Film at the Intersection of High and Mass Culture (Cambridge Studies in Film) - Hardcover

Coates, Paul

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521444721 ISBN 13: 9780521444729

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 1994

Synopsis

Film at the Intersection of High and Mass Culture analyses the contradictions and interaction between high and low art, with particular reference to Hollywood and European cinema. Written in the essayistic speculative tradition of Walter Benjamin and Thedor Adorno, this study also includes analyses of several key films of the 1980s. Tracing the boundaries of such genres as film noir, science fiction and melodrama, it demonstrates how these genres were radically expanded by such film makers as Neil Jordan, Chris Marker and Georges Franju. This work also reflects on kitsch, the star system, racial and gender stereotypes and the nature of audience participation. While defining the conditions under which the symbiotic relationship between high and mass culture can be cross-fertilising, the study stresses their inevitably contradictory characteristics.

About this title

About the Author

Paul Coates is Associate Professor of English at McGill University in Montreal.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521444721
• ISBN 13: 9780521444729
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 221