Gone with the Wind an inspiration for the American avant-garde? Mickey Mouse a crucial source for the development of cutting-edge intellectual and aesthetic ideas? As Greg Taylor shows in this witty and provocative book, the idea is not so far-fetched. One of the first-ever studies of American film criticism. Artists in the Audience shows that film critics, beginning in the 1940s, turned to the movies as raw material to be molded into a more radical modernism than that offered by other contemporary artists or thinkers. In doing so, they offered readers a vanguard alternative that reshaped postwar American culture: nonaesthetic mass culture reconceived and refashioned into rich, personally relevant art by the attuned, creative spectator. Fittingly, this book should be of interest not just to scholars of the history and theory of film criticism, but to a wider audience interested in American belles lettres, arts criticism, and postwar culture.
By:
Greg Taylor
Imprint: Princeton University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Edition: New edition
Dimensions:
Height: 235mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 12mm
Weight: 312g
ISBN: 9780691089553
ISBN 10: 0691089558
Pages: 208
Publication Date: 05 November 2001
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
College/higher education
,
Undergraduate
,
Primary
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
PREFACE CHAPTER ONE The Spectator as Critic as Artist 3 CHAPTER TWO Movies to the Rescue: American Modernism and the Middlebrow Challenge 19 CHAPTER THREE Life on the Edge: Manny Farber and Cult Criticism 30 CHAPTER FOUR Hallucinating Hollywood: Parker Tyler and Camp Spectatorship 49 CHAPTER FIVE From Termites to Auteurs: Cultism Goes Mainstream 73 CHAPTER SIX Heavy Culture and Underground Camp 98 CHAPTER SEVEN Retreat into Theory 122 CONCLUSION Love, Death, and the Limits of Artistic Criticism 150 NOTES 159 REFERENCES 179 INDEX 193
Greg Taylor is Assistant Professor in the Conservatory of Theatre Arts and Film at Purchase College, State University of New York.
Reviews for Artists in the Audience: Cults, Camp, and American Film Criticism
Greg Taylor's intriguing study of film critics takes both a discriminating and aesthetic approach to the subject. . . . An illuminating book. --Filmbill Lively, provocative reading. . . . This is a gripping saga as Taylor tells it, carefully constructed and lucidly written. --David Sterritt, Cineaste Taylor constructs a detailed history of some of the most salient trends in Post-World War II American cinema and film criticism. . . . [His] points are well-taken and his analyses convincingly argued. --Robert L. Cagle, afterimage The educated public has known for years that vanguard film theory is one part self-indulgence, two parts hoodwinking. Taylor's study shows precisely how and why the interpreters lost touch within the medium. --Jacob M. Appel, Boston Book Review
