Dear Cinema-L:


RE: http://listserv.american.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A0=CINEMA-L

The University of California Press is pleased to announce the publication of:

The Fun Factory: The Keystone Film Company and the Emergence of Mass Culture

Rob King is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and History at the 
University of Toronto.

http://go.ucpress.edu/Keystone

 From its founding in 1912, the short-lived Keystone Film Company-home 
of the frantic, bumbling Kops and Mack Sennett's Bathing 
Beauties-made an indelible mark on American popular culture with its 
high-energy comic shorts. Even as Keystone brought "lowbrow" comic 
traditions to the screen, the studio also played a key role in 
reformulating those traditions for a new, cross-class audience. In 
The Fun Factory, Rob King explores the dimensions of that process, 
arguing for a new understanding of working-class cultural practices 
within early cinematic mass culture. He shows how Keystone fashioned 
a style of film comedy from the roughhouse humor of cheap theater, 
pioneering modes of representation that satirized film industry 
attempts at uplift. Interdisciplinary in its approach, The Fun 
Factory offers a unique studio history that views the changing 
politics of early film culture through the sociology of laughter.

Full information about the book, including the table of contents, is 
available online: http://go.ucpress.edu/Keystone


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Lindsay Wong

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University of California Press
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2008 UC Press Online Book Sale (9/15-11/7) : http://go.ucpress.edu/filluprss

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