Captive Bodies: Postcolonial Subjectivity in Cinema (Suny Series, Cultural Studies in Cinema/Video) - Softcover

Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0791441563 ISBN 13: 9780791441565

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 1999

Synopsis

Examines the film industry's fascination with bondage and captivity.

Captive Bodies examines the film industry’s fascination with bondage and captivity, seeking to revisualize American cinema through the lens of critical discourse on captivity narratives, slave narratives, and postcolonial critiques of cinematic constructions of “whiteness,” “blackness,” gender, and sexuality. Captivity is also examined here in relation to both those in front and behind the camera. Are we “subject” to others? Are we “bound” and “captive” in images? Are we “captive” bodies and “captive” audiences, held hostage to the spectacles of voyeuristic pleasure? Are those behind the camera involved in a process not unlike that of the slave system, enslaving the body in the image? To answer these and other questions, Captive Bodies draws upon a wide range of critical methodologies, including postcolonial studies, feminist film criticism, anthropology, and phenomenology.

About this title

About the Author:

Gwendolyn Audrey Foster is Willa Cather Endowed Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She is author of numerous books in the areas of film studies/cultural studies with books and articles on race, gender, and class, as well as film history and popular culture.

Visit vimeo.com/user33782190 to view Foster's short experimental films.

Visit gwendolynaudreyfoster.com for more information on Foster's publications.

Review:

"Foster's text is audacious in its conceptualization and treatment of cultural 'captivity.' Through her discussion not only of film texts but also of modes of film production, she identifies and examines the various expressions, both containing and transgressive, of the narrative of captivity that are bound to culturally pervasive representations of gender, sexuality, and race." -- Marcia Landy, author of The Folklore of Consensus: Theatricality in the Italian Cinema, 1930-1943.

"Examines motion pictures' fascination with bondage and captivity. Interestingly, the author goes beyond what is depicted on the screen to analyze those in front of as well as behind the screen: Are audiences 'captive' and held hostage to the spectacle of voyeuristic pleasure? Are those behind the camera involved in a process not unlike the slave system, enslaving the body in the image? Feminist film criticism, anthropology, and phenomenology are among the methods used to address these questions." --CBQ

About this edition

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0791441563
• ISBN 13: 9780791441565
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 270