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May 2015, Week 1

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Subject:
From:
Charlotte Anderson <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 6 May 2015 15:38:49 +0000
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Dear SCREEN-L Subscribers,



We hope the following titles will be of interest to you.



Race on the QT

Blackness and the Films of Quentin Tarantino
Adilifu Nama

   Known for their violence and prolific profanity, including free use of the n-word, the films of Quentin Tarantino, like the director himself, chronically blurt out in polite company what is extremely problematic even when deliberated in private. Consequently, there is an uncomfortable and often awkward frankness associated with virtually all of Tarantino's films, particularly when it comes to race and blackness. Yet beyond the debate over whether Tarantino is or is not racist is the fact that his films effectively articulate racial anxieties circulating in American society as they engage longstanding racial discourses and hint at emerging trends. This radical racial politics-always present in Tarantino's films but kept very much on the quiet-is the subject of Race on the QT.

   Adilifu Nama concisely deconstructs and reassembles the racial dynamics woven into Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill: Vol. 1, Kill Bill: Vol. 2, Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds, and Django Unchained, as they relate to historical and current racial issues in America. Nama's eclectic fusion of cultural criticism and film analysis looks beyond the director's personal racial attitudes and focuses on what Tarantino's filmic body of work has said and is saying about race in America symbolically, metaphorically, literally, impolitely, cynically, sarcastically, crudely, controversially, and brilliantly.


University of Texas Press
April 2015 184pp 36 b&w photos 9780292772366 PB £15.99 now only £12.79 when you quote CSL515FILM when you order

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/race-on-the-qt




Critical Approaches to the Films of Robert Rodriguez
Edited by Frederick Luis Aldama
Afterword by Alvaro Rodriguez

   Frederick Aldama's The Cinema of Robert Rodriguez<http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/the-cinema-of-robert-rodriguez> (2014) was the first full-scale study of one of the most prolific and significant Latino directors making films today. In this companion volume, Aldama enlists a corps of experts to analyze a majority of Rodriguez's feature films, from his first break-out success El Mariachi in 1992 to Machete in 2010. The essays explore the formal and thematic features present in his films from the perspectives of industry (context, convention, and distribution), the film blueprint (auditory and visual ingredients), and consumption (ideal and real audiences). The authors illuminate the manifold ways in which Rodriguez's films operate internally (plot, character, and event) and externally (audience perception, thought, and feeling).

The volume is divided into three parts: "Matters of Mind and Media" includes essays that use psychoanalytic and cognitive psychology to shed light on how Rodriguez's films complicate Latino identity, as well as how they succeed in remaking audiences' preconceptions of the world. "Narrative Theory, Cognitive Science, and Sin City: A Case Study" offers tools and models of analysis for the study of Rodriguez's film re-creation of a comic book (on which Frank Miller was credited as codirector). "Aesthetic and Ontological Border Crossings and Borderlands" considers how Rodriguez's films innovatively critique fixed notions of Latino identity and experience, as well as open eyes to racial injustices. As a whole, the volume demonstrates how Rodriguez's career offers critical insights into the filmmaking industry, the creative process, and the consuming and reception of contemporary film.


University of Texas Press
March 2015 261pp 17 b&w photos 9781477302408 PB £17.99 now only £14.39 when you quote CSL515FILM when you order

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/critical-approaches-to-the-films-of-robert-rodriguez



On Anger

Race, Cognition, Narrative
Sue J. Kim

   "[Kim's] very timely book gives us a much needed window through which the collective anger of people in Ferguson and too many other American cities becomes comprehensible."-Melus

   Anger is an emotion that affects everyone regardless of culture, class, race, or gender-but at the same time, being angry always results from the circumstances in which people find themselves. In On Anger, Sue J. Kim opens a stimulating dialogue between cognitive studies and cultural studies to argue that anger is always socially and historically constructed and complexly ideological, and that the predominant individualistic conceptions of anger are insufficient to explain its collective, structural, and historical nature.

   On Anger examines the dynamics of racial anger in global late capitalism, bringing into conversation work on political anger in ethnic, postcolonial, and cultural studies with recent studies on emotion in cognitive studies. Kim uses a variety of literary and media texts to show how narratives serve as a means of reflecting on experiences of anger and also how we think about anger-its triggers, its deeper causes, its wrongness or rightness. The narratives she studies include the film Crash, Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior, Tsitsi Dangarembga's Nervous Conditions and The Book of Not, Ngugi wa Thiong'o's Devil on the Cross and Wizard of the Crow, and the HBO series The Wire. Kim concludes by distinguishing frustration and outrage from anger through a consideration of Stéphane Hessel's call to arms, Indignez-vous! One of the few works that focuses on both anger and race, On Anger demonstrates that race-including whiteness-is central to our conceptions and experiences of anger.


University of Texas Press
November 2014 227pp  9781477302149 PB £17.99 now only £14.39 when you quote CSL515FILM when you order

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/on-anger



Selling the Silver Bullet

The Lone Ranger and Transmedia Brand Licensing
Avi Santo

   Originating as a radio series in 1933, the Lone Ranger is a cross-media star who has appeared in comic strips, comic books, adult and juvenile novels, feature films and serials, clothing, games, toys, home furnishings, and many other consumer products. In his prime, he rivaled Mickey Mouse as one of the most successfully licensed and merchandised children's properties in the United States, while in more recent decades, the Lone Ranger has struggled to resonate with consumers, leading to efforts to rebrand the property. The Lone Ranger's eighty-year history as a lifestyle brand thus offers a perfect case study of how the fields of licensing, merchandizing, and brand management have operated within shifting industrial and sociohistorical conditions that continue to redefine how the business of entertainment functions.

   Deciphering how iconic characters gain and retain their status as cultural commodities, Selling the Silver Bullet focuses on the work done by peripheral consumer product and licensing divisions in selectively extending the characters' reach and in cultivating investment in these characters among potential stakeholders. Tracing the Lone Ranger's decades-long career as intellectual property allows Avi Santo to analyze the mechanisms that drive contemporary character licensing and entertainment brand management practices, while at the same time situating the licensing field's development within particular sociohistorical and industrial contexts. He also offers a nuanced assessment of the ways that character licensing firms and consumer product divisions have responded to changing cultural and economic conditions over the past eighty years, which will alter perceptions about the creative and managerial authority these ancillary units wield.


University of Texas Press
April 2015 331pp 49 b&w photos 9780292772540 PB £19.99 now only £15.99 when you quote CSL515FILM when you order

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/selling-the-silver-bullet



The Dread of Difference

Gender and the Horror Film
Barry Keith Grant

   "The Dread of Difference is a classic. Few film studies texts have been so widely read and so influential. It's rarely on the shelf at my university library, so continuously does it circulate. Now this new edition expands the already comprehensive coverage of gender in the horror film with new essays on recent developments such as the Hostel series and torture porn. Informative and enlightening, this updated classic is an essential reference for fans and students of horror movies."-Stephen Prince, editor of The Horror Film and author of Digital Visual Effects in Cinema: The Seduction of Reality

"An impressive array of distinguished scholars . . . gazes deeply into the darkness and then forms a Dionysian chorus reaffirming that sexuality and the monstrous are indeed mated in many horror films."-Choice

"An extremely useful introduction to recent thinking about gender issues within this genre."-Film Theory


University of Texas Press
April 2015 560pp 16 b&w photos 9780292772458 PB £20.99 now only £16.79 when you quote CSL515FILM when you order

http://www.combinedacademic.co.uk/the-dread-of-difference-content





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(PLEASE QUOTE REF NUMBER: CSL515FILM for discount)
To order a copy please contact Marston on +44(0)1235 465500 or email [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>
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