New SCOPE: Reboots, Zombies, Cannibals, Giallo, Battlestar Galactica

Screencap of a windswept Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan's 2005 regeneration of the Batman film franchise. Read about the reboot in William Proctor's Scope article. And for Film Studies For Free's very own, popular Christopher Nolan Studies links list, try here.

Film Studies For Free rushedly points you to some great weekend reading: a new issue of SCOPE is out. Please check out the very worthwhile items linked to directly below. That is all. Thank you.

SCOPE: Issue 22 February 2012

Articles

• Cannibals and Other Impossible Bodies: Il Profumo Della Signora In Nero and the Giallo film Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
• Between Allegory and Seduction: Perceptual Modulation in Battlestar Galactica Enrica Picarelli
• Regeneration and Rebirth: Anatomy of the Franchise Reboot William Proctor
• Modernity’s Automatization of Man: Biopower and the Early Zombie Film Justin Vaccaro

Book Reviews

• All Book Reviews
• Hollywood Incoherent: Narration in Seventies Cinema by Todd Berliner; The Godfather by Jon Lewis A review by Adam O'Brien
• A Song in the Dark: The Birth of the Film Musical by Richard Barrios; Destablizing the Hollywood Musical: Music, Masculinity, and Mayhem by Kelly Kessler; Punk Slash! Musicals: Tracking Slip-Sync on Film by David Laderman A review by Alissa Burger
• Translating Time: Cinema, the Fantastic, and Temporal Critique by Bliss Cua Lim; Crash: Cinema and the Politics of Speed and Stasis by Karen Beckman; Abandoned Images: Film and Film's End by Stephen Barber A review by Benjamin Betka
• The Screenplay: Authorship, Theory and Criticsm by Steven Price; Film Authorship: Auteurs and Other Myths by C. Paul Sellors; Film Adaptation in the Hollywood Studio Era by Guerric DeBona A review by Douglas McLeod
• Skyscraper Cinema: Architecture and Gender in America Film by Merrill Schleier; The Apartment Plot: Urban Living in American Film and Popular Culture, 1945-1975 by Pamela Robertson Wojcik A review by Gillian Jein
• Asian Horror by Andy Richards; Horror to the Extreme: Changing Boundaries in Asian Cinema edited by Jinhee Choi and Mitsuyo Wada-Marciano A review by Jamil Khader
• The Imperial Trace: Recent Russian Cinema by Nancy Condee; Cinepaternity: Fathers and Sons in Soviet and Post-Soviet Film edited by Helena Goscilo and Yana Hashamova A review by John A. Riley
• American Science Fiction Film and Television by Lincoln Geraghty; British Science Fiction Film and Television: Critical Essays edited by Tobias Hochscherf and James Leggott; The Philosophy of Science Fiction edited by Steven M. Sanders A review by Marcus Smith
• Sacred Space: The Quest for Transcendence in Science Fiction Film and Television by Douglas E. Cowan; 2001: A Space Odyssey by Peter Krämer; Battlestar Galactica: Investigating Flesh, Spirit and Steel edited by Roz Kaveney and Jennifer Stoy A review by Matthew Cheney
• Doubting Vision: Film and the Revelationist Tradition by Malcolm Turvey; A Grammar of Murder: Violent Scenes and Film Form by Karla Oeler A review by Tijana Mamula

Film and Television Reviews

• All Film and Television Reviews
• Ghostwatch and Interview with Stephen Volk Elizabeth Evans
• Terraferma Lorenzo Mari
• Midnight in Paris Elliot Morsia

Conference Reports

• All Conference Reports
• Women and Film in Africa: Overcoming Social Barriers Bronwen Pugsley
• Research Symposium: Gender Cultures and Reality Television Felicity Perry

More about → New SCOPE: Reboots, Zombies, Cannibals, Giallo, Battlestar Galactica

Undead Links to George A. Romero Studies

Zombies intruding on the free flow of commerce? Frame grab from Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978)

In [George Romero's films], antagonism and horror are not pushed out of society (to the monster) but are rather located within society (qua the monster). The issue isn’t the zombies; the real problem lies with the “heroes”—the police, the army, good old boys with their guns and male bonding fantasies. If they win, racism has a future, capitalism has a future, sexism has a future, militarism has a future. Romero also implements this critique structurally. As Steven Shaviro observes, the cultural discomfort is not only located in the films’ graphic cannibalism and zombie genocide: the low-budget aesthetics makes us see “the violent fragmentation of the cinematic process itself." The zombie in such a representation may be uncanny and repulsive, but the imperfect uncleanness of the zombie’s face—the bad make-up, the failure to hide the actor behind the monster’s mask—is what breaks the screen of the spectacle. [Lars Bang Larsen, 'Zombies of Immaterial Labor: the Modern Monster and the Death of Death', E-Flux, No. 15, April 2010] 

About a month ago, Film Studies For Free's author was delighted to take part in the first of a series of screenings and roundtables on the fascinating and complex subject of 'Intrusion' and its 'specific relation to the visual on the different but interrelated registers of the psychic, sexual, social and political'. 

This inventive and highly productive series was organised by Amber Jacobs, Lecturer in Psychosocial Studies at Birkbeck, University of London, and creator and presenter of the wonderful Daily Subversions weekly radio show on ResonanceFM (available everywhere online). FSFF will post a video essay contribution on the first film in the 'Intrusion' series just as soon as the more mundane 'intrusions' of research deadlines and the hectic grading season have subsided.

An excellent podcast of the final roundtable of the series, discussing George A. Romero's 1978 film Dawn of the Dead, has just gone online. The discussion features Dr Jacobs, along with Mark Fisher (Cultural Studies and Music Culture, Goldsmiths), Gordon Hon (Artist and Lecturer in Visual Culture, Winchester School of Art), Paul Myerscough (Senior Editor at the London Review of Books), and some great contributions from the audience. The podcast lasts just under an hour. 

To accompany this new online resource, FSFF has assembled and updated a scarily good list of links to further, openly accessible studies or scholarly discussions of Romero's work. Also see previous related entries "Any Zombies Out There?" Undead Film Studies and Zombie Week at In Media Res. And also be aware that you can watch Romero's 1968 film Night of the Living Dead in its entirety at the Internet Archive.

• Birkbeck College Roundtable Discussion on ‘Dawn of the Dead’, May 26, 2011 (with Amber Jacobs, Paul Myerscough, Gordon Hon and Mark Fisher) 
• Michael Bloom, 'Reanimating the Living Dead: Uncovering the Zombie Archetype in the Works of George A. Romero', Offscreen, April 30, 2009
• Matt Cardin, 'Spirituality in Romero’s Living Dead Films', TheoFantastique, December 3, 2009
• John Cussans, 'Tracking the Zombie Diaspora: From Subhuman Haiti to Posthuman Tucson', First published in Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil edited by Paul Yoder and Peter Mario Kreuter, May 2004
• Erin Burns Davis, 'To Say Death’s Name: The Ever-changing Definition of the Zombie in Popular Culture', Academia.edu, 2006 
• Jennifer Whitney Dotson, Considering Blackness in George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead: An Historical Exploration, MA Thesis, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 2006
• Stephen Harper, '"They’re Us": Representations of Women in George Romero’s ‘Living Dead’ Series', Intensities, 2003
• Stephen Harper, 'Zombies, Malls, and the Consumerism Debate: George Romero's Dawn of the Dead', Americana, 1.2, Fall 2002
• Stephen Harper,  “Night of the Living Dead: Reappraising an Undead Classic”, Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 50, November 2005 
• Philip Horne, 'I shopped with a zombie', Critical Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 4, Winter 1992, 97-110
• Lars Bang Larsen, 'Zombies of Immaterial Labor: the Modern Monster and the Death of Death', E-Flux, No. 15, April 2010
• John Marmysz, 'From "Night" to "Day": Nihilism and the Living Dead', First published in Film and Philosophy, vol. 3, 1996
• Marco Maurizi, '“Just in Case Society Crumbles”: George A. Romero and Marxism', Historical Materialism Conference, 2006
• Kim Paffenroth, 'Religious Themes of George Romero’s Zombie Movies', Golem: Journal of Religion and Monsters, Spring 2006 
• Kim Paffenroth (Iona College), 'Dawn of the Dead (1978): Zombies and Human Nature', In Media Res, Wednesday, September 30, 2009
• Pinewood Dialogue with George A. Romero
• Steven Shaviro, 'Survival of the Dead', The Pinocchio Theory, September 25, 2010
• Steven Shaviro, 'Diary of the Dead', The Pinocchio Theory, April 26, 2008
• Jasie Stokes, Ghouls, Hell and Transcendence: the Zombie in Popular Culture from Night of the Living Dead to Shaun of the Dead, MA Thesis, Brigham Young University, April 2010
• Jesse Stommel, '"Pity Poor Flesh": Terrible Bodies in the Films of Carpenter, Cronenberg, and Romero', Bright Lights Film Journal, No. 56, May 2007
• Margaret Twohy, 'From Voodoo to Viruses: The Evolution of the Zombie in Twentieth Century Popular Culture', MPhil Thesis, Trinity College Dublin, October 2008

George A. Romero, Daddy of the Dead (a Wired.com video)

Romero's Zombies

More about → Undead Links to George A. Romero Studies

"Any Zombies Out There?" Undead Film Studies

Image from I Walked with a Zombie (Jacques Tourneur, 1943)

The zombies in these films are a kind of revolutionary force of predators without a revolutionary program. Their only concern is to satisfy an instinctual drive for predation; a drive which, as is pointed out in Day of the Dead, serves no actual biological purpose. They appear and attack without explanation or reason, violating taken for granted principles of sufficient cause and rationality. Because of this, they are especially threatening to the surviving human beings. Enemies such as Nazis or Communists are comprehensible in terms of their historical backgrounds, economic interests, religious, political or philosophic beliefs. But these zombies are a new breed of enemy in that they do not operate according to the same underlying motivations human beings share in common. They are a nihilistic enemy which, as lifeless, spiritless automatons, exemplify the epitome of passive nihilism. They wander the landscape exhibiting only the bare minimum of power that is required for locomotion and the consumption of living flesh. They must steal life from the strong because they possess such a depressed store of innate energy. They are, literally, the walking dead. [John Marmysz, 'From "Night" to "Day": Nihilism and the Living Dead', First published in Film and Philosophy, vol. 3, 1996] 

In [George Romero's films], antagonism and horror are not pushed out of society (to the monster) but are rather located within society (qua the monster). The issue isn’t the zombies; the real problem lies with the “heroes”—the police, the army, good old boys with their guns and male bonding fantasies. If they win, racism has a future, capitalism has a future, sexism has a future, militarism has a future. Romero also implements this critique structurally. As Steven Shaviro observes, the cultural discomfort is not only located in the films’ graphic cannibalism and zombie genocide: the low-budget aesthetics makes us see “the violent fragmentation of the cinematic process itself." The zombie in such a representation may be uncanny and repulsive, but the imperfect uncleanness of the zombie’s face—the bad make-up, the failure to hide the actor behind the monster’s mask—is what breaks the screen of the spectacle. [Lars Bang Larsen, 'Zombies of Immaterial Labor: the Modern Monster and the Death of Death', E-Flux, No. 15, April 2010] 

The fear of one's own body, of how one controls it and relates to it, and the fear of not being able to control other bodies, those bodies whose exploitation is too fundamental to capitalist economy, are both at the heart of whiteness. Never has this horror been more deliriously evoked than in these films of the Dead [Richard Dyer,  White: Essays in Race and Culture (London: Routledge, 1997)].

Film Studies For Free is quaking in its digital boots as a whole host of freely accessible zombie studies gathers menacingly on the online horizon and shuffles ever nearer.... No, no, no, nooooo...

Yes.

Resistance is futile on this the Night of the Living Links.

(The only comforting thought is that film zombies also grow old and win the undying loyalty of their fans...)

• Lars Bang Larsen, 'Zombies of Immaterial Labor: the Modern Monster and the Death of Death', E-Flux, No. 15, April 2010
• Sean Brayton, 'The Post-White Imaginary in Alex Proyas’s I, Robot', Science Fiction Studies, #104, Volume 35, Part 1, February 2008
• Diane Carr, 'Textual Analysis, Digital Games, Zombies', Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory, Proceedings of DiGRA, 2009
• John Cussans, 'Tracking the Zombie Diaspora: From Subhuman Haiti to Posthuman Tucson', First published in Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil edited by Paul Yoder and Peter Mario Kreuter, May 2004
• John Cussans, 'Voodoo Terror: (Mis)Representations of Vodu and Western Cultural Anxieties', paper presented for Feels Like Voodoo Spirit – Haitian Art, Culture, Religion, The October Gallery, London October 14, 2000
• Scott Darwick, 'Who’s Laughing Now?', Williams Prize, 2005
• Jennifer Whitney Dotson, Considering Blackness in George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead: An Historical Exploration, MA Thesis, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, 2006
• Robert J. Edmondstone, 'Beyond “Brutality”: Understanding the Italian Filone's Violent Excesses', PhD Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2008
• Darren Elliott, ‘"Death is the New Pornography!" – Gay Zombies in Queer Horror and Bruce LaBruce’s Otto; or, Up With Dead People (CA/GE 2008)', Monsters and the Monstrous, Mansfield College, Oxford University, September 2009
• Phoebe Fletcher, 'Apocalyptic Machines: Terror and Anti-Production in the Post-9/11 Splatter Film', in The Many Forms of Fear, Horror and Terror edited by Leanne Franklin and Ravenel Richardson, InterDisciplinary.net, August 2009 (scroll to p. 81 in pdf)
• Michael Grant, 'Clint Eastwood: Avatar of the Undead', Michael Grant, February 8, 2010
• Joshua Gunn & Shaun Treat, 'Zombie Trouble: A Propaedeutic on Ideological Subjectification and the Unconscious', first published in Quarterly Journal of Speech Vol. 91, No. 2, May 2005, pp. 144/174
• Stephen Harper, 'Zombies, Malls, and the Consumerism Debate: George Romero's Dawn of the Dead', Americana, 1.2, Fall 2002
• Stephen Harper, '"I could kiss you, you bitch": race, gender, and sexuality in Resident Evil and Resident Evil 2: Apocalypse', from Jump Cut, No. 49, spring 2007
• Stephen Harper,  “Night of the Living Dead: Reappraising an Undead Classic”, Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 50, November 2005
• Eric Hamako (University of Massachusetts) presents: '“The Yellow Peril rises from the grave…to get your White women!" Orientalist themes in zombie stories', In Media Res, Monday, September 28, 2009
• Philip Horne, 'I shopped with a zombie', Critical Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 4, Winter 1992, 97-110
• Peter Hutchings, 'Uncanny Landscapes in British Film and Television', Visual Culture in Britain Vol. 5, Issue 2, 2004
• Phevos Kallitsis , 'Urban Fears and spatial transformations: the horror movie point of view', CityFutures '09, Madrid 2009
• Benjamin A. Lathrop, Cult Films and Film Cults: From The Evil Dead to Titanic, MA Thesis,Ohio University, June 2004
• Elizabeth MacLean Kent, Zombie as Parody: The Misuses of Science and the Non-Human Condition in Postmodern Society', MA Thesis, Auburn University, May 2009
• Mzilikazi Koné, 'Zombies, Haiti, and (Sex) Workers: On Relating to Modernity/Coloniality and Subalterity', Thinking Gender Papers, UCLA Center for the Study of Women, UC Los Angeles, 2010
• Samantha Lay, ''Audiences Across the Divide: Game to Film Adaptation and the Case of Resident Evil', Particip@tions Volume 4, Issue 2 (November 2007)
• John Marmysz, 'From "Night" to "Day": Nihilism and the Living Dead', First published in Film and Philosophy, vol. 3, 1996
• Elizabeth McAlister (Wesleyan Univ.), '“Obama, Zombies, and Black Male Secular Messiahs"', In Media Res, Thursday, October 1, 2009
• Melanie McDougald, Where I am, There (Sh)it will be: Queer Presence in Post Modern Horror Films, MA Thesis, Georgia State University, August 2009
• Bert Olivier, 'Architecture as consumer space', SAJAH, volume 23, number 1, 2008: 93–106
• Kim Paffenroth, 'Religious Themes of George Romero’s Zombie Movies', Golem: Journal of Religion and Monsters, Spring 2006
• Kim Paffenroth (Iona College), 'Dawn of the Dead (1978): Zombies and Human Nature', In Media Res, Wednesday, September 30, 2009 
• Mark Richardson, 'Where Can The Others Meet? Gender, Race and Film Comedy', Senses of Cinema, Issue 33, 2004 
• Janet G. Sayers, 'Emotional contagion and the infectious service smile: A response using parody', Notework [Museletter of the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism], May 2007, pp. 20-26
• Steven Shaviro, 'Survival of the Dead', The Pinocchio Theory, September 25, 2010
• Steven Shaviro, 'Diary of the Dead', The Pinocchio Theory, April 26, 2008
• Steven Shaviro, 'Specters of Marx', The Pinocchio Theory, Feburary 8, 2006
• Steven Shaviro, 'Daniel Plainview', The Pinocchio Theory, Feburary 20, 2008
• Cathy Schlund-Vials (Univ. of Connecticut), 'Racism, Postcolonialism, and Neocolonial Zombies: Resident Evil 5', In Media Res, Tuesday, September 29, 2009
• De Villo Sloan, 'Manuel Puig's Kiss of the Spider Woman as Post-literature', The International Fiction Review, 14, No. 1 (1987)
• Jasie Stokes, Ghouls, Hell and Transcendence: the Zombie in Popular Culture from Night of the Living Dead to Shaun of the Dead, MA Thesis, Brigham Young University, April 2010
• Jesse Stommel, '"Pity Poor Flesh": Terrible Bodies in the Films of Carpenter, Cronenberg, and Romero', Bright Lights Film Journal, No. 56, May 2007
• Margaret Twohy, 'From Voodoo to Viruses: The Evolution of the Zombie in Twentieth Century Popular Culture', MPhil Thesis, Trinity College Dublin, October 2008
• Darrin Verhagen, 'Audiovision, psy-ops and the perfect crime: Zombie Agents and sound design', Scan: Journal of Media Arts Cultures, Vol. 6, Number 2 September 2009
• Mike Wayne, 'Theses on realism and film', International Socialism, Issue 116, October 2007
• Cameron M. Weed, 'The Zombie Manifesto: The Marxist Revolutions in George A. Romero’s Land of the Dead', MA Thesis, Baylor University, May 2009
• Tony Williams, 'White Zombie: Haitian horror', from Jump Cut, no. 28, April 1983, pp. 18-20

Romero's Zombies

View more presentations from Steen Christiansen.

More about → "Any Zombies Out There?" Undead Film Studies

Zombie Week at In Media Res

Image from Dawn of the Dead (George Romero, 1978)

Film Studies For Free today recommends an event at one of its favourite, and one of the most original, film and media studies websites -- In Media Res -- which is just concluding a special theme week devoted to Zombies! Below are the direct links to all the fun stuff, and below those you can find more information about the ethos and practicalities of the marvellous In Media Res site.

• Eric Hamako (University of Massachusetts) presents: '“The Yellow Peril rises from the grave…to get your White women!" Orientalist themes in zombie stories', Monday, September 28, 2009

• Cathy Schlund-Vials (Univ. of Connecticut), 'Racism, Postcolonialism, and Neocolonial Zombies: Resident Evil 5', Tuesday, September 29, 2009

• Kim Paffenroth (Iona College), 'Dawn of the Dead (1978): Zombies and Human Nature', Wednesday, September 30, 2009

• Elizabeth McAlister (Wesleyan Univ.), '“Obama, Zombies, and Black Male Secular Messiahs"', Thursday, October 1, 2009

ABOUT IN MEDIA RES

In Media Res is dedicated to experimenting with collaborative, multi-modal forms of online scholarship.

Each day, a different scholar will curate a 30-second to 3-minute video clip/visual image slideshow accompanied by a 300-350-word impressionistic response.

We use the title "curator" because, like a curator in a museum, you are repurposing a media object that already exists and providing context through your commentary, which frames the object in a particular way.

The clip/comment combination are intended to both introduce the curator's work to the larger community of scholars (as well as non-academics who frequent the site) and, hopefully, encourage feedback/discussion from that community.

Theme weeks are designed to generate a networked conversation between curators. All the posts for that week will thematically overlap and the participating curators each agree to comment on one another's work.

Our goal is to promote an online dialogue amongst scholars and the public about contemporary approaches to studying media.

In Media Res provides a forum for more immediate critical engagement with media at a pace closer to how we typically experience media

In Media Res is a publication of MediaCommons. MediaCommons is a strong advocate for the right of media scholars to quote from the materials they analyze, as protected by the principle of "fair use." If such quotation is necessary to a scholar's argument, if the quotation serves to support a scholar's original analysis or pedagogical purpose, and if the quotation does not harm the market value of the original text -- but rather, and on the contrary, enhances it -- we must defend the scholar's right to quote from the media texts under study.

For more information, please contact In Media Res’ coordinating editor, Avi Santo at asanto@odu.edu

More about → Zombie Week at In Media Res