Books by Peter C . Kunze
In the early 1980s, Walt Disney Productions was struggling, largely bolstered by the success of i... more In the early 1980s, Walt Disney Productions was struggling, largely bolstered by the success of its theme parks. Within fifteen years, however, it had become one of the most powerful entertainment conglomerates in the world. Staging a Comeback: Broadway, Hollywood, and the Disney Renaissance argues that far from an executive feat, this impressive turnaround was accomplished in no small part by the storytellers recruited during this period. Drawing from archival research, interviews, and textual analysis, Peter C. Kunze examines how the hiring of theatrically trained talent into managerial and production positions reorganized the lagging animation division and revitalized its output. By Aladdin, it was clear that animation—not live action—was the center of a veritable “renaissance” at Disney, and the animated musicals driving this revival laid the groundwork for the company’s growth into Broadway theatrical production. The Disney Renaissance not only reinvigorated the Walt Disney Company but both reflects and influenced changes in Broadway and Hollywood more broadly.
Stand-up comedians have a long history of walking a careful line between serious and playful enga... more Stand-up comedians have a long history of walking a careful line between serious and playful engagement with social issues: Lenny Bruce questioned the symbolic valence of racial slurs, Dick Gregory took time away from the stage to speak alongside Martin Luther King Jr. , and—more recently—Tig Notaro challenged popular notions of damaged or abject bodies. Stand-up comedians deploy humor to open up difficult topics for broader examination, which only underscores the social and cultural importance of their work.
Taking a Stand: Contemporary US Stand-Up Comedians as Public Intellectuals draws together essays that contribute to the analysis of the stand-up comedian as public intellectual since the 1980s. The chapters explore stand-up comedians as contributors to and shapers of public discourse via their live performances, podcasts, social media presence, and political activism.
Each chapter highlights a stand-up comedian and their ongoing discussion of a cultural issue or expression of a political ideology/standpoint: Lisa Lampanelli’s use of problematic postracial humor, Aziz Ansari’s merging of sociology and technology, or Maria Bamford’s emphasis on mental health, to name just a few. Taking a Stand offers a starting point for understanding the work stand-up comedians do as well as its reach beyond the stage. Comedians influence discourse, perspectives, even public policy on myriad issues, and this book sets out to take those jokes seriously.
By assessing the historical and contemporary relationships between American and Australian cinema... more By assessing the historical and contemporary relationships between American and Australian cinemas, this collection sets out to encourage future studies on a growing field of inquiry. Its concentration on the complex historical and contemporary relationships between these two cinemas taps directly into discussions of national cinema, transnationalism and global Hollywood. While most equivalent studies aim to define national cinema as independent from or in competition with Hollywood, this collection explores a more porous set of relationships through the varied production, distribution and exhibition associations between Hollywood and Australia. To explore this idea, a range of chapters investigate the influence that Australia has had on US cinema through the exportation of its stars, directors and other production personnel to Hollywood; while many of the other chapters chart the sustained influence of US cinema on Australia over the last 100 years. The authors represented in this book re-examine the concept and definition of Australian cinema in regard to a range of local, international and global practices and trends that blur neat categorizations of Australian national cinema. Although this concentration on US production, or influence, is particularly acute in relation to such developments as the opening of international film studios in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and the Gold Coast over the last 30 years, this book also examines a range of Hollywood financed and/or conceived films shot in Australia since the 1920s. Furthermore it surveys Hollywood models of production and genre, as well as American distribution and exhibition networks, that have altered the way Australians go to the cinema, the type of films they watch, and the kinds of movies they make. This book takes two key points in time - the 1920s and 1930s and the last 20 years - to chart the ongoing, shifting, resistant and dependent relationships between Australian and US cinema and how particular patterns of localism, nationalism, colonialism, transnationalism and globalization have shaped its course over the last century.
A collection of out-of-print and previously unpublished interviews with author and artist Maurice... more A collection of out-of-print and previously unpublished interviews with author and artist Maurice Sendak, ranging from 1966 until 2012. Highlights include an early New Yorker profile, a conversation with Dr. Seuss, Philp Nel's previously unpublished discussion with Sendak about his collaboration with Crockett Johnson and Ruth Krauss, and Terry Gross's last interview with Sendak.
Journal Articles by Peter C . Kunze
In recent years, the longstanding practice of producing and circulating bootleg recordings of Bro... more In recent years, the longstanding practice of producing and circulating bootleg recordings of Broadway musicals has escalated as have condemnations of this activity as detrimental to the commercial theatre industry. Drawing on work from media industry studies, this article reframes theatre bootlegging not as a detrimental practice, but as one that may have generative contributions to the theatre industry for its promotional effects. Rather than celebrating such efforts as wholly resistant or co-opted, however, we must understand bootlegging as essentially fraught, staging the inherent tension between the Broadway musical as art and commerce and blurring the distinction between producers and consumers. Critical attention to theatrical bootlegging as a social and cultural practice foregrounds the range of stakeholders in theatre culture as well as the myriad ways that they function as market actors.
Feminist Media Studies, 2021
When Beauty and the Beast premiered in 1991, its self-assured protagonist was a deliberate depart... more When Beauty and the Beast premiered in 1991, its self-assured protagonist was a deliberate departure from the earlier Disney princess narratives. With time, however, the film has been lumped in with the other princess films as regressive, in part because the fairy tale itself is fundamentally flawed. The decision to remake the film as a live-action spectacle opens Disney and the text to the familiar critiques, which the 2017 film alternately addresses and suppresses. This article focuses on three efforts Disney made to skirt the long-standing feminist critiques on Beauty and the Beast: the casting of Emma Watson, including an "exclusively gay" moment, and framing Beauty as an AIDS allegory. In the process, it becomes clear that the remake is a deferential companion piece designed for cross-generational appeal, both for children today and of 1991, to sustain the highly profitable Disney Princess franchise. By exploring how paratextual and textual strategies were employed to address potential critiques, I assess the extent to which Disney faltered in its efforts to offer a more socially conscious film.
It goes without saying that media studies examines media that has been produced, but what value m... more It goes without saying that media studies examines media that has been produced, but what value might we find in those projects that were not produced? This article turns to failure as a productive site for inquiry, especially for archival work into production cultures. Taking Amblin’s unproduced adaptation of Cats from the Tom Stoppard Papers at the Harry Ransom Center as a case study, I argue that we turn to correspondence, contracts, and scripts of unproduced media for useful case studies into the complex relationship between creatives and industry. This model proves particularly useful for a production studies-informed inquiry in which individual creative agency and labor are foregrounded through textual and discursive analyses. Taken together, this article makes the case for the value of archival research into media industries studies, the productiveness of examining what prevents or obstructs projects from going into production or being completed, and the consequences of studying failure for our understanding of what media (and media studies) can be.
Despite the rich range of scholarship on the film musical, in-depth scholarly attention to the re... more Despite the rich range of scholarship on the film musical, in-depth scholarly attention to the relationship between Hollywood and Broadway as symbolic centers of the U.S. culture industries has been surprisingly sparse. This article makes an intervention into this largely neglected history through an examination of David O. Selznick's failed efforts in the early 1940s to stage Gone With the Wind as a Broadway musical. Fresh off back-to-back Academy Awards for Best Picture, Selznick made the innovative move to try adapting Gone With the Wind during his four-year hiatus from film production. Using Show Boat as an inspiration and Oklahoma! as a catalyst to accelerate his efforts, Selznick's attempts ultimately failed during his lifetime, but represent an earlier inroad into cross-industrial franchising. Furthermore, few know that Selznick set up a summer stock theater in Santa Barbara in 1941 not only to hone his contracted talent, but also to prevent them from leaving southern California for the New York stage in the summer. Consequently, this article emphasizes the value of studying industrial failure for scholars of the culture industries as well as the need for greater study of the alternately generative and competitive relationship between Broadway and Hollywood—a relationship put into renewed relief recently as Broadway shows now espouse a high concept aesthetic to tell stories often with roots in film properties and fueled in part by Hollywood money.
Bebe's Kids (1992) was the first animated feature film by, about, and (arguably) for African Amer... more Bebe's Kids (1992) was the first animated feature film by, about, and (arguably) for African Americans, bringing together two trends in early 1990s Hollywood: the resurgence of feature animation and the emergence of hip hop cinema. Despite its ambitious intentions, the film was a commercial and critical failure, and its attempts to bridge black cinema and animated media have largely gone neglected by scholars in both fields. This essay offers a history and analysis of Bebe's Kids to demonstrate not only the nature of this intriguing media failure, but to also discuss an important moment in hip hop history where nascent white-owned media companies seized upon hip hop-and blackness in general-in an attempt to legitimate themselves as producers of quality content. Indeed, Bebe's Kids represents a marked departure from the nihilism and violent realism of the " ghetto film cycle " toward a light-hearted hip hop cinema that not only showed a different vision of urban black life, but also proved to white audiences that hip hop was edgy, exciting—and safe. Like the Hudlins' House Party (1990), the animated Bebe's Kid offers a generative counterpoint to the standard perceptions of the tone and worldview of early hip hop cinema.
While children’s literature remains an important genre in contemporary literature and publishing,... more While children’s literature remains an important genre in contemporary literature and publishing, we often marginalize its study to elective courses or classes outside the English department. Teaching children’s literature, however, foregrounds many issues central to our field as teachers and scholars of American literature. In this essay, I offer 13 reasons for including children’s literature in American literature surveys. It is my contention that doing so not only expands our idea of the survey course, but can empower our students both inside and outside of the classroom.
Studies in Popular Culture, 2014
Drawing upon feminist and queer theories, this article offers a reading of Casablanca that aims t... more Drawing upon feminist and queer theories, this article offers a reading of Casablanca that aims to not only show the suppression of Ilsa’s agency, but the queer dynamics of the homosocial interactions in the film. It rebukes claims by film critics like Roger Ebert that Casablanca is “about a man and a woman who are in love, and who sacrifice love for a higher purpose.” Instead, the film’s final subject appears to be male friendship, which can be extended to earlier readings of the film’s propagandistic intentions. To accomplish this task, the essay shifts focus from Rick and Ilsa to three triangulations of desire that are fundamental to my understanding of the film: Rick, Ilsa, and Sam (Dooley Wilson); Rick, Ilsa, and Victor (Paul Henreid); and, most importantly, Rick, Ilsa, and Renault (Claude Rains). Using Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s work on homosocial male desire, I argue that Casablanca more accurately depicts the emotional complexity of male friendships and the reductive role of women in these fraternal bonds not only to fulfill the film’s admittedly propagandistic goals, but as an inadvertent testament to gender dynamics in a power structure organized around male power and interactions.
Comedy Studies, 2014
This essay considers the implications of social media technologies, specifically Vine, for comedy... more This essay considers the implications of social media technologies, specifically Vine, for comedy studies, childhood studies, and digital culture. Whereas the child as producer and consumer is often overlooked in the humanities, the author contends digital technologies radically liberate children to become producers of original content which can be easily and widely circulated around the world. Through case studies of three young producer-participants ("produsers") on Vine – Lillian Powers, Nash Grier, and Marissa Mayne – I consider the complexity of children’s humor, the need to consider real children in childhood studies, and the possible consequences on our understandings of authorship, distribution, and consumption.
Palimpsest: A Journal on Women, Gender, and the Black International, 2015
The academic study of children’s and young adult literature actively addresses fiction written by... more The academic study of children’s and young adult literature actively addresses fiction written by and about members of the African American and queer communities, but rarely is the intersection discussed at any length. This critical oversight fails to appreciate the creative work of Jacqueline Woodson, a self-identified black lesbian author whose fiction consistently engages themes of love and friendship alongside race, gender, and sexuality. The article examines Woodson’s 1997 novel The House You Pass Along the Way as a key text in both African American and queer young adult literatures for its original articulation of a queer black adolescent subjectivity. Drawing from queer theory, African American literary theory, and children’s literary studies, I focus on themes of ghostliness, interraciality, tomboyism, and language to argue for increased critical attention on this award-winning, yet critically underappreciated writer as well as further engagement with the growing field of black queer studies.
The Lion and the Unicorn, 2014
Natalie Babbitt's novel for children, Tuck Everlasting, -- the story of a young girl who, while w... more Natalie Babbitt's novel for children, Tuck Everlasting, -- the story of a young girl who, while wandering through her family’s wood, comes across a mysterious family, the Tucks, who unknowingly became immortal when they drank from a spring therein -- appeared in the early stages of the contemporary environmental movement. Winnie, with the assistance of this family, resists attempts by the ominous Man in the Yellow Suit to pump and market the spring water, and in the process, Winnie learns the value of living and friendship. Babbitt’s novel has surprisingly received limited ecocritical attention, but, as I will show, the book features various problematic “inter-being” relationships worthy of further discussion. To flesh out these contradictions, I employ the critical paradigm of ecofeminism, which coincidentally emerged around the time of the novel’s publication, and in the process, I intend to demonstrate what ecofeminism might bring to the academic and pedagogical study of children’s literature. While calling the novel “ecofeminist” in its ideological posturing would be anachronistic, I believe ecofeminism and Tuck Everlasting mutually inform each other in fruitful ways, especially in regards to our understanding of interconnectedness and the continuing marginalization of the child in academic study.
Studies in Australasian Cinema, 2013
The ‘ocker film’ was one of the defining subgenres of the revitalized Australian cinema of the 19... more The ‘ocker film’ was one of the defining subgenres of the revitalized Australian cinema of the 1970s. Characterized by bawdy humor and roguish escapades, these picaresque films satirically perpetuated an image of folksy Australian masculinity that countered and antagonized a queered image of British masculinity. To this end, these popular comedies rebuked the lingering British cultural influence in Australia while underscoring its distinctive humor and cultural identity, albeit one that was sexist, anti-intellectual, and homophobic. In the 1990s, a series of Australian film comedies took up (and took on) the ocker tradition to revise this problematic image of Australian masculinity. In this essay, I argue that The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (Elliott, 1994) re-appropriates and revises the ocker tradition, especially its pervasive heteronormativity. Though it falters in its treatment of women and ethnic minorities, Priscilla promotes a message of diversity that queers what I call the ‘andronationalism’ – that is, masculinized nationalism – touted in the ocker film tradition to envision a more modern and more inclusive image of Australia.
Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 2013
This essay considers the role children’s literature plays in what Lennard J. Davis has called “th... more This essay considers the role children’s literature plays in what Lennard J. Davis has called “the hegemony of normalcy” by closely studying a sample of biographies of Helen Keller intended for children. Through the lens of disability studies, I examine how Keller’s life has been re-appropriated to portray her as a victim of her disability rather than of a society that privileges the “able-bodied.” Such analysis also revisits the debates over biographies for children, an area of children’s literary study often neglected because of accusations of bowdlerization and oversimplification of the subject’s life as well as a perceived lack of artistry.
Studies in Russian and Soviet Cinema, 2013
This article critically examines the integral function of Nadia in Utomlennye solntsem/Burnt by t... more This article critically examines the integral function of Nadia in Utomlennye solntsem/Burnt by the Sun (Mikhalkov, 1994) as a necessary component of the ideological and commercial aims of the film. Critiques of the film often focus on the love triangle, but Nadia is a vital character who serves to shift the audience favour away from Mitia towards Kotov. Through a discussion of Aristotle's and Rousseau's conceptions of the child, I argue that Nadia embodies a western image of childhood contradictory to the representation of childhood in Soviet propaganda of the time. This directorial decision reveals not only Mikhalkov's political agenda, but the international ambitions for the film as a commercial product.
Fat Studies, 2013
Despite the reports on the rise of "obesity," the portrayal of fat male protagonists in contempor... more Despite the reports on the rise of "obesity," the portrayal of fat male protagonists in contemporary American fiction remains relatively rare. When it occurs, the character is quite often rendered as tragicomic. I offer close readings of two protagonists from critically acclaimed novels to flesh out trends in the depiction of the fat male body, which I call "extraordinary," in contemporary American fiction. In charting these characterizations, I hope to reveal the tensions between an attempt at empathy and a tendency to render fat male characters as pathetic.
Teaching American Literature: A Journal of Theory and Practice, 2013
Twitter has proven itself to be one of the fastest growing and most popular social media services... more Twitter has proven itself to be one of the fastest growing and most popular social media services online today. The familiarity many of our students have with Twitter makes it an ideal tool to integrate into our classroom, but those of us unfamiliar with how it works may be unsure of how to do so. This article provides five strategies for incorporating Twitter into your literature classroom: adaptation, role-playing, prequels & sequels, reader response blogging, and
Twitter stream co-lecture.
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Books by Peter C . Kunze
Taking a Stand: Contemporary US Stand-Up Comedians as Public Intellectuals draws together essays that contribute to the analysis of the stand-up comedian as public intellectual since the 1980s. The chapters explore stand-up comedians as contributors to and shapers of public discourse via their live performances, podcasts, social media presence, and political activism.
Each chapter highlights a stand-up comedian and their ongoing discussion of a cultural issue or expression of a political ideology/standpoint: Lisa Lampanelli’s use of problematic postracial humor, Aziz Ansari’s merging of sociology and technology, or Maria Bamford’s emphasis on mental health, to name just a few. Taking a Stand offers a starting point for understanding the work stand-up comedians do as well as its reach beyond the stage. Comedians influence discourse, perspectives, even public policy on myriad issues, and this book sets out to take those jokes seriously.
Journal Articles by Peter C . Kunze
Twitter stream co-lecture.
Taking a Stand: Contemporary US Stand-Up Comedians as Public Intellectuals draws together essays that contribute to the analysis of the stand-up comedian as public intellectual since the 1980s. The chapters explore stand-up comedians as contributors to and shapers of public discourse via their live performances, podcasts, social media presence, and political activism.
Each chapter highlights a stand-up comedian and their ongoing discussion of a cultural issue or expression of a political ideology/standpoint: Lisa Lampanelli’s use of problematic postracial humor, Aziz Ansari’s merging of sociology and technology, or Maria Bamford’s emphasis on mental health, to name just a few. Taking a Stand offers a starting point for understanding the work stand-up comedians do as well as its reach beyond the stage. Comedians influence discourse, perspectives, even public policy on myriad issues, and this book sets out to take those jokes seriously.
Twitter stream co-lecture.
French film critic Aurélien Ferenczi refers to Frankenweenie as a pastiche of Whale’s Frankenstein, and the term “pastiche” seems to be one that critics are prone to employ in describing Burton’s work. Yet if we understand it in the sense that Frederic Jameson does—as “blank parody” —then such an assessment carelessly reduces the political import of Tim Burton’s work, especially his early short films and features. More accurately, Burton appropriates the German Expressionist style and fuses it with the Hollywood aesthetic that demands clean and tidy stories with happy endings, such as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Spielberg, 1982), The Karate Kid (Avildsen, 1984), Back to the Future (Zemeckis, 1985), Hoosiers (Anspaugh, 1986). Dismissing Tim Burton on the basis of his commercial success reveals an outdated allegiance to the Romantic notion of authorship, one which the pragmatics of the studio system easily debunk. A more nuanced (and practical approach) would appreciate Tim Burton’s ability to adopt subversive styles and incorporate them into mainstream products without impairing their potential for success. Despite German Expressionism’s often counter-hegemonic intentions, its inaccessibility often alienated the group it aimed to awaken and inspire. Burton’s appropriation demonstrates one incarnation that attempts to marry avant garde aesthetics with the studio’s necessity for popular consumption. While it may not spark a revolution, it does work to undermine the stale conventions that continue to anesthetize the mainstream audience by reifying the values and practices of the dominant ideology.
A secondary concern of this essay is how these films, unlike their predecessors, exemplify a shift primarily child-directed cinema toward cinema that engages in what Barbara Wall has called “double address.” Though ostensibly intended for children’s consumption, these films consciously include appeals directed at adult viewers, subtexts that often escape children’s frames of reference or cognitive capabilities. Such techniques include the hiring of talent known primarily for their work outside of children’s entertainment (Billy Crystal, John Goodman, Steven Buscemi, Cameron Diaz, Mike Myers, and John Lithgow); allusions to other works of popular culture, especially Hollywood films targeted toward adult audiences (Pulp Fiction and The Godfather in Shrek; Fargo, The Right Stuff, and Psycho in Monsters, Inc.); and sexual innuendo (in Shrek, Magic Mirror introduces Snow White with the quip, “Although she lives with seven other men, she's not easy.”). This layered narrative speaks not only to the genre play at work in these films, but the appeal for the widest possible audience necessitated by the increased financial investment for production (Shrek reportedly cost $60 million, Monsters, Inc. nearly double that). As a result, corporate and commercial necessities are redefining children’s films in terms of their audience, form, and content.
This course is based on one developed by Professor Michele White.
force. We will cover the basics of narrative and film technique before studying important theoretical concepts and critical approaches. To enrich our study, we will closely analyze representative works of
Hollywood and world cinema. Students will develop a strong foundation for future study in the major.
in film production. Students will understand the history and limitations of such studies for analyzing and evaluating cinema as an artform.
considering various techniques, the development of the form, and significant practitioners. Topics will include classical Disney, stop-motion animation, Saturday morning cartoons, anime, Pixar, limited animation, Nicktoons, video games, and experimental animation. By the end of the course, students will understand the rich variety and ongoing significance of animation across media.
“Is It Like a Beat Without a Melody?”: Rap and Revolution in Hamilton | Jeffrey
Severs
Rise Up: Nuyorican Resistance and Transcultural Aesthetics in Hamilton | Gabriel
Mayora
Hamilton’s Women | Stacy Wolf
Blackout on Broadway: Affiliation and Audience in In the Heights and Hamilton |
Elena Machado Sáez
Staging a Revolution: The Cultural Tipping Points of John Gay and Lin-Manual
Miranda | Tiffany Yecke Brooks
Miranda’s Les Miz | Jeffrey Magee
Hamilton Meets Hip-Hop Pedagogy | Alison Dobrick
“Hey Yo, I’m Just Like My Country”: Teaching Miranda’s Hamilton as an
American Chronicle | Timothy J. Viator
Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Metamyth of a Nation’s Founding | Helen M. Whall
“What If This Bullet Is My Legacy?”: The Guns of Hamilton | Meredith Conti
Hamilton and Class | Matthew Clinton Sekellick
A Conversation Rewound: Queer and Racialized Temporalities in Hamilton |
Shereen Inayatulla and Andie Silva