American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film: From 1492 to Three Kings - Hardcover
Hollywood has a growing fascination with America's past. This is evidenced in the release of a rash of films of this genre in the past 25 years. This book offers an analysis of how and why contemporary Hollywood films have sought to mediate American history. It is the first book to explore, comprehensively, the post-Cold War period of film-making, and to consider whether or how far contemporary films have begun to unravel the unifying myths of earlier films and periods. It also considers why such films are becoming increasingly integral to the ambitions of a globally-focused American film industry. The relationship between film and history - the way in which film mediates history and vice versa - is a complex one. In this book, the authors work from two main assumptions. First, that films revision events to challenge or, perhaps more typically, to reaffirm traditional historical interpretations. Second, that this process can only be understood in the context of contemporary debates about identity politics, America's role in world affairs, and the globalisation of the American film business. The book is structured by historical periods and includes chapters on: * The American Revolution (Revolution, The Patriot) * Slavery (Roots, Amistad) * The Civil War (Gettysburg,Glory,Ride with the Devil, Cold Mountain) * World War II (Saving Private Ryan, Thin Red Line, Pearl Harbor) * Oliver Stone and the Decade of Trauma (Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July, Heaven and Earth, Nixon) * Civil Rights and Black Nationalism (Panther, Mississippi Burning, The Hurricane, Malcolm X, Ali) * American Interventionism (Three Kings, Black Hawk Down) Key Features: * Unique: the only book to provide comprehensive analysis of the relationship between film and American history in the post-Cold War era * Topical: explores the relationship between cinema, representation and national identity * Accessible: analyses a broad range of popular, mainstream films which engage with well-known historical events * Uses cultural theory to help consider the complex relationship between film and history * Engages with the contentious issue of the extent to which film distorts/ revisions historical 'truths'
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Review:
This is an accessible, enjoyable study of movies dealing with events from American history ! this study ! deserves a wide readership among students and aficionados of both American history and Hollywood films. The essays are presented in an engaging and ernest style ! the analyses are probing and provocative: models of the kind of creative questioning that leads to fresh insights. A succinct and disciplined book! will undoubtedly find a place in the expanding canon of works on American history and Hollywood film. American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film is a well researched, well argued and generally well written work of scholarship... It brings together for analysis a significant group of Hollywood historical films... Here there is a kind of critical mass that allows the authors to make important suggestions about the treatment of major issues such as gender, race and war in both Hollywood and the larger American culture in the last 15 years. -- Professor Robert Rosenstone, California Institute of Technology 'Scholars who explore the relationship between film and history generally adopt one of two approaches: they write about film on history or they write about history on film. Trevor McCrisken and Andrew Pepper manage to combine the two approaches in a succinct and disciplined book that is intended for a broad audience. The authors deftly manage to present Hollywood dramas as cultural products of their time and simultaneously reflect on how various filmic interpretations of America's past contrbute to shaping and extending the historical record itself! the book will undoubtedly find a place in the expanding canon of works on American history and Hollywood film.' - Australasian Journal of American Studies, December 2006 This is an accessible, enjoyable study of movies dealing with events from American history ! this study ! deserves a wide readership among students and aficionados of both American history and Hollywood films. The essays are presented in an engaging and ernest style ! the analyses are probing and provocative: models of the kind of creative questioning that leads to fresh insights. A succinct and disciplined book! will undoubtedly find a place in the expanding canon of works on American history and Hollywood film. American History and Contemporary Hollywood Film is a well researched, well argued and generally well written work of scholarship... It brings together for analysis a significant group of Hollywood historical films... Here there is a kind of critical mass that allows the authors to make important suggestions about the treatment of major issues such as gender, race and war in both Hollywood and the larger American culture in the last 15 years. 'Scholars who explore the relationship between film and history generally adopt one of two approaches: they write about film on history or they write about history on film. Trevor McCrisken and Andrew Pepper manage to combine the two approaches in a succinct and disciplined book that is intended for a broad audience. The authors deftly manage to present Hollywood dramas as cultural products of their time and simultaneously reflect on how various filmic interpretations of America's past contrbute to shaping and extending the historical record itself! the book will undoubtedly find a place in the expanding canon of works on American history and Hollywood film.' - Australasian Journal of American Studies, December 2006
About the Author:
Trevor McCrisken is Lecturer in American Politics and International Studies at the University of Warwick. Author of American Exceptionalism and the Legacy of Vietnam: US Foreign Policy since 1974 (Palgrave, 2003).
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- PublisherEdinburgh University Press
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 0748614893
- ISBN 13 9780748614899
- BindingHardcover
- Number of pages240
- Rating
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