Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance

Imagining the Method: Reception, Identity, and American Screen Performance

Rawlins, Justin Owen
Hillgartner, Malcolm

Audio Book

Acting & AuditioningFilm StudiesTheater History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN13: 9798874684648
Publisher: Tantor Audio
Published: Jan 16 2024
Language: English
Only one performance style has dominated the lexicon of the casual moviegoer: Method acting. The first reception-based analysis of film acting, Imagining the Method investigates how popular understandings of the so-called Method--what its author Justin Rawlins calls methodness--created an exclusive brand for white, male actors while associating such actors with rebellion and marginalization. Drawing on extensive archival research, the book maps the forces giving shape to methodness and policing its boundaries.

Imagining the Method traces the primordial conditions under which the Method was conceived. It explores John Garfield's tenuous relationship with methodness due to his identity. It considers the links between John Wayne's reliance on anti-Method stardom and Marlon Brando and James Dean's ascribed embodiment of Method features. It dissects contemporary emphases on transformation and considers the implications of methodness in the encoding of AI performers. Altogether, Justin Rawlins offers a revisionist history of the Method that shines a light on the cultural politics of methodness and the still-dominant assumptions about race, gender, and screen actors and acting that inform how we talk about performance and performers.

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