This thesis analyses the way love is presented as the central storyline in cinema drawing upon genre studies and informed by sociology. It ultimately finds that there are two dominant Hollywood love stories: the first is the romantic comedy, which film scholars have explored extensively; the second stands in opposition and focuses on passion. No scholarly investigation currently exists of the latter type of love story as a group, as having generic consistencies, a gap this thesis seeks to remedy. Though this project primarily explores the passionate love story as a cinematic form, it also contributes, through comparison, to the research on romantic comedy, which foregrounds another type of love: companionate love. These two love stories offer different alternatives to their audiences. As such, this project has implications beyond cinema studies and seeks to add to our understanding of intimate partnerships as one of the primary mechanisms of socialisation.

What makes a romance novel a romance? How do you write a kissing book?Writing a well-structured romance isn't the same as writing any other genre-something the popular novel and screenwriting guides don't address. The romance arc is made up of its own story beats, and the external plot and theme need to be braided to the romance arc-not the other way around.Told in conversational (and often irreverent) prose, Romancing the Beat can be read like you are sitting down to coffee with romance editor and author Gwen Hayes while she explains story structure. The way she does with her clients. Some of whom are regular inhabitants of the New York Times and USA Today bestseller lists.Romancing the Beat is a recipe, not a rigid system. The beats don't care if you plot or outline before you write, or if you pants your way through the drafts and do a "beat check" when you're revising. Pantsers and plotters are both welcome. So sit down, grab a cuppa, and let's talk about kissing books.

This collection of original essays, written by scholars from disciplines across the humanities, addresses a wide range of questions about love through a focus on individual films, novels, plays, and works of philosophy. The essays touch on many varieties of love, including friendship, romantic love, parental love, and even the love of an author for her characters. How do social forces shape the types of love that can flourish and sustain themselves? What is the relationship between love and passion? Is love between human and nonhuman animals possible? What is the role of projection in love? These questions and more are explored through an investigation of works by authors ranging from Henrik Ibsen to Ian McEwan, from Rousseau to the Coen Brothers.

The multi-million bestselling novel about a young girl's journey towards healing and the transforming power of love, from the award-winning author of The Invention of Wings and The Book of Longings Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted Black "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the deepest racists in town, Lily decides to spring them both free. They escape to Tiburon, South Carolina—a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. Taken in by an eccentric trio of Black beekeeping sisters, Lily is introduced to their mesmerizing world of bees and honey, and the Black Madonna. This is a remarkable novel about divine female power, a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

Whitewashing the Movies addresses the popular practice of excluding Asian actors from playing Asian characters in film. Media activists and critics have denounced contemporary decisions to cast White actors to play Asians and Asian Americans in movies such as Ghost in the Shell and Aloha. The purpose of this book is to apply the concept of “whitewashing” in stories that privilege White identities at the expense of Asian/American stories and characters. To understand whitewashing across various contexts, the book analyzes films produced in Hollywood, Asian American independent production, and US-China co-productions. Through the analysis, the book examines the ways in which whitewashing matters in the project of Whiteness and White racial hegemony. The book contributes to contemporary understanding of mediated representations of race by theorizing whitewashing, contributing to studies of Whiteness in media studies, and producing a counter-imagination of Asian/American representation in Asian-centered stories.

Through an analysis of hundreds of Hollywood movies, this book examines some of the most contentious social issues of our time, including racism, social inequality, sexism, and gerontophobia. With studies of some of the most enduring film genres in Hollywood’s history, including romantic films such as Casablanca, war movies from World War II through the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts, alienation films, including Five Easy Pieces and Lost in Translation, the school movie, from Goodbye, Mr. Chips to other films set in academia, including Dead Poets Society and Dangerous Minds, the book outlines and demonstrates the sociological approach to viewing films and highlights the socially conservative nature of much Hollywood movie production, which draws on common stereotypes and reinforces dominant cultural values - but is also capable of challenging and serving to change them.

In light of their tremendous gains in the political and professional sphere, and their ever expanding options, why is it that most contemporary American films aimed at women still focus almost exclusively on their pursuit of a heterosexual romantic relationship? American Postfeminist Cinema explores this question and is the first book to examine the symbiotic relationship between heterosexual romance and postfeminist culture. The book argues that since 1980, postfeminism's most salient tensions and anxieties have been reflected and negotiated in the American romance film. Case studies of a broad range of Hollywood and independent films reveal how the postfeminist romance cycle is intertwined with contemporary women's ambivalence and broader cultural anxieties about women's changing social and political status.

The secret life of romantic comedy offers a new approach to one of the most popular and resilient genres in the history of Hollywood. Steering away from the rigidity and ideological determinism of traditional accounts of the genre, this book advocates a more flexible theory, which allows the student to explore the presence of the genre in unexpected places, extending the concept to encompass films that are not usually considered romantic comedies. Combining theory with detailed analyses of a selection of films, including To Be or Not to Be (1942), Rear Window (1954), Kiss Me Stupid (1964), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989) and Before Sunset (2004), the book aims to provide a practical framework for the exploration of a key area of contemporary experience – intimate matters – through one of its most powerful filmic representations: the genre of romantic comedy. Original and entertaining, The secret life of romantic comedy is perfect for students and academics of film and film genre.

"A Story Is a Promise offers a new model for understanding one of the most difficult of all arts: writing dramatic, engaging stories." "Written in a style reminiscent of a workshop, A Story Is a Promise guides the writer toward a keen understanding of the principle underlying all well-told stories, that a story is both a promise made and a promise kept. Step by step, this book teaches writers how to set out a story's promise in an active voice, which is the voice of the true storyteller."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved