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Mad to be saved : the Beats, the '50s, and film

Author: David Sterritt
Publisher: Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, ©1998.
Edition/Format:   Book : State or province government publication : EnglishView all editions and formats
Summary:
"Film critic David Sterritt presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the Beat Generation, its intersections with mainstream and experimental film, and the interactions of all of these with American society and the culture of the '50s. Examining American society in the '50s, Sterritt balances the Beat countercultural goal of rebellion through both artistic creation and everyday behavior against the mainstream  Read more...
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Additional Physical Format: Online version:
Sterritt, David.
Mad to be saved.
Carbondale : Southern Illinois University Press, c1998
(OCoLC)607119724
Material Type: Government publication, State or province government publication
Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: David Sterritt
ISBN: 0809321807 9780809321803
OCLC Number: 38048558
Description: xii, 258 p. ; 24 cm.
Contents: Introduction: Beats, Visions, and Cinema --
Pt. 1. History, Theory, Culture: The Beat Generation Meets the Lonely Crowd --
1. Historical Contexts --
2. Theoretical Frameworks --
Pt. 2. Literature, Photography, Film: From American Jukebox to Biologic Theater --
3. Social Criticism --
4. Beats, Films, and Liminality --
5. Heading Underground.
Responsibility: David Sterritt.
More information:

Abstract:

"Film critic David Sterritt presents an interdisciplinary exploration of the Beat Generation, its intersections with mainstream and experimental film, and the interactions of all of these with American society and the culture of the '50s. Examining American society in the '50s, Sterritt balances the Beat countercultural goal of rebellion through both artistic creation and everyday behavior against the mainstream values of conformity and conservatism, growing worry over cold-war hostilities, and the "rat race" toward material success." "After an introductory overview of the Beat Generation, its history, its antecedents and its influences, Sterritt shows the importance of "visual thinking" in the lives and works of major Beat authors, most notably Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burroughs. He turns to Mikhail Bakhtin's dialogic theory to portray the Beat writers - who were inspired by jazz and other liberating influences - as carnivalesque rebels against what they perceived as a rigid and stifling social order." "Showing the Beats as social critics, Sterritt looks at the work of '50s photographers Robert Frank and William Klein; the attack against Beat culture in the pictures and prose of Life magazine; and the counterattack in Frank's film Pull My Daisy, featuring key Beat personalities. He further explores expressions of rebelliousness in film noir, the melodramas of director Douglas Sirk, and other Hollywood films." "Finally, Sterritt shows the changing attitudes toward the Beat sensibility in Beat-related Hollywood movies like A Bucket of Blood and The Beat Generation; television programs like Route 66 and The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, nonstudio films like John Cassavetes's improvisational Shadows and Shirley Clarke's experimental The Connection; and radically avant-garde works by such doggedly independent screen artists as Stan Brakhage, Ron Rice, Bruce Connor, and Ken Jacobs, drawing connections between their achievements and the most subversive products of their Beat contemporaries."--BOOK JACKET.

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