CINEMA & CULTURAL MODERNITY

* What is the relationship of popular cinema to the concept of 'modernity'? * What now are the key areas of debate which focus the study of cinema and its audiences? * How can we understand the relationship of cinema to both the pleasures of consumerism and the inequalities addressed by critical politics? Cinema and Cultural Modernity carves a lucid path through the central debates of film and cinema studies and explores these in their social and political contexts. The book includes histories of the ways in which we view Hollywood's global dominance, up to the development of late modernity and the declaration of 'postmodernity'. In an accessible fashion, it discusses changing theorizations of the economics, audiences, and fascinations of cinema, addressing concepts such as agency, negotiation and identification, and global 'popularity' within contemporary cultures of celebrity, consumption and the visual. Gill Branston outlines the need for cinema study that is both sensitive to the