Screening Characters: Theories of Character in Film, Television, and Interactive Media

✍ Scribed by Riis, Johannes (editor), Taylor, Aaron (editor)

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 351
• Series: AFI Film Readers
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Characters are central to our experiences of screened fictions and invite a host of questions. The contributors to Screening Characters draw on archival material, interviews, philosophical inquiry, and conceptual analysis in order to give new, thought-provoking answers to these queries. Providing multifaceted accounts of the nature of screen characters, contributions are organized around a series of important subjects, including issues of class, race, ethics, and generic types as they are encountered in moving image media. These topics, in turn, are personified by such memorable figures as Cary Grant, Jon Hamm, Audrey Hepburn, and Seul-gi Kim, in addition to avatars, online personalities, animated characters, and the ensembles of shows such as The Sopranos, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
contents
list of figures
acknowledgments
foreword: consorting with characters
introduction: screening characters
part one the importance of actors
1. seeing and hearing screen characters: stars, twofoldness, and the imagination
2. character and the star vehicle: the impact of casting cary grant
3. character collaborations: the writer–actor relationship in mad men
part two social types, social contexts
4. being typical and being individual
5. the mark of the social: stereotypes, folk psychology, and metonymy in mainstream film
6. racialized disgust and character in film
part three medium-specific features and constraints
7. impossible characterizations
8. performative metamorphosis: animated characters and spectator proximity
9. social media as interface, or how characters enter our everyday reality
10. owning our actions: identification with avatars in video games
part four emotional and moral engagement
11. ethical criticism and fictional characters as moral agents
12. absorbed character engagement: from social cognition responses to the experience of fictional constructions
13. “familiarity breeds contempt”: why fascination, rather than repeat exposure, better explains the appeal of antiheroes on television
part five the character within genre
14. girls who can leap through time: shojo and time travel in east asian media
15. action and affordances: the action hero’s skilled and surprising use of the environment
16. introducing characters in television crime series: stylistic and narrative strategies
about the contributors
about the american film institute
index