"This book discusses the role of television drama series on a global scale, analyzing these dramas across the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa. Contributors consider the role of television dramas as economically valuable cultural products and with their depictions of gender roles, sexua
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lities, race, cultural values, political systems, and religious beliefs as they analyze how these programs allow us to indulge our innate desire to share human narratives in a way that binds us together and encourages audiences to persevere as a community on a global scale. Contributors also go on to explore the role of television dramas as a medium that indulges fantasies and escapism and reckons with reality as it allows audiences to experience emotions of happiness, sorrow, fear, and outrage in both realistic and fantastical scenarios." (Publisher description)
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"Narrative is essential for public engagement with global poverty. Stand Up Planet, a documentary about global development, was produced to evaluate the effects of a little-utilized nonfiction comedy narrative. Using a pretest–posttest experimental design, this study examines shifts in U.S. audien
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ce engagement with global poverty after watching Stand Up Planet, compared with a somber documentary, The End Game. Both documentaries increased awareness of global poverty, support for government aid, knowledge, and intended actions. However, Stand Up Planet produced significantly larger gains in awareness, knowledge, and actions; these effects were mediated by the narrative’s relatability, positive emotions, and entertainment value. The End Game’s effects were mediated by narrative transportation and negative emotions. Implications for narrative in social change campaigns are discussed." (Abstract)
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"Arab Cultural Studies: Mapping the Fieldis the first attempt to explore ways of conceptualizing and theorizing the nascent field of Arab Cultural Studies. It reflects and engages in an interdisciplinary discussion on the different facets of Arab cultural studies, including gender, economy, history,
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epistemology, language, method, politics, literary and cultural criticism, institutionalization, popular culture, creativity and much more. The book presents a meta-narrative about how scholars have thus far thought and re-thought the field. It brings together prominent and emerging experts, writing from both Arab and Western academia, to engage with key complex, epistemic and methodological questions and to articulate in the meantime the new kinds of language and hermeneutics necessary for the appropriation of an historically conscious and coherent field of scientific enquiry into contemporary Arab media, culture and society." (Publisher description)
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"Postnationalist African cinemas convincingly interrogates the ways in which African narratives locate postcolonial identities and forms beyond essentially nationalist frameworks. It investigates how the emergence of new genres, discourses and representations, all unrelated to an overtly nationalist
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project, influences the formal choices made by contemporary directors. By foregrounding the narrative, generic, discursive, representational and aesthetic structures of films, this book shows how directors are beginning to regard film as a popular form of entertainment rather than political praxis. Tcheuyap investigates filmic genres such as comedy, dance, crime and epic alongside cultural aspects including witchcraft, sexuality, pornography and oracles." (Publisher description)
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"Der Autor arbeitete als Lektor und Dramaturg. Er hat eine Professur an der Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg im Fachbereich Drehbuch inne. "In diesen Leitfaden fließen nicht nur Schneiders eigene Erfahrungen aus seiner zehnjährigen Lehrtätigkeit ein, sondern auch die Essenz der wichtigsten und for
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tgeschrittensten Drehbuchlehren [...] Mit diesem Buch ist Michael Schneider ein Ratgeber gelungen, dem weder ein Beigeschmack von Bevormundung noch von übertriebener Sachlichkeit anhaftet. Er hat Drehbuchrahmen vorgegeben, welche nicht die Kreativität des (werdenden) Autors behindern. Es ist kein Lehrbuch im üblichen Sinne, sondern vielmehr ein locker aneinander gefügtes, plausibel entwickeltes Kompendium mit thematischen Schwerpunkten. 'Vor dem Dreh kommt das Buch' ist eine sehr gelungene Mischung aus klassischer und neuer Filmdramaturgie, Filmanalyse, Filmkritik und Werkstatttexten." (Medien praktisch 2/03)
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