A01=Steven C. Caton
aqaba
arab national council
Author_Steven C. Caton
british film
Category=ATFA
Category=JBCC
Category=JHM
class
classic film
colonialism
cultural differences
damascus
desert tribes
discourse of power
emotional struggles
epic historical drama
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnography
film
film and television
film criticism
film studies
filmmaking
first world war
gender
gender studies
greater syria
hejaz
homosexuality
identity
lawrence of arabia
masculinity
middle east
movie studies
movies
ottoman empire
representation of the other
te lawrence
violence
war
Product details
- ISBN 9780520210837
- Weight: 499g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 13 Apr 1999
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Combining ethnography, film criticism, and his extensive knowledge of the Middle East, Steven C. Caton presents an innovative and fascinating examination of the classic film, Lawrence of Arabia. Caton is interested in why this epic film has been so compelling for so many people for more than three decades. In seeking an answer he draws from situations in his own life, biographies of the film's key participants, and analyses of issues relating to class, gender, colonialism, and cultural differences. The result is a many-prismed book that poses important questions of ethnographic representation and the discourse of power. Caton's approach is dialectical, and his readings of the film are situated within different historical periods, from the early 1960s to the present. Among the subjects he highlights are travel and colonialism in fieldwork and filmmaking, orientalism in the representation of the Other, and the film's ambiguous handling of masculinity and homosexuality. Caton looks at his own reactions to the film at various stages in his life and offers a thought-provoking account of the film's reception by today's high school and college students.
Steven C. Caton is Professor of Modern Arab Society in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University and the author of Peaks of Yemen I Summon: Poetry as Cultural Practice in a North Yemeni Tribe (California, 1990).
