Hokum!

The Early Sound Slapstick Short and Depression-Era Mass Culture

Rob King (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

270 Seiten

2017
University of California Press (Verlag)
978-0-520-28811-9 (ISBN)

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Takes a comprehensive view of short-subject slapstick comedy in the early sound era. Challenging the received wisdom that sound destroyed the slapstick tradition, the author explores the slapstick short's Depression-era development against a backdrop of changes in film industry practice, comedic tastes, and moviegoing culture.

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Hokum! is the first book to take a comprehensive view of short-subject slapstick comedy in the early sound era. Challenging the received wisdom that sound destroyed the slapstick tradition, author Rob King explores the slapstick short's Depression-era development against a backdrop of changes in film industry practice, comedic tastes, and moviegoing culture. Each chapter is grounded in case studies of comedians and comic teams, including the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, and Robert Benchley. The book also examines how the past legacy of silent-era slapstick was subsequently reimagined as part of a nostalgic mythology of Hollywood's youth.

Rob King is Associate Professor at Columbia University's School of the Arts and author of the award-winning The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture.

List of Illustrations and Audiovisual Media
Acknowledgments
Introduction

PART I. CONTEXTS
1. “The Cuckoo School”: Humor and Metropolitan Culture in 1920s America
2. “The Stigma of Slapstick”: The Short-Subject Industry and Its Imagined Public

PART II. CASE HISTORIES
3. “The Spice of the Program”: Educational Pictures and the Small-Town Audience
4. “I Want Music Everywhere”: Music, Operetta, and Cultural Hierarchy at the Hal Roach Studios
5. “From the Archives of Keystone Memory”: Slapstick and Re-membrance at Columbia Pictures’ Short-Subjects Department
Coda: When Comedy Was King

List of Abbreviations
Notes
Index

Erscheinungsdatum	07.06.2017
Zusatzinfo	39 b-w, 5 video, 2 audio
Verlagsort	Berkerley
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	408 g
Themenwelt	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Film / TV
	Kunst / Musik / Theater ► Theater / Ballett
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien
	Technik
ISBN-10	0-520-28811-4 / 0520288114
ISBN-13	978-0-520-28811-9 / 9780520288119
Zustand	Neuware