Un-American Psycho: Brian De Palma and the Political Invisible

Author:   Chris Dumas
Publisher:   Intellect
ISBN:  

9781841505541


Pages:   240
Publication Date:   15 July 2012
Format:   Paperback
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
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Un-American Psycho: Brian De Palma and the Political Invisible


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Full Product Details

Author:   Chris Dumas
Publisher:   Intellect
Imprint:   Intellect Books
Dimensions:   Width: 17.80cm , Height: 1.40cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.413kg
ISBN:  

9781841505541


ISBN 10:   1841505544
Pages:   240
Publication Date:   15 July 2012
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Case of the Missing Disciplinary Object    Chapter 1: Shower Scene  Hitchcock and the Murder of Marion Crane How to Blame De Palma How to Operate the Hitchcock Machine Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Žižek (But Were Afraid to Ask De Palma)    Chapter 2: Get to Know Your Failure  Death(s) of the Left: An Historical Cartoon Godard: The Holy Man Made in U.S.A. Cinema of Failed Revolt   Chapter 3: The Personal and The Political  Bad Objects The Liberal Gaze The Political Invisible    Conclusion: Norman Bates and His Doubles

Reviews

How, at this date, can you possibly write an original book on Alfred Hitchcock? Or on his fellow sovereign of Film Studies, Jean-Luc Godard? Or, for that matter, on anything in Film Studies, a discipline whose present practitioners seem to drive the same luxe brands of theory along the same political/aesthetic autoroutes? To these riddles, Chris Dumas gives us a surprising but cogent answer: by writing an outrageously original book on Brian De Palma, the figure whom this same discipline has - with suspicious but never before interrogated vehemence - dismissed as Hitchcock's evil emulator and Godard's dumb double. De Palma, who in Dumas finally finds a critic and theorist worthy of him, has undoubtedly been waiting a long time for this book. But so has Film Studies. In a field deeply fearful of being cast out from scholarly legitimacy, of bearing the same stigma that it has inflicted on De Palma, Un-American Psycho can't but register as remarkably fresh work in every main sense: unusual, invigorating, cheeky. But try to imagine all that a character in Psycho might have had in mind when he complained that the air was ""hot as fresh milk,"" and you'll be alerted to a rarer and possibly more troubling sort of freshness on offer here. This is, to give it a name, the raw thrill of live writing. D.A. Miller, John F. Hotchkis Professor, UC Berkeley Reading this book is like drinking that extra cup of coffee. Organized around two intricately interwoven topics - the history of Film Studies and the failed reception of Brian De Palma's films - this book asks troubling, provocative questions, not only about the causal relationship of politics to taste, but about a certain unease at the heart of Film Studies itself. Gracefully written, it moves from polemic to close textual analysis to theory without skipping a beat. At its most basic, it provides a clear, lucid, and intelligent updating of Hitchcock, Godard, and De Palma scholarship. At its most sharply angled moments, it demands that we revisit the basic assumptions of the discipline. Brave, exacting, brilliant, and confrontational, it is the most radical thing I've read in a long time - not only in the sense of challenging the status quo, but of taking us truly back to our roots. Joan Hawkins, author of Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde The thesis of Chris Dumas's book is as audacious as it is entertaining: As De Palma is to Hitchcock, so too is Dumas to A iA ek and to all of Dumas's other parental figures who dominate much of today's film studies discourse. With a combination of sometimes wince-inducing Oedipal outrage and lovingly obsessive filial piety, Dumas assumes the voice of film studies' preternaturally argumentative teenage son, in order to claim not only a defining place for De Palma in film history but a revolutionary understanding of how Anglophone film studies has produced and protected its own blind spots in order to maintain itself as a discipline. By elevating the figure of De Palma from a lost object to a genuinely wonderful bad one, Dumas points the way also to a new understanding of the history of film studies. This is a brave and brilliant book James Schamus, author of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Gertrud: The Moving Word


How, at this date, can you possibly write an original book on Alfred Hitchcock? Or on his fellow sovereign of Film Studies, Jean-Luc Godard? Or, for that matter, on anything in Film Studies, a discipline whose present practitioners seem to drive the same luxe brands of theory along the same political/aesthetic autoroutes? To these riddles, Chris Dumas gives us a surprising but cogent answer: by writing an outrageously original book on Brian De Palma, the figure whom this same discipline has - with suspicious but never before interrogated vehemence - dismissed as Hitchcock's evil emulator and Godard's dumb double. De Palma, who in Dumas finally finds a critic and theorist worthy of him, has undoubtedly been waiting a long time for this book. But so has Film Studies. In a field deeply fearful of being cast out from scholarly legitimacy, of bearing the same stigma that it has inflicted on De Palma, Un-American Psycho can't but register as remarkably fresh work in every main sense: unusual, invigorating, cheeky. But try to imagine all that a character in Psycho might have had in mind when he complained that the air was hot as fresh milk, and you'll be alerted to a rarer and possibly more troubling sort of freshness on offer here. This is, to give it a name, the raw thrill of live writing. D.A. Miller, John F. Hotchkis Professor, UC Berkeley Reading this book is like drinking that extra cup of coffee. Organized around two intricately interwoven topics - the history of Film Studies and the failed reception of Brian De Palma's films - this book asks troubling, provocative questions, not only about the causal relationship of politics to taste, but about a certain unease at the heart of Film Studies itself. Gracefully written, it moves from polemic to close textual analysis to theory without skipping a beat. At its most basic, it provides a clear, lucid, and intelligent updating of Hitchcock, Godard, and De Palma scholarship. At its most sharply angled moments, it demands that we revisit the basic assumptions of the discipline. Brave, exacting, brilliant, and confrontational, it is the most radical thing I've read in a long time - not only in the sense of challenging the status quo, but of taking us truly back to our roots. Joan Hawkins, author of Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde The thesis of Chris Dumas's book is as audacious as it is entertaining: As De Palma is to Hitchcock, so too is Dumas to A iA ek and to all of Dumas's other parental figures who dominate much of today's film studies discourse. With a combination of sometimes wince-inducing Oedipal outrage and lovingly obsessive filial piety, Dumas assumes the voice of film studies' preternaturally argumentative teenage son, in order to claim not only a defining place for De Palma in film history but a revolutionary understanding of how Anglophone film studies has produced and protected its own blind spots in order to maintain itself as a discipline. By elevating the figure of De Palma from a lost object to a genuinely wonderful bad one, Dumas points the way also to a new understanding of the history of film studies. This is a brave and brilliant book James Schamus, author of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Gertrud: The Moving Word


"How, at this date, can you possibly write an original book on Alfred Hitchcock? Or on his fellow sovereign of Film Studies, Jean-Luc Godard? Or, for that matter, on anything in Film Studies, a discipline whose present practitioners seem to drive the same luxe brands of theory along the same political/aesthetic autoroutes? To these riddles, Chris Dumas gives us a surprising but cogent answer: by writing an outrageously original book on Brian De Palma, the figure whom this same discipline has - with suspicious but never before interrogated vehemence - dismissed as Hitchcock's evil emulator and Godard's dumb double. De Palma, who in Dumas finally finds a critic and theorist worthy of him, has undoubtedly been waiting a long time for this book. But so has Film Studies. In a field deeply fearful of being cast out from scholarly legitimacy, of bearing the same stigma that it has inflicted on De Palma, Un-American Psycho can't but register as remarkably fresh work in every main sense: unusual, invigorating, cheeky. But try to imagine all that a character in Psycho might have had in mind when he complained that the air was ""hot as fresh milk,"" and you'll be alerted to a rarer and possibly more troubling sort of freshness on offer here. This is, to give it a name, the raw thrill of live writing. D.A. Miller, John F. Hotchkis Professor, UC Berkeley Reading this book is like drinking that extra cup of coffee. Organized around two intricately interwoven topics - the history of Film Studies and the failed reception of Brian De Palma's films - this book asks troubling, provocative questions, not only about the causal relationship of politics to taste, but about a certain unease at the heart of Film Studies itself. Gracefully written, it moves from polemic to close textual analysis to theory without skipping a beat. At its most basic, it provides a clear, lucid, and intelligent updating of Hitchcock, Godard, and De Palma scholarship. At its most sharply angled moments, it demands that we revisit the basic assumptions of the discipline. Brave, exacting, brilliant, and confrontational, it is the most radical thing I've read in a long time - not only in the sense of challenging the status quo, but of taking us truly back to our roots. Joan Hawkins, author of Cutting Edge: Art Horror and the Horrific Avant-Garde The thesis of Chris Dumas's book is as audacious as it is entertaining: As De Palma is to Hitchcock, so too is Dumas to A iA ek and to all of Dumas's other parental figures who dominate much of today's film studies discourse. With a combination of sometimes wince-inducing Oedipal outrage and lovingly obsessive filial piety, Dumas assumes the voice of film studies' preternaturally argumentative teenage son, in order to claim not only a defining place for De Palma in film history but a revolutionary understanding of how Anglophone film studies has produced and protected its own blind spots in order to maintain itself as a discipline. By elevating the figure of De Palma from a lost object to a genuinely wonderful bad one, Dumas points the way also to a new understanding of the history of film studies. This is a brave and brilliant book James Schamus, author of Carl Theodor Dreyer's Gertrud: The Moving Word"


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Chris Dumas is an independent scholar and artist based in San Francisco.

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