic and always a step beyond the grasp of disciplinary discourse, this singular work rejects the notion of the spectator as a fixed position, and instead presents it as a field of tensions—a “wayward” history of encounters.
Spectatorship, Embodiment and Physicality in the Contemporary Mutilation Film
by Laura WilsonSpectatorship, Embodiment and Physicality in the Contemporary Mutilation Film explores 'physical spectatorship': the representation of mutilation on the screen and the physical responses this evokes. The book is organised around the study of a series of dynamic engagements that reconfigure the film-viewer relationship.
Spectral Characters: Genre and Materiality on the Modern Stage
by Sarah BalkinTheater’s materiality and reliance on human actors has traditionally put it at odds with modernist principles of aesthetic autonomy and depersonalization. Spectral Characters argues that modern dramatists in fact emphasized the extent to which humans are fictional, made and changed by costumes, settings, props, and spoken dialogue. Examining work by Ibsen, Wilde, Strindberg, Genet, Kopit, and Beckett, the book takes up the apparent deadness of characters whose selves are made of other people, whose thoughts become exteriorized communication technologies, and whose bodies merge with walls and furniture. The ghostly, vampiric, and telepathic qualities of these characters, Sarah Balkin argues, mark a new relationship between the material and the imaginary in modern theater. By considering characters whose bodies respond to language, whose attempts to realize their individuality collapse into inanimacy, and who sometimes don’t appear at all, the book posits a new genealogy of modernist drama that emphasizes its continuities with nineteenth-century melodrama and realism.
The Spectral Metaphor: Living Ghosts and the Agency of Invisibility
by E. PeerenWhat does it mean to live as a ghost? Exploring spectrality as a metaphor in the contemporary British and American cultural imagination, Peeren proposes that certain subjects – migrants, servants, mediums and missing persons – are perceived as living ghosts and examines how this figuration can signify both dispossession and empowerment or agency.
The Spectre of Sound: Music in Film and Television
by Kevin DonnellyThis book is a major new study - dealing with notions of film music as a device that desires to control its audience, using a most powerful thing: emotion. The author emphasises the manipulative and ephemeral character of film music dealing not only with traditional orchestral film music, but also looks at film music's colonisation of television, and discusses pop music in relation to films, and the historical dimensions to ability to possess audiences that have so many important cultural and aesthetic effects. It challenges the dominant but limited conception of film music as restricted to film by looking at its use in television and influence in the world of pop music and the traditional restriction of analysis to 'valued' film music, either from 'name' composers' or from the 'golden era' of Classical Hollywood. Focusing on areas as diverse as horror, pop music in film, ethnic signposting, television drama and the soundtrack without a film- this is an original study which expands the range of writing on the subject.
The Spectre of Sound: Music in Film and Television
by Kevin DonnellyThis book is a major new study - dealing with notions of film music as a device that desires to control its audience, using a most powerful thing: emotion. The author emphasises the manipulative and ephemeral character of film music dealing not only with traditional orchestral film music, but also looks at film music's colonisation of television, and discusses pop music in relation to films, and the historical dimensions to ability to possess audiences that have so many important cultural and aesthetic effects. It challenges the dominant but limited conception of film music as restricted to film by looking at its use in television and influence in the world of pop music and the traditional restriction of analysis to 'valued' film music, either from 'name' composers' or from the 'golden era' of Classical Hollywood. Focusing on areas as diverse as horror, pop music in film, ethnic signposting, television drama and the soundtrack without a film- this is an original study which expands the range of writing on the subject.
The Spectre of Tradition and the Aesthetic-Political Movement of Theatre and Performance: An Intercultural Perspective (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Min TianThis book interrogates anew the phenomenon of tradition in a dialogical debate with a host of Western thinkers and critical minds. In contrast to the predominantly Western approaches, which look at traditions (Western and non-Western) from a predominantly (Western) modernist perspective, this book interrogates, from an intercultural perspective, the transnational and transcultural consecration, translation, (re)invention, and displacement of traditions (theatrical and cultural) in the aesthetic-political movement of twentieth-century theatre and performance, as exemplified in the case studies of this book. It looks at the question of traditions and modernities at the centre of this aesthetic-political space, as modernities interculturally evoke and are haunted by traditions, and as traditions are interculturally refracted, reconstituted, refunctioned, and reinvented. It also looks at the applicability of its intercultural perspective on tradition to the historical avant-garde in general, postmodern, postcolonial, and postdramatic theatre and performance and to the twentieth-century "classical" intercultural theatre and the twenty-first-century "new interculturalisms" in theatre and performance. To conclude, it looks at the future of tradition in the ecology of our globalized theatrum mundi and considers two important interrelated concepts, future tradition and intercultural tradition. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in performance studies.
The Spectre of Tradition and the Aesthetic-Political Movement of Theatre and Performance: An Intercultural Perspective (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Min TianThis book interrogates anew the phenomenon of tradition in a dialogical debate with a host of Western thinkers and critical minds. In contrast to the predominantly Western approaches, which look at traditions (Western and non-Western) from a predominantly (Western) modernist perspective, this book interrogates, from an intercultural perspective, the transnational and transcultural consecration, translation, (re)invention, and displacement of traditions (theatrical and cultural) in the aesthetic-political movement of twentieth-century theatre and performance, as exemplified in the case studies of this book. It looks at the question of traditions and modernities at the centre of this aesthetic-political space, as modernities interculturally evoke and are haunted by traditions, and as traditions are interculturally refracted, reconstituted, refunctioned, and reinvented. It also looks at the applicability of its intercultural perspective on tradition to the historical avant-garde in general, postmodern, postcolonial, and postdramatic theatre and performance and to the twentieth-century "classical" intercultural theatre and the twenty-first-century "new interculturalisms" in theatre and performance. To conclude, it looks at the future of tradition in the ecology of our globalized theatrum mundi and considers two important interrelated concepts, future tradition and intercultural tradition. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in performance studies.
Spectres of Pessimism: A Cultural Logic of the Worst
by Mark SchmittThis book argues that philosophical pessimism can offer vital impulses for contemporary cultural studies. Pessimist thought offers ways to interrogate notions of temporality, progress and futurity. When the horizon of future expectation is increasingly shaped by the prospect of apocalypse and extinction, an exploration of pessimist thought can help to make sense of an increasingly complex and uncertain world by affirming rather than suppressing the worst. This book argues that a cultural logic of the worst is at work in a substantial section of contemporary philosophical thought and cultural representations.Spectres of pessimism can be found in contemporary ecocritical thought, antinatalist philosophies, political thought, and cultural theory, as well as in literature, film, and popular music. In its unsettling of temporality, this new pessimism shares sensibilities with the field of hauntology. Both deconstruct linear narratives of time that adhere to a stable sequence of past, present and future. Mark Schmitt therefore couples pessimism and hauntology to explore the spectres of pessimism in a range of theories and narratives—from ecocriticism, antinatalism and queer theory to utopianism, from afropessimism to the fiction of Hari Kunzru and Thomas Ligotti to the films of Camille Griffin, Gaspar Noé, Denis Villeneuve and Lars von Trier.
Speculative Satire in Contemporary Literature and Film: Rant Against the Regime (Routledge Studies in Speculative Fiction)
by Kirk CombeSince 1980, when neoliberal and neoconservative forces began their hostile takeover of western culture, a new type of political satire has emerged that works to unmask and deter those toxic doctrines. Literary and cultural critic Kirk Combe calls this new form of satire the Rant. The Rant is grim, highly imaginative, and complex in its blending of genres. It mixes facets of satire, science fiction, and monster tale to produce widely consumed spectacles—major studio movies, popular television/streaming series, bestselling novels—designed to disturb and to provoke. The Rant targets what Combe calls the Regime. Simply put, the Regime is the sum of the dangerous social, economic, and political orthodoxies spurred on by neoliberal and neoconservative polity. Such practices include free-market capitalism, corporatism, militarism, religiosity, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, and so on. In the Rant, then, we have a unique and wholly contemporary genre of political expression and protest: speculative satire.
Speculative Satire in Contemporary Literature and Film: Rant Against the Regime (Routledge Studies in Speculative Fiction)
by Kirk CombeSince 1980, when neoliberal and neoconservative forces began their hostile takeover of western culture, a new type of political satire has emerged that works to unmask and deter those toxic doctrines. Literary and cultural critic Kirk Combe calls this new form of satire the Rant. The Rant is grim, highly imaginative, and complex in its blending of genres. It mixes facets of satire, science fiction, and monster tale to produce widely consumed spectacles—major studio movies, popular television/streaming series, bestselling novels—designed to disturb and to provoke. The Rant targets what Combe calls the Regime. Simply put, the Regime is the sum of the dangerous social, economic, and political orthodoxies spurred on by neoliberal and neoconservative polity. Such practices include free-market capitalism, corporatism, militarism, religiosity, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, and so on. In the Rant, then, we have a unique and wholly contemporary genre of political expression and protest: speculative satire.
Speculative Television and the Doing and Undoing of Religion (Routledge Advances in Television Studies)
by Gregory EricksonThis book explores the concept that, as participation in traditional religion declines, the complex and fantastical worlds of speculative television have become the place where theological questions and issues are negotiated, understood, and formed. From bodies, robots, and souls to purgatories and post-apocalyptic scenarios and new forms of digital scripture, the shows examined – from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Westworld – invite their viewers and fans to engage with and imagine concepts traditionally reserved for religious spaces. Informed by recent trends in both fan studies and religious studies, and with an emphasis on practice as well as belief, the thematically focused narrative posits that it is through the intersections of these shows that we find the reframing and rethinking of religious ideas. This truly interdisciplinary work will resonate with scholars and upper-level students in the areas of religion, television studies, popular culture, fan studies, media studies, and philosophy.
Speculative Television and the Doing and Undoing of Religion (Routledge Advances in Television Studies)
by Gregory EricksonThis book explores the concept that, as participation in traditional religion declines, the complex and fantastical worlds of speculative television have become the place where theological questions and issues are negotiated, understood, and formed. From bodies, robots, and souls to purgatories and post-apocalyptic scenarios and new forms of digital scripture, the shows examined – from Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Westworld – invite their viewers and fans to engage with and imagine concepts traditionally reserved for religious spaces. Informed by recent trends in both fan studies and religious studies, and with an emphasis on practice as well as belief, the thematically focused narrative posits that it is through the intersections of these shows that we find the reframing and rethinking of religious ideas. This truly interdisciplinary work will resonate with scholars and upper-level students in the areas of religion, television studies, popular culture, fan studies, media studies, and philosophy.
Speech for the Stage
by Evangeline MachlinFrom its original publication, thousands of actors have used this classic text to develop and refine their voice and speech. Evangeline Machlin includes warm-up routines for the voice but initially focuses on the importance of listening. She also discusses such important elements as relaxation, phonetics, articulation, resonance, pitch, rate of speech and stress. In addition, there are chapters on dialects, on reading aloud, sight reading, auditioning and performance.
Speech for the Stage
by Evangeline MachlinFrom its original publication, thousands of actors have used this classic text to develop and refine their voice and speech. Evangeline Machlin includes warm-up routines for the voice but initially focuses on the importance of listening. She also discusses such important elements as relaxation, phonetics, articulation, resonance, pitch, rate of speech and stress. In addition, there are chapters on dialects, on reading aloud, sight reading, auditioning and performance.
Speed and Flight in Shakespeare
by Matthew SteggleShakespeare's plays are fascinated by the problems of speed and flight. They are repeatedly interested in humans, spirits, and objects that move very fast; become airborne; and in some cases even travel into space. In Speed and Flight in Shakespeare, the first study of any kind on the subject, Steggle looks at how Shakespeare’s language explores ideas of speed and flight, and what theatrical resources his plays use to represent these states. Shakespeare has, this book argues, an aesthetic of speed and flight. Featuring chapters on The Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Henry V, Macbeth and The Tempest, this study opens up a new field around the ‘historical phenomenology’ of early modern speed.
The Speed of Sound: Breaking the Barriers between Music and Technology: A Memoir
by Thomas DolbyThomas Dolby is a five-time Grammy nominee, whose ‘She Blinded Me With Science’ reached number 5 on the US Billboard charts in 1982, appeared in Breaking Bad, and was even covered by The Muppets... Based on his meticulous notes and journals, The Speed of Sound chronicles Dolby’s life in the music business during the eighties; in Silicon Valley through the nineties, and at the forefront of the mobile phone revolution around the turn of the millennium – it was Dolby who created the synthesizer installed today on most mobile phones. With humour and a considerable panache for storytelling, The Speed of Sound is a revealing look behind the curtain of the music industry, as well as a unique history of technology over the past thirty years. From sipping Chablis with Bill Gates to visiting Michael Jackson at his mansion or viewing the Web for the first time on Netscape founder Jim Clark’s laptop, this is both the view from the ultimate insider and also that of a technology pioneer whose groundbreaking ideas have helped shape the way we live today.
Spellbound by Beauty: Alfred Hitchcock and His Leading Ladies
by Donald SpotoThe inspiration behind BBC2's The Girl starring Toby Jones and Sienna Miller, Spellbound by Beauty examines Hitchcock's relationship with his leading ladies including Tippi Hendren and Grace Kelly. Hitchcock is also the subject of an upcoming film, Hitchcock, starring Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren due for release in 2013.Spellbound by Beauty examines Alfred Hitchcock's well known collaborations with the leading ladies of his day, and, in so doing, delves into his creative life and his uniquely curious professional and personal relationships. The result is a singular kind of life story - a book about film and film stars; business and power; sex and fantasy; romance and derailed psychology. Drawing on explosive, never-before-published material and details gleaned through his friendship with Hitchcock, along with archival material and personal collections only recently made available, Donald Spoto casts a new light on this most famous of directors. He traces Hitchcock's professional and social rise and deals frankly with his strange marriage to Alma Reville, his distance from his daughter, Patricia, and his obsessive relationships with a number of his leading ladies from Grace Kelly and Kim Novak to Tippi Hedren.
Spelling Matters Too: Student Book (PDF)
by Mark MorrisPresents explanations and teaching of the key spelling rules to help improve students' spelling skills. This title offers diagnostic tests to ensure progression by identifying students' weaknesses and directing them to the appropriate teaching and practice.
Spencer Tracy: A Biography
by James CurtisDuring his lifetime, Spencer Tracy was known as Hollywood's 'actor's actor'. Critics wrote that what Olivier was to theatre, Tracy was to film. Over his career he was nominated for nine Academy Awards, and won two. But there has been no substantial, intimate biography of the man, until now. From his earliest days in stock theatre, Tracy was a publicist's trial, guarding his private life fiercely. Most of the people associated closely with him shunned the limelight - notably his wife, his children and the great actress Katharine Hepburn, with whom he had an affair that lasted over 26 years. Although his screen roles often depicted a happy, twinkling Irishman, Tracy struggled with alchoholism to the end, a fact which the studios managed to keep out of the papers.With the help of Tracy's daughter, Susie, and access to previously unseen papers, James Curtis has now produced the definitive biography of a tortured, complex and immensely talented man.The book contains 124 integrated photos, many published for the first time.
The Spice Of Life (Rigby Navigator)
by Michaela Morgan Rosalind Kerven Anthony MastersPart of the Rigby Navigator series that builds on the foundations laid by Rigby Star Guided for successful guided reading lessons at KS2.
Spies and Stars: MI5, Showbusiness and Me
by Charlotte BinghamThe wickedly funny sequel to the MI5 and Me, described by Tatler as 'a stone cold comic classic', following the irrepressible Lottie's adventures in 1950s LondonLondon in the 1950s. Lottie is a reluctant typist at MI5 and the even more reluctant daughter of the organisation's most illustrious spy. Now she has had the bad luck to fall in love with Harry, a handsome if frustrated young actor, who has also been press-ganged into the family business, acting as one of her father's undercover agents in the Communist hotbed of British theatre. Together the two young lovers embark on a star-studded adventure through the glittering world of theatre - but, between missing files, disapproving parents, and their own burgeoning creative endeavours, life is about to become very complicated indeed...
Spike Lee: Finding the Story and Forcing the Issue (Modern Filmmakers)
by Jason P. VestSpike Lee's journey from guerrilla filmmaker to Hollywood insider is explored in light of his personal background, the cultural influence of his films, and the extensive scholarship his movies have inspired.This insightful study probes the iconic filmmaker's career as a director and shaper of American culture. It not only sheds light on the ways in which Lee's background, influences, and outlook affect his films but also discusses how he participates in, transforms, and transcends the tradition of black American filmmaking. Each chapter offers a critical assessment of at least one, and sometimes multiple, Lee films, examining their production history; their place in Lee's filmography; and their aesthetic, cultural, and historical significance. Readers will come away from this first scholarly assessment of Lee's career and work with a better understanding of his penchant for stirring up controversy about significant social, political, and artistic issues as well as his role as an American artist who provokes his audiences as much as he pacifies them.
Spike Lee: Finding the Story and Forcing the Issue (Modern Filmmakers)
by Jason P. VestSpike Lee's journey from guerrilla filmmaker to Hollywood insider is explored in light of his personal background, the cultural influence of his films, and the extensive scholarship his movies have inspired.This insightful study probes the iconic filmmaker's career as a director and shaper of American culture. It not only sheds light on the ways in which Lee's background, influences, and outlook affect his films but also discusses how he participates in, transforms, and transcends the tradition of black American filmmaking. Each chapter offers a critical assessment of at least one, and sometimes multiple, Lee films, examining their production history; their place in Lee's filmography; and their aesthetic, cultural, and historical significance. Readers will come away from this first scholarly assessment of Lee's career and work with a better understanding of his penchant for stirring up controversy about significant social, political, and artistic issues as well as his role as an American artist who provokes his audiences as much as he pacifies them.
Spike Lee's America (America Through the Lens #2)
by David SterrittSpike Lee has directed, written, produced, and acted in dozens of films that present an expansive, nuanced, proudly opinionated, and richly multifaceted portrait of American society. As the only African-American filmmaker ever to establish a world-class career, Lee has paid acute attention to the experiences of racial and ethnic minorities. But white men and women also play important roles in his movies, and his interest in class, race, and urban life hasn’t prevented his films from ranging over broad swaths of the American scene in stories as diverse as the audiences who view them. His defining trait is a willingness to raise hard questions about contemporary America without pretending to have easy answers; his pictures are designed to challenge and provoke us, not ease our minds or pacify our emotions. The opening words of his 1989 masterpiece Do the Right Thing present his core message in two emphatic syllables: “Wake up!” Spike Lee’s America is a vibrant and provocative engagement not only with the work of a great filmmaker, but also with American society and politics.