Silent Film Comedy and American Culture [electronic resource] /
Bilton, Alan.author.
This absorbing 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 expressing the unconscious wishes and fears of the modern age, in a way that foreshadows the concerns of our own celebrity-obsessed consumer culture.
Description based upon print version of record.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
An introduction to silent film comedy and American culture: clowns, conformity, consumerism -- A convention of crazy bugs: Mack Sennett and America's immigrant unconscious -- Accelerated bodies and jumping jacks: automata, mannequins and toys in the films of Charlie Chaplin --  Nobody loves a fat man: conspicuous consumption and the case of Fatty Arbuckle in 1920's America -- Dizzy Doras and big-eyed beauties: Mabel Normand and the notion of the female clown in American silent film -- Consumerism and its discontents: Harold Lloyd and the anxieties of capitalism -- Buster Keaton and the south: the first things and the last -- Sleepwalkers on parade: the shell-shocked silence of Harry Langdon -- Conclusion.
This absorbing 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 expressing the unconscious wishes and fears of the modern age, in a way that foreshadows the concerns of our own celebrity-obsessed consumer culture.
Cultural studies.
Motion pictures and television.
Motion pictures—History.
Performing arts.
United States—Study and teaching.
Culture—Study and teaching.
Cultural Studies.
Screen Studies.
Film History.
Performing Arts.
American Culture.
Regional and Cultural Studies.