Vividly bringing to light the tradition of physical comedy in the French cabaret, caf�-concert, and early French film comedy, this book answers the perplexing question, "Why do the French love Jerry Lewis?" The extraordinary emphasis on nervous pathology in the Parisian caf�-concert, where the genres of the Epileptic Singer and the Idiot Comic took center stage, and where popular comic monologues and songs included "Man with a Tic" and "I'm Neurasthenic," points to a fascinating intersection between medicine and popular ...
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Vividly bringing to light the tradition of physical comedy in the French cabaret, caf�-concert, and early French film comedy, this book answers the perplexing question, "Why do the French love Jerry Lewis?" The extraordinary emphasis on nervous pathology in the Parisian caf�-concert, where the genres of the Epileptic Singer and the Idiot Comic took center stage, and where popular comic monologues and songs included "Man with a Tic" and "I'm Neurasthenic," points to a fascinating intersection between medicine and popular culture. The French tradition of comic performance style between 1870 and 1910 nearly exactly duplicates the movements, gestures, tics, grimaces, and speech anomalies found in nineteenth-century hysteria; the characteristics of hysteria became a new aesthetics. Early French film comedy carried on this tradition of frenetic gesture and gait, as most film performers came from these entertainments and from the circus. Even before Chaplin's films triumphed in France, film comics were instantly recognizable from their pathological gait, just as Jacques Tati would be a half-century later. Comedy, a genre that dominated French cinema until World War I, has often been linked to a mass public for film; the author elucidates this link by proposing a broadly generalized cultural-medical phenomenon as the explanation for the dominance of the comic genre. Comic performance style drew from a group of nervous disorders characterized by the psychological automatism emanating from the "lower faculties": nervous reflex, motor impulses, sensation, and instinct. Building on her previous work on hysteria, the cabaret, and pathologies of movement in the films of Georges M�li�s, and drawing on over 400 French films made between 1896 and 1915, the author contributes to a new theory of spectatorship at work in the cabaret, in shows of magnetizers, and in early French film comedy. Jerry Lewis touches a nerve in French cultural memory because, more than any other film comic, he incarnates this tradition of performance style.
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Add this copy of Why the French Love Jerry Lewis: From Cabaret to Early to cart. $7.72, good condition, Sold by Bookmans rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Tucson, AZ, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by Stanford University Press.
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Near Fine. Book. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Softcover 2002 edition. Text and covers in near fine condition. Binding firm. Page unmarked and clean. (274 pages)
Add this copy of Why the French Love Jerry Lewis From Cabaret to Early to cart. $13.95, very good condition, Sold by Mahler Books rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Pflugerville, TX, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by Stanford University Press.
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Very Good. 0804738947. This book is in very good condition; no remainder marks. It does have some cover shelfwear. Inside pages are clean.; 8.50 X 6 X 0.70 inches; 296 pages.
Add this copy of Why the French Love Jerry Lewis: From Cabaret to Early to cart. $20.00, good condition, Sold by J. Hood, Booksellers, Inc. rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Baldwin City, KS, UNITED STATES, published 2001 by Stanford University Press.
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Very minor bumped corner & slight stain on fore-edge of text, else very good, clean and sound condition with bright cover. Presentation copy: "and to a very good friend who passes through and whose passages are always so much a pleasure-with a great deal of affection, and respect for your work-Rae Beth Gordon 7 June 2002"
Add this copy of Why the French Love Jerry Lewis: From Cabaret to Early to cart. $22.14, new condition, Sold by Ingram Customer Returns Center rated 5.0 out of 5 stars, ships from NV, USA, published 2002 by Stanford University Press.
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Add this copy of Why the French Love Jerry Lewis (Paperback Or Softback) to cart. $28.67, new condition, Sold by BargainBookStores rated 4.0 out of 5 stars, ships from Grand Rapids, MI, UNITED STATES, published 2002 by Stanford University Press.
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