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  • © 2015

Movie Towns and Sitcom Suburbs

Building Hollywood’s Ideal Communities

Palgrave Macmillan

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Part of the book series: Screening Spaces (SCSP)

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Table of contents (8 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-x
  2. Introduction Visions of Community

    • Stephen Rowley
    Pages 1-18
  3. Movie Towns

    • Stephen Rowley
    Pages 19-49
  4. Sitcom Suburbs

    • Stephen Rowley
    Pages 51-76
  5. The Bad Suburb

    • Stephen Rowley
    Pages 77-114
  6. The Fake Town

    • Stephen Rowley
    Pages 115-150
  7. Constructing the Movie Town

    • Stephen Rowley
    Pages 151-173
  8. Deconstructing the Movie Town

    • Stephen Rowley
    Pages 175-201
  9. Conclusion The Perpetual Suburb

    • Stephen Rowley
    Pages 203-214
  10. Back Matter

    Pages 215-272

About this book

Media depictions of community are enormously influential on wider popular opinion about how people would like to live. In this study, Rowley examines depictions of ideal communities in Hollywood films and television and explores the implications of attempts to build real-world counterparts to such imagined places.

Reviews

“This densely argued, scholarly text focuses on the way television and cinema in this period both presented images of idealised communities and also responded to growing criticisms of such movements as New Urbanism in the USA. … This is a remarkable book and a work of extraordinary scholarship.” (David Mercer, Australian Geographer, February, 2016)

"Movie Towns and Sitcom Suburbs should be required reading for anyone who wants to explore the relationship between visual culture and urban theory in a rigorous manner. Rowley's analysis of Disney's envisioning of the ideal community - from animated entertainment to theme parks to planned communities - is distinguished by meticulous close readings and his theoretical sophistication. He moves so deftly across media because he constructs such elegant paradigms for comparative analysis. This issimply a benchmark work." - Jim Collins, Professor, Film and Television, University of Notre Dame, USA

About the author

Stephen Rowley is Lecturer of Urban and Social Studies at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Australia.

Bibliographic Information

Buy it now

Buying options

eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access