Valuing Films: Shifting Perceptions of Worth - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0230229689 ISBN 13: 9780230229686

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011

Synopsis

This book gets to the heart of what films mean to people on personal, political and commercial levels. Exploring large-scale value judgements and tastes that underpin social, academic and institutional practices, it also looks at how films relate and contribute to individual life experiences. Studies within this volume survey a wide range of cultural practices and films: from Mexican and Nigerian cinema to anime and European films; from 'violent' and 'extreme' movies to comedies and 'weepies'; from Citizen Kane and Gone with the Wind to Transformers and The Usual Suspects. This collection examines how films are studied and taught, together with the shifting canonical frameworks working within magazines, newspapers and new technologies. It also provides an insight into the hierarchical structures that inform the way audiences and fans from diverse cultures value films in relation to pleasure, entertainment, ethical worth, aesthetic style, depth of meaning and authenticity.

About this title

Review:

'This special collection of essays is a valuable addition to a subject that has been neglected in film studies over the past few decades. Containing a diverse number of articles covering different films, by various critics from Britain and the United States, it provides insightful and new readings into an area that deserves further exploration, as the very important introduction and epilogue by its editor reveals. A worthy addition to the area of film studies.'
- Tony Williams, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, USA
 
'Film studies has been slow to acknowledge how central debates about value must be to its concerns. This welcome collection opens up a wide range of value debates, many of which were foreclosed by cinema's need to achieve respectability as an art. Ranging from classic vs modern Hollywood, and European art cinema's problematic status, to the newer frontiers of Japanese anime, Mexican popular cinema and Nigeria's Nollywood, the authors display an encouraging appetite for new sources of data, new audience attitudes, and the self-evident fact that value motivates much of our media behaviour.'
- Ian Christie, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK

Book Description:

This volume explores what films mean to people on personal, political and commercial levels, exploring value judgements and tastes that underpin social, academic and institutional practices

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0230229689
• ISBN 13: 9780230229686
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 239
• Editor: Hubner L.