Overview

This collection considers Lubitsch, the famous author of Weimar and classical Hollywood cinema, as a role model for our times. From this ethical position Lubitsch's cinema is regarded as a conceptual tool to unlock the serious issues of contemporary politics, culture, philosophy, philosophy of art and theatre. It is not only the socio-political or philosophical context of Lubitsch's work that is at stake in these chapters; they go deeper than a simple film reading to explore Lubitsch as a lexicon with which we can analyze and explore the issues of our time. The authors explore implications of films for political philosophy and re-think his ideas of revolution, communism, and capitalism (films such as Ninotchka, Oyster Princess). Many authors explore Lubitsch's indirect approach to sexuality as a way to maintain the romantic and mysterious nature of sex in our time, as instead as a source of obscenity and awkwardness. Authors also explore radical political incorrectness and vileness of his characters, suggesting that one can solve the tyranny of PC and the absence of humor today with the help of Lubitsch. They also explore his feminism that could be used as a contrast to the #MeToo movement.

Full Product Details

Author:   Gregor Moder ,  Ivana Novak ,  Mladen Dolar ,  Jela Krecic
Publisher:   Rowman & Littlefield
Imprint:   Rowman & Littlefield
Dimensions:   Width: 15.70cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 23.60cm
Weight:   0.445kg
ISBN:  

9781538146163

ISBN 10:   1538146169
Pages:   176
Publication Date:   22 August 2024
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Ethics of Ernst Lubitsch by Gregor Moder and Ivana Novak Section One. POLITICS AND REVOLUTION Chapter 1: An Uprising with a Lubitsch Touch by Alenka Zupančič Chapter 2: Communist Ninotchka by Aaron Schuster Section Two. THEATER AND COMICALITY Chapter 3: The Uncanny and the Comic: Freud avec Lubitsch by Mladen Dolar Chapter 4: Lubitsch, Shakespeare, and the Theatricality of Power by Gregor Moder Chapter 5: What Touches Me Under My Ego. Comicality in Lubitsch, and its Psychoanalytic Structure by Robert Pfaller Section Three. LOVE AND SEX Chapter 6: Lubitsch’s Women, or, Why Women Deserve Love and Money by Jela Krečič Chapter 7: The Princess Learns to Wink: Lubitsch and the Politics of the Obscene by Yuval Kremnitzer Chapter 8: The Disenchantment and the Restoration of Love in The Shop Around the Cornerby Ivana Novak Index About the Contributors

Reviews

There are those who see comedy only as a mode of relief from the dangers and anxieties of the real world and who thus dismiss the genre merely as a form of distraction. Such a ridiculous stance drastically avoids the precise ethical core of comedy, which, in the hands of Ernst Lubitsch, provides a real and authentic encounter with the world--one that is needed more than ever today. This is a fact demonstrated with excitement and brilliance by the authors collected in Novak and Moder's book. Building upon the rich and expanding analytical frameworks produced by the Ljubljana School for Theoretical Psychoanalysis, The Ethics of Ernst Lubitsch is a marvelous achievement showing why the name Lubitsch deserves to be etched in stone alongside the names Lacan and Hegel. --Matthew Flisfeder, associate professor of rhetoric and communications, The University of Winnipeg, Canada

Author Information

Ivana Novak is a curator of the film programme at the Slovenian national television (RTV Slovenija). She is a film critic and theoretician, a musician and a PhD candidate at the University of Ljubljana. Her main topics of research are humour and comedy, classical American and European cinema and television series. She has co-edited several books: Lubitsch Can’t Wait (2014), Stanley Cavell: Refleksija filma (2015), and Do zadnjega smeha: Preston Sturges (2016). Gregor Moder is a senior research associate in the Department of Philosophy, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is the author of Comic Love: Shakespeare, Hegel, Lacan (2016) and Hegel and Spinoza: Substance and Negativity (2017), and he coedited The Object of Comedy: Philosophies and Performances (2020). He is currently the principal investigator in a research project on the “Theatricality of Power.”

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