Pub Date : 2022-04-19DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2022.2060009
Michael Lipiner, Yael Maurer
ABSTRACT This article examines the transformation of the femme fatale figure from classic noir to neo-noir film and to contemporary television. Exploring the reasons for this transformation and its implications yields fresh revelations about the new femme fatale. Using Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) as the focal point, we examine the intertextual allusions to this classic in two postmodern neo-noir films – Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat (1981) and John Dahl’s The Last Seduction (1994) – and in one of Netflix’s earliest original television series, House Of Cards (2013–2018), created by Beau Willimon. In addition, this article queries in what ways these filmic reincarnations offer a revolutionary re-envisioning of the femme fatale figure. Unlike the classic femme fatale, the new femme fatale ‘gets away with murder’, thus posing a monstrous threat to the capitalist and patriarchal economy in which she operates. The subversive potential of these neo-noir films lies in their parodic and witty undercutting of societal norms, especially at the height of today’s #MeToo Movement.
摘要本文探讨了蛇蝎美人形象从经典黑色电影到新黑色电影再到当代电视的转变。探索这种转变的原因及其影响，会对新的蛇蝎美人产生新的启示。以比利·怀尔德（Billy Wilder）的《双重赔偿》（1944）为焦点，我们在两部后现代新黑色电影——劳伦斯·卡斯丹（Lawrence Kasdan）的《身体发热》（Body Heat）（1981）和约翰·达尔（John Dahl）的《最后的诱惑》（the Last Seduction）（1994）——以及由博·威利蒙（Beau Willimon。此外，本文还质疑这些电影转世以何种方式对蛇蝎美人形象进行了革命性的重新想象。与经典蛇蝎美人不同，新蛇蝎美人“逍遥法外”，从而对她经营的资本主义和父权制经济构成了可怕的威胁。这些新黑色电影的颠覆潜力在于它们对社会规范的戏仿和诙谐的颠覆，尤其是在当今#MeToo运动的鼎盛时期。
{"title":"Looks that kill: Double Indemnity (1944) reimagined in postmodern neo-noir and television","authors":"Michael Lipiner, Yael Maurer","doi":"10.1080/17400309.2022.2060009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2022.2060009","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the transformation of the femme fatale figure from classic noir to neo-noir film and to contemporary television. Exploring the reasons for this transformation and its implications yields fresh revelations about the new femme fatale. Using Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) as the focal point, we examine the intertextual allusions to this classic in two postmodern neo-noir films – Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat (1981) and John Dahl’s The Last Seduction (1994) – and in one of Netflix’s earliest original television series, House Of Cards (2013–2018), created by Beau Willimon. In addition, this article queries in what ways these filmic reincarnations offer a revolutionary re-envisioning of the femme fatale figure. Unlike the classic femme fatale, the new femme fatale ‘gets away with murder’, thus posing a monstrous threat to the capitalist and patriarchal economy in which she operates. The subversive potential of these neo-noir films lies in their parodic and witty undercutting of societal norms, especially at the height of today’s #MeToo Movement.","PeriodicalId":43549,"journal":{"name":"New Review of Film and Television Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"424 - 445"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44742311","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2022.2066435
S. Walia
{"title":"‘Bad’ women of Bombay films: studies in desire and anxiety","authors":"S. Walia","doi":"10.1080/17400309.2022.2066435","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2022.2066435","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43549,"journal":{"name":"New Review of Film and Television Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"292 - 294"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45337130","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2022.2065875
Aidan Dolby
the characters in these films and where popular cinema ultimately compromises on its subversive potential. In conclusion, then, there are a few ideas which remain unexplored in this anthology. First, there is no clarity offered as to what constitutes bad in the contemporary moment, although sufficient attention has been paid to what constituted ‘bad’ in the decades leading up to the twenty-first century. Second, horror as a genre that creates female monsters does not find room within this volume, which limits its scope because it is in horror that evil (feminine or otherwise) is not banished to the outskirts of rationality but rather is brought inside the periphery for close analysis. Third is the book’s overwhelming conclusion, which suggests there are in fact no ‘bad’ women, and the quotations in the title begin to haunt and consume the theoretical underpinning of the text. I leave you with this question then: are there in fact, on a closer examination, no bad women to be found in popular imagination?
{"title":"ReFocus: the films of John Hughes","authors":"Aidan Dolby","doi":"10.1080/17400309.2022.2065875","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2022.2065875","url":null,"abstract":"the characters in these films and where popular cinema ultimately compromises on its subversive potential. In conclusion, then, there are a few ideas which remain unexplored in this anthology. First, there is no clarity offered as to what constitutes bad in the contemporary moment, although sufficient attention has been paid to what constituted ‘bad’ in the decades leading up to the twenty-first century. Second, horror as a genre that creates female monsters does not find room within this volume, which limits its scope because it is in horror that evil (feminine or otherwise) is not banished to the outskirts of rationality but rather is brought inside the periphery for close analysis. Third is the book’s overwhelming conclusion, which suggests there are in fact no ‘bad’ women, and the quotations in the title begin to haunt and consume the theoretical underpinning of the text. I leave you with this question then: are there in fact, on a closer examination, no bad women to be found in popular imagination?","PeriodicalId":43549,"journal":{"name":"New Review of Film and Television Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"294 - 298"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44208546","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2022.2064178
Sean M. Donovan
ABSTRACT Contemporary LGBTQ film festivals are often held to a standard of nostalgic radicalism based in U.S. independent film cultures of the early nineties, and found diluted and assimilationist as a result. In an effort to track the complex circulation of affect still present within LGBTQ film festivals, this article troubles this critique of commodification and investigates the networking of LGBTQ film festival affect amongst contexts of significant socio-historical importance like group belonging, pride, and activism. I offer the concept affective media network to consider the organization of public feeling emergent from the negotiated emotional orientation attendees experience through films, corporate installations, and various festival events, each with differing relationships to LGBTQ history. Reading festivals as affective media networks allows us to see them as the unique public spheres they are – mediated spaces of community, ritual, and history that reflect the desires of a specific place and time. Using participant observation methodologies, I focus on Outfest, the premiere LGBTQ film festival in Los Angeles. Paying particular attention to the aggregate of Outfest’s rainbow iconography, and its curation of programmed space, I frame the LGBTQ film festival as an ambivalent space mediating nostalgia for the past against the hope of the future.
{"title":"Over the corporate rainbow: LGBTQ film festivals and affective media networks","authors":"Sean M. Donovan","doi":"10.1080/17400309.2022.2064178","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2022.2064178","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Contemporary LGBTQ film festivals are often held to a standard of nostalgic radicalism based in U.S. independent film cultures of the early nineties, and found diluted and assimilationist as a result. In an effort to track the complex circulation of affect still present within LGBTQ film festivals, this article troubles this critique of commodification and investigates the networking of LGBTQ film festival affect amongst contexts of significant socio-historical importance like group belonging, pride, and activism. I offer the concept affective media network to consider the organization of public feeling emergent from the negotiated emotional orientation attendees experience through films, corporate installations, and various festival events, each with differing relationships to LGBTQ history. Reading festivals as affective media networks allows us to see them as the unique public spheres they are – mediated spaces of community, ritual, and history that reflect the desires of a specific place and time. Using participant observation methodologies, I focus on Outfest, the premiere LGBTQ film festival in Los Angeles. Paying particular attention to the aggregate of Outfest’s rainbow iconography, and its curation of programmed space, I frame the LGBTQ film festival as an ambivalent space mediating nostalgia for the past against the hope of the future.","PeriodicalId":43549,"journal":{"name":"New Review of Film and Television Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"268 - 291"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42379974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2022.2066948
M. S. Johnson
future:” Social Class and Individualism in the 1980s Teen Films of John Hughes,’ is a stand-out within this section and volume. Bulman’s sociologically-inflected chapter engages with two prime values within American society, individualism and class. These themes prominently surface in Hughes’ teen films, and the genre as a whole, with Bulman noting that ‘to understand teen films in general, we must first understand Hughes’s contribution’ (222). Bulman goes on to remark:
{"title":"Wonder, horror, mystery: letters on cinema and religion in Malick, Von Trier, and Kieślowski","authors":"M. S. Johnson","doi":"10.1080/17400309.2022.2066948","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2022.2066948","url":null,"abstract":"future:” Social Class and Individualism in the 1980s Teen Films of John Hughes,’ is a stand-out within this section and volume. Bulman’s sociologically-inflected chapter engages with two prime values within American society, individualism and class. These themes prominently surface in Hughes’ teen films, and the genre as a whole, with Bulman noting that ‘to understand teen films in general, we must first understand Hughes’s contribution’ (222). Bulman goes on to remark:","PeriodicalId":43549,"journal":{"name":"New Review of Film and Television Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"298 - 302"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47543754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-04-03DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2022.2064177
Joshua Bastian Cole
ABSTRACT The mirror scene that produces an eerily mismatched reflection is a staple of both trans and speculative films. Jay Prosser and Jack Halberstam have examined this trope, the latter asserting trans mirror scenes allow a disruptive ‘trans look’ for a non-trans audience. This essay takes up the trans gaze, but the process reverses. Rather, non-trans characters can become readably trans by way of a new trans look, one that takes account of asymmetrical mirror images as well as formal cinematic devices that collectively comprise an expanded trans aesthetics, proposing that the formal device itself, a mirroring split, is the trans mediation. Thereby, all misattuned mirror scenes (not only those confined to attempting trans representation) are fundamentally trans. The mismatched mirror reflection elicits an uncanny discomfort that is dysphoria. When characters control or align with mismatched reflections, films take a trans imaginary seriously, but unintentionally. The combination of trans technical and visual aesthetics made possible by mirrors, moving cameras, and a floating, disconnected view, both visualize and enact a trans point of view. Like the images reflected within the scenes’ mirrors, mirror scenes (trans and non-trans) are slightly altered reflections of each other.
{"title":"Changing the reflection: re-visions on the trans mirror scene","authors":"Joshua Bastian Cole","doi":"10.1080/17400309.2022.2064177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2022.2064177","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The mirror scene that produces an eerily mismatched reflection is a staple of both trans and speculative films. Jay Prosser and Jack Halberstam have examined this trope, the latter asserting trans mirror scenes allow a disruptive ‘trans look’ for a non-trans audience. This essay takes up the trans gaze, but the process reverses. Rather, non-trans characters can become readably trans by way of a new trans look, one that takes account of asymmetrical mirror images as well as formal cinematic devices that collectively comprise an expanded trans aesthetics, proposing that the formal device itself, a mirroring split, is the trans mediation. Thereby, all misattuned mirror scenes (not only those confined to attempting trans representation) are fundamentally trans. The mismatched mirror reflection elicits an uncanny discomfort that is dysphoria. When characters control or align with mismatched reflections, films take a trans imaginary seriously, but unintentionally. The combination of trans technical and visual aesthetics made possible by mirrors, moving cameras, and a floating, disconnected view, both visualize and enact a trans point of view. Like the images reflected within the scenes’ mirrors, mirror scenes (trans and non-trans) are slightly altered reflections of each other.","PeriodicalId":43549,"journal":{"name":"New Review of Film and Television Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"243 - 267"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42947615","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-03-22DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2022.2033067
Julian Hanich
ABSTRACT Against the background of a widespread language skepticism among film theorists and practitioners, this article aims to highlight the evocative potential of spoken words in cinema. Focusing on an aesthetic device dubbed ‘suggestive verbalization’, it demonstrates how character speech can powerfully appeal to the spectator’s sensory imagination: language allows film viewers to imagine – in various sensory modes – something they do not see or hear. The article sets out to show that the evocative power of character speech and dialogue is largely uncharted territory in film studies and then defines the term ‘suggestive verbalizations’ more closely. By means of various examples, it subsequently distinguishes four types of suggestive verbalization along temporal lines: verbalization-of-the-past, verbalization-of-the-present, verbalization-of-the-future and verbalization-of-generalities. In the final section, several functions are discussed suggestive verbalizations can have for the aesthetics of a film and the viewer’s experience. An implicit goal is to contribute to the ongoing work on the poetics of ‘omission, suggestion and completion’ in the cinema and the phenomenology of the viewer’s imagination. The article thus supports attempts to define film not exclusively as a perceptual audiovisual medium but also as a medium that depends on and, in fact, thrives on the sensory imagination of the viewer.
{"title":"Suggestive verbalizations in film: on character speech and sensory imagination","authors":"Julian Hanich","doi":"10.1080/17400309.2022.2033067","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2022.2033067","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Against the background of a widespread language skepticism among film theorists and practitioners, this article aims to highlight the evocative potential of spoken words in cinema. Focusing on an aesthetic device dubbed ‘suggestive verbalization’, it demonstrates how character speech can powerfully appeal to the spectator’s sensory imagination: language allows film viewers to imagine – in various sensory modes – something they do not see or hear. The article sets out to show that the evocative power of character speech and dialogue is largely uncharted territory in film studies and then defines the term ‘suggestive verbalizations’ more closely. By means of various examples, it subsequently distinguishes four types of suggestive verbalization along temporal lines: verbalization-of-the-past, verbalization-of-the-present, verbalization-of-the-future and verbalization-of-generalities. In the final section, several functions are discussed suggestive verbalizations can have for the aesthetics of a film and the viewer’s experience. An implicit goal is to contribute to the ongoing work on the poetics of ‘omission, suggestion and completion’ in the cinema and the phenomenology of the viewer’s imagination. The article thus supports attempts to define film not exclusively as a perceptual audiovisual medium but also as a medium that depends on and, in fact, thrives on the sensory imagination of the viewer.","PeriodicalId":43549,"journal":{"name":"New Review of Film and Television Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"145 - 168"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45297426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-20DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2022.2034412
Katy Parry
ABSTRACT The opening episodes of BBC1ʹs Bodyguard (2018) broke records for a drama debut, the highest launch figure for any new drama across all channels in the United Kingdom since 2006. This article examines the hit series with a particular focus on notions of public service and post-military identity. The paper explores how the drama conveys ‘public service’ in the UK context at this specific historic moment, adding to writer Jed Mercurio’s oeuvre of dramas that explore the professional ethics of public servants. More specifically, I argue that the analytical lens of ‘post-militariness’ offers a nuanced way to better understand the complex cultural and political work of the traumatized war veteran from the 9/11 wars, as portrayed in popular media culture. Bodyguard is only one of many dramas representing contemporary war veterans who are often depicted as struggling to transition to civilian life. ‘Post-militariness’ accounts for both the persistence of military identity as a source of pride and as a source for feelings of betrayal.
{"title":"Representing public service and post-militariness in Bodyguard (BBC, 2018)","authors":"Katy Parry","doi":"10.1080/17400309.2022.2034412","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2022.2034412","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The opening episodes of BBC1ʹs Bodyguard (2018) broke records for a drama debut, the highest launch figure for any new drama across all channels in the United Kingdom since 2006. This article examines the hit series with a particular focus on notions of public service and post-military identity. The paper explores how the drama conveys ‘public service’ in the UK context at this specific historic moment, adding to writer Jed Mercurio’s oeuvre of dramas that explore the professional ethics of public servants. More specifically, I argue that the analytical lens of ‘post-militariness’ offers a nuanced way to better understand the complex cultural and political work of the traumatized war veteran from the 9/11 wars, as portrayed in popular media culture. Bodyguard is only one of many dramas representing contemporary war veterans who are often depicted as struggling to transition to civilian life. ‘Post-militariness’ accounts for both the persistence of military identity as a source of pride and as a source for feelings of betrayal.","PeriodicalId":43549,"journal":{"name":"New Review of Film and Television Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"169 - 193"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-02-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49070098","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-17DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2022.2036053
Deniz Zorlu
ABSTRACT This article examines the complex and contradictory gendered desires and anxieties that reveal themselves in the representation of powerful women in contemporary global television. Focusing on the internationally most popular TV series of the Turkish TV industry, Magnificent Century, screened in over 75 countries and seen by more than 500 million people, the central objective of this article is to assess the cultural implications of the series’ portrayal of influential and dominant women. Set in the 16th-century, Magnificent Century projects into the past a postfeminist interpretation of history, celebrating competitiveness, self-interestedness, and ambition, especially for its central character Hurrem Sultan, who rises from her slave origins to become a powerful empress. The series promotes women’s individualistic empowerment in a patriarchal world, while recurrently re-asserting male hegemony. Magnificent Century relies on gendered power reversals between femininity and masculinity as its main narrative and affective structure in which postfeminist empowerment and misogyny co-exist. Close textual analysis of the series coupled with examination of online viewer responses demonstrate that popular feminism and popular misogyny have concurrent audience appeal and that the powerful woman is a figure of cultural disquiet in the contemporary global mediascape.
{"title":"Powerful women, postfeminism, and fantasies of patriarchal recuperation in Magnificent Century","authors":"Deniz Zorlu","doi":"10.1080/17400309.2022.2036053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2022.2036053","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines the complex and contradictory gendered desires and anxieties that reveal themselves in the representation of powerful women in contemporary global television. Focusing on the internationally most popular TV series of the Turkish TV industry, Magnificent Century, screened in over 75 countries and seen by more than 500 million people, the central objective of this article is to assess the cultural implications of the series’ portrayal of influential and dominant women. Set in the 16th-century, Magnificent Century projects into the past a postfeminist interpretation of history, celebrating competitiveness, self-interestedness, and ambition, especially for its central character Hurrem Sultan, who rises from her slave origins to become a powerful empress. The series promotes women’s individualistic empowerment in a patriarchal world, while recurrently re-asserting male hegemony. Magnificent Century relies on gendered power reversals between femininity and masculinity as its main narrative and affective structure in which postfeminist empowerment and misogyny co-exist. Close textual analysis of the series coupled with examination of online viewer responses demonstrate that popular feminism and popular misogyny have concurrent audience appeal and that the powerful woman is a figure of cultural disquiet in the contemporary global mediascape.","PeriodicalId":43549,"journal":{"name":"New Review of Film and Television Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"220 - 242"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-02-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44726889","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-02-15DOI: 10.1080/17400309.2022.2036523
John V. Walker
ABSTRACT It is increasingly common for scholars and journalists to make claims of horror cinema’s potential to engage with socio-political realities and, in so doing, identify grave social injustices. This article argues that, if one is to make a true assessment of the extent to which horror films might effect social change, one needs to look towards activist communities within which filmmakers are using the genre as part of a broader effort to do precisely that. In so doing, the article theorizes ‘Activist Horror Film’ in relation to a British short film, The Herd, a work cultivated as part of the vegan-feminist protest movement. The article begins by situating The Herd within the context of scholarship about socially charged horror films, before considering the film’s broader activist context and that of its production, the crowd-funding campaign that led to its completion, the film’s content, its presence at festivals and online and its afterlife within circles of vegan/animal welfare activism. This article contends that The Herd is easily distinguished from other socially aware horror films of the contemporary moment, for the activism of its makers is what drives it and is the context that birthed it and within which it continues to be shown.
{"title":"Activist horror film: the genre as tool for change","authors":"John V. Walker","doi":"10.1080/17400309.2022.2036523","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/17400309.2022.2036523","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT It is increasingly common for scholars and journalists to make claims of horror cinema’s potential to engage with socio-political realities and, in so doing, identify grave social injustices. This article argues that, if one is to make a true assessment of the extent to which horror films might effect social change, one needs to look towards activist communities within which filmmakers are using the genre as part of a broader effort to do precisely that. In so doing, the article theorizes ‘Activist Horror Film’ in relation to a British short film, The Herd, a work cultivated as part of the vegan-feminist protest movement. The article begins by situating The Herd within the context of scholarship about socially charged horror films, before considering the film’s broader activist context and that of its production, the crowd-funding campaign that led to its completion, the film’s content, its presence at festivals and online and its afterlife within circles of vegan/animal welfare activism. This article contends that The Herd is easily distinguished from other socially aware horror films of the contemporary moment, for the activism of its makers is what drives it and is the context that birthed it and within which it continues to be shown.","PeriodicalId":43549,"journal":{"name":"New Review of Film and Television Studies","volume":"20 1","pages":"194 - 219"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41603177","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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