This is a roundup of new print publications available from this December. For details on how to order these titles, please click on the book covers or the links to the respective publishers.
British Film Culture of the 1970s: The Boundaries of Pleasure
Edited by Sue Harper and Justin Smith
(Edinburgh University Press) 336 pages
ISBN: 978-0748640782 (Hardback), Price: £65
www.euppublishing.com
This volume draws a map of British film culture in the 1970s and provides a wide-ranging history of the period. It examines the cross-cultural relationship between British cinema and other media, including popular music and television. The analysis covers mainstream and experimental film cultures, identifying their production contexts and the economic, legislative and censorship constraints on British cinema throughout the decade. The essays in Part I contextualise the study and illustrate the diversity of 1970s moving image culture. In Part II, Sue Harper and Justin Smith examine how gender relations and social space were addressed in film. They show how a shared visual manner and performance style characterises this fragmented cinema, and how irony and anxiety suffuse the whole film culture. This volume charts the shifting boundaries of permission in 1970s film culture and changes in audience taste. Contributors include: Dave Allen, Sian Barber, Peri Bradley, Laurie N. Ede, Laurel Forster, Vincent Porter and Sally Shaw. This book is the culmination of an AHRC-funded project at the University of Portsmouth. For more information about '1970s British Cinema, Film and Video: Mainstream and Counter-Culture' (2006-2009) please visit the project website at www.1970sproject.co.uk.
About the Editors: Professor Sue Harper is Emeritus Professor - Film History at the University of Portsmouth and is co-author of British Cinema of the 1950s: The Decline of Deference with Vincent Porter (Oxford University Press, 2003). Justin Smith is a Principal Lecturer and Subject Leader for Film Studies at the University of Portsmouth and author of Withnail and Us: Cult Films and Film Cults in British Cinema, 1968-86 (I. B. Tauris, 2010).
The Celluloid Madonna: From Sculpture to Screen
By Catherine O'Brien
(Columbia University Press), 224 pages
ISBN: 978-1906660277 (Paperback), £17.50; ISBN: 978-1906660284 (Hardback), £52.50
www.cup.columbia.edu
The first book to analyze the life of the Virgin Mary on screen from the silent era through to the present. For decades, Mary has caught the imagination of filmmakers from a range of religious backgrounds, whether Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Marxist, or atheist, and film's intersection of theology and secular culture has inspired some of the most singular and controversial visions of this icon in cinema history. Focusing on the challenge of adapting Scripture to the screen, this volume discusses Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927), Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth (1977), Jean-Luc Godard's Hail Mary (1984), Jean Delannoy's Mary of Nazareth (1994), Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004), Catherine Hardwicke's The Nativity Story (2006), and Mark Dornford-May's Son of Man (2006).
About the Author: Catherine O’Brien is senior lecturer in film studies and French at Kingston University in the U.K. She has published widely on the intersections between Marian theology and secular culture.
Gothic Science Fiction: 1980-2010
Edited by Sara Wasson and Emily Alder
(Liverpool University Press), 219 pages
ISBN: 978-1846317071 (Hardback), Price: £65.00
www.liverpool-unipress.co.uk
The essays in this collection examine interpretations across genre, form, and discipline, as well as revealing a buoyant field of research in contemporary Gothic and science fiction studies. The collection ranges across narrative media – in the form of literature, film, graphic novels, trading card games – and across genre – in the form of horror, science fiction, Gothic, New Weird and more. Bringing together distinguished contributors, the essays explore questions of genre, medical science, gender, biopower, capitalism, with Gothic science fiction texts understood as uniquely inflected for their time and place. Contributors include: Roger Luckhurst, Fred Botting, Aris Mousoutzanis, Laurence Davies, Gwyneth Peaty, Mark P. Williams, Jerrilyn McGregory, Nickianne Moody and Laura Hilton.
About the Editors: Sara Wasson is Senior Lecturer in Literature and Culture, Senior Teaching Fellow, and Programme Leader for the BA (Hons) Culture, Media and Society degree at Edinburgh Napier University and is the author of Urban Gothic of the Second World War: Dark London (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Dr Emily Alder is a lecturer at Edinburgh Napier University and is Assistant Editor for Gothic Studies, the journal of the International Gothic Association.
Hollywood and Intimacy: Style, Moments, Magnificence
By Steven Peacock
(Palgrave Macmillan), 184 pages
ISBN: 978-0230354500 (Hardback), Price: £50
www.palgrave.com
Hollywood and Intimacy provides a rare critical appreciation of close relationships in the modern American movie. Films considered include The Age of Innocence (1993), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), The Insider (1999), and The Straight Story (1999). Offering a new perspective on contemporary Hollywood, the book considers the intimate relationships that exist between characters, their surroundings, and points of film style. Through close and evocative readings, the book counters typical claims for contemporary Hollywood's large-scale indulgence and forwards a fresh approach to understanding the big American film.
About the Author: Steven Peacock is Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Hertfordshire and is the author of Colour (Manchester University Press, 2010) and editor of Reading 24: TV Against the Clock (I B Tauris, 2007).
Local Radio, Going Global By Guy Starkey (Palgrave Macmillan), 224 pages ISBN: 978-0230276895 (hardback), Price: £50 www.palgrave.com
This book examines the development of local radio broadcasting and the trend in the UK and abroad for locally-owned, locally-originated and locally-accountable commercial radio stations to fall into the hands of national and even international media groups. They in turn disadvantage the communities from which they seek to profit, by removing from them a means of cultural expression and democratic participation. In essence, localness in local radio is an endangered species, despite being a relatively recent phenomenon. By tracing the early development of local radio through ideologically-charged debates around public-service broadcasting and the fitness of the private sector to exploit scarce resources, to present-day digital environments in which traditional rationales for regulation on ownership and content have become increasingly challenged, the book provides a manifesto for informed speculation around future developments in local radio.
About the Author: Guy Starkey is Professor of Radio Journalism and Head of the Department of Media at the University of Sunderland. His publications include Radio in Context (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), Balance and Bias in Journalism: Representation, Regulation and Democracy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and Radio Journalism with Professor Andrew Crisell (Sage, 2009).
Public Service Media and Policy in Europe
By Dr Karen Donders
(Palgrave Macmillan), 248 pages
ISBN: 978-0230290969 (hardback), Price: £50
www.palgrave.com
Public Service Media and Policy in Europe provides an in-depth account of EU policies in the area of public service broadcasting, focusing mainly on the application of the European State aid rules. The book discusses when, how and with what impact the European Commission deals with public service broadcasting. There is an element of fear towards the intervention of the European Commission, and a worry that it is overly focused on economic goals to the detriment of public interest objectives. More specifically, the fear exists that 'Europe' might hamper the evolution from public service broadcasting to public service media and introduce harmonized European rules for public service broadcasting. Private media companies have lobbied extensively against the expansion of public broadcasters' tasks and for a European straitjacket in this regard. Karen Donders evaluates whether the European Commission has indeed satisfied private sector interests by marginalising public broadcasters, or whether it has in fact contributed to the emergence of a public service media project.
About the Author: Dr Karen Donders is Senior Researcher with the Centre for Studies on Media Information and Telecommunication (SMIT) and the Institute for European Studies (IES) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.
Scripting Hitchcock: Psycho, The Birds, and Marnie
By Walter Raubicheck and Walter Srebnick
(University of Illinois Press), 168 pages
SBN: 978-0252078248 (Paperback), £14.99
www.combinedacademic.co.uk
Explores the collaborative process between director Alfred Hitchcock and the screenwriters he hired to write the scripts for three of his most important films: Psycho (1960), The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964). Drawing from extensive interviews with the screenwriters and other film technicians who worked for Hitchcock, Walter Raubicheck and Walter Srebnick illustrate how much of the filmmaking process took place not on the set or in front of the camera, but in the adaptation of the sources, the mutual creation of plot and characters by the director and screenwriters Jay Presson Allen, Joseph Stefano, and Evan Hunter.
About the Authors: Walter Raubicheck is a professor of English at Pace University and the co-editor of Going My Way: Bing Crosby and American Culture (University of Rochester Press, 2007). Walter Srebnick is Professor Emeritus of English at Pace University and the co-editor of Hitchcock's Rereleased Films: From Rope to Vertigo (Wayne State University Press, 1991).
Television Journalism
By Stephen Cushion
(Sage Publications), 240 pages
ISBN: 978-1446207413 (Paperback), Price: £22.99; ISBN: 978-1446207406 (Hardback), Price: £65.00
www.uk.sagepub.com
Despite the democratic promise of new media, television journalism remains the most viewed, valued and trusted source of information in many countries around the world. Comparing patterns of ownership, policy and regulation, this book explores how different environments have historically shaped contemporary trends in television journalism internationally. Informed by original research, Television Journalism lays bare the implications of market forces, public service interventions and regulatory shifts in television journalism's changing production practices, news values and audience expectations. Accessibly written and packed with topical references, this authoritative account offers fresh insights into the past, present and future of journalism, making it a necessary point of reference for upper-level undergraduates, researchers and academics in broadcasting, journalism, mass communication and media studies.
About the Author: Stephen Cushion is a lecturer at the Cardiff School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University, UK. He is the Deputy Director of the MA in Journalism, Media and Communications and Political Communications programmes. He co-edited The Rise of 24-Hour News Television: Global Perspectives with Justin Lewis (2010, Peter Lang).