Genre and Performance: Film and Television

Christine Cornea is Lecturer in Film and Television with the School of Film and Television at the University of East Anglia

Looking at contemporary film and television, this book explores how popular genres frame our understanding of on-screen performance. It brings together ground-breaking and inspiring work on this topic from both renowned and newer academics in the field. Previous studies of screen performance have tended to fix upon star actors, directors, or programme makers, or they have concentrated upon particular training and acting styles. Moving outside of these confines, this book provides a truly interdisciplinary account of performance in film and television and examines a much neglected area in our understanding of how popular genres and performance intersect on screen.Each chapter concentrates upon a particular genre or draws upon generic case studies in examining the significance of screen performance. Individual chapters examine contemporary film noir, horror, the biopic, drama-documentary, the western, science fiction, comedy performance in 'spoof news' programmes and the television 'sit com' and popular Bollywood films.

List of illustrationsContributor biographiesAcknowledgementsEditor's introduction - Christine Cornea1. Film noir: gesture under pressure - Cynthia Baron2. Captured ghosts: horror acting in the 1970s British television drama - Richard J. Hand3. Docudrama performance: realism, recognition and representation - Jonathan Bignell4. Living stories: performance in the contemporary biopic - Dennis Bingham5. Borders and boundaries in Deadwood - Steven Peacock6. The Colbert Report: performing the news as parody for the postmodern viewer - Gwendolyn Audrey Foster7. Contemporary comedy performance in British sitcom - Brett Mills8. 2-D performance and the re-animated actor in science fiction cinema - Christine Cornea9. The multiple determinants of television acting - Roberta Pearson10. Bollywood blends: genre and performance in Shahrukh Khan's post-millennial films - Rayna DenisonIndex