The Disaster Film as Social Practice
The Disaster Film as Social Practice

Author: Joseph Zornado

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-07-26

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 1040092977

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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.

The Cinematic Superhero as Social Practice
The Cinematic Superhero as Social Practice

Author: Joseph Zornado

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-11-06

Total Pages: 219

ISBN-13: 3030854582

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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.

The Disaster Film as Social Practice
The Disaster Film as Social Practice

Author: Joseph L. Zornado

Publisher:

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781032445991

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"Surveying disaster film 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 book 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. 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"--

Eco-Teen Films
Eco-Teen Films

Author: Robin L. Murray

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-09-06

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 1040127819

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Illuminating the impacts of environmental disasters and climate crises globally, this book examines the experiences of teens grappling with eco-disasters and issues in films of the twenty-first century. With an emphasis on teen activism, international settings and filmmakers, and marginalized perspectives, this book showcases teens on film that are struggling with present and future everyday eco-disasters amplified by climate change. By highlighting and interrogating diverse genres of teen films in which young adults encounter, address, and battle environmental issues and calamities while also struggling with adolescent development, this book acknowledges the young adult point of view missing from most critical ecocinema research and underlines connections between the more complex ‘coming-of-age’ themes found in teen films with ecocinema themes and approaches. The films examined navigate increasingly realistic conditions, even in fantastical settings, as they showcase teens’ relationships with and responses to environmental issues and eco-disasters. Emphasizing teen activism and under-represented intersectional perspectives outside Hollywood, it establishes the eco-teen film as a notable subgenre. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of film studies, ecocriticism, and environmental studies, especially those with a particular interest in ecocinema and/or ecocritical readings of films.

African Documentary Cinema
African Documentary Cinema

Author: Alexie Tcheuyap

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-08-01

Total Pages: 245

ISBN-13: 1040097618

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African Documentary Cinema investigates the inception and trajectory of contemporary documentary filmmaking in sub-Saharan African countries and their diasporas. The book challenges critical paradigms that have long prevailed in African film criticism, shedding light on the diverse discourses and evolving aesthetic trends present within documentary films. Situating his analysis within the context of the significant transformation of the African film industry, the author focuses on the development, diversity, and shifting dynamics that have impacted contemporary documentary cinema. Examining the historical, political, sociological, economic, and cultural factors that have facilitated the rise of documentary films—especially those created by female documentarians—the book assesses the emergence of documentary filmmakers spanning different generations. Their training, practices, and innovative perspectives on social, political, and environmental issues ultimately give rise to new frameworks for understanding the bio-documentary genre, issues of gender discrimination, LGBTQIA+ identities, environmental trauma, genocide, and memory on the African continent. This ground-breaking study offers new insight into a rapidly expanding topic and will appeal to students and scholars in the fields of film studies, documentary film, media industry studies, African studies, French, postcolonial studies, politics, and cultural studies.

Aftershocks of Disaster
Aftershocks of Disaster

Author: Yarimar Bonilla

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2019-09-03

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 164259086X

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Two years after Hurricane Maria hit, Puerto Ricans are still reeling from its effects and aftereffects. Aftershocks collects poems, essays and photos from survivors of Hurricane Maria detailing their determination to persevere. The concept of "aftershocks" is used in the context of earthquakes to describe the jolts felt after the initial quake, but no disaster is a singular event. Aftershocks of Disaster examines the lasting effects of hurricane Maria, not just the effects of the wind or the rain, but delving into what followed: state failure, social abandonment, capitalization on human misery, and the collective trauma produced by the botched response.

Centring Women in Bollywood Biopics
Centring Women in Bollywood Biopics

Author: Chandrava Chakravarty

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-10-28

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 1040183352

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This book explores the dramatic rise in popularity of the women’s biopic in contemporary Bollywood, within the context of wider cultural shifts over the past decade. Delving into the societal shifts reflected in the genre, both on and off screen, the book explores the contours of individual agency and the centring of women in Indian cinema. The book offers new insight into women-centric Hindi biopics, a fast-rising genre carving out a tradition of its own, with female directors and actors contributing to this rising postfeminist celebration of women’s agency and individuality. The authors posit that the alternative narratives, created by Bollywood and accepted by mainstream audiences, have become a catalyst to elevate women or female actors to protagonists, without the need to conform to the sexist mores of mainstream Bollywood. This book will be of interest to scholars, researchers and upper-level students in the areas of film studies, media industries, gender and feminism, and South Asian studies.

Dramatising Disaster
Dramatising Disaster

Author: Christine Cornea

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2013-02-14

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 1443846481

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The imagining of disaster has intensified across a wide range of media entertainment formats and genres in recent years and themes of disaster are regularly deployed in fictional films, television drama series, drama-documentaries, comic books and video games. This being the case, it is therefore vital that film and media scholars pay attention to the ways in which disaster is presented to us, to the figurative strategies employed, to the representational history of disaster in media, to the metaphorical resonances of disaster themes, and even to the ways in which entertainment media texts might be understood as part of a broader discourse of disaster within certain historical and cultural contexts. Dramatising Disaster presents new and innovative research from both early career and more established academics. Some of the chapters in this edited collection are based upon papers originally presented at a highly successful conference study day held by the School of Film, Television and Media at the University of East Anglia in 2011, while others are specifically solicited contributions. Distinct from previous, more particularised film and media studies in this area, this edited collection is focused not upon a specific disaster or specific disaster context, but upon the wider topic of disaster in popular culture.

The Reinvention of Social Practices
The Reinvention of Social Practices

Author: Gary Genosko

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2018-03-27

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 1786605074

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The Reinvention of Social Practices shows the relevance of Félix Guattari's thought for the analysis of contemporary social and cultural encounters, ranging across an alternative ‘skateboard’ school, informatic subjugations, urban ecological dilemmas, drug subcultures, and countercultures. Gary Genosko, the leading English interpreter of Guattari, expands upon Guattari’s conception of schizoanalysis as a transformative process of critical self-modelling that leads to the creation of new maps of existence, highlighting an interpretive dream pragmatics, a peripatetic psychiatric practice, a rethinking of epilepsy, and a post-media vision of digital interfaces beyond the keyboard. The folds of Guattari’s collaborations with Gilles Deleuze and Antonio Negri are explored, and his philosophical friendship with Franco Bifo Berardi is brought into focus.

Social Practice Art in Turbulent Times
Social Practice Art in Turbulent Times

Author: Eric J. Schruers

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-07-03

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0429832850

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This volume is an anthology of current groundbreaking research on social practice art. Contributing scholars provide a variety of assessments of recent projects as well as earlier precedents, define approaches to art production, and provide crucial political context. The topics and art projects covered, many of which the authors have experienced firsthand, represent the work of innovative artists whose creative practice is utilized to engage audience members as active participants in effecting social and political change. Chapters are divided into four parts that cover history, specific examples, global perspectives, and critical analysis.