New Books in Film

Dr. Dexter Gabriel is an associate professor of history at the University of Connecticut. He’s published and taught widely on the histories of slavery, resistance, and freedom, including teaching a superb class on slavery in popular culture, particularly film. He’s the author of the 2023 book Jubilee’s Experiment: The British West Indies and American Abolitionism (Cambridge UP, 2023).But in addition to this, Professor Gabriel conducts a second, equally impressive intellectual and creative life in a wholly different register. As P. Djèlí Clark, he’s the author of acclaimed and award-winning speculative fiction, including the much-loved Dead Djinn universe books, Ring Shout, and his most recent, The Dead Cat Tail Assassins.We have a really rich and deep conversation with Dexter, about how he juggles such an array of interests and pursuits, the question of whether there can be a “good” portrayal of slavery on film and what that would look like, whether there are lessons for our future with AI from our past with slavery.In part two of this conversation, coming soon on this feed, we speak with P. Djèlí Clark about his speculative fiction. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

There She Goes Again: Gender, Power, and Knowledge in Contemporary Film and Television Franchises (Rutgers UP, 2023) interrogates the representation of ostensibly powerful women in transmedia franchises, examining how presumed feminine traits—love, empathy, altruism, diplomacy—are alternately lauded and repudiated as possibilities for effecting long-lasting social change. By questioning how these franchises reimagine their protagonists over time, the book reflects on the role that gendered exceptionalism plays in social and political action, as well as what forms of knowledge and power are presumed distinctly feminine. The franchises explored in this book illustrate the ambivalent (post)feminist representation of women protagonists as uniquely gifted in ways both gendered and seemingly ungendered, and yet inherently bound to expressions of their femininity. At heart, There She Goes Again asks under what terms and in what contexts women protagonists are imagined, envisioned, embodied, and replicated in media. Especially now, in a period of gradually increasing representation, women protagonists demonstrate the importance of considering how we should define—and whether we need—feminine forms of knowledge and power.Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

It is hard to discuss the current film industry without acknowledging the impact of comic book adaptations, especially considering the blockbuster success of recent superhero movies. Yet transmedial adaptations are part of an evolution that can be traced to the turn of the last century, when comic strips such as “Little Nemo in Slumberland” and “Felix the Cat” were animated for the silver screen. Along with Barry Keith Grant, Scott Henderson (Dean and Head, Trent University Durham GTA) compiled a rich group of essays that represent diverse academic fields, including technoculture, film studies, theater, feminist studies, popular culture, and queer studies. Comics and Pop Culture: Adaptation from Panel to Frame (University of Texas Press, 2019) presents more than a dozen perspectives on this rich history and the effects of such adaptations. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Robert Benton’s 1979 interior drama turned out to be one of the biggest films of the 70s. While we might appreciate Dustn Hoffman now more often than we watch his movies, this marked another example of him owning the decade. It’s his movie, despite the attempt to give balance to the two Kramers fighting for the legal and moral right to raise their son. If you haven’t seen this since it played in theaters for months and then became a cable-TV staple, it’s worth rewatching; if you’ve never seen it, give it a look. Either way, be sure to listen to our conversation (and debate) about it once you finish.Kramer vs. Kramer was adapted from Avery Corman’s bestselling novel, found here.Follow us on X and Letterboxd–and let us know what you’d like us to watch! Incredible bumper music by John Deley. Also check out Dan’s new Substack site, Pages and Frames, for more film-related material. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Dr. Shweta Kishore and Dr Kunal Ray’s Resistance in Indian Documentary Film: Aesthetics, Culture and Practice (Edinburgh UP, 2024) is a unique collection of essays on documentary cinema and practice that brings together multiple modes of scholarly, reflective and autoethnographic writing on documentary by scholars and creative practitioners. It takes a holistic view of documentary culture as a field comprising not only films but practices such as circulation, curation, criticism, and education, that come together to create a particular ecology of resistance. Resistance is conceptualised as a multidimensional phenomenon comprising both documentary representation as well as practices and tangible actions through which people mobilize and adapt documentary for local, community and individual functions.Dr Kunal Ray is a writer and academic. He teaches literature and film at FLAME University, Pune. His writings on art and culture appear in The Hindu, The Indian Express, Hindustan Times amongst other publications. He has co-edited books on song-texts and food cultures in India. He is also the co-founder and co-editor of On Eating - A Multilingual Journal of Food & Eating.Dr Shweta Kishore lectures in Screen and Media at RMIT (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology) University. She is the author of Indian Documentary Film and Filmmakers: Independence in Practice published by Edinburgh University Press in 2018. Her research on documentary theory and practice appears in journals such as Bioscope, Feminist Media Studies, Studies in Documentary Film and Senses of Cinema. She is also a documentary practitioner and curator committed to creating conversations between Indian and international moving image artists and audiences.Priyam Sinha recently graduated with a PhD from the National University of Singapore. Her interdisciplinary academic interests lie at the intersection of film studies, disability studies, production cultures, affect studies, anthropology of the body, creative media industries and cultural studies. She can be reached at https://twitter.com/PriyamSinha Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

Screening Big Data: Films that Shape Our Algorithmic Literacy (Routledge, 2024) examines the influence of key films on public understanding of big data and the algorithmic systems that structure our digitally mediated lives.From star-powered blockbusters to civic-minded documentaries positioned to facilitate weighty debates about artificial intelligence, these texts frame our discourse and mediate our relationship to technology. Above all, they impact society’s abilities to regulate AI and navigate big tech’s political and economic manoeuvres to achieve market dominance and regulatory capture. Foregrounding data politics with close readings of key films like Moneyball, Minority Report, The Social Dilemma, and Coded Bias, in Screening Big Data by Dr. Gerald Sim reveals compelling ways in which films and tech industry–adjacent media define apprehension of AI. With the mid-2010s techlash in danger of fizzling out, Screening Big Data explores the relationship between this resistance and cultural infrastructure while highlighting the urgent need to refocus attention onto how technocentric media occupy the public imagination.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

The hosts tackle the intriguing film, exploring its delicate balance between humor and sentimental pitfalls. They analyze character arcs, particularly Jack Nicholson's unforgettable performance, and how empathy shapes the narrative. The discussion dives into authenticity in storytelling, emphasizing the need for realism and kindness. They also reflect on character evolution, questioning the very nature of success amid personal strife. Tune in for insights on how emotional journeys are crafted and celebrated on screen.

Listener note: This interview contains discussions of suicide. Listener note: This interview contains discussions of suicide. Resources for people in a crisis:If you or someone you know is in a crisis or is feeling suicidal, please talk to somebody.Call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988 for free and confidential support. ¿Estás en una crisis?Llama o envía un mensaje de texto al 988 o envía un mensaje de texto con AYUDA al 741741Youth and Suicide in American Cinema: Context, Causes, and Consequences (Palgrave MacMillan, 2022) explores the depiction of suicide in American youth films from 1900 to 2019. Anchored in Sociology, this multidisciplinary study investigates the causes and consequences of suicide and uncovers the socio-cultural context for the development of youth, film, and suicide. While such cinematic portrayals seem to privilege external explanations of suicide versus internal or psychological ones, overall they are neither rich nor sensitive. Most are simplistic, limited or at the very least unbalanced. At times, they are flatly controversial. In light of this overall problematic depiction of suicide, this book offers a proactive approach to empower young audiences--a media literacy strategy to embrace while watching these films.A Fulbright grantee and an award-winning artist, Alessandra Seggi (PhD in Sociology and MA in Media Studies) teaches at Villanova University, Pennsylvania, USA.Ailin Zhou is a PhD student in Film & Digital Media at University of California, Santa Cruz. Her research interests include transnational Chinese cinema, Asian diasporic visual culture, contemporary art, and feminist and queer theories. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

During the heyday of Hollywood’s studio system, stars were carefully cultivated and promoted, but at the price of their independence. This familiar narrative of Hollywood stardom receives a long-overdue shakeup in Emily Carman’s new book. Far from passive victims of coercive seven-year contracts, a number of classic Hollywood’s best-known actresses worked on a freelance basis within the restrictive studio system. In leveraging their stardom to play an active role in shaping their careers, female stars including Irene Dunne, Janet Gaynor, Miriam Hopkins, Carole Lombard, and Barbara Stanwyck challenged Hollywood’s patriarchal structure.Through extensive, original archival research, Independent Stardom: Freelance Women in the Hollywood Studio System (U Texas Press, 2016) uncovers this hidden history of women’s labor and celebrity in studio-era Hollywood. Carman weaves a compelling narrative that reveals the risks these women took in deciding to work autonomously. Additionally, she looks at actresses of color, such as Anna May Wong and Lupe Vélez, whose careers suffered from the enforced independence that resulted from being denied long-term studio contracts. Tracing the freelance phenomenon among American motion picture talent in the 1930s, Independent Stardom rethinks standard histories of Hollywood to recognize female stars as creative artists, sophisticated businesswomen, and active players in the then (as now) male-dominated film industry.Peter C. Kunze is an assistant professor of communication at Tulane University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film

A different kind of Star Trek television series debuted in 1993. Deep Space Nine was set not on a starship but a space station near a postcolonial planet still reeling from a genocidal occupation. The crew was led by a reluctant Black American commander and an extraterrestrial first officer who had until recently been an anticolonial revolutionary. DS9 extended Star Trek’s tradition of critical social commentary but did so by transgressing many of Star Trek’s previous taboos, including religion, money, eugenics, and interpersonal conflict. DS9 imagined a twenty-fourth century that was less a glitzy utopia than a critical mirror of contemporary U.S. racism, capitalism, imperialism, and heteropatriarchy.Thirty years after its premiere, DS9 is beloved by critics and fans but remains marginalised in scholarly studies of science fiction. Drawing on cultural geography, Black studies, and feminist and queer studies, A Different Trek: Radical Geographies of Deep Space Nine (University of Nebraska Press, 2023) by Dr. David Seitz is the first scholarly monograph dedicated to a critical interpretation of DS9’s allegorical world-building. If DS9 has been vindicated aesthetically, this book argues that its prophetic, place-based critiques of 1990s U.S. politics, which deepened the foundations of many of our current crises, have been vindicated politically, to a degree most scholars and even many fans have yet to fully appreciate.This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSupport our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film