Dramatising Disaster

The imagining of disaster has intensified across a wide range of media entertainment formats and genres in recent years and themes of disaster are regularly deployed in fictional films, television drama series, drama-documentaries, comic books and video games. This being the case, it is therefore vital that film and media scholars pay attention to the ways in which disaster is presented to us, to the figurative strategies employed, to the representational history of disaster in media, to the metaphorical resonances of disaster themes, and even to the ways in which entertainment media texts might be understood as part of a broader discourse of disaster within certain historical and cultural contexts. Dramatising Disaster presents new and innovative research from both early career and more established academics. Some of the chapters in this edited collection are based upon papers originally presented at a highly successful conference study day held by the School of Film, Television and Media at the University of East Anglia in 2011, while others are specifically solicited contributions. Distinct from previous, more particularised film and media studies in this area, this edited collection is focused not upon a specific disaster or specific disaster context, but upon the wider topic of disaster in popular culture.

The Dead City unearths meanings from such depictions of ruination and decay, looking at representations of both thriving cities and ones which are struggling, abandoned or simply in transition. It reveals that ruination presents a complex opportunity to envision new futures for a city, whether that is by rewriting its past or throwing off old assumptions and proposing radical change. Seen in a certain light, for example, urban ruin and decay are a challenge to capitalist narratives of unbounded progress. They can equally imply that power structures thought to be deeply ingrained are temporary, contingent and even fragile. Examining ruins in Chernobyl, Detroit, London, Manchester and Varosha, this book demonstrates that how we discuss and depict urban decline is intimately connected to the histories, economic forces, power structures and communities of a given city, as well as to conflicting visions for its future.

We live in a world at risk. Dire predictions about our future or the demise of planet earth persist. Even fictional representations depict narratives of decay and the end of a commonly shared social reality. Along with recurring Hollywood blockbusters that imagine the end of the world, there has been a new wave of zombie features as well as independent films that offer various visions of the future. The Apocalypse in Film: Dystopias, Disasters, and Other Visions about the End of the World offers an overview of Armageddon in film from the silent era to the present. This collection of essays discusses how such films reflect social anxieties—ones that are linked to economic, ecological, and cultural factors. Featuring a broad spectrum of international scholars specializing in different historical genres and methodologies, these essays look at a number of films, including the silent classic The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the black comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, the Mayan calendar disaster epic, 2012, and in particular, Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia, the focus of several essays. As some filmmakers translate the anxiety about a changing global climate and geo-political relations into visions of the apocalypse, others articulate worries about the planet’s future by depicting chemical warfare, environmental disasters, or human made destruction. This book analyzes the emergence of apocalyptic and dystopic narratives and explores the political and social situations on which these films are based. Contributing to the dialogue on dystopic culture in war and peace, The Apocalypse in Film will be of interest to scholars in film and media studies, border studies, gender studies, sociology, and political science.

What does popular culture's relationship with cyborgs, robots, vampires and zombies tell us about being human? Insightful scholarly perspectives shine a light on how film and television evince and portray the philosophical roots, the social ramifications and the future visions of a posthumanist world.

Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) has long been recognised as one of the key artistic expressions of the nuclear age. Made at a time when nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union was a real possibility, the film is menacing, exhilarating, thrilling, insightful and very funny. Combining a scene-by-scene analysis of Dr. Strangelove with new research in the Stanley Kubrick Archive, Peter Krämer's study foregrounds the connections the film establishes between the Cold War and World War II, and between sixties America and Nazi Germany. How did the film come to be named after a character who only appears in it very briefly? Why does he turn out to be a Nazi? And how are his ideas for post-apocalyptic survival in mineshafts connected to the sexual fantasies of the military men who destroy life on the surface of the Earth? This special edition features original cover artwork by Marian Bantjes.

During his career Stanley Kubrick became renowned for undertaking lengthy and exhaustive research prior to the production of all his films. In the lead-up to what would eventually become Dr. Strangelove (1964), Kubrick read voraciously and amassed a substantial library of works on the nuclear age. With rare access to unpublished materials, this volume assesses Dr. Strangelove's narrative accuracy, consulting recently declassified Cold War nuclear-policy documents alongside interviews with Kubrick's collaborators. It focuses on the myths surrounding the film, such as the origins and transformation of the "straight" script versions into what Kubrick termed a "nightmare comedy." It assesses Kubrick's account of collaborating with the writers Peter George and Terry Southern against their individual remembrances and material archives. Peter Sellers's improvisations are compared to written scripts and daily continuity reports, showcasing the actor's brilliant talent and variations.

Though reaching ever further toward the skies, today’s cities are overshadowed by multiple threats: climate change, overpopulation, social division, and urban warfare all endanger our metropolitan way of life. The fundamental tool we use to make sense of these uncertain city futures is the imagination. Architects, artists, filmmakers, and fiction writers have long been inspired to imagine cities of the future, but their speculative visions tend to be seen very differently from scientific predictions: flights of fancy on the one hand versus practical reasoning on the other. In a digital age when the real and the fantastic coexist as near equals, it is especially important to know how these two forces are entangled, and how together they may help us best conceive of cities yet to come. Exploring a breathtaking range of imagined cities—submerged, floating, flying, vertical, underground, ruined, and salvaged—Future Cities teases out the links between speculation and reality, arguing that there is no clear separation between the two. In the Netherlands, prototype floating cities are already being built; Dubai’s recent skyscrapers resemble those of science-fiction cities of the past; while makeshift settlements built by the urban poor in the developing world are already like the dystopian cities of cyberpunk. Bringing together architecture, fiction, film, and visual art, Paul Dobraszczyk reconnects the imaginary city with the real, proposing a future for humanity that is firmly grounded in the present and in the diverse creative practices already at our fingertips.

The six chapters assembled in The Kubrick Legacy showcase important trends in the evolution of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick’s artistic legacy. In the 20 years since his death an enormous range of information and scholarship has surfaced, in part from the Kubrick estate’s public preservation, archiving, exhibition and promulgation of the auteur’s staggering collection of research materials and film artefacts. These essays from international scholars chart incarnations of the official Kubrick exhibition of extensive artifacts touring the globe for the past decade; the filmmaker’s lasting impact on established authors with whom he collaborated; the profound influence of Kubrick’s use of existing music in film scores; the exponential rise of conspiracy theories and (mis)interpretation of his work since his death; the repeated imitation of and homage to his oeuvre across decades of international television advertising; and the (re)discovery of Kubrick on screen in both documentary form and dramatic characterization. The Kubrick Legacy provides a tantalizing, critical snapshot of the enduring impact and influence of one of the twentieth century’s most enigmatic and consummate screen artists.