Puppets and "popular" Culture

Puppets and
Author :
Publisher : Cornell University Press
Total Pages : 282
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0801430941
ISBN-13 : 9780801430947
Rating : 4/5 (41 Downloads)

Synopsis Puppets and "popular" Culture by : Scott Cutler Shershow

Shershow thus suggests that so-called high and low practices thoroughly interpenetrate one another, forcing us to question whether rival social groups ever truly have their own separate "cultures."

Puppets, Gods, and Brands

Puppets, Gods, and Brands
Author :
Publisher : University of Hawaii Press
Total Pages : 297
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780824881160
ISBN-13 : 0824881168
Rating : 4/5 (60 Downloads)

Synopsis Puppets, Gods, and Brands by : Teri J. Silvio

The early twenty-first century has seen an explosion of animation. Cartoon characters are everywhere—in cinema, television, and video games and as brand logos. There are new technological objects that seem to have lives of their own—from Facebook algorithms that suggest products for us to buy to robots that respond to human facial expressions. The ubiquity of animation is not a trivial side-effect of the development of digital technologies and the globalization of media markets. Rather, it points to a paradigm shift. In the last century, performance became a key term in academic and popular discourse: The idea that we construct identities through our gestures and speech proved extremely useful for thinking about many aspects of social life. The present volume proposes an anthropological concept of animation as a contrast and complement to performance: The idea that we construct social others by projecting parts of ourselves out into the world might prove useful for thinking about such topics as climate crisis, corporate branding, and social media. Like performance, animation can serve as a platform for comparisons of different cultures and historical eras. Teri Silvio presents an anthropology of animation through a detailed ethnographic account of how characters, objects, and abstract concepts are invested with lives, personalities, and powers—and how people interact with them—in contemporary Taiwan. The practices analyzed include the worship of wooden statues of Buddhist and Daoist deities and the recent craze for cute vinyl versions of these deities, as well as a wildly popular video fantasy series performed by puppets. She reveals that animation is, like performance, a concept that works differently in different contexts, and that animation practices are deeply informed by local traditions of thinking about the relationships between body and soul, spiritual power and the material world. The case of Taiwan, where Chinese traditions merge with Japanese and American popular culture, uncovers alternatives to seeing animation as either an expression of animism or as “playing God.” Looking at the contemporary world through the lens of animation will help us rethink relationships between global and local, identity and otherness, human and non-human.

Humor and Comedy in Puppetry

Humor and Comedy in Puppetry
Author :
Publisher : Popular Press
Total Pages : 168
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0879724129
ISBN-13 : 9780879724122
Rating : 4/5 (29 Downloads)

Synopsis Humor and Comedy in Puppetry by : Dina Sherzer

This volume is about puppetry, an expression of popular and folk culture which is extremely widespread around the world and yet has attracted relatively little scholarly attention. Puppetry, which is intended for audiences of adults as well as children, is a form of communication and entertainment and an esthetic and artistic creation. Of the many aspects of puppetry worthy of scholarly study, this book's focus is on a central and dominant feature--humor and comedy.

The Secret Life of Puppets

The Secret Life of Puppets
Author :
Publisher : Harvard University Press
Total Pages : 368
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780674041417
ISBN-13 : 0674041410
Rating : 4/5 (17 Downloads)

Synopsis The Secret Life of Puppets by : Victoria Nelson

In one of those rare books that allows us to see the world not as we've never seen it before, but as we see it daily without knowing, Victoria Nelson illuminates the deep but hidden attraction the supernatural still holds for a secular mainstream culture that forced the transcendental underground and firmly displaced wonder and awe with the forces of reason, materialism, and science. In a backward look at an era now drawing to a close, The Secret Life of Puppets describes a curious reversal in the roles of art and religion: where art and literature once took their content from religion, we came increasingly to seek religion, covertly, through art and entertainment. In a tour of Western culture that is at once exhilarating and alarming, Nelson shows us the distorted forms in which the spiritual resurfaced in high art but also, strikingly, in the mass culture of puppets, horror-fantasy literature, and cyborgs: from the works of Kleist, Poe, Musil, and Lovecraft to Philip K. Dick and virtual reality simulations. At the end of the millennium, discarding a convention of the demonized grotesque that endured three hundred years, a Demiurgic consciousness shaped in Late Antiquity is emerging anew to re-divinize the human as artists like Lars von Trier and Will Self reinvent Expressionism in forms familiar to our pre-Reformation ancestors. Here as never before, we see how pervasively but unwittingly, consuming art forms of the fantastic, we allow ourselves to believe.

Spaces of Puppets in Popular Culture

Spaces of Puppets in Popular Culture
Author :
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Total Pages : 247
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781000592504
ISBN-13 : 1000592502
Rating : 4/5 (04 Downloads)

Synopsis Spaces of Puppets in Popular Culture by : Janet Banfield

This first book-length exploration of geographical engagement with puppets examines constructions of puppets in contemporary popular British culture and considers the various ways in which puppets and humans (not just puppeteers) are unified in diverse cultural media. Organised around themes of metaphorical, performative and transformational puppets, the work draws out how puppets are used in diverse cultural media (fiction, music, television, film and theatre), how they are constructed through those uses, and to what effect. Both puppets as generalised forms (bodily, relational or ideational) and specific puppet characters (Mr Punch, Pinocchio) are explored. Building upon existing associations between puppets and the grotesque, the volume extends understandings of the puppet by elaborating borderscaping strategies through which puppets are constructed and an alternative perspective on the uncanniness of puppets. Geographically, it unearths distinct puppet spatialities, identifies the socially critical potential of puppets, rescales geo/bio-politics at the interpersonal level, and highlights the potential of puppets within posthuman debates about the status of the human. This work will be of interest to anyone fascinated by puppets, as well as those in fields such as geography, anthropology, cultural and media studies, and those interested in the grotesque, posthumanism and/or non-representational scholarship.

Puppets

Puppets
Author :
Publisher : Gareth Stevens Publishing LLLP
Total Pages : 36
Release :
ISBN-10 : 083684047X
ISBN-13 : 9780836840476
Rating : 4/5 (7X Downloads)

Synopsis Puppets by : Meryl Doney

Offers the history of puppets as a form of entertainment from around the world, providing instructions for making puppets from Japan, India, and Burma.

A History of Popular Culture in Japan

A History of Popular Culture in Japan
Author :
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages : 289
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9781474258555
ISBN-13 : 1474258557
Rating : 4/5 (55 Downloads)

Synopsis A History of Popular Culture in Japan by : E. Taylor Atkins

The phenomenon of 'Cool Japan' is one of the distinctive features of global popular culture of the millennial age. A History of Popular Culture in Japan provides the first historical and analytical overview of popular culture in Japan from its origins in the 17th century to the present day, using it to explore broader themes of conflict, power, identity and meaning in Japanese history. E. Taylor Atkins shows how Japan is one of the earliest sites for the development of mass-produced, market-oriented cultural products consumed by urban middle and working classes. The best-known traditional arts and culture of Japan- no theater, monochrome ink painting, court literature, poetry and indigenous music-inhabited a world distinct from that of urban commoners, who fashioned their own expressive forms and laid the groundwork for today's 'gross national cool.' Popular culture was pivotal in the rise of Japanese nationalism, imperialism, militarism, postwar democracy and economic development. Offering historiographical and analytical frameworks for understanding its subject, A History of Popular Culture in Japan synthesizes the latest scholarship from a variety of disciplines. It is a vital resource for students of Japanese cultural history wishing to gain a deeper understanding of Japan's contributions to global cultural heritage.

Popular Puppet Theatre in Europe, 1800-1914

Popular Puppet Theatre in Europe, 1800-1914
Author :
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Total Pages : 272
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0521616158
ISBN-13 : 9780521616157
Rating : 4/5 (58 Downloads)

Synopsis Popular Puppet Theatre in Europe, 1800-1914 by : John McCormick

The first comparative study in English of all aspects of puppetry in nineteenth-century Europe.

Puppets, Masks, and Performing Objects

Puppets, Masks, and Performing Objects
Author :
Publisher : MIT Press
Total Pages : 212
Release :
ISBN-10 : 0262522934
ISBN-13 : 9780262522939
Rating : 4/5 (34 Downloads)

Synopsis Puppets, Masks, and Performing Objects by : John Bell

This volume, which originally appeared as a special issue of TDR/The Drama Review, looks at puppets, masks, and other performing objects from a broad range of perspectives. Puppets and masks are central to some of the oldest worldwide forms of art making and performance, as well as some of the newest. In the twentieth century, French symbolists, Russian futurists and constructivists, Prague School semioticians, and avant-garde artists around the world have all explored the experimental, social, and political value of performing objects. In recent years, puppets, masks, and objects have been the focus of Broadway musicals, postmodernist theory, political spectacle, performance art, and new academic programs, for example, at the California Institute of the Arts.This volume, which originally appeared as a special issue of TDR/The Drama Review, looks at puppets, masks, and other performing objects from a broad range of perspectives. The topics include Stephen Kaplin's new theory of puppet theater based on distance and ratio, a historical overview of mechanical and electrical performing objects, a Yiddish puppet theater of the 1920s and 1930s, an account of the Bread and Puppet Theater's Domestic Resurrection Circus and a manifesto by its founder, Peter Schumann, and interviews with director Julie Taymor and Peruvian mask-maker Gustavo Boada. The book also includes the first English translation of Pyotr Bogatyrev's influential 1923 essay on Czech and Russian puppet and folk theaters. Contributors John Bell, Pyotr Bogatyrev, Stephen Kaplin, Edward Portnoy, Richard Schechner, Peter Schumann, Salil Singh, Theodora Skipitares, Mark Sussman, Steve Tilllis

Karagiozis

Karagiozis
Author :
Publisher : University Press of Kentucky
Total Pages : 250
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780813159416
ISBN-13 : 0813159415
Rating : 4/5 (16 Downloads)

Synopsis Karagiozis by : Linda Myrsiades

Karagiozis—a form of comic folk drama employing stock puppet figures—was immensely popular in Greece until recent years, when newer forms of entertainment have virtually eclipsed it. Derived from ancient Byzantine and Greek sources, it takes its name from the principal puppet character, the clever, humpbacked fool-hero Karagiozis, who appears in many guises, surrounded by a cast of folk caricatures from all walks of life. Kostas and Linda Myrsiades present here a tripartite view of Karagiozis: a translation of a typical text taken directly from a live performance; interviews with one of the last master Karagiozis puppeteers; and an analysis of the place of this indigenous genre in Greek life and culture. The first part of the book examines critical issues concerning the context of Karagiozis performance: its place as an expression of an unofficial social world, as a gender statement that reveals the split vision of its culture, as an expression of a pluralistic society, and as an indigenous event shaped by economic, geographic, political, and social forces. The second portion offers insights from interviews with Giorgos Haridimos, until his retirement Greece's preemi-nent Karagiozis player, and a translation of his classic text "Karagiozis Baker" reflecting an actual performance by Haridimos. Through novel verbal and typographic devices, Kostas Myrsiades succeeds in preserving the full flavor of his oral source—its rhythms and intonations, its linguistic nuances, and even audience reactions—to convey the actual experience of the theatergoer. This unique translation thus establishes a model for collecting and disseminating oral theatrical tradition. Folklorists, cultural historians, and students of theater will appreciate this introduction to an ancient but little known folkloric form.