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A National Medal of Arts winner, Mel Brooks has kept us in stitches for 70 years, laughing at the human condition. Brooks is well known for his New York Jewish humor, but as Roger Ebert says, the engines that drive his comedy have rarely been noticed.
This work offers new insights into Brooks' creative genius. Fifteen scholars discuss the social satire and genre parody that fuel well-known films like The Producers, Blazing Saddles, Young Frankenstein, High Anxiety, and History of the World, Part I, along with deep dives into overlooked films like Twelve Chairs, Silent Movie, and Life Stinks. The essays herein cover how Brooks' comedy developed, his standup roots, Get Smart, and his work as a producer for The Elephant Man and The Fly, and more, together presenting a detailed look at one of comedy's most influential voices.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Mel Brooks, Tailor Retailored
Sue Matheson
¿¿¿¿¿¿ Foundations
"Totally Crazy" Cabaret: Drag Shows, Song-and-Dance, Parody, and Dark Jewish Humor in the Films of Mel Brooks
Peter Scott Lederer
"He shoulda been called Yitzhak": Mel Brooks and the Pleasures of Parody
Terry Lindvall and Chris Lindvall
¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿¿ ¿¿¿¿¿ Selected Works (1965-1991)
Got Smart: Mel Brooks, Ambivalent Parody, and the Cultural Politics of Foolishness
Kerry Soper
Springtime for Strangelove! The Holocaust, Nazism, and Jewishness in the Films of Mel Brooks and Stanley Kubrick
Nathan Abrams and Michael Lipiner
Around a Proscenium: Representation and Distance in The Producers
Murray Pomerance
Between the Mensch and the Pícaro: Greed, Deceit, and Friendship in Mel Brooks' The Twelve Chairs (1970)
Ralph Beliveau
Brooks, Gogol, and Dali: Surrealism, Simulacra, and Simulation in Blazing Saddles (1974)
Sue Matheson
Parody, Pastiche, and Intertextuality in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974)
Frances Pheasant-Kelly
Comedic Film Criticism, Filmed: Mel Brooks' Love of Cinema in Silent Movie (1976) and The Critic (1963)
Matthew Cipa
"The Hitchcock picture to end all Hitchcock pictures": Mel Brooks' High Anxiety (1977)
Thomas Grochowski
Hitchcock, Brooks, and Pure Cinema
Douglas C. MacLeod, Jr.
The Court Jester's Tale: History of the World, Part I (1981) as Epic, Parody, and Epic Parody
A. Bowdoin Van Riper
Mel Brooks, THE Producer: David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980) and David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986)
Jonathan Winchell
A Jewish Future: The Diverse Diasporic Universe of Spaceballs (1987)
David L. Reznik
The Rich Get Richer: Life Stinks (1991)
Cynthia J. Miller
Afterword
Jeremy Dauber
A Bibliography on Mel Brooks
Camille McCutcheon
About the Contributors
Index
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Sue Matheson is a professor of English at the University College of the North in Manitoba, Canada. She is the author, editor, or co-editor of more than a dozen scholarly volumes, specializing in American popular culture and film.
