Masters of the Grotesque: The Cinema of Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, the Coen Brothers and David Lynch - Softcover

Weishaar, Schuy R.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786471867 ISBN 13: 9780786471867

Publisher: McFarland & Company, 2012

Synopsis

The concepts and theories surrounding the aesthetic category of the grotesque are explored in this book by pursuing their deployment in the films of American auteurs Tim Burton, Terry Gilliam, the Coen Brothers and David Lynch. The author argues that interpreting these directors' films through the lens of the grotesque allows us to situate both the auteurs and the films within a long history of the grotesque in art and aesthetics. This cultural tradition effectively subsumes the contribution of any artist or genre that intersects it but also affords the artist or genre--the auteur and the genre filmmaker--a pantheon and an abundance of images, themes, and motifs, etc. through which he or she can subversively represent the world and our place in it.

About this title

About the Author

Schuy R. Weishaar teaches writing and literature at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville, Tennessee. His fiction and essays have appeared in The Other Journal.

Review

"I must begin by confessing that Masters of the Grotesque is a book I wish I had written. Masters of the Grotesque is, however, a better book than I ever could have done...more theoretically sophisticated, more incisive, more far-reaching. Weishaar is a gifted writer, able to wrestle big ideas down to earth, drag them out of that very-20th-century Plato's cave we know as a movie theatre and into the light, putting them to critical use and then plunging back into the cave once again, more than ready to persuade the still-imprisoned of his new understanding." --David Lavery, Middle Tennessee State University

Edition details

• Publisher: McFarland & Company
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 0786471867
• ISBN 13: 9780786471867
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 219