Research Catalog

Title

The cinema and its shadow : race and technology in early cinema / Alice Maurice.

Author

Maurice, Alice.

Publication

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2013]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xi, 268 pages : illustrations; 23 cm

Summary

The Cinema and Its Shadow argues that race has defined the cinematic apparatus since the earliest motion pictures, especially at times of technological transition. In particular, this work explores how racial difference became central to the resolving of cinematic problems: the stationary camera, narrative form, realism, the synchronization of image and sound, and, perhaps most fundamentally, the immaterial image--the cinema's "(Bshadow," which figures both the material reality of the screen image and its racist past. Discussing early "(Brace subjects," Alice Maurice demonstrates that these films influenced cinematic narrative in lasting ways by helping to determine the relation between stillness and motion, spectacle and narrative drive. The book examines how motion picture technology related to race, embodiment, and authenticity at specific junctures in cinema's development, including the advent of narratives, feature films, and sound. In close readings of such films as The Cheat, Shadows, and Hallelujah!, Maurice reveals how the rhetoric of race repeatedly embodies film technology, endowing it with a powerful mix of authenticity and magic. In this way, the racialized subject became the perfect medium for showing off, shoring up, and reintroducing the cinematic apparatus at various points in the history of American film. Moving beyond analyzing race in purely thematic or ideological terms, Maurice traces how it shaped the formal and technological means of the cinema.

Subject

• Ethnicity in motion pictures
• Minorities in motion pictures
• Race in motion pictures
• Motion picture industry > Technological innovations
• African Americans in motion pictures

Bibliography (note)

• Includes filmography.
• Includes bibliographical references, filmography and index.

Contents

Introduction: embodying cinema -- Performing body, performing image: race and the boundaries of early cinematic narrative -- Face, race, and screen: close-ups and the transition to the feature film -- Recasting shadows: race, image, and audience -- "Cinema at its source": synchronizing race and sound in the early talkies -- Conclusion: red, white, and blue: digital cinema, race, and avatar.

Call Number

Sc D 13-1023

ISBN

• 9780816678044 (hc : alk. paper)
• 0816678049 (hc : alk. paper)
• 9780816678051 (pb : alk. paper)
• 0816678057 (pb : alk. paper)

LCCN

• 2012043821
• 40022060012

OCLC

816563784

Author

Maurice, Alice.

Title

The cinema and its shadow : race and technology in early cinema / Alice Maurice.

Publisher

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2013]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes filmography.

Includes bibliographical references, filmography and index.

Other Standard Identifier

40022060012

Research Call Number

Sc D 13-1023