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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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