Advertising and the Transformation of Screen Cultures: (Film Culture in Transition)

Advertising has played a central role in shaping the history of modern media. While often identified with American consumerism and the rise of the 'Information Society', motion picture advertising has been part of European visual culture since the late nineteenth century. With the global spread of ad agencies, moving image advertisements became a privileged cultural form to make people experience the qualities and uses of branded commodities, to articulate visions of a 'good life', and to incite social relationships. Abandoning a conventional delineation of fields by medium, country, or period, this book suggests a lateral view. It charts the audiovisual history of advertising by focussing on objects (products and services), screens (exhibition, programming, physical media), practices (production, marketing), and intermediaries (ad agencies). In this way, the book develops new historical, methodological, and theoretical perspectives.

Table of Contents:
Introduction (Bo Florin, Patrick Vonderau, and Yvonne Zimmermann), 1. Early Cinema, Process Films, and Screen Advertising (Yvonne Zimmermann), Part I. Approaches and Methods, 2. Advertising and Modernity: A Critical Reassessment (Patrick Vonderau), 3. Advertising and Avantgardes: A History of Concepts, 1930-1940 (Yvonne Zimmermann), 4. Advertising as Institution: Charles Wilp and German Television, 1950-1970 (Patrick Vonderau), 5. Advertising and the Apparatus: Cinema, Television, and Out-of-Home Screens (Yvonne Zimmermann), 6. Advertising as Commercial Speech: Truth and Trademarks in Testimonial Advertising (Patrick Vonderau), 7. Advertising's Self-Reference: From Early Cinema to the Super Bowl (Yvonne Zimmermann), Part II. Cases and Materials, 8. Moving Objects: The Case of Volvo (Bo Florin), 9. Cinematic Intertexts: H&M Goes YouTube (Bo Florin), 10. Beyond Promotion: The UN Global Goals Campaign (Bo Florin), Select Bibliography, Index.

About the Author :

Bo Florin is Professor of Cinema Studies at the Department for Media Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden. Patrick Vonderau is Professor of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Halle, Germany. Yvonne Zimmermann is Professor of Media Studies at Philipps-University Marburg. Recent books include the co-authored Advertising and the Transformation of Screen Cultures>/cite> (AUP 2021) and the co-edited Films That Work Harder: The Global Circulations of Industrial Cinema (AUP 2023). She is the editor of a special issue on Asta Nielsen, the film star system and the introduction of the long feature film in Early Popular Visual Culture (2021).

"With Advertising and the Transformation of Screen Cultures, Florin, Vonderau, and Zimmermann have crafted an expansive, groundbreaking study of advertising's industrial practices and cultural forms. Covering a range of national contexts, media objects, and historical moments, the book's authors provide an exciting window into the dynamic relationship between advertising and moving images."
- Alisa Perren, University of Texas

"Remarkably ambitious in its scope, theoretically sophisticated, and always grounded in richly detailed original research that ranges from early cinema to YouTube, Advertising and the Transformation of Screen Cultures is an invaluable contribution to the history of screen advertising and media studies more generally."
- Gregory A. Waller, Indiana University

"Advertising and the Transformation of Screen Cultures is a welcome further contribution to this new generation of advertising studies [...] In their excellent introduction, the authors expressly discuss the ways in which they delineate their fields of study. [...] This fluid yet focused approach to analysis is then applied across a fascinating range of examples of screen advertising [...]"
- Stephanie Rains, Alphaville, No. 23, 2022