Popeye And Curly

Enjoy one hundred and twenty scenes from the vibrant city of Abbasid Baghdad, starring book-loving author Popeye (Al-Jahiz) and winebibbing poet Curly (Abu Nuwas), along with their friends Coral (a singing girl) and the Caliph of one of the world's most influential empires in history. Each episode is derived from historical sources, and designed to entertain, educate, and amaze.

The 13th-century Arabic grimoire, al-Sakkākī's Kitāb al-Shāmil (Book of the Complete), provides numerous methods of contacting jinn. The first such jinn described, Abū Isrā'īl Būzayn ibn Sulaymān, arrives with a donkey. In the course of offering an explanation for his ritual, this Element reveals the double-sided nature of asinine symbology, and explains why this animal has served as the companion of both demons and prophets. Focusing on two nodes of donkey symbology—the phallus and the bray-it reveals a coincidentia oppositorum in a deceptively humble and comic animal form. Thus, the donkey, bearer of a demonic voice, and of a phallus symbolic of base materiality, also represents transcendence of the material and protection from the demonic. In addition to Arabic literature and occult rituals, the Element refers to evidence from the ancient Near East, Egypt, and Greece, as well as to medieval Jewish and Christian texts.

Explores how both black and white southern writers such as Joel Chandler Harris, Charles Chesnutt, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, Ralph Ellison, Ellen Douglas, and Ernest Gaines have employed oral storytelling in literature Tracing Southern Storytelling in Black and White is a study of the historical use of oral storytelling by southern writers in written works. In each chapter, Sarah Gilbreath Ford pairs a white and an African American writer to highlight points of confluence in black and white southern oral traditions. She argues that the connections between white and African American southern writers run deeper than critics have yet explored, and she uses textual comparisons to examine the racial mixing of oral culture. On porches, in kitchens, and on the pages of their work, black and white southerners exchanged not just stories but strategies for telling stories. As a boy, Joel Chandler Harris listened to the stories of African American slaves, and he devised a framework to turn the oral stories into written ones. Harris’s use of the frame structure influenced how Charles Chesnutt recorded oral stories, but it led Alice Walker to complain that her heritage had been stolen. Mark Twain listened to African American storytellers as a child. His use of oral dialects then impacts how Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner employ oral storytelling and how Toni Morrison later writes in response to Faulkner. The interactions are not linear, not a chain of influence, but a network of interactions, borrowings, and revisions. Ford’s pairings lead to new readings that reveal how the writers employ similar strategies in their narratives, due in part to shared historical context. While Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner, for example, use oral storytelling in the 1930s to examine the fear of racial mixing, Ellen Douglas and Ernest Gaines use it in the 1970s to build bridges between the races. Exploring the cultural crossing that occurs in the use of oral storytelling, Ford offers a different view of this common strategy in southern narrative and a new perspective on how culture is shared.

The Palgrave Encyclopedia of American Horror Film Shorts chronicles for the first time over 1,500 horror and horror-related short subjects theatrically released between 1915, at the dawn of the feature film era when shorts became a differentiated category of cinema, and 1976, when the last of the horror-related shorts were distributed to movie theaters. Individual entries feature plot synopses, cast and crew information, and – where possible – production histories and original critical reviews. A small number of the short subjects catalogued herein are famous; such as those featuring the likes of Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, The Three Stooges, Bugs Bunny, and Daffy Duck; but the bulk are forgotten. The diverse content of these shorts includes ghosts, devils, witches, vampires, skeletons, mad scientists, monsters, hypnotists, gorillas, dinosaurs, and so much more, including relevant nonfiction newsreels. Their rediscovery notably rewrites many chapters of the history of horror cinema, from increasing our understanding of the sheer number horror films that were produced and viewed by audiences to shedding light on particular subgenres and specific narrative and historical trends.

Presents the work of America's most popular and influential comic artists, and includes critical essays accompanying each artist's drawings.

It's a rare comic character who can make audiences laugh for well over half a century--but then again, it's a pretty rare cartoon hero who can boast of forearms thicker than his waist, who can down a can of spinach in a single gulp, or who generally faces the world with one eye squinted completely shut. When E.C. Segar's gruff but lovable sailor man first tooted his pipe to the public on January 7, 1929, it was not in the animated cartoon format for which he is best known today (and which would become the longest running series in film history). Instead it was on the comics page of the New York Journal, as Segar's Thimble Theatre strip. Over the decades to come, Popeye was to appear on radio, television, stage, and even in a live-action feature film. This comprehensive and lavishly illustrated history is a thoroughly updated and revised edition of the highly acclaimed 1994 work. Animated series and films are examined, noting the different directions each studio took and the changing character designs of the Popeye family. Popeye in other media--comics, books, radio, and a stage play--is thoroughly covered, as are Robert Altman's 1980 live-action film, and Popeye memorabilia.

More people today can name the members of the Three Stooges than can name three justices of the Supreme Court. The Stooges are comedy icons whose enduring appeal and slapstick legacy have made them one of the most famous and beloved comedy troupes in the world. Michael Fleming's The Three StoogesTM is the first complete, authorized biography of the men who made pie fights part of our national cultural heritage. A juggernaut of wise guys, headlocks, and unforgettable insults, this book tells the whole history of the Stooges, starting with their origins in the golden years of vaudeville, when the boys from Brooklyn honed their craft. Moe, Curly, and Shemp Howard were born Moses, Jerome, and Samuel Horwitz--and were believed for many years to be the three least accomplished sons of their Lithuanian immigrant parents. Ultimately, of course, the Three Stooges reinvented the rules of slapstick comedy: never be caught unprepared in a pie fight, never slap one wise guy in the face if you can slap three in a row, and never underestimate the value of a good poke in the eye. Signed in 1934 by Columbia Pictures to a renewable contract that had them making at least nine short films a year, the Stooges learned firsthand about the sharks swimming through Hollywood's early waters. And after nearly a quarter century of producing the short films for which the Stooges are so well known and loved, the studio declined to renew their contract in 1954, and the pioneering pie-throwing professionals lost their jobs. Fittingly, though, Moe & Co. were destined to have the last laugh: the advent of television revived their careers after the decline of vaudeville and Hollywood shorts, and a new generation of belly laughs was born. From the Stooges' humble origins to movie stardom to comedy legends, there's something here for every level of fan--from folks who watched them on television as a kid to Stooge scholars and certified "knuckleheads." Featuring over two hundred photographs, many of them rare; interviews with Stooge friends and families; and a complete filmography with every "woob-woob" and crashed society cocktail party lovingly detailed, this book will be treasured by all Stoogedom.