Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics

New
Paperback
2007
$37.45

Bad Girls Go to Hell. Cannibal Holocaust. Eve and the Handyman. Examining film culture's ongoing fascination with the low, bad, and sleazy faces of cinema, Sleaze Artists brings together film scholars with a shared interest in the questions posed by disreputable movies and suspect cinema. They explore the ineffable quality of sleaze in relation to a range of issues, including the production realities of low-budget exploitation pictures and the ever-shifting terrain of reception and taste.
Writing about horror, exploitation, and sexploitation films, the contributors delve into topics ranging from the place of the Aztec horror film in debates about Mexican national identity to a cycle of 1960s films exploring homosexual desire in the military. One contributor charts the distribution saga of Mario Bava's 1972 film Lisa and the Devil through the highs and lows of art cinema, fringe television, grindhouse circuits, and connoisseur DVD markets. Another offers a new perspective on the work of Doris Wishman, the New York housewife turned sexploitation director of the 1960s who has become a cult figure in bad-cinema circles over the past decade. Other contributors analyze the relation between image and sound in sexploitation films and Italian horror movies, the advertising strategies adopted by sexploitation producers during the early 1960s, the relationship between art and trash in Todd Haynes's oeuvre, and the ways that the Friday the 13th series complicates the distinction between trash and legitimate cinema. The volume closes with an essay on why cinephiles love to hate the movies.
Contributors. Harry M. Benshoff, Kay Dickinson, Chris Fujiwara, Colin Gunckel, Joan Hawkins, Kevin Heffernan, Matt Hills, Chuck Kleinhans, Tania Modleski, Eric Schaefer, Jeffrey Sconce, Greg Taylor

Synopsis

Bad Girls Go to Hell. Cannibal Holocaust. Eve and the Handyman. Examining film culture's ongoing fascination with the low, bad, and sleazy faces of cinema, Sleaze Artists brings together film scholars with a shared interest in the questions posed by disreputable movies and suspect cinema. They explore the ineffable quality of sleaze in relation to a range of issues, including the production realities of low-budget exploitation pictures and the ever-shifting terrain of reception and taste.

Writing about horror, exploitation, and sexploitation films, the contributors delve into topics ranging from the place of the Aztec horror film in debates about Mexican national identity to a cycle of 1960s films exploring homosexual desire in the military. One contributor charts the distribution saga of Mario Bava's 1972 film Lisa and the Devil through the highs and lows of art cinema, fringe television, grindhouse circuits, and connoisseur DVD markets. Another offers a new perspective on the work of Doris Wishman, the New York housewife turned sexploitation director of the 1960s who has become a cult figure in bad-cinema circles over the past decade. Other contributors analyze the relation between image and sound in sexploitation films and Italian horror movies, the advertising strategies adopted by sexploitation producers during the early 1960s, the relationship between art and trash in Todd Haynes's oeuvre, and the ways that the Friday the 13th series complicates the distinction between trash and legitimate cinema. The volume closes with an essay on why cinephiles love to hate the movies.

Contributors. Harry M. Benshoff, Kay Dickinson, Chris Fujiwara, Colin Gunckel, Joan Hawkins, Kevin Heffernan, Matt Hills, Chuck Kleinhans, Tania Modleski, Eric Schaefer, Jeffrey Sconce, Greg Taylor

$37.45

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 352
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 11 Dec 2007
ISBN 10: 0822339641
ISBN 13: 9780822339649
Book Overview: The impact that non-mainstream and middlebrow film genres have had on popular culture--including sexploitation, horror, cult, XXX, and indie films

Media Reviews

There is a certain thrill inherent in a scholarly anthology that wholly embraces those films usually deemed disreputable, disgusting, cheap, and perhaps even anti-intellectual. . . . A satisfyingly subversive addition to film studies and cultural studies. . . . - Adam Dodd, M/C Reviews
One of the most intriguing essayists in the book is Kay Dickinson, on how music figured in Britain's banning of five Italian films from videotape distribution. - Nina C. Ayoub, Chronicle of Higher Education
Personally, I found the book's first section, `Sleazy Historyies,' to be the most compelling . . . . The book's second section, `Sleazy Afterlives,' contains some top-notch retrospective analyses of marginal films. - Mikita Brottman, PopMatters
Sleaze Artists constitutes an honest attempt to trip the cultural rift. There's a becoming undercurrent of humility to most of the essays, which suggests that even the brightest minds in cultural studies are still refining their approach to what is generally a back-breaking endeavor-elevating the low into the rarefied (and suffocating) air of academic contemplation. - Adam Nayman, Cineaste
Sleaze Artists represents an articulate, accessible, and thoughtful adventure into the world of cinematic bad taste and low culture. . . . Sleaze Artists provides us with clear, thoughtful discussion about some great sleazy movies. - Parley Ann Boswell, Journal of American Cultures
Sleaze Artists is an excellent collection, which covers a wide range of topics important to the understanding of sleaze cinema, and is a great addition to both cinema and cultural studies. - Lyndall Clipstone, Media International Australia
Aztec blood sacrifices! Knife-wielding psychos!! Libido-crazed military men!!! Martin Heidegger!!!! With verve and vigor, Sleaze Artists offers this . . . and more! The book boldly rips the lid off the wacky world of sleaze movies with subversive delight and intellectual insight!! Don't go into this volume alone!-unless you are ready for sharp scholarship, rigorous historiography, careful argument, and a deep commitment to an understanding of cinema in all its richness across a variety of taste cultures!! -Dana Polan, Cinema Studies, New York University
Sleaze Artists constitutes an honest attempt to trip the cultural rift. There's a becoming undercurrent of humility to most of the essays, which suggests that even the brightest minds in cultural studies are still refining their approach to what is generally a back-breaking endeavor-elevating the low into the rarefied (and suffocating) air of academic contemplation. -- Adam Nayman * Cineaste *
Sleaze Artists is an excellent collection, which covers a wide range of topics important to the understanding of sleaze cinema, and is a great addition to both cinema and cultural studies. -- Lyndall Clipstone * Media International Australia *
Sleaze Artists represents an articulate, accessible, and thoughtful adventure into the world of cinematic bad taste and low culture. . . . Sleaze Artists provides us with clear, thoughtful discussion about some great sleazy movies. -- Parley Ann Boswell * Journal of American Cultures *
One of the most intriguing essayists in the book is Kay Dickinson, on how music figured in Britain's banning of five Italian films from videotape distribution. -- Nina C. Ayoub * Chronicle of Higher Education *
Personally, I found the book's first section, `Sleazy Historyies,' to be the most compelling . . . . The book's second section, `Sleazy Afterlives,' contains some top-notch retrospective analyses of marginal films. -- Mikita Brottman * PopMatters *

Author Bio

Jeffrey Sconce is Associate Professor in the Screen Cultures Program at Northwestern University. He is the author of Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television, also published by Duke University Press.