Download or read book Abject Spaces in American Cinema written by Frances Pheasant-Kelly and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American cinema abounds with films set in prisons, asylums, hospitals and other institutions. Rather than orderly places of recovery and rehabilitation, these institutional settings emerge as abject spaces of control and repression in which adult identity is threatened as a narrative impetus. Exploring the abject through issues as diverse as racism, mental illness or the preservation of bodies for organ donation, this book analyses a range of films including 'The Shawshank Redemption' (1994), 'Full Metal Jacket' (1987) and 'Girl, Interrupted' (1999) through to cult films such as 'Carrie' (1976.
Download or read book Abject Spaces in American Cinema written by Frances Pheasant-Kelly and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-05-21 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American cinema abounds with films set in prisons, asylums, hospitals and other institutions. Rather than orderly places of recovery and rehabilitation, these institutional settings emerge as abject spaces of control and repression in which adult identity is threatened as a narrative impetus. Exploring the abject through issues as diverse as racism, mental illness or the preservation of bodies for organ donation, thi book analyses a range of films including One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), The Shawshank Redemption (1994), Full Metal Jacket (1987) and Girl, Interrupted (1999) through to cult films such as Carrie (1976) and Bubba Ho-tep (2002). In these films, locations of coherence and order become places where the internal and repressed aspects of the body, individual and social, threaten to overwhelm the individual. Identity is compromised through harsh conditions, extreme discipline, the exertion of absolute control, and above all the restriction of personal space. Symbolically infantilised, forced to reassess aspects of the adult, the only escape is through violence; the eponymous Carrie escapes from her cupboard for a massacre, the women of Girl, Interrupted mutilate and annihilate themselves and Kubrick's Gomer Pyle shoots sadistic patriarch Sergeant Hartman in the 'head'. By analysing scenes of horror and disgust within the context of abject space, Frances Pheasant-Kelly reveals how threats to identity manifest in scenes of torture, horror and psychosexual repression and are resolved either through death or through traumatic re-entry into the outside world. Bringing together contemporary theoretical debates and critical disciplines, Abject Spaces in American Cinema offers a coherent and meaningful analysis of institutonal films and shows that the chaos of the abject space cannot be resolved- only escaped. This readable and engging tour of the abject in the institution of film will be immensely valuable to students of Film Studies, Critical Theory and Cultural Studies.
Download or read book European Cinema and Continental Philosophy written by Thomas Elsässer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking volume for the Thinking Cinema series focuses on the extent to which contemporary cinema contributes to political and philosophical thinking about the future of Europe's core Enlightenment values. In light of the challenges of globalization, multi-cultural communities and post-nation state democracy, the book interrogates the borders of ethics and politics and roots itself in debates about post-secular, post-Enlightenment philosophy. By defining a cinema that knows that it is no longer a competitor to Hollywood (i.e. the classic self-other construction), Elsaesser also thinks past the kind of self-exoticism or auto-ethnography that is the perpetual temptation of such a co-produced, multi-platform 'national cinema as world cinema'. Discussing key filmmakers and philosophers, like: Claire Denis and Jean-Luc Nancy; Aki Kaurismäki, abjection and Julia Kristeva; Michael Haneke, the paradoxes of Christianity and Slavoj Zizek; Fatih Akin, Alain Badiou and Jacques Rancière, Elsaesser is able to approach European cinema and assesses its key questions within a global context. His combination of political and philosophical thinking will surely ground the debate in film philosophy for years to come.
Download or read book Spaces of Surveillance written by Susan Flynn and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-08-22 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world of ubiquitous surveillance, watching and being watched are the salient features of the lives depicted in many of our cultural productions. This collection examines surveillance as it is portrayed in art, literature, film and popular culture, and makes the connection between our sense of ‘self’ and what is ‘seen’. In our post-panoptical world which purports to proffer freedom of movement, technology notes our movements and habits at every turn. Surveillance seeps out from businesses and power structures to blur the lines of security and confidentiality. This unsettling loss of privacy plays out in contemporary narratives, where the ‘selves’ we create are troubled by surveillance. This collection will appeal to scholars of media and cultural studies, contemporary literature, film and art and American studies.
Download or read book Sensational Pleasures in Cinema Literature and Visual Culture written by G. Padva and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-02-25 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This international collection focuses on the phallic character of classic and contemporary literary and visual cultures and their invasive nature. It focuses on thrillers, horror cinema, sexual art and photography, erotic literature, female and male body politics, queer pleasures, gender/cross-gender/transgenderism, CCTV and phallic ethnicities.
Download or read book Spaces of the Cinematic Home written by Eleanor Andrews and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-24 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the ways in which the house appears in films and the modes by which it moves beyond being merely a backdrop for action. Specifically, it explores the ways that domestic spaces carry inherent connotations that filmmakers exploit to enhance meanings and pleasures within film. Rather than simply examining the representation of the house as national symbol, auteur trait, or in terms of genre, contributors study various rooms in the domestic sphere from an assortment of time periods and from a diversity of national cinemas—from interior spaces in ancient Rome to the Chinese kitchen, from the animated house to the metaphor of the armchair in film noir.
Download or read book Style and Form in the Hollywood Slasher Film written by Wickham Clayton and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-10-12 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Style and Form in the Hollywood Slasher Film fills a broad scholastic gap by analysing the elements of narrative and stylistic construction of films in the slasher subgenre of horror that have been produced and/or distributed in the Hollywood studio system from its initial boom in the late 1970s to the present.
Download or read book Cinema Suffering and Psychoanalysis written by Laura Stephenson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-12-14 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cinema, Suffering and Psychoanalysis explores psychological disorder as common to the human condition using a unique three-angled approach: psychoanalysis recognises the inherent suffering encountered by each subject due to developmental phases; psychology applies specific categorisation to how this suffering manifests; cinema depicts suffering through a combination of video and aural elements. Functioning as a culturally reflexive medium, the six feature films analysed, including Black Swan (2010) and The Machinist (2004), represent some of the most common psychological disorders and lived experiences of the contemporary era. This book enters unchartered terrain in cinema scholarship by combining clinical psychology's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual Five (DSM-V) to organise and diagnose each character, and psychoanalysis to track the origin, mechanism and affect of the psychological disorder within the narrative trajectory of each film. Lacan's theories on the infantile mirror phase, the Imaginary, and the Symbolic, Žižek's theories on the Real, the big Other and the Event, and Kristeva's theories on abjection and melancholia work in combination with the DSM's classification of symptoms to interpret six contemporary pieces of cinema. By taking into consideration that origin, mechanism, affect and symptomatology are part of an interconnected group, this book explores psychological disorder as part of the human condition, something which contributes to and informs personal identity. More specifically, this research refutes the notion that psychological disorder and psychological health exist as a binary, instead recognising that what has traditionally been pathologised, may instead be viewed as variations on human identity.
Download or read book Make America Hate Again written by Victoria McCollum and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-06-21 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Horror films have traditionally sunk their teeth into straitened times, reflecting, expressing and validating the spirit of the epoch, and capitalising on the political and cultural climate in which they are made. This book shows how the horror genre has adapted itself to the transformation of contemporary American politics and the mutating role of traditional and new media in the era of Donald Trump’s Presidency of the United States. Exploring horror’s renewed potential for political engagement in a socio-political climate characterised by the angst of civil conflict, the deception of ‘alternative facts’ and the threat of nuclear or biological conflict and global warming, Make America Hate Again examines the intersection of film, politics, and American culture and society through a bold critical analysis of popular horror (films, television shows, podcasts and online parodies), such as 10 Cloverfield Lane, American Horror Story, Don’t Breathe, Get Out, Hotel Transylvania 2, Hush, It, It Comes at Night, South Park, The Babadook, The Walking Dead, The Woman, The Witch and Twin Peaks: The Return. The first major exploration of the horror genre through the lens of the Trump era, it investigates the correlations between recent, culturally meaningful horror texts, and the broader culture within which they have become gravely significant. Offering a rejuvenating, optimistic, and positive perspective on popular culture as a site of cultural politics, Make America Hate Again will appeal to scholars and students of American studies, film and media studies, and cultural studies.
Download or read book James Bond Will Return written by Claire Hines and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2024-01-09 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For over six decades, James Bond has been a fixture of global culture, universally recognizable by the films’ combination of action set pieces, sex, political intrigue, and outrageous gadgetry. But as the British Empire entered the final stages of collapse, as the Cold War wound down and the “War on Terror” began, and as the visions of masculinity and femininity the series presented began to strike many viewers as outdated, the Bond formula has adapted to the changing times. Spanning the franchise’s entire history, from Sean Connery’s iconic swagger to Daniel Craig’s rougher, more visceral interpretation of the superspy, James Bond Will Return offers both academic readers and fans a comprehensive view of the series’s transformations against the backdrop of real-world geopolitical intrigue and sweeping social changes. Leading scholars consider each of the twenty-five films in the series, showing how and why Bond has changed and what elements of the formula have stood the test of time. Each chapter examines a single film from a distinct position, giving readers a full picture of the variety and breadth of the longest-running series in cinema history. Close formal readings; production histories; tracings of the political, social, and historical influences; analyses of the series’ use of then-new filmmaking technologies; reflections on the star personas that have been built around the character—these and many more approaches combine to produce a wide-ranging view of the James Bond film franchise. Essential reading for Bond scholars and aficionados alike, James Bond Will Return brings out the many surprising complexities of an iconic character.
Download or read book Through the Black Mirror written by Terence McSweeney and published by Springer. This book was released on 2019-07-26 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection charts the first four seasons of Black Mirror and beyond, providing a rich social, historical and political context for the show. Across the diverse tapestry of its episodes, Black Mirror has both dramatized and deconstructed the shifting cultural and technological coordinates of the era like no other. With each of the nineteen chapters focussing on a single episode of the series, this book provides an in-depth analysis into how the show interrogates our contemporary desires and anxieties, while simultaneously encouraging audiences to contemplate the moral issues raised by each episode. What if we could record and replay our most intimate memories? How far should we go to protect our children? Would we choose to live forever? What does it mean to be human? These are just some of the questions posed by Black Mirror, and in turn, by this volume. Written by some of the foremost scholars in the field of contemporary film and television studies, Through the Black Mirror explores how Black Mirror has become a cultural barometer of the new millennial decades and questions what its embedded anxieties might tell us.
Download or read book Meta and Inter Images in Contemporary Visual Art and Culture written by Carla Taban and published by Leuven University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-14 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the epistemological potential of meta- and inter-images Since the 1990s, when the question of the visual became central in various arts and humanities disciplines, images that refer to themselves as such or to other images have enjoyed an increasing interest. Meta- and Inter-Images in Contemporary Visual Art and Culture partakes in, enriches and updates these debates. It investigates what meta- and inter-images can make known about the visual, in its own terms, by its own means. Written by scholars in aesthetics, art history, and cultural, film, literary, media, and visual studies, the essays gathered here tackle meta- and inter-images in an array of creative artefacts, practices, and media. They unfold the epistemological potential of every meta- and inter-image discussed to raise questions such as: What are images? How do they work? By whom, to what purpose, to what effect and in what context/s are they used? How are they created and understood? And how do they challenge our (pre)conceptions of images and the ways we study them? Contributors Maaheen Ahmed (Université catholique de Louvain), Vangelis Athanassopoulos (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne), Sotirios Bahtsetzis (Hellenic Open University), Concepción Cortés Zulueta (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Mafalda Dâmaso (Goldsmiths, University of London), Elisabeth-Christine Gamer (University of Bern), Amanda Gluibizzi (Ohio State University), Stella Hockenhull (University of Wolverhampton), Anaël Lejeune (Université catholique de Louvain), Fabrice Leroy (University of Louisiana at Lafayette), Johanna Malt (King’s College London), Olga Moskatova (IKKM, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar), Magdalena Nowak (The Graduate School for Social Research at the Polish Academy of Sciences), Jorgelina Orfila (Texas Tech University), Fran Pheasant-Kelly (University of Wolverhampton), Raphaël Pirenne (School of Graphic Research, E.R.G. Brussels), Abigail Susik (Willamette University)
Download or read book The City Since 9 11 written by Keith Wilhite and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-03-04 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charting the intersection of aesthetic representation and the material conditions of urban space, The City Since 9/11 posits that the contemporary metropolis provides a significant context for reassessing theoretical concerns related to narrative, identity, home, and personal precarity. In the years since the September 11 attacks, writers and filmmakers have explored urban spaces as contested sites—shaped by the prevailing discourses of neoliberalism, homeland security, and the war on terror, but also haunted by an absence in the landscape that registers loss and prefigures future menace. In works of literature, film, and television, the city emerges as a paradoxical space of permanence and vulnerability and a convergence point for anxieties about globalization, structural inequality, and apocalyptic violence. Building on previous scholarship addressing trauma and the spectacle of terror, the contributors also draw upon works of philosophy, urban studies, and postmodern geography to theorize how literary and visual representations expose the persistent conflicts that arise as cities rebuild in the shadow of past ruins. Their essays advance new lines of argument that clarify art’s role in contemporary debates about spatial practices, gentrification, cosmopolitanism, memory and history, nostalgia, the uncanny and the abject, postmodern virtuality, the politics of realism, and the economic and social life of cities. The book offers fresh readings of familiar post-9/11 novels, such as Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, but it also considers works by Teju Cole, Joseph O’Neill, Silver Krieger, Colum McCann, Ronald Sukenick, Jonathan Lethem, Thomas Pynchon, Colson Whitehead, Paul Auster, William Gibson, Amitav Ghosh, and Katherine Boo. In addition, The City Since 9/11 includes essays on the films Children of Men, Hugo, and the adaptation of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, chapters on the television series The Bridge, The Killing, and The Wire, and an analysis of Michael Arad’s Reflecting Absence and the 9/11 Memorial.
Download or read book Screen Interiors written by Pat Kirkham and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2021-03-11 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Covering everything from Hollywood films to Soviet cinema, London's queer spaces to spaceships, horror architecture and action scenes, Screen Interiors presents an array of innovative perspectives on film design. Essays address questions related to interiors and objects in film and television from the early 1900s up until the present day. Authors explore how interior film design can facilitate action and amplify tensions, how rooms are employed as structural devices and how designed spaces can contribute to the construction of identities. Case studies look at disjunctions between interior and exterior design and the inter-relationship of production design and narrative. With a lens on class, sexuality and identity across a range of films including Twilight of a Woman's Soul (1913), The Servant (1963), Caravaggio (1986), and Passengers (2016), and illustrated with film stills throughout, Screen Interiors showcases an array of methodological approaches for the study of film and design history.
Download or read book Contemporary Black American Cinema written by Mia Mask and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary Black American Cinema offers a fresh collection of essays on African American film, media, and visual culture in the era of global multiculturalism. Integrating theory, history, and criticism, the contributing authors deftly connect interdisciplinary perspectives from American studies, cinema studies, cultural studies, political science, media studies, and Queer theory. This multidisciplinary methodology expands the discursive and interpretive registers of film analysis. From Paul Robeson’s and Sidney Poitier’s star vehicles to Lee Daniels’s directorial forays, these essays address the career legacies of film stars, examine various iterations of Blaxploitation and animation, question the comedic politics of "fat suit" films, and celebrate the innovation of avant-garde and experimental cinema.
Download or read book Screens of Terror written by Phil Hammond and published by Abramis. This book was released on 2011 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The essays in this collection first came together at a conference, held at London South Bank University's Centre for Media and Culture Research in September 2010, on representations of the 'war on terror' in film and television.
Download or read book Powers of Horror written by Julia Kristeva and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2024-03-26 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Powers of Horror, Julia Kristeva offers an extensive and profound consideration of the nature of abjection. Drawing on Freud and Lacan, she analyzes the nature of attitudes toward repulsive subjects and examines the function of these topics in the writings of Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Marcel Proust, James Joyce, and other authors. Kristeva identifies the abject with the eruption of the real and the presence of death. She explores how art and religion each offer ways of purifying the abject, arguing that amid abjection, boundaries between subject and object break down.
