Geiger, J (2007) Facing the Pacific: Polynesia and the U.S. imperial imagination. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu. ISBN 9780824830663
Geiger, J (2007) Facing the Pacific: Polynesia and the U.S. imperial imagination. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu. ISBN 9780824830663
Geiger, J (2007) Facing the Pacific: Polynesia and the U.S. imperial imagination. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu. ISBN 9780824830663
Abstract
The enduring popularity of Polynesia in western literature, art, and film attests to the pleasures that Pacific islands have, over the centuries, afforded the consuming gaze of the west-connoting solitude, release from cares, and, more recently, renewal from urbanized modern life. Facing the Pacific is the first study to offer a detailed look at the United States' intense engagement with the myth of the South Seas just after the First World War, when, at home, a popular vogue for all things Polynesian seemed to echo the expansion of U.S. imperialist activities abroad. Jeffrey Geiger looks at a variety of texts that helped to invent a vision of Polynesia for U.S. audiences, focusing on a group of writers and filmmakers whose mutual fascination with the South Pacific drew them together-and would eventually drive some of them apart. Key figures discussed in this volume are Frederick O'Brien, author of the bestseller White Shadows in the South Seas; filmmaker Robert Flaherty and his wife, Francis Hubbard Flaherty, who collaborated on Moana; director W. S. Van Dyke, who worked with Robert Flaherty on MGM's adaptation of White Shadows; and Expressionist director F. W. Murnau, whose last film, Tabu, was co-directed with Flaherty.
Item Type: | Book |
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Subjects: | E History America > E151 United States (General) P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1993 Motion Pictures P Language and Literature > PS American literature |
Divisions: | Faculty of Humanities Faculty of Humanities > Literature, Film, and Theatre Studies, Department of |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 17 Feb 2012 11:25 |
Last Modified: | 23 Sep 2022 19:16 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/2224 |