Bøger af Michele Aaron

Death and the Moving Image examines the representation of death and dying in mainstream cinema from its earliest to its latest renditions to reveal the ambivalent place of death in twentieth and twenty-first century culture: the ongoing split between its over- and under-statement, between its cold, bodily, realities and its fantastical, transcendental and, most importantly, strategic depictions. Our screens are steeped in death's dramatics: in spectacles of glorious sacrifice or bloody retribution, in the ecstasy of agony, but always in the promise of redemption. This book is about the staging of these dramatics in mainstream Western film and the discrepancies that fuel them and are, by return, fuelled by them. Exploring the impact of gender, race, nation or narration upon them, this groundbreaking study isolates how mainstream cinema works to bestow value upon certain lives, and specific socio-cultural identities, in a hierarchical and partisan way. Dedicated to the popular, to the political and ethical implications of mass culture's themes and imperatives, Death and the Moving Image takes this culture to task for its mortal economies of expendability. Ultimately, it also disinters the capacity for film, and film criticism, to engage with life and vulnerability differently and even generatively.

Coined in the early 1990s to describe a burgeoning film movement, "New Queer Cinema" has turned the attention of film theorists, students, and audiences to the proliferation of intelligent, stylish, and daring work by lesbian and gay filmmakers within independent cinema and to the infiltration of "queer" images and themes into the mainstream. Why did this shift take place? Was it political gains, cultural momentum, or market forces that energized the evolution and transformation of this cinematic genre? New Queer Cinema: A Critical Reader provides a definitive and highly readable guide to the development of this important and controversial film movement. The volume is divided into four sections: defining "new queer cinema," assessing its filmmakers, examining geographic and national differences, and theorizing spectatorship. Chapters address the work of pivotal directors (such as Todd Haynes and Gregg Araki) and salient films (including Paris Is Burning and Boys Don't Cry), as well as unconventional and non-Anglo-American work (experimental filmmaking and third world cinema). With a critical eye to its uneasy relationship to the mainstream, New Queer Cinema explores the aesthetic, sociocultural, political, and, necessarily, commercial investments of the movement. It is the first full-length study of recent developments in queer cinema that combines indispensable discussions of central issues with exciting new work by key writers.