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Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema
If science fiction stages the battle between humans and non-humans, whether alien or machine, who is elected to fight for us? In the classics of science fiction cinema, humanity is nearly always represented by a male, and until recently, a white male. Spanning landmark American films from Blade Runner to Avatar, this major new study offers the first ever analysis of masculinity in science fiction cinema. It uncovers the evolution of masculine heroes from the 1980s until the present day, and the roles played by their feminine counterparts. Considering gender alongside racial and class politics, Masculinity in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema also situates filmic examples within the broader culture. It is indispensable for understanding science fiction and its role in contemporary cultural politics.
From the Margins to the Mainstream
This book explores the various issues raised by women's fraught integration into the mainstream in film and television, whether it be off screen as filmmakers and film critics or on screen in film and TV series. Marianne Kac-Vergne and Julie Assouly consider the varied representations of women in films such as Jackie Brown (1997), Marie Antoinette (2006), It's a Free World... (2007) and Wonder Woman (2017). They particularly look into the overlooked gendered aspects of voice-overs and the adverse tropes used to represent maternity in television series as well as the complex motif of the vagina dentata in contemporary film and television. The chapters analyze independent, art-house, Hollywood and TV productions often in transnational contexts, shedding light on how definitions of femininity are culturally specific yet cross national, class and racial lines. The contributors include renowned scholars such as Yvonne Tasker, Celestino Deleyto, David Roche and Nicole Cloarec, as well as emerging yet well-published film scholars.
Moving to the Mainstream
"This work focuses on the conflicted relationship between women and film as women move from the margins to the mainstream. It examines women's involvement with the film and television industry as actresses and directors, but also as critics and spectators. Marianne Kac-Vergne and Julie Assouly seek to offer new approaches to the study of gender by drawing together essays on different methodological and theoretical backgrounds like cosmopolitan theory, discourse analysis, celebrity and star studies, film history, reception studies and formalism. The chapters analyze independent, art-house, Hollywood and TV productions often in transnational contexts, shedding light on how definitions of femininity are culturally specific yet cross national, class and racial lines. The contributors include renowned scholars such as Yvonne Tasker, Celestino Deleyto, David Roche and Nicole Cloarec, as well as emerging yet well-published film scholars."--
Transnationalism and Imperialism
While Western films can be seen as a mode of American exceptionalism, they have also become a global genre. Around the world, Westerns exemplify colonial cinema, driven by the exploration of racial and gender hierarchies and the progress and violence shaped by imperialism. Transnationalism and Imperialism: Endurance of the Global Western Film traces the Western from the silent era to present day as the genre has circulated the world. Contributors examine the reception and production of American Westerns outside the US alongside the transnational aspects of American productions, and they consider the work of minority directors who use the genre to interrogate a visual history of oppression. B...
There She Goes Again
There She Goes Again interrogates the representation of ostensibly powerful women in transmedia franchises, examining how presumed feminine traits—love, empathy, altruism, diplomacy—are alternately lauded and repudiated as possibilities for effecting long-lasting social change. By questioning how these franchises reimagine their protagonists over time, the book reflects on the role that gendered exceptionalism plays in social and political action, as well as what forms of knowledge and power are presumed distinctly feminine. The franchises explored in this book illustrate the ambivalent (post)feminist representation of women protagonists as uniquely gifted in ways both gendered and seemingly ungendered, and yet inherently bound to expressions of their femininity. At heart,There She Goes Again asks under what terms and in what contexts women protagonists are imagined, envisioned, embodied, and replicated in media. Especially now, in a period of gradually increasing representation, women protagonists demonstrate the importance of considering how we should define—and whether we need—feminine forms of knowledge and power.
The Orientalist Semiotics of »Dune«
Frank Herbert's »Dune« (1965) is considered to be one of the most successful Science Fiction novels of the 20th century. It introduces its readers to a future universe, in which the production of the most valuable resource of the universe – ›spice‹ – is only possible on one vast desert planet called Arrakis. »Dune« offers many different motifs, including a hero that eventually turns into a superhuman being. However, the novel is also rich of orientalist semiotics and relates to a sign system existent when Herbert wrote his book. Frank Jacob discusses these semiotics in detail and shows how much of »Lawrence of Arabia« is present in the story's plot.
Cosmopolitan Aspirations in Contemporary Cinema
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 ...
Female Agencies and Subjectivities in Film and Television
This volume provides an overview of the landscape of mediated female agencies and subjectivities in the last decade. In three sections, the book covers the films of women directors, television shows featuring women in lead roles, and the representational struggles of women in cultural context, with a special focus on changes in the transformative power of narratives and images across genres and platforms. This collection derives from the editors’ multi-year experiences as scholars and practitioners in the field of film and television. It is an effort that aims to describe and understand female agencies and subjectivities across screen narratives, gather scholars from around the world to generate timely discussions, and inspire fellow researchers and practitioners of film and television.
Detoxing Masculinity in Anglophone Literature and Culture
This edited volume rethinks Masculinity Studies by breaking away from the notion of the perpetual crisis of masculinity. It argues that not enough has been done to distinguish patriarchy from masculinity and proposes to detox masculinity by offering a collection of positive representations of men in fictional and non-fictional texts. The editors show how ideas of hegemonic and toxic masculinity have been too fixed on the exploration of dominance and subservience, and too little on the men (and the male characters in fiction) who behave following other ethical, personal and socially accepted patterns. Bringing together research from different periods and genres, this collection provides broad, multidisciplinary insights into alternative representations of masculinity.
Arrival
A study of Denis Villeneuve’s genre-transcendent film. In Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016), scientists must decipher the language of and peacefully communicate with aliens who have landed on Earth before the world’s military attacks. In this first book-length study of the film, scholar David Roche argues that it is one of the most important films of this century, and the most brilliant science fiction film since Blade Runner. Roche posits Arrival as a blockbuster with artistic ambitions—an argument supported by the film’s several Academy Award nominations—and looks closely at how the film engages with theoretical questions posed by contemporary film studies and philosophy alike....
