Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg: Hollywood Wunderkind and Humanist focuses on the most
commercialy successful American director of his generation, from his early
career at Universal Television to the Oscar-winning Lincoln (2013). The
fourteen chapters deal as much with his major hits as with films that have
received little critical attention like The Sugarland Express (1974), 1941
(1979) and The Terminal (2004). They address questions of ethics, ideology and
identity politics recognized as central to the director’s œuvre, while seeking
to make up for the lack of material on the films’ formal qualities and on the
notable contributions they have made to classical Hollywood genres such as
horror, science fiction and the war movie. This book contests the idea that
Spielberg is a “naïve” director, a mere craftsman with an eye for composition
and a natural talent for narrative economy. Instead, the book aims to
foreground the work’s cohesion, its influences and self-consciousness, its
steadfast inscription within the Western humanist tradition, and its resolve
to engage with the contemporary and explore complex ethical issues through
mainstream narratives, whether “serious” Oscar contenders or action-filled
popcorn blockbusters, a dichotomy Spielberg has increasingly sought to blur.