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Silent Film Comedy and American Culture

Alan Bilton Orcid Logo

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Swansea University Author: Alan Bilton Orcid Logo

Abstract

This absorbing study of early 20th Century American Culture interprets the anarchic absurdity of slapstick movies as a form of collective anxiety dream, their fantastical images and illogical gags bypassing rational thought to express the unconscious fears, wishes and concerns of the modern age. Sil...

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Published: Basingstoke Palgrave Macmillan 2013
Online Access: http://us.macmillan.com/silentfilmcomedyandamericanculture/AlanBilton
URI: https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa278
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last_indexed 2018-02-09T04:27:07Z
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spelling 2013-11-07T14:14:20.9994088 v2 278 2011-10-01 Silent Film Comedy and American Culture 6d9cb0e3122baad39e7f8e8bc70791e6 0000-0001-9010-3609 Alan Bilton Alan Bilton true false 2011-10-01 AELC This absorbing study of early 20th Century American Culture interprets the anarchic absurdity of slapstick movies as a form of collective anxiety dream, their fantastical images and illogical gags bypassing rational thought to express the unconscious fears, wishes and concerns of the modern age. Silent film comedy, with its childlike love of the illogical, the destructive and the anti-social, seems to suggest a form of comic revolt against the mechanization and the uniformity of the machine age, but the book also charts how a new consumer culture sought to simultaneously tame and contain these energies, redirecting them in the service of a newly emergent mass culture. Not just a film history of the silent era, the book offers a provocative and lively engagement with the origins of mass culture, tracing the origins of Hollywood’s dream factory and alongside it the roots of our own irrational, childlike, celebrity-obsessed consumer culture. Book 1 Palgrave Macmillan Basingstoke Silent Film, Comedy, American Culture, Consumerim 30 4 2013 2013-04-30 http://us.macmillan.com/silentfilmcomedyandamericanculture/AlanBilton COLLEGE NANME English Literature COLLEGE CODE AELC Swansea University 2013-11-07T14:14:20.9994088 2011-10-01T00:00:00.0000000 Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics Alan Bilton 0000-0001-9010-3609 1
title Silent Film Comedy and American Culture
spellingShingle Silent Film Comedy and American Culture
Alan Bilton
title_short Silent Film Comedy and American Culture
title_full Silent Film Comedy and American Culture
title_fullStr Silent Film Comedy and American Culture
title_full_unstemmed Silent Film Comedy and American Culture
title_sort Silent Film Comedy and American Culture
author_id_str_mv 6d9cb0e3122baad39e7f8e8bc70791e6
author_id_fullname_str_mv 6d9cb0e3122baad39e7f8e8bc70791e6_***_Alan Bilton
author Alan Bilton
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publishDate 2013
institution Swansea University
publisher Palgrave Macmillan
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department_str School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics{{{_:::_}}}Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences{{{_:::_}}}School of Culture and Communication - English Language, Tesol, Applied Linguistics
url http://us.macmillan.com/silentfilmcomedyandamericanculture/AlanBilton
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description This absorbing study of early 20th Century American Culture interprets the anarchic absurdity of slapstick movies as a form of collective anxiety dream, their fantastical images and illogical gags bypassing rational thought to express the unconscious fears, wishes and concerns of the modern age. Silent film comedy, with its childlike love of the illogical, the destructive and the anti-social, seems to suggest a form of comic revolt against the mechanization and the uniformity of the machine age, but the book also charts how a new consumer culture sought to simultaneously tame and contain these energies, redirecting them in the service of a newly emergent mass culture. Not just a film history of the silent era, the book offers a provocative and lively engagement with the origins of mass culture, tracing the origins of Hollywood’s dream factory and alongside it the roots of our own irrational, childlike, celebrity-obsessed consumer culture.
published_date 2013-04-30T03:03:00Z
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