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Film production at Paramount Pictures during the so-called classical era required the mobilisation of massive material and human capital that depended on institutional systems of surveillance, knowledge creation and control ranging from departmental affiliations to the pre-printed budget forms. This article focuses on those pre-printed budget forms as technologies of knowledge and power, revealing that the necessities of creating and managing coalitions of expert labourers created alternative power centres and spaces where being the object of surveillance was itself a source of power. It concludes by discussing the implications of this ecology for the historiography of Hollywood.
devastating effects of pandemics. This collection considers these key issues, alongside the appeal and popularity of the medical plot, and the way medicine has become ‘heritage’ due to its inclusion in period drama. Scope of the collection We begin with period dramas set in the early modern period of European, British, and American history, a time when medicine as a profession was coming into its own, as trained experts tried to
medical experts for themselves and those close to them. Through its premise, Harlots becomes an effective vehicle to transmit the history of eighteenth-century prostitution to popular audiences. It is part of a recent trend in televised period pieces to expose the power dynamics of historical narratives. Scholarship on period pieces, including essays in this volume, has pointed out how series such as
In 2011, Kate Middleton 1 was ‘reportedly worth £1 billion to the British economy’. 2 The huge international interest in her wedding that year to Prince William was greeted as a major opportunity to boost British trade by promoting British fashion both at home and abroad. On 9 March 2012 on ITV’s morning television show Daybreak , British fashion expert Caryn Franklin
This book focuses attention on a particular aspect of the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) remit. It examines how the concepts of both 'public service' and the 'popular' were interpreted by the BBC. The book also examines how their relationship changed over time, moving across the early history of radio and television, up until the advent of Independent Television (ITV). It explores The Grove Family, which has secured a certain visibility in British television history due to its status as "British television's first soap opera". By focusing on a number of programme case studies such as the soap opera, the quiz/game show, the 'problem' show and programmes dealing with celebrity culture, the book demonstrates how BBC television surprisingly explored popular interests and desires. The book details how the quiz or game show, or to use the dominant term from the time, the "give-away" show, has been used to map sharp differences between the BBC and ITV in the 1950s. It focuses on the BBC's 'problem' or 'private life' programme, Is This Your Problem? ( ITYP?), in which members of the public asked the advice of an expert panel. The book explores television's relations with fame in the 1950s. It details how This is Your Life (TIYL) became a privileged site for debates about television's renegotiation of the boundaries of public/private, particularly with regard to audiences' cultural access to famous selves.
economic experts as the best way of overcoming the crisis of European cinema. Seen by most film critics as the most Americanised filmmaker of his generation, Besson learned the rules of the contemporary film market with his own films, and applies them to the promotion of projects aimed at the international market. The production and distribution strategies of Besson’s companies reflect the coherence of a
developed (Burdeau and Thirion, 2008: 16–17). Bégaudeau’s original authorship was not simply reworked by Cantet and co-writer Campillo. It was opened up to the input of parents, teachers and, above all, children in a way that challenged any fixed authorial role. As elsewhere, when he had turned to amateur performers, Cantet trusted people to be experts on their own lives and to use their experience to inform their roles. Describing his work with the teachers, for example, Cantet said: ‘On a passé des heures à improviser mais aussi à discuter des enjeux de Between
but someone with a similar social role: the woman trade unionist in Ressources humaines is a real trade unionist, the boss a manager, the sacked father a worker forced into early retirement, and so on.8 The casting starts from the presupposition that each character is an expert in his or her own role. When discussing Entre les murs, for example, Cantet said of his amateur cast, ‘Aussi bien les élèves que les profs, ils ont une expertise de leur vie dont j’avais besoin pour écrire le film’ (Burdeau and Thirion, 2008: 16).9 Rather than being asked to erase their
Screening the Hollywood Rebels in 1950s Britain explores the relationship between classic American films about juvenile delinquency and British popular youth culture in the mid-twentieth century. The book examines the censorship, publicity and fandom surrounding such Hollywood films as The Wild One, Blackboard Jungle, Rebel Without a Cause, Rock Around the Clock and Jailhouse Rock alongside such British films as The Blue Lamp, Spare the Rod and Serious Charge. Intersecting with star studies and social and cultural history, this is the first book to re-vision the stardom surrounding three extraordinarily influential Hollywood stars: Marlon Brando, James Dean and Elvis Presley. By looking specifically at the meanings of these American stars to British fans, this analysis provides a logical and sustained narrative that explains how and why these Hollywood images fed into, and disrupted, British cultural life. Screening the Hollywood Rebels in 1950s Britain is based upon a wide range of sources including censorship records, both mainstream and trade newspapers and periodicals, archival accounts and memoirs, as well as the films themselves. The book is a timely intervention of film culture and focuses on key questions about screen violence and censorship, masculinity and transnational stardom, method acting and performance, Americanisation and popular post-war British culture. The book is essential reading for researchers, academics and students of film and social and cultural history, alongside general readers interested in the links between the media and popular youth culture in the 1950s.
This is the first book-length study of one of the most significant of all British television writers, Jimmy McGovern. The book provides comprehensive coverage of all his work for television including early writing on Brookside, major documentary dramas such as Hillsborough and Sunday and more recent series such as The Street and Accused.
Whilst the book is firmly focused on McGovern’s own work, the range of his output over the period in which he has been working also provides something of an overview of the radical changes in television drama commissioning that have taken place during this time. Without compromising his deeply-held convictions McGovern has managed to adapt to an ever changing environment, often using his position as a sought-after writer to defy industry trends.
The book also challenges the notion of McGovern as an uncomplicated social realist in stylistic terms. Looking particularly at his later work, a case is made for McGovern employing a greater range of narrative approaches, albeit subtly and within boundaries that allow him to continue to write for large popular audiences.
Finally it is worth pointing to the book’s examination of McGovern’s role in recent years as a mentor to new voices, frequently acting as a creative producer on series that he part-writes and part brings through different less-experienced names.