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(More customer reviews)Here is an academic book that anyone interested in language, literature, and cinema should love. Beautifully written (as few academic books are), it applies the cultural criticism of Russian writer Mikhail Bakhtin to a diverse selection of novels and films, but most notably to those from Brazil. It is a match made in heaven, because both Bakhtin and Brazil believe in carnival (the joyful festivities that take place just before Lent, known in the States as Mardi Gras) and the carnivalesque (where rules are suspended, the oppressed take center stage, the powerful are mocked, and the body is celebrated). Stam begins by providing a clear and thorough overview of Bakhtin's precepts and terminology (dialogism, chronotope, heteroglossia), showing how his writing can fill in the gaps left by other theories and illuminate both artistic texts and everyday life. He then moves on to discuss the conjunction between Bakhtin and film theory specifically, providing elegant analyses of Bunuel's "Exterminating Angel," Godard's "Two or Three Things I Know About Her," Welles's unfinished "It's All True" (much of which was shot in Brazil), Brazilian classics such as "Macunaima," and "Mar das Rosas/Sea of Roses." and several others. Along the way, he takes in such issues as the grotesque and magical body, the subversive as well as the pleasurable potential of carnival, the uses of cannibalism, and cinematic eroticism. This wide-ranging study takes in everything from music (by Brazilian composers Caetano Veloso and Chico Buarque, plus rap) to the influence of the Yiddish theater on Woody Allen's "Zelig." An outstanding book that's a delight to read.
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Subversive Pleasures offers the first extended application of Mikhail Bakhtin's critical methods to film, mass-media, and cultural studies. With extraordinary interdisciplinary and multicultural range, Robert Stam explores issues that include the "translinguistic" critique of Saussurean semiotics and Russian formalism, the question of language difference in the cinema, issues of national culture in Latin America, and "the carnivalesque" in literature and film. He discusses literary works by Rabelais, Shakespeare, and Jarry and treats films by Vigo, Bunuel, Wertmuller, Imamura, Mel Brooks, Monty Python, Marleen Gooris, and others. Now in paperback, Subversive Pleasures is a splendidly lucid introduction to the central concepts and analytical methods of Bakhtin and the Bakhtin circle.
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