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This book presents cosmopolitanism as a useful methodological approach to understand the transnational synergies present in contemporary cinema. In line with existing literature from the social sciences, the volume aims to contribute to the ‘cosmopolitan turn’ in cinema studies. It considers cosmopolitanism as, among others, a personal and social aspiration of social justice, world citizenship and celebration of difference; a notion to be criticised as elitist, Western, often imperialist, and homogenising; and an actually existing social practice characterised by contradiction, messiness and conflict. The chapters in this volume offer insights into the variety of sometimes contradictory ...
This book examines the recent trend in global cinema to feature infectious disease. As the global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic materialised the anxieties and discourses of world risk that had long been portrayed in popular media, the book provides a novel definition of the epidemic film genre and offers a systematic look into the narrative and stylistic conventions that characterise it. Epidemic Cinema traces the evolution of the genre from its early cinematic origins to establish the founding principles of a genre standing at the crossroads between science-fiction and horror. It draws on close textual analysis to show how the pandemic reified one of the central predicaments of epidemic n...
Here be Kraken! The Squid Cinema From Hell draws upon writers like Vilem Flusser, Donna J. Haraway, Graham Harman and Eugene Thacker to offer up a critical analysis of cephalopods and other tentacular creatures in contemporary media, while also speculating that digital media might themselves constitute a weird, intelligent alien. If this were not enough to shiver ye timbers, the book engages with contemporary discourses of posthumanism, speculative realism, object-oriented ontology and animal studies to suggest that humans are the products of media rather than media being the products of humans. Including case studies of films by Denis Villeneuve, Park Chan-wook and Celine Sciamma, The Squid Cinema From Hell also provides a daring engagement with various media beyond cinema, including literature, music videos, 4DX, advertising, websites, YouTube, Artificial Intelligence and more. Zounds! This unique and Lovecraftian book will change the way you think about, and with, our contemporary, media-saturated world. For as we contemplate the abyss, the abyss looks back at us - and chthulumedia, or media at the end of human times, begin to emerge.
Recent films are increasingly using themes and conventions of science fiction such as dystopian societies, catastrophic environmental disasters, apocalyptic scenarios, aliens, monsters, time travel, teleportation, and supernatural abilities to address cosmopolitan concerns such as human rights, climate change, economic precarity, and mobility. This book identifies and analyses the new transnational turn towards cosmopolitanism in science fiction cinema since the beginning of the twenty-first century. The book considers a wide selection of examples, including case studies of films such as Elysium, In Time, 2012, Andrew Niccol’s The Host, Codependent Lesbian Space Alien Seeks Same, and Cloud...
Women Who Kill explores several lines of inquiry: the female murderer as a figure that destabilizes order; the tension between criminal and victim; the relationship between crime and expression (or the lack thereof); and the paradox whereby a crime can be both an act of destruction and a creative assertion of agency. In doing so, the contributors assess the influence of feminist, queer and gender studies on mainstream television and cinema, notably in the genres (film noir, horror, melodrama) that have received the most critical attention from this perspective. They also analyse the politics of representation by considering these works of fiction in their contexts and addressing some of the ambiguities raised by postfeminism. The book is structured in three parts: Neo-femmes Fatales; Action Babes and Monstrous Women. Films and series examined include White Men Are Cracking Up (1994); Hit & Miss (2012); Gone Girl (2014); Terminator (1984); The Walking Dead (2010); Mad Max: Fury Road (2015); Contagion (2011) and Ex Machina (2015) among others.
This book offers a fresh analysis of Before Sunrise that reframes its romance within the contexts of transnational culture and cinema. The book highlights the symbolic value of the film’s construction of transnational youth in the building of a trans-European culture. Engaging with the film’s critical history, this book focuses on its specific view of youth and young love. Before Sunrise: Young Love on the Move examines young love within the cultural context of the 1990s in the US and its links with Generation X and the slacker culture. Within a wider scope, it also looks at the history and theory of romantic comedy and its connections with independent cinema. In considering the film a transnational text, this analysis underlines the parallels between a narrative of young love at the end of the 20th century and the construction of a young, or rejuvenated, Europe. Before Sunrise: Young Love on the Move provides an invaluable insight into this beloved film for students and researchers in film studies, transnational cinema and youth culture.
Stories of desert landscapes, cutting-edge production facilities, and lavish festivals often dominate narratives about film and digital media on the Arabian Peninsula. However, there is a more complicated history that reflects long-standing interconnections between the Persian Gulf, Arabian Sea, and Indian Ocean. Just as these waters are fluid spaces, so too is the flow of film and digital media between cultures in East Africa, Europe, North Africa, South Asia, Southwest Asia, and Southeast Asia. Reorienting the Middle East examines past and contemporary aspects of film and digital media in the Gulf that might not otherwise be apparent in dominant frameworks. Contributors consider oil compan...
The Handbook of Incarceration in Popular Culture will be an essential reference point, providing international coverage and thematic richness. The chapters examine the real and imagined spaces of the prison and, perhaps more importantly, dwell in the uncertain space between them. The modern fixation with ‘seeing inside’ prison from the outside has prompted a proliferation of media visions of incarceration, from high-minded and worthy to voyeuristic and unrealistic. In this handbook, the editors bring together a huge breadth of disparate issues including women in prison, the view from ‘inside’, prisons as a source of entertainment, the real worlds of prison, and issues of race and gender. The handbook will inform students and lecturers of media, film, popular culture, gender, and cultural studies, as well as scholars of criminology and justice.
At one time, more than one million sheep roamed the grassy areas of Arizona. Herding sheep was a critical component of the economy, building Arizona from its early territorial days into statehood. Fortunes were made, and, during economic downturns and other disasters, some lost everything. By the 1890s, sheepherding was a major enterprise in Arizona. Today, just over 180,000 sheep live in the state. Where Have All the Sheep Gone? details the untold story of the sheep industry in Arizona starting in the 1500s when the Spanish conquistadors began their push northward from Mexico and brought the first sheep as a food source. Arizona’s sheep industry is a rich history that has never been compr...