Nietzsche in Hollywood: Images of the Übermensch in Early American Cinema (Horizons of Cinema) - Hardcover

Rukgaber, Matthew

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1438490275 ISBN 13: 9781438490274

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2022

Synopsis

Argues that Nietzsche's idea of the Übermensch was a central concern of filmmakers in the 1920s and 1930s.

Nietzsche in Hollywood offers a compelling and startling history of Hollywood film in which the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and his idea of the Übermensch looms large. Though Nietzsche's philosophy was attacked as egoistic and a sociopathic version of Darwinism in films from the 1910s, it undergoes a series of cinematic and philosophical transformations in the 1920s and 1930s under the eye and pen of some of the most significant names in early Hollywood, including Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg, Ben Hecht, Howard Hawks, and Ernst Lubitsch. In addition to establishing historical connections between Nietzsche's philosophy and these filmmakers, the book provides philosophical readings of many Hollywood films through the lens of the Nietzschean ideas of "perspectivism" and the critique of morality. Offering a new history of classic Hollywood films as well as a new approach to film philosophy, Nietzsche in Hollywood reveals a reading of the philosopher in American culture that has largely been ignored.

About this title

About the Author

Matthew Rukgaber is Lecturer in Philosophy at Eastern Connecticut State University.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2022
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1438490275
• ISBN 13: 9781438490274
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 296