8 minute read
Race & Gender
Kevin Wynter, Pomona College, USA This book provides a concise introduction to critical race theory and shows how this theory can be used to interpret Jordan Peele’s Get Out. Its analysis of Get Out is organized into three sections – Sub/ urban Space, The Black Body, and The Sunken Place – illustrating how contemporary debates in critical race theory and approaches to the analysis of mainstream Hollywood cinema can illuminate each other. In this way, the book provides both an accessible reference guide to key terminology in critical race studies and fi lm studies, while contributing new scholarship to both fi elds.
UK February 2022 • US February 2022 • 208 pages PB 9781501351297 • £15.99 / $19.95 • HB 9781501351280 • £60.00 / $75.00 ePub 9781501351303 • £14.61 / $17.95 ePdf 9781501351310 • £14.61 / $17.95 Series: Film Theory in Practice • Bloomsbury Academic The Female Body and Popular Culture
Joan Ormrod, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK This book explores how Wonder Woman’s body has changed over the years as her mission has shifted from being an ambassador for peace and love to the greatest warrior in the DC transmedia universe, as she's refl ected increasing technological sophistication, globalisation and women’s changing roles and ambitions.
UK August 2021 • US August 2021 • 320 pages PB 9781350191648 • £28.99 / $39.95 Previously published in HB 9781788314114 ePub 9781786725813 • £76.50 / $94.85 ePdf 9781786735812 • £76.50 / $94.85 Bloomsbury Academic
Library of Gender and Popular Culture
Claire Nally, Northumbria University, UK and Angela Smith, University of Sunderland, UK
Gender and Early Television
Mapping Women’s Role in Emerging US and British Media, 1850-1950
Sarah Arnold, Maynooth University, Ireland Sarah Arnold traces women’s relationship to the new medium of television, arguing that women played a crucial role in its development both as producers and as audiences long before the ‘golden age’ of television in the 1950s. As keen consumers of media, women also helped promote television to the public by performing as ‘television girls’. Additionally, women worked as directors, producers, technical crew and announcers. Beginning with the emergence of media entertainment in the mid-19th century and culminating in the rise of the post-war television industries, the author shows that, all along the way, women had a stake in television.
UK June 2021 • US June 2021 • 256 pages HB 9781780769769 • £85.00 / $115.00 ePub 9781786726100 • £76.50 / $94.85 ePdf 9781786736161 • £76.50 / $94.85 Series: Library of Gender and Popular Culture • Bloomsbury Academic
Alice Guilluy, London Film Academy, UK Alice Guilluy examines the reception of contemporary Hollywood romantic comedy in Britain, France and Germany. She offers a new look at the romantic comedy genre through a qualitative study of its consumption by actual audiences, focusing on Sweet Home Alabama (2002, dir. Andy Tennant). In doing so, she attempts to challenge traditional critiques of the genre as trite “escapism” at best, and dangerous “guilty pleasure” at worst. This book makes a valuable contribution to scholarly debates on gender representation in the contemporary romantic comedy, and brings a fresh approach to genre studies through its focus on audience research.
UK July 2021 • US July 2021 • 256 pages • 10 bw illus HB 9781350163034 • £85.00 / $115.00 ePub 9781350163058 • £76.50 / $94.85 ePdf 9781350163041 • £76.50 / $94.85 Series: Library of Gender and Popular Culture • Bloomsbury Academic
Fat on Film
Gender, Race and Body Size in Contemporary Hollywood Cinema
Barbara Plotz, London College of Communication, UAL, UK This book provides a critical analysis of the cinematic representation of fatness over the last two decades, specifi cally in contemporary Hollywood cinema, with emphasis on the intersection of gender, race and fatness. The analysis is based on around 50 fi lms released since 2000 and includes examples such as Transformers (2007), Precious (2009), Kung Fu Panda (2008), Paul Blart (2009) and Pitch Perfect (2012).
UK August 2021 • US August 2021 • 296 pages PB 9781350191662 • £28.99 / $39.95 Previously published in HB 9781350114586 ePub 9781350114593 • £76.50 / $94.85 ePdf 9781350114579 • £76.50 / $94.85 Series: Library of Gender and Popular Culture • Bloomsbury Academic
Fathers on Film
Paternity and Masculinity in 1990s Hollywood
Katie Barnett, University of Chester, UK The father is an enduring and iconic fi gure in Hollywood cinema and in the 1990s, narratives of redemptive fatherhood featured prominently in some of the decade’s most popular fi lms like Kindergarten Cop (1990), Mrs Doubtfi re (1993), Jurassic Park (1993) and The Lion King (1994). Katie Barnett offers an insightful and interdisciplinary discussion of cinematic fathers, interpreting such fi lms through the lens of feminist and queer theory, along with masculinity studies and psychoanalysis.
UK August 2021 • US August 2021 • 272 pages • 20 bw illus PB 9781350191600 • £28.99 / $39.95 Previously published in HB 9781350120884 ePub 9781350120877 • £76.50 / $94.85 ePdf 9781350120860 • £76.50 / $94.85 Series: Library of Gender and Popular Culture • Bloomsbury Academic
Christiane Schönfeld, University of Limerick, Ireland
Detailing the comprehensive and multi-layered story of adaptations of German literature on fi lm between 1896-2010, this indispensable study shows how these adaptations emerge from and continue to shape the social, artistic, and commercial aspects of fi lm history. The History of German Literature on Film includes an online comprehensive chronology of fi lm adaptations spanning the history of the cinema, allowing students to follow the main trunk of analysis and to quickly contextualize adaptations in fi lm history, providing opportunities for independent research.
UK January 2023 • US January 2023 • 400 pages • 50 bw illus HB 9781628923766 • £120.00 / $180.00 ePub 9781628923759 • £132.35 / $162.00 ePdf 9781628923742 • £132.35 / $162.00 Series: The History of World Literatures on Film • Bloomsbury Academic
Global Exploitation Cinemas
Austin Fisher, Bournemouth University, UK and Johnny Walker, Northumbria University, UK
Let's Go Stag!
A History of Pornographic Film from the Invention of Cinema to 1970
Dan Erdman, Media Burn Archive, Chicago, USA Let's Go Stag! reveals the secrets of the underground world of hardcore pornographic "stag fi lms". Using the archives of civic groups, law enforcement, bygone government studies and similarly neglected evidence, archivist Dan Erdman reconstructs the means by which stag fi lms were produced, distributed and exhibited, and also demonstrates the way in which these practices changed with the times, eventually paving the way for the pornographic explosion of the 1970s and beyond.
UK October 2021 • US October 2021 • 272 pages • 50 bw illus HB 9781501333019 • £96.00 / $120.00 ePub 9781501333026 • £88.50 / $108.00 ePdf 9781501333033 • £88.50 / $108.00 Series: Global Exploitation Cinemas • Bloomsbury Academic
The Mad Max Effect
Road Warriors in International Exploitation Cinema
James Newton, University of Kent, UK By analysing the individual fi lms of the Mad Max series, this book examines how the kinetic energy and aesthetic design of a number of divergent exploitation fi lms fi lters into the Mad Max series and resulted in a fresh cycle of international low-budget postapocalyptic movies that appeared on the new home video markets in the 1980s. The fi rst in-depth academic study of the extraordinary journey of Mad Max from its premiere in 1979 to the Acadamy Award success of 2015's Fury Road, The Mad Max Effect reveals how a humble low-budget Australian action movie came from the cultural margins of exploitation cinema to have an indelible impact on the broader media landscape.
UK July 2021 • US July 2021 • 208 pages • 18 bw illus HB 9781501342295 • £96.00 / $120.00 ePub 9781501342301 • £88.50 / $108.00 ePdf 9781501342318 • £88.50 / $108.00 Series: Global Exploitation Cinemas • Bloomsbury Academic
Limit Cinema
Transgression and the Nonhuman in Contemporary Global Film
Chelsea Birks, University of British Columbia & Simon Fraser University, Canada Limit Cinema explores how contemporary global cinema represents the relationship between humans and nature. During the 21st century this relationship has become increasingly fraught due to proliferating social and environmental crises; recent fi lms from Lars von Trier’s Melancholia (2011) to Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) address these problems by refl ecting or renegotiating the terms of our engagement with the natural world. In this spirit, this book proposes a new fi lm philosophy for the Anthropocene. It argues that certain contemporary fi lms attempt to transgress the limits of human experience, and that such ‘limit cinema’ has the potential to help us rethink our relationship with nature. Posing a new and timely alternative to the process philosophies that have become orthodox in the fi elds of fi lm philosophy and ecocriticism, Limit Cinema revitalizes the philosophy of Georges Bataille and puts forward a new reading of his notion of transgression in the context of our current environmental crisis. To that end, Limit Cinema brings Bataille into conversation with more recent discussions in the humanities that seek less anthropocentric modes of thought, including posthumanism, speculative realism, and other theories associated with the nonhuman turn. The problems at stake are global in scale, and the book therefore engages with cinema from a range of national and cultural contexts. From Ben Wheatley’s psychological thrillers to Nettie Wild’s eco-documentaries, limit cinema pushes against the boundaries of thought and encourages an ethical engagement with perspectives beyond the human.
UK August 2021 • US August 2021 • 208 pages • 15 bw illus HB 9781501352867 • £90.00 / $120.00 ePub 9781501352874 • £88.50 / $108.00 ePdf 9781501352881 • £88.50 / $108.00 Series: Thinking Cinema • Bloomsbury Academic
The Politics of Nordsploitation
History, Industry, Audiences
Pietari Kääpä, University of Stirling, UK & Tommy Gustafsson, Linnaeus University, Sweden The Politics of Nordsploitation takes a transnational approach to exploring fi lms in their industrial contexts, exploring them as not only political manifestations of domestic considerations but also to position Nordic exploitation fi lm cultures in a global context. The book provides a fi lm historical exposition of a largely ignored fi lm cultural movement but in addition, on a more retrospective level of analysis, it outlines how infl uential these fi lms have been. The majority of the book focuses on key patterns and periods in the 1970-90s, but also traces the impact these fi lms have had on textual tactics and industrial practices of contemporary fi lmmakers.
UK January 2021 • US January 2021 • 288 pages • 31 bw illus HB 9781501327339 • £80.00 / $120.00 ePub 9781501327315 • £88.50 / $108.00 ePdf 9781501327308 • £88.50 / $108.00 Series: Global Exploitation Cinemas • Bloomsbury Academic
