Synopses & Reviews
From its founding in 1912, the short-lived Keystone Film Companyand#151;home of the frantic, bumbling Kops and Mack Sennett's Bathing Beautiesand#151;made an indelible mark on American popular culture with its high-energy comic shorts. Even as Keystone brought "lowbrow" comic traditions to the screen, the studio played a key role in reformulating those traditions for a new, cross-class audience. In The Fun Factory, Rob King explores the dimensions of that process, arguing for a new understanding of working-class cultural practices within early cinematic mass culture. He shows how Keystone fashioned a style of film comedy from the roughhouse humor of cheap theater, pioneering modes of representation that satirized film industry attempts at uplift. Interdisciplinary in its approach, The Fun Factory offers a unique studio history that views the changing politics of early film culture through the sociology of laughter.
Review
and#8220;Essential reading for all those film historians not necessarily interested in slapstick comedy.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;This studio history . . . offers insights on the politics of early filmmaking through the sociology of laughter.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;A searching and briskly authoritative history.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;[An] ambitious and innovative study [and] an important contribution. . . . A wonderful analysis of the historical and cultural complexity of this key moment of modernity and one of its major industries. [It] should be compulsory to all scholars in the field.and#8221;
About the Author
Rob King is Assistant Professor of Cinema Studies and History at the University of Toronto.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I: and#147;SATIRE IN OVERALLSand#8221;: THE KEYSTONE FILM COMPANY AND POPULAR CULTURE
1. and#147;The Fun Factoryand#8221;: Class, Comedy, and Popular Culture, 1912-1914
2. and#147;Funny Germansand#8221; and and#147;Funny Drunksand#8221;: Clowns, Class, and Ethnicity at Keystone, 1913-1915
3. and#147;The Impossible Attained!and#8221; Tillie's Punctured Romance and the Challenge of Feature-Length Slapstick, 1914-1915
PART II: and#147;MORE CLEVER AND LESS VULGARand#8221;: THE KEYSTONE FILM COMPANY AND MASS CULTURE
4. and#147;Made for the Masses with an Appeal to the Classesand#8221;: Keystone, the Triangle Film Corporation, and the Failure of Highbrow Film Culture, 1915-1917
5. and#147;Uproarious Inventionsand#8221;: Keystone, Modernity, and the Machine, 1915-1917
6. From and#147;Diving Venusand#8221; to and#147;Bathing Beautiesand#8221;: Reification and Feminine Spectacle, 1916-1917
Conclusion
Notes
Filmography
Index