Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society)

Subversive Pleasures offers the first extended application of Mikhail Bakhtin's critical methods to film, mass-media, and cultural studies. With extraordinary interdisciplinary and multicultural range, Robert Stam explores issues that include the "translinguistic" critique of Saussurean semiotics and Russian formalism, the question of language difference in the cinema, issues of national culture in Latin America, and "the carnivalesque" in literature and film. He discusses literary works by Rabelais, Shakespeare, and Jarry and treats films by Vigo, Bunuel, Wertmuller, Imamura, Mel Brooks, Monty Python, Marleen Gooris, and others. Now in paperback, Subversive Pleasures is a splendidly lucid introduction to the central concepts and analytical methods of Bakhtin and the Bakhtin circle. An introduction to Mihkail Bakhtin and the Bakhtin circle that is both scholarly and personal. Subversive Pleasures offers the first extended application of Mikhail Bakhtin's critical methods to film, mass-media, and cultural studies. With extraordinary interdisciplinary and multicultural range, Robert Stam explores issues that include the "translinguistic" critiquw of Saussurean semiotics and Russian formalisn, the question of language difference in the cinema, issues of national culture in Latin America, and "the carnivalesque" in literature and film. He discusses literary works by Rabelais, Shakespeare, and Jarry and treats films by Vigo, Bunuel, Wertmuller, Imamura, Mel Brooks, Monty Python, Marleen Gooris, and others. Now in Paperback Subversive Pleasures is a splendidly lucid introduction to the central concepts and analytical methods of Bakhtin and the Bakhtin circle. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Translinguistics and Semiotics 2. Language, Difference, and Power 3. Film, Literature, and the Carnivalesque 4. Of Cannibals and Carnivals 5. The Grotesque Body and Cinematic Eroticism 6. From Dialogism to Zelig Envoi: Bakhtin and Mass-Media Critique Notes Index Applying Bakhtin's critical methods to film, mass-media and cultural studies, Stam draws on Bakhtin's corporal semiotics of "the grotesque body" to analyze eroticism in the cinema, and explores issues including the "translinguistic" critique of Saussurean semiotics and Russian formalism In the last few years, the Russian author Mikhail Bakhtin has become one of the most influential and controversial thinkers on the contemporary scene.