2008
First Published
3.30
Average Rating
376
Number of Pages
From its founding in 1912, the short-lived Keystone Film Company―home of the frantic, bumbling Kops and Mack Sennett's Bathing Beauties―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.
Avg Rating
3.30
Number of Ratings
10
5 STARS
0%
4 STARS
50%
3 STARS
30%
2 STARS
20%
1 STARS
0%
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