Download or read book The Cinematic Superhero as Social Practice written by Joseph Zornado and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2021-11-06 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book analyzes the cinematic superhero as social practice. The study’s critical context brings together psychoanalysis and restorative and reflective nostalgia as a way of understanding the ideological function of superhero fantasy. It explores the origins of cinematic superhero fantasy from antecedents in myth and religion, to twentieth-century comic book, to the cinematic breakthrough with Superman (1978). The authors then focus on Spider-Man as reflective response to Superman’s restorative nostalgia, and read MCU’s overarching narrative from Iron Man to End Game in terms of the concurrent social, political, and environmental conditions as a world in crisis. Zornado and Reilly take up Wonder Woman and Black Panther as self-conscious attempts to reflect on gender and race in restorative superhero fantasy, and explore Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy as a meditation on the need for authoritarian fascism. The book concludes with Logan, Wonder Woman 1984, and Amazon Prime’s The Boys as distinctly reflective fantasy narratives critical of the superhero fantasy phenomenon.
Download or read book The Disaster Film as Social Practice written by Joseph Zornado and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-07-26 with total page 178 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Surveying disaster films from a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective, this book explores the disaster film genre from its initial appearance in 1933 (The Grapes of Wrath, 1933) to its present-day form (Don’t Look Up!, 2021), laying bare the ideological unconscious at work within the genre. The Disaster Film as Social Practice examines environmental science, history, film and literature in its interdisciplinary analysis of the disaster film genre. It explores the interplay, and the dichotomy, of “restorative” and “reflective” disaster narratives. An analysis of cinema's role in symbolizing and managing collective anxiety around disaster and death narratives examines how disaster films, through their narrative structures and symbolic elements, contribute to the public's understanding and emotional processing of real-world threats, and how cinematic narratives shape and are shaped by public and private ideological discourses, reflecting deeper psychological and environmental truths. Finally, the book offers an overview of how the transformation of the disaster film genre over time tells a history through imagining the worst. Providing a nuanced understanding of the disaster film genre and its significance in contemporary culture and thought, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of film studies, cultural studies, media studies, and environmental studies.
Download or read book Film as Social Practice written by Graeme Turner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Turner provides a clear introduction to major theoretical issues in the history of film production and film studies, examining the function of film as a national cultural industry, and its place in our popular culture.
Download or read book The Science Fiction Film in Contemporary Hollywood written by Evdokia Stefanopoulou and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2023-07-27 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Science Fiction Film in Contemporary Hollywood focuses on the American science fiction (SF) film during the period 2001-2020, in order to provide a theoretical mapping of the genre in the context of Conglomerate Hollywood. Using a social semiotics approach in a systematic corpus of films, the book argues that the SF film can be delineated by two semiotic squares -the first one centering on the genre's more-than-human ontologies (SF bodies), and the second one focusing on its imaginative worlds (SF worlds). Based on this theoretical framework, the book examines the genre in six cycles, which are placed in their historical context, and are analyzed in relation to cultural discourses, such as technological embodiment, race, animal-human relations, environmentalism, global capitalism, and the techno-scientific Empire. By considering these cycles -which include superhero films, creature films, space operas, among others-as expressions of the genre's basic oppositions, the book facilitates the comparison and juxtaposition of films that have rarely been discussed in tandem, offering a new perspective on the multiple articulations of the SF film in the new millennium.
Download or read book Netflix Spain written by Jorge González del Pozo and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-10-02 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection analyzes the tensions, contradictions, contributions, and new horizons generated and/or imposed by Netflix within Spain’s audiovisual culture. This book provides invaluable insight into how Netflix—first in its role as distributor and then as content creator—has changed the audiovisual landscape in Spain. It discusses how Netflix challenges the traditional method of categorizing film and television output by nationality while also examining how Spain is presented to other countries through the Netflix catalog and questioning what its chosen output—light comedies, mystery/thrillers, narco-fiction, and crime—means for Spain’s national brand. With chapters addressing themes such as reproducibility, pan-Europeanism after Brexit, gender representation, identity, and globalization, this book explores how—under the influence of Netflix—Spain is transitioning from an importer of audiovisual content to a center of export. This book will appeal to students and scholars of Film and Media Studies, Hispanic and Iberian Studies, and Spanish with a specific interest in Spanish film, television, media, and culture, as well as global media industries.
Download or read book Superhero Synergies written by James N. Gilmore and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2014-03-06 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the age of digital media, superheroes are no longer confined to comic books and graphic novels. Their stories are now featured in films, video games, digital comics, television programs, and more. In a single year alone, films featuring Batman, Spider-Man, and the Avengers have appeared on the big screen. Popular media no longer exists in isolation, but converges into complex multidimensional entities. As a result, traditional ideas about the relationship between varying media have come under striking revision. Although this convergence is apparent in many genres, perhaps nowhere is it more persistent, more creative, or more varied than in the superhero genre. Superhero Synergies: Comic Book Characters Go Digital explores this developing relationship between superheroes and various forms of media, examining how the superhero genre, which was once limited primarily to a single medium, has been developed into so many more. Essays in this volume engage with several of the most iconic heroes—including Batman, Hulk, and Iron Man—through a variety of academic disciplines such as industry studies, gender studies, and aesthetic analysis to develop an expansive view of the genre’s potency. The contributors to this volume engage cinema, comics, video games, and even live stage shows to instill readers with new ways of looking at, thinking about, and experiencing some of contemporary media’s most popular texts. This unique approach to the examination of digital media and superhero studies provides new and valuable readings of well-known texts and practices. Intended for both academics and fans of the superhero genre, this anthology introduces the innovative and growing synergy between traditional comic books and digital media.
Download or read book Experiencing Cinema written by Emma Pett and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2021-01-28 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film is often conceived as a medium that is watched rather than experienced. Existing studies of film audiences, and of media reception more broadly, have revealed the complexity of viewing practices and cultures surrounding cinema-going and its exhibition spaces. Experiencing Cinema offers the first in-depth study of participant engagement with a range of experiential media forms derived from cinema culture. From sing-a-long screenings to theatrical extravaganzas, a broad spectrum of alternative film-going practices and immersive spaces are explored and analysed in this original audience study. Moving from intimate community gatherings to blockbuster urban venues, from isolated farmhouses to Olympic stadia, Experiencing Cinema considers the lure and value of these popular events. Often attracting a diverse, intergenerational range of participants, from early-adopter urban hipsters to DIY rural communities, the growing demand for participatory cinema within the contemporary marketplace is analysed alongside broader debates circulating around the move away from traditional tiered seating and increased audience mobility and the de-centring of the film text.
Download or read book The 21st Century Superhero written by Richard J. Gray II and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2011-09-07 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superhero films are one of the most enduring genres of cinema, and their popularity is only increasing in the 21st century. These ten critical essays explore the phenomenon through the lenses of numerous academic disciplines, and cover topics such as the role of globalization in the formation of superhero narratives, the shifting nature of masculinity and femininity in the superhero world and the state of the genre today. Of particular interest is the way these narratives, however fantastic, abstract, futuristic or simplistic, resonate with specific events in the world and function as starting points for discussion of contemporary sociopolitical conflicts.
Download or read book Super heroes written by Wendy Haslem and published by New Academia Publishing, LLC. This book was released on 2007 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection explores contemporary superhero narratives, including comic books and films, in a wider mythic context. Since the 1930s superheroes have come to dominate a variety of media formats. Why are audiences so fascinated with heroes, and what makes the idea of heroes so necessary in society?
Download or read book Superhero Rhetoric from Exceptionalism to Globalization written by Michael Arthur Soares and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-09-11 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Superhero Rhetoric from Exceptionalism to Globalization: Up, Up and ...Abroad examines superhero narratives through the lens of American rhetoric and globalization. Michael Arthur Soares illustrates how deeply intertwined superhero narratives are with American political culture by analyzing, on the one hand, the rhetoric of American exceptionalism and the representation of American presidents in superhero narratives and, on the other, the prevalence of superhero rhetoric in speeches by American politicians. Turning toward the global mobility of the superhero genre, Soares then offers further insight into the ways in which cultural contexts inform transformations of superheroes and their narratives around the world and how American filmmakers have adjusted their narratives to guarantee their global reach and ability to place films in the global marketplace. Finally, the author considers real-life examples of licensed superhero iconography embodied by individuals around the world who seek to make change in their communities. Ultimately, the chapters examine the journey of superhero rhetoric and how it reaches out to global audiences, across cultural borders and back again.
Download or read book The Hero and Hero Making Across Genres written by Amar Singh and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2021-09-30 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book critically examines how a Hero is made, sustained, and even deformed, in contemporary cultures. It brings together diverse ideas from philosophy, mythology, religion, literature, cinema, and social media to explore how heroes are constructed across genres, mediums, and traditions. The essays in this volume present fresh perspectives for readers to conceptualize the myriad possibilities the term ‘Hero’ brings with itself. They examine the making and unmaking of the heroes across literary, visual and social cultures —in religious spaces and in classical texts; in folk tales and fairy tales; in literature, as seen in Heinrich Böll’s Und Sagte Kein Einziges Wort, Thomas Brüssig’s Heroes like Us, and in movies, like Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, Michel Gondry’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and in the short film like Dean Potter's When Dogs Fly. The volume also features nuanced takes on intersectional feminist representations in hero movies; masculinity in sports biopics; taking everyday heroes from the real to the reel, among others key themes. A stimulating work that explores the mechanisms that ‘manufacture’ heroes, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of English literature, postcolonial studies, cultural studies, film studies, media studies, literary and critical theory, arts and aesthetics, political sociology and political philosophy.
Download or read book American Theology Superhero Comics and Cinema written by Anthony Mills and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stan Lee, who was the head writer of Marvel Comics in the early 1960s, co-created such popular heroes as Spider-Man, Hulk, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Iron Man, Thor, and Daredevil. This book traces the ways in which American theologians and comic books of the era were not only both saying things about what it means to be human, but, starting with Lee they were largely saying the same things. Author Anthony R. Mills argues that the shift away from individualistic ideas of human personhood and toward relational conceptions occurring within both American theology and American superhero comics and films does not occur simply on the ontological level, but is also inherent to epistemology and ethics, reflecting the comprehensive nature of human life in terms of being, knowing, and acting. This book explores the idea of the "American monomyth" that pervades American hero stories and examines its philosophical and theological origins and specific manifestations in early American superhero comics. Surveying the anthropologies of six American theologians who argue against many of the monomyth’s assumptions, principally the staunch individualism taken to be the model of humanity, and who offer relationality as a more realistic and ethical alternative, this book offers a detailed argument for the intimate historical relationship between the now disparate fields of comic book/superhero film creation, on the one hand, and Christian theology, on the other, in the United States. An understanding of the early connections between theology and American conceptions of heroism helps to further make sense of their contemporary parallels, wherein superhero stories and theology are not strictly separate phenomena but have shared origins and concerns.
Download or read book Law and Justice on the Small Screen written by Peter Robson and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-08-01 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Law and Justice on the Small Screen' is a wide-ranging collection of essays about law in and on television. In light of the book's innovative taxonomy of the field and its international reach, it will make a novel contribution to the scholarly literature about law and popular culture. Television shows from France, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and the United States are discussed. The essays are organised into three sections: (1) methodological questions regarding the analysis of law and popular culture on television; (2) a focus on genre studies within television programming (including a subsection on reality television), and (3) content analysis of individual television shows with attention to big-picture jurisprudential questions of law's efficacy and the promise of justice. The book's content is organised to make it appropriate for undergraduate and graduate classes in the following areas: media studies, law and culture, socio-legal studies, comparative law, jurisprudence, the law of lawyering, alternative dispute resolution and criminal law. Individual chapters have been contributed by, among others: Taunya Banks, Paul Bergman, Lief Carter, Christine Corcos, Rebecca Johnson, Stefan Machura, Nancy Marder, Michael McCann, Kimberlianne Podlas and Susan Ross, with an Introduction by Peter Robson and Jessica Silbey.
Download or read book The Cinema of James Wan written by Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2021-12-31 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An auteur and the creator of multiple cinematic universes, James Wan has become one of the most successful directors in history, his films breaking box office records worldwide. Yet there is little scholarship on Wan's work. This collection of new essays fills the gap with contributions from around the globe offering analysis of his film and television productions, including Saw (2004), Aquaman (2018) and The Conjuring Universe franchise, along with less well-known works like Death Sentence (2007), Dead Silence (2007) and his pilot for the new MacGyver series. For the first time, Wan's films are explored in-depth from wide range of critical perspectives.
Download or read book The Superhero Symbol written by Liam Burke and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2019-12-13 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bringing together superhero scholars and key industry figures The Superhero Symbol unmasks how superheroes have become so pervasive in media, culture, and politics. This timely collection explores how these powerful icons are among the entertainment industry's most valuable intellectual properties, yet can be appropriated for everything from activism to cosplay and real-life vigilantism.
Download or read book Champions Vol 1 written by Mark Waid and published by Marvel Entertainment. This book was released on 2017-05-03 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collecting Champions (2016) #1-5. One of the great team names in Marvel history returns, in incredible new fashion! During the fallout of Civil War II, Ms. Marvel, Nova and Spider-Man quit the Avengers and strike out on their own! With Viv Vision and the Totally Awesome Hulk by their side, these young heroes are determined to change the world their own way - and they're only the beginning! It starts as an idea. It becomes an ideal. But what happens when it turns into a movement - one so big even the Hulk can't stop it? And will one of the greatest X-Men of all forge a new future by their side? Welcome to the Champions, Cyclops! Unfortunately, not all of your new would-be teammates are glad to see you!
Download or read book A Brief History of Comic Book Movies written by Wheeler Winston Dixon and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-01-05 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Brief History of Comic Book Movies traces the meteoric rise of the hybrid art form of the comic book film. These films trace their origins back to the early 1940s, when the first Batman and Superman serials were made. The serials, and later television shows in the 1950s and 60s, were for the most part designed for children. But today, with the continuing rise of Comic-Con, they seem to be more a part of the mainstream than ever, appealing to adults as well as younger fans. This book examines comic book movies from the past and present, exploring how these films shaped American culture from the post-World War II era to the present day, and how they adapted to the changing tastes and mores of succeeding generations.
