MARC Record from marc_columbia

LEADER: 03588fam a2200457 a 4500
001 1426905
005 20220602032921.0
008 930803t19941994nyuaf b 001 0 eng
010 $a 93027388
020 $a0231084641 (alk. paper)
035 $a(OCoLC)28675468
035 $a(OCoLC)ocm28675468
035 $9AHU2722CU
035 $a(NNC)1426905
035 $a1426905
040 $aDLC$cDLC$dNNC
050 00 $aPN1995.9.H6$bP35 1994
082 00 $a791.43/616$220
100 1 $aPaul, William,$d1944-$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n83043614
245 10 $aLaughing, screaming :$bmodern Hollywood horror and comedy /$cWilliam Paul.
260 $aNew York, NY :$bColumbia University Press,$c[1994], ©1994.
300 $axi, 510 pages, 24 unnumbered pages of plates :$billustrations ;$c24 cm.
336 $atext$2rdacontent
337 $aunmediated$2rdamedia
338 $avolume$2rdacarrier
490 1 $aFilm and culture
504 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index.
520 $aWilliam Paul's exploration of an extremely popular box office genre - the gross-out movie - is the first book to take this lowbrow product seriously.
520 8 $aWriting about "movies that embraced the lowest common denominator as an aesthetic principle, movies that critics constantly griped about having to sit through," Paul examines their unique place in our culture. He focuses on gross-out horror and comedy films of the seventies and eighties - film cycles set in motion by the extraordinary successes of The Exorcist and Animal House. What links these genres together, Paul argues, is their concern with the human body - and all its scatological and sexual aspects.
520 8 $aThese "films of license," as Paul calls them, embrace "explicitness as part of their aesthetic." Tracing both of these culturally disreputable subgenres back to older traditions of festive comedy and Grand Guignol, Paul finds their precursors in horror films like The Birds and Night of the Living Dead as well as comedies such as M*A*S*H and Blazing Saddles that were produced under Hollywood's then recently liberalized censorship code.
520 8 $aMoving on to mass tastes, Paul asserts that American audiences are "not without powers of discrimination." He argues that gross-out movies challenge social tastes and values, but without the self-consciousness of avant-garde art.
520 8 $aThrough interpretations of classics by Charlie Chaplin and Alfred Hitchcock, blaxploitation movies, horror films by David Cronenburg and Stanley Kubrick, and comedies starring John Belushi and Bill Murray, Paul establishes gross-out as a true genre - one that "speaks in the voice of festive freedom, uncorrected and unconstrained by the reality principle... aggressive, seemingly improvised, and always ambivalent."
650 0 $aHorror films$xHistory and criticism.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008105766
650 0 $aComedy films$xHistory and criticism.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008101229
650 0 $aSensationalism in motion pictures.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85120039
650 0 $aSex in motion pictures.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85120622
650 0 $aViolence in motion pictures.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85143526
650 0 $aMotion pictures$xPsychological aspects.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh2008108034
830 0 $aFilm and culture.$0http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n92059833
852 00 $bbar$hPN1995.9.H6$iP35 1994
852 00 $bglx$hPN1995.9.H6$iP35 1994