Bilton's 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 mechanisation and the uniformity of the machine age, but the book also charts how a new ...
Read More
Bilton's 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 mechanisation and the uniformity of the machine age, but the book also charts how a new consumer culture sought simultaneously to 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, Bilton also provides 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.
Read Less
Add this copy of Silent Film Comedy and American Culture to cart. $51.65, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2013 by Palgrave MacMillan.
Add this copy of Silent Film Comedy and American Culture to cart. $51.65, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2013 by Palgrave MacMillan.
Add this copy of Silent Film Comedy and American Culture to cart. $80.09, good condition, Sold by Bonita rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Newport Coast, CA, UNITED STATES, published 2013 by Palgrave Macmillan.
