The contributors to this collection sift through the pre-release stories, merchandise tie-ins, advertising gimmicks, video offers, package tours and the like in order to make clear why Titanic turned out to be such a mammoth, international cultural phenomenon. . . . Keeping to the popular spirit of Titanic itself, the book is designed for a broad readership, and the contributors have made an effort to stay away from theoretical jargon.
(Times Literary Supplement) Anyone interested in accessible scholarly approaches to film and culture studies or a keener insight into why and how one film can resonate across borders at a particular moment in time will find this a stimulating and useful collection of essays.
(Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas) A thought-provoking collection of essays that bring contemporary cinema into serious focus. Titanic: Anatomy of a Blockbuster is wedded to movie history, to current cultural attitudes, and to its impact on viewers. Too bad someone wasnÆt around to do this for Gone With the Wind.
- Jeanine Basinger (chair, Film Studies Program, Wesleyan University) If Titanic was not just another film, then this work, with its range of approaches and perspectives, is not just another anthology.
- David Desser (University of Illinois) The authors in this volume offer a first-rate examination of a question that has long vexed studies of media and popular culture: what makes a text resonate so extensively, so deeply with its audiences that it becomes a public sensation? Sandler and Studlar have assembled a collection of essays that vividly and persuasively demonstrate the complexity of forces acting on the reception of what became the biggest film blockbuster of them all.
- Barbara Klinger (author of Melodrama and Meaning: History, Culture, and the Films of Douglas Sirk) Intriguing perspectives on a major cultural phenomenon.
- Steven Biel (author of Down with the Old Canoe: A Cultural History of the Titanic" Disaster)
