Nadine Narska

Author : Matthew Rukgaber
Publisher : State University of New York Press
ISBN 13 : 1438490291
Total Pages : 376 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (384 download)

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Download or read book Nietzsche in Hollywood written by Matthew Rukgaber and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 376 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nietzsche in Hollywood offers a compelling and startling history of Hollywood film in which the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and his idea of the Übermensch looms large. Though Nietzsche's philosophy was attacked as egoistic and a sociopathic version of Darwinism in films from the 1910s, it undergoes a series of cinematic and philosophical transformations in the 1920s and 1930s under the eye and pen of some of the most significant names in early Hollywood, including Erich von Stroheim, Josef von Sternberg, Ben Hecht, Howard Hawks, and Ernst Lubitsch. In addition to establishing historical connections between Nietzsche's philosophy and these filmmakers, the book provides philosophical readings of many Hollywood films through the lens of the Nietzschean ideas of "perspectivism" and the critique of morality. Offering a new history of classic Hollywood films as well as a new approach to film philosophy, Nietzsche in Hollywood reveals a reading of the philosopher in American culture that has largely been ignored.