William H. Epstein & R. Barton Palmer 
Invented Lives, Imagined Communities 
The Biopic and American National Identity

Biopics—films that chronicle the lives of famous and notorious figures from our national history—have long been one of Hollywood’s most popular and important genres, offering viewers various understandings of American national identity.
Invented Lives, Imagined Communities provides the first full-length examination of US biopics, focusing on key releases in American cinema while treating recent developments in three fields: cinema studies, particularly the history of Hollywood; national identity studies dealing with the American experience; and scholarship devoted to modernity and postmodernity. Films discussed include
Houdini,
Patton,
The Great White Hope,
Bound for Glory,
Ed Wood,
Basquiat,
Pollock,
Sylvia,
Kinsey,
Fur,
Milk,
J. Edgar, and
Lincoln, and the book pays special attention to the crucial generic plot along which biopics traverse and showcase American lives, even as they modify the various notions of the national character.

表中的内容

Acknowledgments



Introduction: Strategic Patriotic Memories

William H. Epstein




PERFORMERS AND SHOWMEN



Empty Words: Houdini and
Houdini

Murray Pomerance



Woody Guthrie, Warts and All: The Biopic in the New American Cinema of the 1970s

Dennis Bingham



“Weird Andy Hardy”:
Ed Wood and American National Identity

Constantine Verevis




HOT AND COLD WARRIORS



Topography and Typology: Wyatt Earp and the West

Homer B. Pettey



Patton (1970): Celebrating the Un-American National Hero

R. Barton Palmer



J. Edgar: Eastwood’s Man of Mystery

Douglas Mcfarland




ARTISTS AND WRITERS



Nationalizing Abject American Artists: Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, and Jean-Michel Basquiat

Julie Codell



Adapting Plathology:
Sylvia (2003)

Claire Perkins



“The Dark Lady of American Photography”: Steven Shainberg’s
Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006)

Monika Pietrzak-Franger




EMANCIPATORS AND MARTYRS



The Great White Hope (1970): A Forgotten Biopic?

James Burns And Abel A. Bartley



Kinsey: An Inquiry into American Sexual Identity

Gabriele Linke



Toward a New LGBT Biopic: Politics and Reflexivity in Gus Van Sant’s
Milk (2008)

Julia G. Erhart



Spielberg’s
Lincoln: Memorializing Emancipation

R. Barton Palmer



Afterword: The Making of Americans

William H. Epstein



Contributors

Index

关于作者

William H. Epstein is Professor of English at the University of Arizona. His previous books include
Recognizing Biography and
Contesting the Subject: Essays in the Postmodern Theory and Practice of Biographical Criticism.
R. Barton Palmer is Calhoun Lemon Professor of Literature and Director of Film Studies at Clemson University. His previous books include
Shot on Location: Postwar American Cinema and the Exploration of Real Place and (with William Robert Bray)
Hollywood’s Tennessee: The Williams Films and Postwar America.