Screening Characters: Theories of Character in Film, Television, and Interactive Media (AFI Film Readers)

by Aaron Taylor (Editor), JohannesRiis (Editor)

New
Hardcover
2019
$142.88

Characters are central to our experiences of screened fictions and invite a host of questions. The contributors to Screening Characters draw on archival material, interviews, philosophical enquiry, and conceptual analysis in order to give new, thought-provoking answers to these queries. Providing multifaceted accounts of the nature of screen characters, contributions are organized around a series of important subjects, including issues of class, race, ethics, action heroes, and crime detectives as they are encountered in moving image media. These topics, in turn, are personified by such memorable figures as Cary Grant, Jon Hamm, Audrey Hepburn, and Seul-gi Kim, in addition to avatars, online personalities, animated characters and the ensembles of shows such as The Sopranos, Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

Synopsis

Characters are central to our experiences of screened fictions and invite a host of questions. The contributors to Screening Characters draw on archival material, interviews, philosophical enquiry, and conceptual analysis in order to give new, thought-provoking answers to these queries. Providing multifaceted accounts of the nature of screen characters, contributions are organized around a series of important subjects, including issues of class, race, ethics, action heroes, and crime detectives as they are encountered in moving image media. These topics, in turn, are personified by such memorable figures as Cary Grant, Jon Hamm, Audrey Hepburn, and Seul-gi Kim, in addition to avatars, online personalities, animated characters and the ensembles of shows such as The Sopranos, Mad Men and Breaking Bad.

$142.88

Quantity

5 in stock

More Information

Format: Hardcover
Pages: 350
Edition: 1
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 12 Mar 2019
ISBN 10: 1138391824
ISBN 13: 9781138391826

Media Reviews

This book is a remarkably accessible collection of essays on some of the most theoretically complex aspects of actors and acting on film and in other media. It also covers a wide selection of films, TV-series, and computer games, making it a standard work in the fields of Cognitive Film Studies, Philosophy and Film, and even Celebrity Studies. --Erik Hedling, Professor, Lund University, Sweden

Author Bio

Johannes Riis is an Associate Professor of film studies at University of Copenhagen. He has published extensively on issues of film acting, including a monograph (Spillets kunst: Folelser i film), articles in numerous journals and anthologies, including Cinema Journal, Projections, and The Routledge Companion to Philosophy and Film. A member of the Board of Directors at The Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image since 2005, he is currently writing a book on film acting styles between 1920 and 1980. Aaron Taylor is an Associate Professor of New Media at the University of Lethbridge. He is the editor of Theorizing Film Acting, and his essays on performance have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Cinema Journal, Velvet Light Trap, [in]Transition, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, The Journal of Film and Video, Close-Up: Great Cinematic Performances Vol. 2, Make Ours Marvel, Millennial Masculinity, Acting and Performance in Moving Image Culture, and Stages of Reality.