| Description |
1 online resource (xi, 272 pages) : illustrations |
| Series |
Duke backfile |
| Contents |
The early cinema encounters empire: war actualities, American modernity, and military masculinity -- Placing audiences on the scene of history: modern warfare and the battle reenactment at the turn of the century -- Electric modernity and the cinema at the pan-American exposition: the city of living light -- Regulating mobility: traffic, technology and feature-length narrativity |
| Summary |
In Picturing American Modernity, Kristen Whissel investigates the relationship between early American cinema and the experience of technological modernity. She demonstrates how between the late 1890s and the eve of the First World War moving pictures helped the U.S. public understand the possibilities and perils of new forms of "traffic" produced by industrialization and urbanization. As more efficient ways to move people, goods, and information transformed work and leisure at home and contributed to the expansion of the U.S. empire abroad, silent films presented compelling visual representations of the spaces, bodies, machines, and forms of mobility that increasingly defined modern life in the United States and its new territories. Whissel shows that by portraying key events, achievements, and anxieties, the cinema invited American audiences to participate in the rapidly changing world around them. Moving pictures provided astonishing visual dispatches from military camps prior to the outbreak of fighting in the Spanish-American War. They allowed audiences to delight in images of the Pan-American Exposition, and also to mourn the assassination of President McKinley there. One early film genre, the reenactment, presented spectators with renditions of bloody battles fought overseas during the Philippine-American War. Early features offered sensational dramatizations of the scandalous "white slave trade," which was often linked to immigration and new forms of urban work and leisure. By bringing these frequently distant events and anxieties "near" to audiences in cities and towns across the country, the cinema helped construct an American national identity for the machine age |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 253-262) and index |
| Notes |
English |
|
Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002. http://purl.oclc.org/DLF/benchrepro0212 MiAaHDL |
|
Print version record |
|
digitized 2022. HathiTrust Digital Library committed to preserve pda MiAaHDL |
| SUBJECT |
Technik -- Motiv -- Film -- USA. idsbb |
| Subject |
Technology in motion pictures.
|
|
Transportation in motion pictures.
|
|
War films -- United States -- History and criticism
|
|
Silent films -- United States -- History and criticism
|
|
ART -- Film & Video.
|
|
PERFORMING ARTS -- Film & Video -- Reference.
|
|
PERFORMING ARTS -- Film & Video -- History & Criticism.
|
|
Silent films.
|
|
Technology in motion pictures.
|
|
Transportation in motion pictures.
|
|
War films.
|
|
Technik
|
|
Gesellschaft
|
|
Film -- Motiv -- Technik -- USA.
|
|
Stummfilm -- USA -- Geschichte.
|
|
Film -- Motiv -- Verkehr -- USA.
|
|
Verkehr -- Motiv -- Film -- USA.
|
|
Stummfilm.
|
|
Film.
|
|
Verkehr.
|
|
Transport.
|
|
Technischer Fortschritt.
|
|
Motiv (Film)
|
|
Technology in motion pictures.
|
|
Transportation in motion pictures.
|
|
War films -- United States -- History and criticism.
|
|
Silent films -- United States -- History and criticism.
|
|
Film.
|
|
United States.
|
|
USA.
|
| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
|
| Form |
Electronic book
|
| ISBN |
9780822391456 |
|
0822391457 |
|
1283065118 |
|
9781283065115 |
|
9786613065117 |
|
6613065110 |
|
