Archive for 2015

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[ecrea] new book Hitchcock à la Carte

Tue Mar 31 06:37:36 GMT 2015


Hitchcock à la Carte

Jan Olsson



"Hitchcock à la Carte is a major contribution to the inexhaustible literature on Hitchcock. It locates the branding of Hitchcock in the canny promotion of his rotund and mordantly witty persona and traces how the television franchise amplified and consolidated the Hitchcock brand in an unprecedented fashion. Olsson takes us inside the Hitchcockian world in a way that few have." —Richard Allen, author of Hitchcock's Romantic Irony



"Alfred Hitchcock said his films were slices of cake, and his TV programs were just as tasty, offering bite-sized morsels of the affable demeanor, understated wit, and genius for suspense that made him the world's most iconic movie director as well as one of the greatest. Eloquently blending historical perspective, stylistic analysis, and cross-disciplinary criticism, Jan Olsson has written the definitive study of these quintessentially Hitchcockian entertainments."—David Sterritt, author of The Films of Alfred Hitchcock



“Olsson shines a valuable light on Hitchcock’s television work (which may be unfamiliar to today’s audiences). . . .”—Stephen Rees, Library Journal

Alfred Hitchcock: cultural icon, master film director, storyteller, television host, foodie. And as Jan Olsson argues in Hitchcock à la Carte, he was also an expert marketer who built his personal brand around his rotund figure and well-documented table indulgencies. Focusing on Hitchcock's television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1962) and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (1962-1965), Olsson asserts that the success of Hitchcock's media empire depended on his deft manipulation of bodies and the food that sustained them. Hitchcock's strategies included frequently playing up his own girth, hiring body doubles, making numerous cameos, and using food—such as a frozen leg of lamb—to deliver scores of characters to their deaths. Constructing his brand enabled Hitchcock to maintain creative control, blend himself with his genre, and make himself the multi-million-dollar franchise's principal star. Olsson shows how Hitchcock's media brand management was a unique performance model that he used to mark his creative oeuvre as strictly his own.



Jan Olsson is Professor of Cinema Studies at Stockholm University. He is the coeditor of Television after TV: Essays on a Medium in Transition, also published by Duke University Press.



Duke University Press

March 2015 272pp 55 illustrations 9780822358046 Paperback £16.99 now only £13.59 when you quote CSL315TELE when you order



http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/Book/42357/Hitchcock-á-la-Carte





Broadcasting Modernity

Cuban Commercial Television, 1950-1960

Yeidy M. Rivero



"Broadcasting Modernity is the definitive and most comprehensive account of Cuban television during the decade immediately preceding the Revolution of 1959. Simply brilliant at all levels, this is one of those books that changes the way in which we make sense of one of the most important social processes of the Latin American twentieth century. Yeidy M. Rivero has made an enormous contribution to Latin American and U.S. media scholarship."— José Quiroga, author of Cuban Palimpsests



"Yeidy M. Rivero delivers a riveting account of the complex struggles over the introduction of television as both a symbol and site of Cuban modernization during the 1950s. Set against the backdrop of hemispheric politics and Cold War struggle, television proved to be a linchpin of political and cultural transformation throughout the island nation and ultimately across the Americas. Lively, imaginative, and thoroughly researched, Broadcasting Modernity offers a provocative account of how a media revolution became revolutionary media."— Michael Curtin, author of Playing to the World's Biggest Audience: The Globalization of Chinese Film and TV



The birth and development of commercial television in Cuba in the 1950s occurred alongside political and social turmoil. In this period of dramatic swings encompassing democracy, a coup, a dictatorship, and a revolution, television functioned as a beacon and promoter of Cuba’s identity as a modern nation. In Broadcasting Modernity, television historian Yeidy M. Rivero shows how television owners, regulatory entities, critics, and the state produced Cuban modernity for television. The Cuban television industry enabled different institutions to convey the nation's progress, democracy, economic abundance, high culture, education, morality, and decency. After nationalizing Cuban television, the state used it to advance Fidel Castro's project of creating a modern socialist country. As Cuba changed, television changed with it. Rivero not only demonstrates television's importance to Cuban cultural identity formation, she explains how the medium functions in society during times of radical political and social transformation.



Yeidy M. Rivero is Associate Professor of Screen Arts and Cultures at the University of Michigan. She is the author of Tuning Out Blackness: Race and Nation in the History of Puerto Rican Television, also published by Duke University Press.



Duke University Press

March 2015 264pp 20 illustrations 9780822358718 PB £17.99 now only £14.39 when you quote CSL315TELE when you order



http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/broadcasting-modernity





Amazon Town TV

An Audience Ethnography in Gurupá, Brazil

Richard Pace & Brian P. Hinote



The interdisciplinary aims of Richard Pace and Brian P. Hinote's Amazon Town TV make it a worthwhile venture, perhaps more than the actual scholarship itself, which breaks little new theoretical ground in terms of television studies, but does serve as a fascinating ethnographic study of the potential for television's sociocultural effects in Gurupá, Brazil.



In 1983, anthropologist Richard Pace began his fieldwork in the Amazonian community of Gurupá one year after the first few television sets arrived. On a nightly basis, as the community’s electricity was turned on, he observed crowds of people lining up outside open windows or doors of the few homes possessing TV sets, intent on catching a glimpse of this fascinating novelty. Stoic, mute, and completely absorbed, they stood for hours contemplating every message and image presented. So begins the cultural turning point that is the basis of Amazon Town TV, a rich analysis of Gurupá in the decades during and following the spread of television.



Pace worked with sociologist Brian Hinote to explore the sociocultural implications of television’s introduction in this community long isolated by geographic and communication barriers. They explore how viewers change their daily routines to watch the medium; how viewers accept, miss, ignore, negotiate, and resist media messages; and how television’s influence works within the local cultural context to modify social identities, consumption patterns, and worldviews.



University of Texas Press

May 2014 224pp 24 b&w photos, 1 map, 30 tables 9780292762046 PB £17.99 now only £14.39 when you quote CSL315TELE when you order



http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/amazontown-tv





UK Postage and Packing £2.95, Europe £4.50

(PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER: CSL315TELE for discount)

To order a copy please contact Marston on +44(0)1235 465500 or email (direct.orders /at/ marston.co.uk)

or visit our website:

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/

where you can also receive your discount

 *Offer excludes the USA, South America and Australasia.
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