Spanish Horror Film And Television In The 21st Century

This book provides an up-to-date, in-depth survey of 21st-century Spanish horror film and media, exploring both aesthetics and industrial dynamics. It offers detailed analysis of contemporary films and TV series as well as novel approaches to key works within the history of Spanish cinema. While addressing the specificities of the Spanish landscape, this volume also situates the national cinematic output within the international arena, understanding film production and reception as continuously changing processes in which a variety of economic, social and cultural factors intervene. The book first analyzes the main horror trends emerging in the early 2000s, then approaches genre hybridization and the rise of new filmmakers since the 2010s with a special focus on gender issues and the reconfiguration of the past, before addressing the impact of streaming services within the Spanish film panorama, from a production and distribution standpoint. This book will be of keen interest to scholars and students in the areas of film studies, media studies, TV studies, horror, Spanish cultural studies and production studies.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Tracing the Borders of Spanish Horror Cinema and Television -- PART I: The (Postmodern) Gothic -- 1 Trapped in the House of Mirrors: The Others as a Transnational Postmodern Gothic Thriller -- 2 Contemporary Spanish Gothic Heroines -- PART II: Mothers, Children, Patriarchy, and the Biopolitics of Reproduction -- 3 Monstrous (Re)productions: Mothering Patriarchy on the Spanish Horror Screen -- 4 Suspendido en el tiempo: Children and Contemporary Spanish Horror -- PART III: Sound, Vision, Media, and Intermediality -- 5 Dude, Where's my Phallus?!: Locating the Horror of La piel que habito / The Skin I Live In (2011) -- 6 Why They Film: The Camera and Viewer Address in Found Footage Horror Films from Spain -- 7 Sound of Fear in Recent Spanish Films -- PART IV: The [REC] Phenomenon -- 8 After the End of History: Horror Cinema in Neoliberal Spain (2002-2013) -- 9 Generating Fear: From Fantastic Factory (2000-2005) to [REC] (2007-2014) -- 10 The Medium Is the Monster: Metadiscourse and the Horrors of post-11 M Spain in the [REC] Tetralogy -- 11 "I am an eye, I am a mechanical eye ... ": (The [REC] Series) -- PART V: A Focus on Individual Filmmakers: Daniel Calparsoro and Paul Naschy -- 12 Blurring Reality and Fiction in Contemporary Spanish Horror TV: The Case of Daniel Calparsoro -- 13 An Icon Rises from the Grave: The 21st Century Cult Stardom of Paul Naschy -- List of Contributors -- Index

This critical anthology sets out to explore the boom that horror cinema and TV productions have experienced in Spain in the past two decades. It uses a range of critical and theoretical perspectives to examine a broad variety of films and filmmakers, such as works by Alejandro Amenábar, Álex de la Iglesia, Pedro Almodóvar, Guillermo del Toro, Juan Antonio Bayona, and Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza. The volume revolves around a set of fundamental questions: What are the causes for this new Spanish horror-mania? What cultural anxieties and desires, ideological motives and practical interests may be behind such boom? Is there anything specifically "Spanish" about the Spanish horror film and TV productions, any distinctive traits different from Hollywood and other European models that may be associated to the particular political, social, economic or cultural circumstances of contemporary Spain?

This book provides a comprehensive cultural and historical account of the key film policies put into place by the Spanish state between 1980 and 2010 through a gendered lens, framing these policies within the wider context of European film legislation. Departing from the belief that there is no such thing as an objective and value-neutral approach to policy analysis because our society is organised around gender, this volume builds upon Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of field to propose that film policies do not emerge in a vacuum because they respond to different demands from those agents involved in the field of the Spanish cinema. By so doing, it critically assesses how these policies have come into being, by whom, in response to what interests, how they have shaped the Spanish film industry, and how far and in what ways they have tackled gender inequality in the Spanish film industry. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of Spanish cinema, gender studies, film industry studies, film policy, and feminist film studies.

This book questions the predominance of “media abundance” as a guiding concept for contemporary mediated politics. The authors argue that media abundance is not a universal condition, and that certain individuals, communities, and even nations can more accurately be referred to as media scarce – where access to media technologies and content is limited, highly controlled, or surveilled. Through case studies that focus on guerilla militants, incarcerated Indigenous people, and cold war‐era infrastructure, including Soviet “closed” or “secret” cities and Canadian nuclear bunkers, the book’s chapters interrogate how the once media scarce later “speak” to – and can be heard by – the predominant, abundant media culture. Drawing from several art projects and diverse cultural sites, the book highlights how media scarce communities negotiate and otherwise narrate their place in the world, their past experiences and lives, and escape from subjugation. To better understand media scarce politics, the book asks how and when communities become – by accident or force, by choice or necessity – media scarce. This innovative and insightful text will appeal to students and scholars around the world working in the areas of media and politics, art and politics, visual studies, surveillance studies, and communication studies.

This book presents a new paradigm for attending to gender-based violence (GBV) social media discourse among marginalised Black women in South Africa. Focusing on the intersections of television and social media, the study charts the morphing and merging of the “inside” of the soap opera and the “outside” of the real world, amid a rise in feminist social media activism. The analysis begins with coverage of gender-based violence in a long-running South African soap opera and social media discussion of these issues, in parallel with real-world events and the collective social media response. The author offers pertinent insights into audiences in sub-Saharan Africa, presenting a new feminist trajectory for women and activism in the region. Offering new insights into an important issue, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of gender, cultural studies, film studies, television studies, sociology, development studies, feminism, media, and journalism.

This book rethinks the study of European Cinema in a way that centres on students and their needs, in a comprehensive volume introducing undergraduates to the main discourses, directions and genres of twenty-first-century European film. Importantly, this collection is the first of its kind to apply a transversal approach to European Cinema, bringing together the East and the West, while providing a broad picture of key trends, aesthetics, genres, national identities, and transnational concerns. Lewis and Canning’s collection effectively addresses some of the most pressing questions in contemporary European film, such as ecology, migration, industry, identity, disability, memory, auteurship, genre, small cinemas, and the national and international frameworks which underpin them. Combining accessible original research with a thorough grounding in recent histories and contexts, each chapter includes key definitions, reflective group questions, and a summative case study. Overall, this book makes a strong contribution to our understanding of recent European Cinema, making it an invaluable resource for lecturers and students across a variety of film-centred modules.

Over ten seasons since 2011, the television series American Horror Story (AHS), created by Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, has continued to push the boundaries of the televisual form in new and exciting ways. Emerging in a context which has seen a boom in popularity for horror series on television, AHS has distinguished itself from its ‘rivals’ such as The Walking Dead, Bates Motel or Penny Dreadful through its diverse strategies and storylines which have seen it explore archetypal narratives of horror culture as well as engaging with real historical events. Utilising a repertory company model for its casting, the show has challenged issues around contemporary politics, heteronormativity, violence on the screen, and disability to name but a few. This new collection of essays approaches the AHS anthology series through a variety of critical perspectives within the broader field of television studies and its transections with other disciplines.