Skyscraper cinema
Subtitle: architecture and gender in American film
By: Merrill Schleier.
Publisher: University of Minnesota Press
Published: 2009
Place of publication: Minneapolis
Language: eng
Number of pages: 367
ISBN-13: 9780816642816; 9780816642823
Subjects: Skyscrapers in motion pictures; Sex role in motion pictures; Masculinity in motion pictures; Social classes in motion pictures; Motion pictures -- United States -- History
Description: "Whether tall office buildings, high-rise apartments, or lofty hotels, skyscrapers have been stars in American cinema since the silent era. Cinema's tall buidlings have been variously represented as unbridled aspiration, dens of iniquity and eroticism, beacons of democracy, and well-oiled corporate machines. Considering their intriguing diversity, Merrill Schleier establishes and explains the impact of actual skyscrapers on America's ideologies about work, leisure, romance, sexual identity and politics as seen in Hollywood movies"--Publisher description.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Constructing the American skyscraper film; title: From stumbling blocks to stepping stones : Harold Lloyd's skyscraper films; title: Icons of exploitation : gender and class disharmony in the Depression-era skyscraper office; title: Masculine heroes, modernism, and political ideology in The fountainhead and The big clock; title: Mid-century corporate renewal and gender realignment in executive suite and desk set; title: Recent skyscraper films.