Author Description

Astaire By Numbers: Time And The Straight White Male Dancer Looks At Every Second Of Dancing Fred Astaire Committed To Film In The Studio Era-all Six Hours, Thirty-four Minutes, And Fifty Seconds. Using A Quantitative Digital Humanities Approach, As Well As Previously Untapped Production Records, This Book Takes The Reader Onto The Set And Into The Rehearsal Halls And Editing Rooms Where Astaire Created His Seemingly Perfect Film Dances. Looking Closely In This Way Reveals How Astaire Used The Technically Sophisticated Resources Of The Hollywood Film Making Machine To Craft A Singular Career In Mass Entertainment As A Straight, White Man Who Danced On Screen Across A Quarter Century Of Film History. Astaire By Numbers Dissects Astaire's Work At The Level Of The Shot, The Cut, And The Dance Step To Reveal The Aesthetic And Practical Choices That Yielded Astaire's Dancing Figure On Screen. How Astaire Secured His Masculinity (by Dancing Noisily And Aggressively) And His Heterosexuality (by Dancing Most Of The Time With A Female Partner) Comes In For Close Examination, As Does The Content Of Astaire's Whiteness, Which Emerges In Both The Sheer Extent Of His Work And The Larger Implications Of His Famous Full Figure Framing Of His Dancing Body. Astaire By Numbers Rethinks This Towering Straight White Male Figure From The Ground Up By Digging Deeply Into Questions Of Race, Gender, And Sexuality And Offering A Complete Re-assessment Of A Twentieth-century Icon Of American Popular Culture-- Provided By Publisher.