Books by Dana Polan

In this first book on The LEGO Movie, renowned film and TV scholar Dana Polan shows how, through irony, savvy self-awareness, and knowingness about the culture industry, the blockbuster animated film makes for essential cinema.

This engaging book chronicles the first classes on the art and industry of cinema and the colorful pioneers who taught, wrote, and advocated on behalf of the new art form. Using extensive archival research, Dana Polan looks at, for example, Columbia University's early classes on Photoplay Composition; lectures at the New School for Social Research by famed movie historian Terry Ramsaye; the film industry's sponsorship of a business course on film at Harvard; and attempts by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to create programs of professionalized education at the University of Southern California, Stanford, and elsewhere. Polan examines a wide range of thinkers who engaged with the new art of film, from Marxist Harry Alan Potamkin to sociologist Frederic Thrasher to Great Books advocates Mortimer Adler and Mark Van Doren.

Dana Polan considers what made Julia Childs TV show, The French Chef, so popular during its original broadcast and such enduring influences on American cooking, American television, and American culture since then.

In this concise analysis of the television show The Sopranos, a leading film and TV scholar explains the importance of the series in both its cultural and media-industry contexts.

Dana Polan sets out to unlock the style and technique of "Pulp Fiction". He shows how broad Tarantino's points of reference are, and analyzes the narrative accomplishment and complexity. In addition, Polan argues that macho attitudes celebrated in film are much more complex than they seem.