{"title":"Jason Sperb","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"flickers-of-film-book-jason-sperb-9780813576015","title":"Flickers of Film","description":"\u003cdiv\u003eWhether paying tribute to silent films in \u003ci\u003eHugo\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eThe Artist\u003c\/i\u003e or celebrating arcade games in \u003ci\u003eTron: Legacy\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eWreck-It-Ralph\u003c\/i\u003e, Hollywood suddenly seems to be experiencing a wave of intense nostalgia for outmoded technologies. To what extent is that a sincere lament for modes of artistic production that have nearly vanished in an all-digital era? And to what extent is it simply a cynical marketing ploy, built on the notion that nostalgia has always been one of Hollywood's top-selling products?\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e In \u003ci\u003eFlickers of Film\u003c\/i\u003e, Jason Sperb offers nuanced and unexpected answers to these questions, examining the benefits of certain types of film nostalgia, while also critiquing how Hollywood's nostalgic representations of old technologies obscure important aspects of their histories. He interprets this affection for the prehistory and infancy of digital technologies in relation to an industry-wide anxiety about how the digital has grown to dominate Hollywood, pushing it into an uncertain creative and economic future. Yet he also suggests that Hollywood's nostalgia for old technologies ignores the professionals who once employed them, as well as the labor opportunities that have been lost through the computerization and outsourcing of film industry jobs. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e Though it deals with nostalgia, \u003ci\u003eFlickers of Film\u003c\/i\u003e is strikingly cutting-edge, one of the first studies to critically examine Pixar's role in the film industry, cinematic representations of videogames, and the economic effects of participatory culture. As he takes in everything from \u003ci\u003eTerminator: Salvation\u003c\/i\u003e to \u003ci\u003eThe Lego Movie\u003c\/i\u003e, Sperb helps us see what's distinct about this recent wave of self-aware nostalgic films--how Hollywood nostalgia today isn't what it used to be. \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49526963306769,"sku":"GOR013429849","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0813576016.jpg?v=1761389936"},{"product_id":"disney-s-most-notorious-film-book-jason-sperb-9780292756779","title":"Disney's Most Notorious Film","description":"The Walt Disney Company offers a vast universe of movies, television shows, theme parks, and merchandise, all carefully crafted to present an image of wholesome family entertainment. Yet Disney also produced one of the most infamous Hollywood films, Song of the South. Using cartoon characters and live actors to retell the stories of Joel Chandler Harris, SotS portrays a kindly black Uncle Remus who tells tales of Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and the Tar Baby to adoring white children. Audiences and critics alike found its depiction of African Americans condescending and outdated when the film opened in 1946, but it grew in popularity--and controversy--with subsequent releases. Although Disney has withheld the film from American audiences since the late 1980s, SotS has an enthusiastic fan following, and pieces of the film--such as the Oscar-winning Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah--remain throughout Disney's media universe. Disney's Most Notorious Film examines the racial and convergence histories of Song of the South to offer new insights into how audiences and Disney have negotiated the film's controversies over the last seven decades. Jason Sperb skillfully traces the film's reception history, showing how audience perceptions of SotS have reflected debates over race in the larger society. He also explores why and how Disney, while embargoing the film as a whole, has repurposed and repackaged elements of SotS so extensively that they linger throughout American culture, serving as everything from cultural metaphors to consumer products.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49984401637649,"sku":"CIN0292756771G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0292756771.jpg?v=1752316123"},{"product_id":"blossoms-and-blood-book-jason-sperb-9781477302217","title":"Blossoms and Blood","description":"From his film festival debut Hard Eight to ambitious studio epics Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson's unique cinematic vision focuses on postmodern excess and media culture. In Blossoms and Blood, Jason Sperb studies the filmmaker's evolving aesthetic and its historical context to argue that Anderson's films create new, often ambivalent, narratives of American identity in a media-saturated world. Blossoms and Blood explores Anderson's films in relation to the aesthetic and economic shifts within the film industry and to America's changing social and political sensibilities since the mid-1990s. Sperb provides an auteur study with important implications for film history, media studies, cultural studies, and gender studies. He charts major themes in Anderson's work, such as stardom, self-reflexivity, and masculinity and shows how they are indicative of trends in late twentieth-century American culture. One of the first books to focus on Anderson's work, Blossoms and Blood reveals the development of an under-studied filmmaker attuned to the contradictions of a postmodern media culture.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":50503876772113,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50503877329169,"sku":"GOR009809264","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51865671237905,"sku":"CIN1477302212G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1477302212.jpg?v=1761388609"},{"product_id":"hard-sell-of-paradise-book-jason-sperb-9781438487731","title":"The Hard Sell of Paradise","description":"The Hard Sell of Paradise examines how mid-twentieth-century Hollywood, negotiating the rhetoric of the tourism industry, offered a complex and contradictory vision of \"Hawai'i\" for its audiences. From the classic studio system and elite tourism of the 1930s to a postwar era of mass travel, TV, and new leisure markets, the book explores how an eclectic group of populist media reflected the language of tourism not only through its narratives of leisure, but also through its complex engagement with larger cultural and historical questions, such as colonialism, world war, and statehood. Drawing on rare archival research, The Hard Sell of Paradise also explores the valuable role that tourism partners such as United Airlines, Matson Cruise Lines, and the Hawaii Tourist Bureau played in directly and indirectly influencing such films and television shows as Waikiki Wedding, Diamond Head, Blue Hawaii, The Endless Summer, and Hawaii Five-O.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51026120114449,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51026122178833,"sku":"NIN9781438487731","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53590881009937,"sku":"NLS9781438487731","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1438487738.jpg?v=1751052615"},{"product_id":"hard-sell-of-paradise-book-jason-sperb-9781438487748","title":"The Hard Sell of Paradise","description":"The Hard Sell of Paradise examines how mid-twentieth-century Hollywood, negotiating the rhetoric of the tourism industry, offered a complex and contradictory vision of \"Hawai'i\" for its audiences. From the classic studio system and elite tourism of the 1930s to a postwar era of mass travel, TV, and new leisure markets, the book explores how an eclectic group of populist media reflected the language of tourism not only through its narratives of leisure, but also through its complex engagement with larger cultural and historical questions, such as colonialism, world war, and statehood. Drawing on rare archival research, The Hard Sell of Paradise also explores the valuable role that tourism partners such as United Airlines, Matson Cruise Lines, and the Hawaii Tourist Bureau played in directly and indirectly influencing such films and television shows as Waikiki Wedding, Diamond Head, Blue Hawaii, The Endless Summer, and Hawaii Five-O.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51026172543249,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51026174738705,"sku":"NIN9781438487748","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":53587631243537,"sku":"NGR9781438487748","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53590881861905,"sku":"NLS9781438487748","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/1438487746.jpg?v=1751020345"},{"product_id":"stranger-from-omaha-book-jason-sperb-9781477332573","title":"The Stranger from Omaha","description":"The first in-depth analysis of the films of Alexander Payne through the lenses of authorship, tourism, and leisure.   With the films Election, About Schmidt, Sideways, Nebraska, and The Holdovers, Alexander Payne has carved out an unusual role in American cinema as a bankable auteur. There is something about Payne’s neurotics and searchers, his working stiffs and disillusioned idealists-something funny, moving, and filled with insight.    Jason Sperb dissects Payne’s oeuvre, focusing on the director’s penchant for travel narratives. Payne’s films usually center on male protagonists discontent with the emotional and material realities of the day-to-day and seeking satisfaction in some literal or metaphorical elsewhere. But their attempts to escape wind up perpetuating, rather than alleviating, the imbalance between labor and leisure that structures modern life. In this sense, Sperb argues, Payne’s characters are akin to tourists, searching for fleeting glimpses of the fulfillment they dream about. Examining themes of masculinity, nostalgia, whiteness, and class, The Stranger from Omaha is the first auteur study devoted to Payne’s delicately balanced cinematic world. An outsider even in his own heartland, Payne proves to be an artist working at a clarifying remove-a witness to the American condition, observing from just enough distance.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51688791146769,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51688794685713,"sku":"NGR9781477332573","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52499189661969,"sku":"NIN9781477332573","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/147733257X.jpg?v=1760780817"},{"product_id":"kubrick-facade-book-jason-sperb-9780810858558","title":"The Kubrick Facade","description":"Many of Stanley Kubrick's films are often interpreted as cold and ambiguous. Whether viewing Barry Lyndon, 2001, The Shining, or Eyes Wide Shut, there is a sense in which these films resist their own audiences, creating a distance from them. Though many note the coldness of Kubrick's films, a smaller number attempt to explore exactly how his body of work elicits this particular reaction. Fewer still attempt to articulate what it might mean to feel Stanley Kubrick's films. In The Kubrick Facade, Jason Sperb examines the narrative ambiguity of the director's films-from the voice-over narration in early works, including the once forgotten Fear and Desire-to the blank faces of characters in his later ones. In doing so, Sperb shows how both devices struggle in vain to make sense of the chaos and sterility of the cinematic surface. All thirteen of Stanley Kubrick's feature-length films are discussed in chronological order, from the little-seen and long-neglected Fear and Desire to the posthumous release of Eyes Wide Shut. Sperb also discusses Kubrick's importance to Steven Spielberg's AI. While exploring all of Kubrick's films, the author concentrates in particular on The Killing, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, The Shining, Full Metal Jacket, and Eyes Wide Shut. This is also the first book-length study that focuses considerable attention on Fear and Desire and its relevance to Kubrick's larger body of work. In this respect, The Kubrick Facade is one of the first truly comprehensive books on narrative in the maverick director's films. It is also the first book to integrate a discussion of AI, and the first to fully explore the importance of the consistent visual emphasis on blank, silent faces in his post-Lolita films.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":52451957801233,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52451958391057,"sku":"NLS9780810858558","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780810858558.jpg?v=1759363114"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/en-gb\/collections\/author-books-by-jason-sperb.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}