Hollywood Comedians, The Film Reader

by Krutnik; Frank

• ISBN13: 9780415235518
• ISBN10: 0415235510
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-01-23
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Hollywood Comediansexamines a range of comedians and contexts from the silent era to the 1990s. Contributors address key debates on performance and genre, and discuss issues of gender and the body, ethnicity and race. Includes essays by: Steven Cohan, Phil Drake, Bambi Haggins, Henry Jenkins, Peter Kramer, Patricia Mellencamp, William Paul, Joanna Rapf, Kathleen Rowe Karlyn, Steve Seidman and Mark Winokur.

Author Biography

Richard Bradley is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Reading.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vii
General Introduction	1	(18)
PART ONE: GENRE, NARRATIVE AND PERFORMANCE	19	(36)
Introduction	19	(2)
Performance, Enunciation and Self-reference in Hollywood Comedian Comedy	21	(22)
Steve Seidman
Derailing the Honeymoon Express: Comicality and Narrative Closure in Buster Keaton's The Blacksmith	43	(12)
Peter Kramer
PART TWO: APPROACHES TO SILENT COMEDY	55	(32)
Introduction	55	(2)
The Case of Silent Slapstick	57	(16)
Steve Neale
Frank Krutnik
Buster Keaton, or the Work of Comedy in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction	73	(6)
Tom Gunning
Charlie Chaplin and the Annals of Anality	79	(8)
William Paul
PART THREE: SOUND COMEDY, THE VAUDEVILLE AESTHETIC AND ETHNICITY	87	(36)
Introduction	87	(4)
Anarchistic Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic	91	(14)
Henry Jenkins III
The Marx Brothers and the Search for the Landsman	105	(18)
Mark Winokur
PART FOUR: COMEDIAN COMEDY AND GENDER	123	(44)
Introduction	123	(4)
She Done Him Wrong: Spectacle and Narrative	127	(6)
Kathleen Rowe
Lucille Ball and the Regime of Domiculture	133	(12)
Patricia Mellencamp
Comic Theory from a Feminist Perspective: A Look at Jerry Lewis	145	(10)
Joanna E. Rapf
Queering the Deal: On the Road with Hope and Crosby	155	(12)
Steven Cohan
PART FIVE: POST-CLASSICAL COMEDIAN COMEDY	167	(32)
Introduction	167	(4)
Laughing Mad: The Black Comedian's Place in American Comedy of the Post-Civil Rights Era	171	(16)
Bambi L. Haggins
Low Blows? Theorizing Performance in Post-classical Comedian Comedy	187	(12)
Philip Drake
Select Bibliography	199	(4)
Index	203