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This is the first book to offer a systematic account of the concept of opacity in the aesthetic field. Engaging with works by Ernie Gehr, John Akomfrah, Matt Saunders, David Lynch, Trevor Paglen, Zach Blas, and Low, the study considers the cultural, epistemological, and ethical values of images and sounds that are fuzzy, indeterminate, distorted, degraded, or otherwise indistinct. Rethinking Art and Visual Culture shows how opaque forms of art address problems of mediation, knowledge, and information. It also intervenes in current debates about new systems of visibility and surveillance by explaining how indefinite art provides a critique of the positivist drive behind these regimes. A timely contribution to media theory, cinema studies, American studies, and aesthetics, the book presents a novel and extensive analysis of the politics of transparency.
This book focuses on the theme of counter-surveillance in art through a multi-faceted engagement with the highly controversial Norwegian play Ways of Seeing. Denounced by the prime minister and subject to a police investigation, the play gained notoriety when it featured footage showing the homes of the country’s financial and political elite as part of its scenography. The book provides a thorough consideration of the work’s reception context before elucidating its relation to the politics of neoliberalism. What is foregrounded in this analysis are, first, the use of an aesthetics of sousveillance to visualize the material infrastructure of racism and right-wing populism, second, the tangled interrelations of art and law, third, questions of censorship and artistic freedom, and fourth, the promotion of an alternative mode of political governance – grounded in feminism and ecological awareness – through the example of the Rojava experiment.
As Hollywood shifts towards the digital era, the role of the media franchise has become more prominent. This edited collection, from a range of international scholars, argues that the franchise is now an integral element of American media culture. As such, the collection explores the production, distribution and marketing of franchises as a historical form of media-making - analysing the complex industrial practice of managing franchises across interconnected online platforms. Examining how traditional media incumbents like studios and networks have responded to the rise of new entrants from the technology sector (such as Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google), the authors take a critical look at the way new and old industrial logics collide in an increasingly fragmented and consolidated mediascape.
Identity in Animation: A Journey into Self, Difference, Culture and the Body uncovers the meaning behind some of the most influential characters in the history of animation and questions their unique sense of who they are and how they are formed. Jane Batkin explores how identity politics shape the inner psychology of the character and their exterior motivation, often buoyed along by their questioning of ‘place’ and ‘belonging’ and driven by issues of self, difference, gender and the body. Through this, Identity in Animation illustrates and questions the construction of stereotypes as well as unconventional representations within American, European and Eastern animation. It does so w...
For three decades, award-winning independent filmmaker Todd Haynes, who emerged in the early 1990s as a foundational figure in New Queer Cinema, has gained critical recognition for his outsider perspective. Today, Haynes is widely known for bringing women’s stories to the screen. Analyzing Haynes’s films including Safe (1995), Velvet Goldmine (1998), Far from Heaven (2002), and Carol (2015), as well as his unauthorized Karen Carpenter biopic, Superstar (1987), and the television miniseries Mildred Pierce (2011), the contributors to Reframing Todd Haynes reassess his work in light of his long-standing feminist commitments and his exceptional career as a director of women’s films. They p...
This collection of essays highlights innovative work in the emerging field of media archaeology. It explores the relationship between theory and practice and the relationship between media archaeology and other disciplines. There are three sections to the collection proposing new possible fields of research for media studies: Media Archaeological Theory; Experimental Media Archaeology; Media Archaeology at the Interface. The book includes essays from acknowledged experts in this expanding field, such as Thomas Elsaesser, Wanda Strauven and Jussi Parikka.
In this exciting interdisciplinary collection, scholars, activists, and media producers explore the emergence of Indigenous media: forms of media expression conceptualized, produced, and created by Indigenous peoples around the globe. Whether discussing Maori cinema in New Zealand or activist community radio in Colombia, the contributors describe how native peoples use both traditional and new media to combat discrimination, advocate for resources and rights, and preserve their cultures, languages, and aesthetic traditions. By representing themselves in a variety of media, Indigenous peoples are also challenging misleading mainstream and official state narratives, forging international solid...
Why are so many contemporary comics and graphic narratives written as memoirs or documentaries of traumatic events? Is there a specific relationship between the comics form and the documentation and reportage of trauma? How do the interpretive demands made on comics readers shape their relationships with traumatic events? And how does comics’ documentation of traumatic pasts operate across national borders and in different cultural, political, and politicised contexts? The sixteen chapters and three comics included in Documenting Trauma in Comics set out to answer exactly these questions. Drawing on a range of historically and geographically expansive examples, the contributors bring their different perspectives to bear on the tangled and often fraught intersections between trauma studies, comics studies, and theories of documentary practices and processes. The result is a collection that shows how comics is not simply related to trauma, but a generative force that has become central to its remembrance, documentation, and study.
Contributions by Leah Aldridge, Karen M. Bowdre, Aymar Jean Christian, Keith Corson, Rachel Jessica Daniel, Artel Great, Brandeise Monk-Payton, Miriam J. Petty, Eric Pierson, Paul N. Reinsch, TreaAndrea M. Russworm, Rashida Z. Shaw, Samantha N. Sheppard, Ben Raphael Sher, and Khadijah Costley White For over a decade, Tyler Perry has been a lightning rod for both criticism and praise. To some he is most widely known for his drag performances as Madea, a self-proclaimed "mad black woman," not afraid to brandish a gun or a scalding pot of grits. But to others who watch the film industry, he is the businessman who by age thirty-six had sold more than $100 million in tickets, $30 million in video...