| Description |
1 online resource (x, 206 pages) : illustrations |
| Series |
SUNY series, horizons of cinema
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SUNY series, horizons of cinema.
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| Summary |
The Slapstick Camera demonstrates that slapstick film comedies display a canny and sometimes profound understanding of their medium. Slapstick film comedy may be grounded in idiocy and failure, but the genre is far more sophisticated than it initially appears. In this book, Burke Hilsabeck suggests that slapstick is often animated by a philosophical impulse to understand the cinema. He looks closely at movies and gags that represent the conditions and conventions of cinema production and demonstrates that film comedians display a canny and sometimes profound understanding of their medium--from Buster Keaton's encounter with the film screen in Sherlock Jr. (1924) to Harpo Marx's lip-sync turn with a phonograph in Monkey Business (1931) to Jerry Lewis's film-on-film performance in The Errand Boy (1961). The Slapstick Camera follows the observation of philosopher Stanley Cavell that self-reference is one way in which "film exists in a state of philosophy." By moving historically across the studio era, the book looks at a series of comedies that play with the changing technologies and economic practices behind film production and describes how comedians offered their own understanding of the nature of film and filmmaking. Hilsabeck locates the hidden intricacies of Hollywood cinema in a place where one might least expect them--the clowns, idiots, and scoundrels of slapstick comedy. Burke Hilsabeck is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Northern Colorado |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Contents |
Slapstick spectators: Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) -- Buster Keaton's theory of film -- Redeeming vision: Charlie Chaplin -- Bodies of silence, bodies of sound: the Marx brothers -- Hollywood, television, and the case of Ernie Kovacs -- Nouvelles Blagues: Jerry Lewis |
| Local Note |
eBooks on EBSCOhost EBSCO eBook Subscription Academic Collection - North America |
| Subject |
Comedy films -- United States -- History and criticism.
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Motion pictures -- Philosophy.
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Motion pictures -- Production and direction -- United States.
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Television comedies -- United States -- History and criticism.
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Comedy films |
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Motion pictures -- Philosophy |
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Motion pictures -- Production and direction |
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Television comedies |
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United States https://id.oclc.org/worldcat/entity/E39PBJtxgQXMWqmjMjjwXRHgrq |
| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Other Form: |
Print version: Hilsabeck, Burke, 1978- Slapstick camera. Albany : State University of New York Press, [2020] 9781438477312 (DLC) 2019011272 (OCoLC)1104218920 |
| ISBN |
9781438477329 (electronic bk.) |
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1438477325 (electronic bk.) |
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9781438477312 (hardcover ; alk. paper) |
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1438477317 (hardcover ; alk. paper) |
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9781438477305 (paperback ; alk. paper) |
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1438477309 (paperback ; alk. paper) |
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