French Blockbusters: Cultural Politics of a Transnational Cinema
- ISBN-10
- 1474424236
- ISBN-13
- 9781474424233
- Category
- Performing Arts / Film / General
- Pages
- 236
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2019
- Publisher
- Edinburgh University Press
- Author
- Charlie Michael
Description
The digitised spectacles conjured by a word like 'blockbuster' may create a certain cognitive dissonance with received ideas about French cinema - long celebrated as a model for philosophical, economic and aesthetic resistance to globalised popular culture. While the Gallic 'cultural exception' remains a forceful current to this day, this book shows how the onslaught of Hollywood mega-franchises and new media platforms since the 1980s has also provoked an overtly commercialised response from French producers eager to redefine the stakes and scope of their own traditions. Cutting a swath through recent French-produced cinema, French Blockbusters offers the first book-length consideration of the theoretical implications, historical impact and cultural consequences of a recent grouping of popular films that are rapidly changing what it means to make - or to see - a 'French' film today. From English-language action vehicles like Valérian and the City of a Thousand Planets (Besson, 2017) to revisionist historical films like Of Gods and Men (Beauvois, 2011) and crowd-pleasing comedies like Intouchables (Tolédano & Nakache, 2011), the variously filiated 'local blockbusters' from contemporary France brim with the seeds of cultural contradiction, but also with the energy of a forceful counter-history. Charlie Michael earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and currently teaches film and media studies in the Atlanta area. He co-edited the Directory of World Cinema: France (2013) and his work has also appeared in SubStance, The Velvet Light Trap, Quebec Studies, French Politics, Culture & Society, and A Companion to Contemporary French Cinema.
Get the book
Other editions
-
- 2019-07-17
- 256 pages
- Ebook
- Edinburgh University Press
-
- 2019-07-17
- 256 pages
- Ebook
- Edinburgh University Press
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