Blossoms and Blood : Postmodern Media Culture and the Films of Paul Thomas Anderson

In addition to fostering a supportive learning environment and teaching experience, their classroom contributions and insightful writing helped me better work through my own understanding of Anderson's fi lms at a crucial moment in the process. As this research began to get more attention, I was invited by Scott Dunham to give a talk at the University of Chicago's legendary Doc Films Series in February 2012. Th ere, I introduced a screening of Punch-Drunk Love as part of their Paul Th omas Anderson series. It was exciting to have a chance to share my research on his fi lms with an audience, and to see Punch-Drunk Love on 35mm for the fi rst (and last?) time since its initial theatrical run a decade earlier. I'd like to thank Scott and the rest of the Doc Films group for their generosity. Th e book itself came together relatively quickly but would not have done so without the confi dence of others. I'm once again most grateful for the support of the University of Texas Press and for the unwavering belief and guidance of my editor, Jim Burr, who continues to be my biggest benefactor. I'm also especially appreciative of the feedback from R. Barton Palmer and Robert Kolker, both of whom believed in me and in the work itself. As always, I'm appreciative of friends and colleagues always there in ways large and small (even the ones who thought I was crazy for writing this "From his film festival debut Hard Eight to ambitious studio epics Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson's unique cinematic vision focuses on postmodern excess and media culture. In Blossoms and Blood, Jason Sperb studies the filmmaker's evolving aesthetic and its historical context to argue that Anderson's films create new, often ambivalent, narratives of American identity in a media-saturated world. Blossoms and Blood explores Anderson's films in relation to the aesthetic and economic shifts within the film industry and to America's changing social and political sensibilities since the mid-1990s. Sperb provides an auteur study with important implications for film history, media studies, cultural studies, and gender studies. He charts major themes in Anderson's work, such as stardom, self-reflexivity, and masculinity and shows how they are indicative of trends in late twentieth-century American culture. One of the first books to focus on Anderson's work, Blossoms and Blood reveals the development of an under-studied filmmaker attuned to the contradictions of a postmodern media culture." -- Publisher's description. From his film festival debut, Hard Eight, to ambitious studio epics Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson's unique cinematic vision focuses on postmodern excess and media culture. In Blossoms and Blood, Jason Sperb studies the filmmaker's evolving aesthetic and its historical context to argue that Anderson's films create new, often ambivalent, narratives of American identity in a media-saturated world. Blossoms and Blood explores Anderson's films in relation to the aesthetic and economic shifts within the film industry and to America's changing social and political sensibilities since the mid-1990s. Sperb provides an auteur study with important implications for film history, media studies, cultural studies, and gender studies. He charts major themes in Anderson's work, such as stardom, self-reflexivity, and masculinity, and shows how they are indicative of trends in late twentieth-century American culture. One of the first books to focus on Anderson's work, Blossoms and Blood reveals the development of an under-studied filmmaker attuned to the contradictions of a postmodern media culture. Book jacket Drawing fascinating connections between cultural history and film authorship, Blossoms and Blood charts the development of Paul Thomas Anderson, whose films, such as Boogie Nights, Magnolia, and There Will Be Blood, offer a prescient approach to the contr