ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FOREWORD Robert Bennett, Montana State University-Bozeman, USA PREFACE Christopher Schaberg, Loyola University New Orleans, USA INTRODUCTION 1. Making Montana Ben Leubner, Montana State University-Bozeman, USA 2. Romantic Hero Elizabeth Abele, SUNY Nassau Community College, USA 3. On Crashing Christopher Schaberg, Loyola University New Orleans, USA 4. Suburban Rage Robert Bennett, Montana State University-Bozeman, USA 5. Abyss of Simulation Randy Laist, Goodwin College, USA 6. Brangelina Blend Michele White, Tulane University, USA 7. Art Muse Sarah Juliet Lauro, Clemson University, USA 8. Oedipus Cop Fran Pheasant-Kelly, University of Wolverhampton, UK 9. Anger of Achilles Rick Hudson, Bath Spa University, UK 10. Becoming Brad Bob Batchelor, Thiel College, USA 11. A Star is Born Andy Horton, University of Oklahoma, USA 12. Brad Pitt for Mayor Thomas Bayer, Tulane University, USA 13. Gay for Brad Edmond Y. Chang, Drew University, USA CODA: FAILURE Brian A. Sullivan, Loyola University New Orleans, USA POSTSCRIPT? MADNESS Robert Bennett, Montana State University-Bozeman, USA BIBLIOGRAPHY CONTRIBUTORS INDEX Susan Clements, USA ARTWORK Nancy Bernardo, Rochester Institute of Technology, USA
Provides a perspectival analysis of Brad Pitt as a multiplex of fantasies and desires that get played out through Pitt's visage on and off screen.
Christopher Schaberg is Associate Professor of English at Loyola University New Orleans, USA, and author of The Textual Life of Airports: Reading the Culture of Flight (2013). Robert Bennett is Associate Professor of English at Montana State University-Bozeman, USA, and author of Deconstructing Post-WWII New York City: The Literature, Art, Jazz, and Architecture of an Emerging Global Capital (2003).
With just the right mix of wit, self-awareness, and critical
passion, the authors subject the curious case of brand Pitt--artist
and star, boy toy and generational icon, Redford scion and Ninth
Ward architect, Chanel shill and co-proprietor of the going concern
known as Brangelina--to edifying and satisfying scrutiny.
*Eric Lott, City University of New York, The Graduate Center,
USA*
Deconstructing Brad Pitt will shock you the moment you find out it
exists. The instinctive reaction to such a work is that academic
analysis and Hollywood stardom do not to make good bedfellows. This
is exactly why you open the first page, and you find yourself
hooked ... It is a highly readable book, full of personal insights,
first-person narratives and analyses based on the cultural studies
literature.
*LSE Review of Books*
In this exciting anthology, Schaberg and Bennett continue the work
of DeAngelis, Negra, and Pomerance, once again demonstrating that
an intensive study of a popular Hollywood film star will reveal not
the margins, but the center of how American culture functions. The
path charted by Richard Dyer 35 years ago has led to a flourishing
of analyses of stardom, wonderfully executed here by Schaberg,
Bennett, and their collaborators, who skillfully interrogate Brad
Pitt's cinematic, popular, and political image. The first rule of
Brad Pitt Studies is you MUST read and talk about _Deconstructing
Brad Pitt!
*Walter Metz, Southern Illinois University, USA*
_Deconstructing Brad Pitt, edited by Robert Bennett and Christopher
Schaberg, is an anthology of multi-disciplinary, multi-perspectival
engagements with the figure of Brad Pitt. The book is a strange and
compelling meshwork of affect, memory and desire, as each
author/artist follows a richly surprising line that leads readers
to places they might never have found on their own. Some of these
places are whimsical while others are more perilous and reverberate
with disaster, crises, madness, and failure. It would quite miss
the point to say that this collection is a celebrity study – it
transverses multiple disciplines from cultural studies to
psychoanalysis to new materialist feminism and queer theory. Yet,
it is not bound by any of these approaches. Ranging from visual
essays to personal accounts, the collection articulates “Brad Pitt”
as an event that is proximate to place, industry, nature, ruin,
representation, and resilience. Moving into and away from the
performative features of Brad Pitt, as celebrity and as citizen who
could be considered the unofficial mayor of New Orleans,
_Deconstructing Brad Pitt invites us to imagine what it might be
like to theorize engagement as entanglement, as a productive crash
into the objects that surround us. It invites us to take seriously
what others too quickly ignore or leave behind.
*Joy V. Fuqua, Associate Professor of Media Studies, Queens
College/CUNY, USA, and author of Prescription TV: Therapeutic
Discourse in the Hospital and at Home (2012)*
An in-depth look into the cultural phenomenon called Brad Pitt,
this book is for both fans and detractors of the actor. If you are
expecting tabloid fodder and TMZ-like stories, don’t pick up this
book because Deconstructing Brad Pitt by Christopher Schaberg and
Robert Bennett is a serious academic treatise which happens to be
an easy and fun read.
*Marienela.net*
Deconstructing Brad Pitt is an ambitious exploration of Brad Pitt
as a man, actor and celebrity. ...a fascinating exploration of Brad
Pitt as an icon, the roles he has played and the impact of his
celebrity status on contemporary life.
*Celebrity Studies*
Overall Deconstructing Brad Pitt is a compelling read, most
suitable for a scholarly audience though accessible to well-read
mass audience that seeks thoughtful commentary on American popular
culture. Pitt as actor, celebrity, philanthropist, father, partner,
environmentalist, liberal activist, man, tabloid fodder, artist
sheds light on many aspects of American popular culture and
society.
*American Studies*
Christopher Schaberg and Robert Bennett’s edited collection
Deconstructing Brad Pitt is an extremely remarkable volume and
honest to the core ... It is the first academic study focused on
the superstar, and it helps introduce Brad in newer ways to his
readers as well as his fans.
*Journal of Film and Video*
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