Seduction
Autor Karina Longworthen Limba Engleză Paperback – 21 mai 2021
Prezentându-se ca un obiect impresionant pe masă, cu cele aproape 900 de pagini ale sale, Seduction este o explorare monumentală a arhitecturii puterii din spatele strălucirii epocii de aur a Hollywood-ului. Ne-a atras atenția modul în care Karina Longworth, vocea din spatele fenomenului podcast 'You Must Remember This', reușește să transforme o biografie colectivă într-o analiză viscerală a modului în care industria cinematografică a modelat și, deseori, a devorat destine feminine. Recomandăm acest volum nu doar ca o cronică a celebrității, ci ca un studiu despre control și imagine, centrat pe figura enigmatică și perturbatoare a lui Howard Hughes. Simțim în fiecare capitol tensiunea dintre aspirația spre faimă a unor actrițe precum Katharine Hepburn sau Ava Gardner și mecanismele de supraveghere instituite de Hughes, care folosea detectivi privați și informatori pentru a menține controlul. Complementar volumului Howard Hughes de Peter Brown din aceeași perioadă artistică, care se concentrează pe imperiul de afaceri și declinul personal al magnatului, Seduction oferă o perspectivă diferită, așezând în centrul reflectorului experiența femeilor care au navigat prin acest sistem coercitiv. Stilul narativ este bogat în detalii de epocă, reușind să evoce atmosfera platourilor de filmare și a bătăliilor cu cenzura timpului. Este o lectură care pulsează de realitățile crude ascunse sub straturile de machiaj și lumina reflectoarelor, demontând mitul glamour-ului pur pentru a revela o moștenire a obiectificării care rezonează puternic și în prezent.
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Specificații
ISBN-10: 0062859676
Pagini: 896
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 53 mm
Greutate: 1.43 kg
Ediția:Text mare
Editura: Harper Large Print
De ce să citești această carte
Această carte este esențială pentru cei care vor să înțeleagă rădăcinile istorice ale dinamicii puterii în industria filmului. Cititorul câștigă o perspectivă documentată asupra modului în care mari staruri, dar și femei rămase anonime, au supraviețuit obsesiilor unui magnat influent. Este un amestec fascinant de istorie socială, biografie și critică culturală, oferit într-un format generos care permite o imersiune totală în atmosfera Hollywood-ului clasic.
Despre autor
Karina Longworth este o scriitoare, critic de film și istoric media american, recunoscută la nivel internațional pentru podcastul său de succes, 'You Must Remember This', dedicat istoriilor uitate sau secrete ale primului secol de existență al Hollywood-ului. Expertiza sa în arhivele cinematografiei și capacitatea de a contextualiza scandalurile celebre în cadre sociologice mai largi o fac una dintre cele mai respectate voci contemporane în domeniul istoriei filmului. În Seduction, ea își folosește talentul narativ pentru a aduce la lumină complexitatea relațiilor dintre gen, putere și celebritate.
Descriere scurtă
In recent months, the media has reported on scores of entertainment figures who used their power and money in Hollywood to sexually harass and coerce some of the most talented women in cinema and television. But as Karina Longworth reminds us, long before the Harvey Weinsteins there was Howard Hughes—the Texas millionaire, pilot, and filmmaker whose reputation as a cinematic provocateur was matched only by that as a prolific womanizer.
His supposed conquests between his first divorce in the late 1920s and his marriage to actress Jean Peters in 1957 included many of Hollywood’s most famous actresses, among them Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, and Lana Turner. From promoting bombshells like Jean Harlow and Jane Russell to his contentious battles with the censors, Hughes—perhaps more than any other filmmaker of his era—commoditized male desire as he objectified and sexualized women. Yet there were also numerous women pulled into Hughes’s grasp who never made it to the screen, sometimes virtually imprisoned by an increasingly paranoid and disturbed Hughes, who retained multitudes of private investigators, security personnel, and informers to make certain these actresses would not escape his clutches.
Vivid, perceptive, timely, and ridiculously entertaining, The Seducer is a landmark work that examines women, sex, and male power in Hollywood during its golden age—a legacy that endures nearly a century later.
Textul de pe ultima copertă
Howard Hughes’s reputation as a director and producer of films unusually defined by sex dovetails with his image as one of the most prolific womanizers of the twentieth century. The promoter of bomb-shell actresses such as Jean Harlow and Jane Russell, Hughes supposedly included among his off-screen conquests many of the most famous actresses of the era such as Billie Dove, Katharine Hepburn, Ava Gardner, Ginger Rogers, and Lana Turner. His marketing of male desire helped produce an incredibly influential, sexualized image of womanhood that has impacted culture ever since. But there was a price . . .
In Seduction, Karina Longworth draws upon an unprecedented trove of archival sources, diaries, and documents to produce a land-mark work of Hollywood history that is as effervescent as it is relevant. Seduction is not only about the murkier shades of golden-age Hollywood, but the ripples that still slither across today’s entertainment industry and our culture in general.
Recenzii
“The stories Longworth uncovers—about Katharine Hepburn and Jane Russell, yes, but also Ida Lupino and Faith Domergue and Anita Loos—are so rich, so compelling, that they urge you to question how much else in history has been lost within the swirling vortex of Great Men.” — Atlantic
“A compelling and relevant must-read.” — Entertainment Weekly
“A first-rate work of cultural curation, in which Longworth combs the countless stacks of Hollywood memoirs and biographies, with a focus on the pathological predations of Howard Hughes, Texas millionaire, starmaker and film producer.” — USA Today (four stars)
“An astute and entertaining takedown of the movie industry, the press and the multimillionaire turned wannabe filmmaker Howard Hughes. Hardly anyone emerges from the pages of Seduction unblemished by selfishness and greed once they are touched by the movie business and its promise of wealth, power and fame.” — Associated Press
“From the force behind the You Must Remember This podcast comes a book exploring the glamour of classic Hollywood cinema through the lens of Texas business magnate, filmmaker (Hell’s Angels, Scarface), and notorious womanizer Howard Hughes—think a Harvey Weinstein–esque character decades before #MeToo.” — Vanity Fair
“Longworth blasts through the seductive narratives propagated by men in the film business to uncover the dark stories underneath.” — The Cut
“Vibrant… A compulsive page-turner… Much of Seduction reads like a long overdue act of redress, repositioning women into the more central positions where they belong.” — Los Angeles Times
“Longworth pulls back the curtain on Hollywood’s golden age to reveal, through the stories of some of the actresses pursued by legendary millionaire mogul Howard Hughes, its dark and lasting legacy of power inequity, harassment, and abuse.” — Bustle
“Seduction reads like a scandal sheet tempered with primary and secondary research.” — Los Angeles Review of Books
“A candid portrait of the multifaceted millionaire…As his romantic tastes shifts from known quantities — like Hepburn, Rogers and Gardner — to powerless unknowns, Seduction reveals the root of Hughes’s interest in women: a desire to exert total control, rather than true affection.” — Washington Post
“Audacious and welcome.” — Sight and Sound
“Jam-packed with Hollywood scandal and history.” — Refinery 29
“Karina Longworth loves Hollywood the way it ought to be loved — mercilessly. She is a skeptic without cynicism, a feminist without apology, and in Seduction she has found the great subject that her essential podcast has long promised” — James Kaplan, author of Sinatra
“An entertaining and timely tour of early Hollywood mores and manipulation. No matter how much you think you know about golden age Hollywood, Longworth serves up fascinatingly fresh perspective on the ways male desire and power shaped movie mythology.” — Joy Press, author of Stealing the Show
“Full of insight...illuminating and memorable.” — Booklist
“A history that shows clearly how powerful men exploited actresses long before the #MeToo movement began. Hollywood historian Longworth has mined memoirs, biographies, magazines, newspapers, and archives to create an entertaining, gossip-filled portrait of the film capital’s golden age… A lively—and often sordid—Hollywood history.” — Kirkus Reviews
“Throughout this densely researched and lively book the siren song of the new medium of film is heard.” — Cineaste