Life, Myth, and the American Family Unreeling: The Spiritual Significance of Movies for the 20th Century

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Universal-Publishers, 2005 - 330 pàgines
This book is about what movies do for us. It is about how movies exhibit the contradictions, truths, and fantasies surrounding our bedrock American beliefs in things held sacred, including, in this case, our creed of family. It is about why we again and again attend the dark universal tabernacles in which these sermons are offered. The depth of analysis offered here will also bring new insights to those concerned with parenting issues, self understanding, and media consciousness - all increasingly relevant areas of concern in contemporary life. And, for those interested in telling stories that will truly "move" the rest of us, this book will serve as a secret doorway to the inner sanctum of human characters responding to the places and times of their lives. Finally, this book will bring revelation and liberation to reader's lives by showing them how to look through movies into themselves as they have never done before. In the specific examples of archetypal life journeys illuminated through these films, they will experience empathy with the ineffability of their existence. And, in transubstantiating with these movie characters amidst history, culture, and family, they will journey through their own conundrums in arcs that bring them moments of at-one-ment.

Des de l'interior del llibre

Continguts

THE UNIVERSAL TABERNACLE
1
The Projection Reflection and Reception
9
The Truman Show
13
UNREELING THROUGH THE DECADES
29
The Progress of Blame The Generation Gap
52
Our Town Splendor in The Grass
55
Splendor in The Grass Rebel Without a Cause
62
Rebel Without a Cause Ordinary People
77
A River Runs Through It
190
Love and Role Modeling
192
Sounder
199
Kramer vs Kramer
211
THE LAST DECADE
213
Smoke Signals
224
The Joy Luck Club
231
Grand Canyon
248

Hardship and Ease
81
The Grapes of Wrath The Graduate
97
Transitions
113
The Best Years of Our Lives
133
Nashville
155
WHAT WORKS?
159
Knowing and Not Knowing
169
The Great Santini
180
American Beauty
265
LOOKING BACK ON THE FUTURE
267
Pleasantville
273
21st Century Prognostications
282
The Challenges to Come
300
Artificial Intelligence
309
APPENDICES
313
Copyright

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Pàgina 1 - A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds. The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Pàgina 11 - Between the idea And the reality Between the motion And the act Falls the Shadow For Thine is the Kingdom Between the conception And the creation Between the emotion And the response Falls the Shadow...
Pàgina 313 - The lascivious clamor of the flagellomaniac for more of it, constant as the clamor for more insolence, more war, and lower rates, is tolerated and even gratified because, having no moral ends in view, we have sense enough to see that nothing but brute coercion can impose our selfish will on others. Cowardice is universal; patriotism, public opinion, parental duty, discipline, religion, morality, are only fine names for intimidation; and cruelty, gluttony, and credulity keep cowardice in countenance....

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