Darwin's Screens: Evolutionary Aesthetics, Time and Sexual Display in the Cinema Barbara Creed 9780522857092

Darwin's Screens addresses a major gap in film scholarship - the key influence of Charles Darwin's theories on the history of the cinema. Much has been written on the effect of other great thinkers such as Freud and Marx but very little on the important role played by Darwinian ideas on the evolution of the newest art form of the twentieth century. Creed argues that Darwinian ideas influenced the evolution of early film genres such as horror, the detective film, science fiction, film noir and the musical. Her study draws on Darwin's theories of sexual selection, deep time and transformation, and on emotions, death, and the meaning of human and animal in order to rethink some of the canonical arguments of film and cinema studies.

About the Author
Barbara Creed is Professor of Cinema Studies and Head of the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.

Reviews
'What a wonderful book! Barbara Creed's wide-ranging study soars - to take on the evolutionary implications of the movies, spanning classic horror, to science fiction, to film noir.' - Professor Barbara Maria Stafford, University of Chicago, author of Echo Objects: The Cognitive Work of Images



Book Information
ISBN 9780522857092
Author Barbara Creed
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Melbourne University Press
Publisher Melbourne University Press
Weight(grams) 324g
Dimensions(mm) 210mm * 137mm * 16mm