Cimke: Entertainment & Performing arts

Dancing Queen : Marie De Médicis’ Ballets at the Court of Henri IV

Under glittering lights in the Louvre palace, the French court ballets danced by Queen Marie de Médicis prior to Henri IV’s assassination in 1610 attracted thousands of spectators ranging from pickpockets to ambassadors from across Europe. Drawing on newly discovered primary sources as well as theories and methodologies derived from literary studies, political history, musicology, dance studies, and women’s and gender studies, Dancing Queen traces how Marie’s ballets authorized her incipient political authority through innovative verbal and visual imagery, avant-garde musical developments, and ceremonial arrangements of objects and bodies in space.

Drones, Clones, and Alpha Babes: Retrofitting Star Trek’s Humanism, Post-9/11

The Star Trek franchise represents one of the most successful emanations of popular media in our culture. The number of books, both popular and scholarly, published on the subject of Star Trek is massive, with more and more titles printed every year. Very few, however, have looked at Star Trek in terms of the dialectics of humanism and the posthuman, the pervasiveness of advanced technology, and the complications of gender identity. In Drones, Clones and Alpha Babes, Diana Relke sheds light on how the Star Trek narratives influence and are influenced by shifting cultural values in the United States, using these as portals to the sociopolitical and sociocultural landscapes of the United States, pre- and post-9/11.

Between Stage and Screen: Ingmar Bergman Directs

Ingmar Bergman is worldwide known as a film and stage director. Yet no-one has attempted to compare his stage and screen activities. In Between stage and screen Egil Törnqvist examines formal and thematical correspondences and differences between a number of Bergman’s stage, screen, and radio productions. In the prologue Bergman’s spiritual and aesthetic heritage and his position in the twentieth century media landscape is outlined. In the epilogue the question is answered to what extent one can speak of Bergman’s directorial ‘method’ irrespective of the chosen medium.

Emerson Goes to the Movies : Individualism in Walt Disney Company’s Post-1989 Animated Films

Disney films are heavy with ideology and American national myths, and, because of their educational role, it seems relevant to acknowledge this dimension and discuss the sources of the Disney worldview. This book, instead of focusing on Disney’s influence upon its audience, concerns rather what influences Disney, how Disney reflects the American mentality, and how the idea of individualism is depicted in the Company’s particular films. The principal way of reading particular Disney films is the Cultural Studies approach. Thus, the book presents Romantic individualism with reference to such categories as race, gender, class, and imperialism.

Cinematic Canines : Dogs and Their Work in the Fiction Film

Dogs have been part of motion pictures since the movies began. They have been featured onscreen in various capacities, from any number of “man’s best friends” (Rin Tin Tin, Asta, Toto, Lassie, Benji, Uggie, and many, many more) to the psychotic Cujo. The contributors to Cinematic Canines take a close look at Hollywood films and beyond in order to show that the popularity of dogs on the screen cannot be separated from their increasing presence in our lives over the past century.