The Disaster Film As Social Practice

Surveying disaster films from a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective, this book explores the disaster film genre from its initial appearance in 1933 (The Grapes of Wrath, 1933) to its present-day form (Don’t Look Up!, 2021), laying bare the ideological unconscious at work within the genre. The Disaster Film as Social Practice examines environmental science, history, film and literature in its interdisciplinary analysis of the disaster film genre. It explores the interplay, and the dichotomy, of “restorative” and “reflective” disaster narratives. An analysis of cinema's role in symbolizing and managing collective anxiety around disaster and death narratives examines how disaster films, through their narrative structures and symbolic elements, contribute to the public's understanding and emotional processing of real-world threats, and how cinematic narratives shape and are shaped by public and private ideological discourses, reflecting deeper psychological and environmental truths. Finally, the book offers an overview of how the transformation of the disaster film genre over time tells a history through imagining the worst. Providing a nuanced understanding of the disaster film genre and its significance in contemporary culture and thought, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of film studies, cultural studies, media studies, and environmental studies.

Surveying disaster film from a Lacanian psychoanalytic perspective, this book explores the disaster film genre from its initial appearance in 1933 (The Grapes of Wrath, 1933) to its present-day form (Don't Look Up!, 2021), laying bare the ideological unconscious at work within the genre. The book examines environmental science, history, film and literature in its interdisciplinary analysis of the disaster film genre. It explores the interplay, and the dichotomy, of "restorative" and "reflective" disaster narratives. Analysis of cinema's role in symbolizing and managing collective anxiety around disaster and death narratives examines how disaster films, through their narrative structures and symbolic elements, contribute to the public's understanding and emotional processing of real-world threats and how cinematic narratives shape and are shaped by public and private ideological discourses, reflecting deeper psychological and environmental truths. Finally, the book offers an overview of how the transformation of the disaster film genre over time tells a history through imagining the worst. Providing a nuanced understanding of the disaster film genre and its significance in contemporary culture and thought, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of film studies, cultural studies, media studies, and environmental studies.

This book analyzes the cinematic superhero as social practice. The study’s critical context brings together psychoanalysis and restorative and reflective nostalgia as a way of understanding the ideological function of superhero fantasy. It explores the origins of cinematic superhero fantasy from antecedents in myth and religion, to twentieth-century comic book, to the cinematic breakthrough with Superman (1978). The authors then focus on Spider-Man as reflective response to Superman’s restorative nostalgia, and read MCU’s overarching narrative from Iron Man to End Game in terms of the concurrent social, political, and environmental conditions as a world in crisis. Zornado and Reilly take up Wonder Woman and Black Panther as self-conscious attempts to reflect on gender and race in restorative superhero fantasy, and explore Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy as a meditation on the need for authoritarian fascism. The book concludes with Logan, Wonder Woman 1984, and Amazon Prime’s The Boys as distinctly reflective fantasy narratives critical of the superhero fantasy phenomenon.

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.

African Documentary Cinema investigates the inception and trajectory of contemporary documentary filmmaking in sub-Saharan African countries and their diasporas. The book challenges critical paradigms that have long prevailed in African film criticism, shedding light on the diverse discourses and evolving aesthetic trends present within documentary films. Situating his analysis within the context of the significant transformation of the African film industry, the author focuses on the development, diversity, and shifting dynamics that have impacted contemporary documentary cinema. Examining the historical, political, sociological, economic, and cultural factors that have facilitated the rise of documentary films—especially those created by female documentarians—the book assesses the emergence of documentary filmmakers spanning different generations. Their training, practices, and innovative perspectives on social, political, and environmental issues ultimately give rise to new frameworks for understanding the bio-documentary genre, issues of gender discrimination, LGBTQIA+ identities, environmental trauma, genocide, and memory on the African continent. This ground-breaking study offers new insight into a rapidly expanding topic and will appeal to students and scholars in the fields of film studies, documentary film, media industry studies, African studies, French, postcolonial studies, politics, and cultural studies.

In this major new work, Gary Genosko, the world's leading English interpreter of Guattari, offers critical methodological reflections and applications that bring to life Guattari’s thought in contemporary social contexts. The volume explores his collaborations with Deleuze and Negri, and brings into focus his friendship with Franco Bifo Berardi.

This book examines the relationship between social practices and built space, focusing on current cooperative/participative and posthuman approaches to its production and management. From a social-cultural-and-ecological perspective, it explores the modes of engagement of all factors in the constitutional processes of inhabited space. Throughout this interdisciplinary collection, built space is reconsidered in the light of other schools of thought such as philosophy, anthropology, social sciences and political theories and practices. It covers new ground at conceptual, epistemic and methodological levels, focusing on inhabited space from within the framework of globalisation, biopolitics, cultural changes, environmental crisis and new technologies. Organised into three parts, Parts 1 and 2 focus on the role of architects in the emergence of a new ethos for habitation, as well as the modalities of the inclusion of differences in design, discussing the importance of participation and narrative at a theoretical and practical level in architecture. In the third part, the chapters delve into questions regarding the intersection of design, ecology and technoscience in a posthuman approach, which might support the inclusion of differences in design and the emergence of a new environmental ethos. Providing a stimulating landscape of arguments and challenges to new readings of architecture, society and the environment, this book will be of interest to researchers, students and professionals of architecture, urban planning, anthropology and philosophy.

This open access book explores the role visual tools and graphical models play in safety management. It explains the importance of visualising safety, for teaching concepts, communicating ideas to peers, and raising awareness of potential threats through posters. Visualising Safety, an Exploration introduces graphical models which have been influential in promoting ideas of safety, and impacting the organisational design of safety mechanisms, including the Heinreich ‘safety pyramid’ and Reason’s ‘Swiss Cheese’. It analyses these models, as well as other forms of visualization, presenting viewpoints from academics and practitioners in the fields of safety science, history, ethnography and interface design. This brief will be of interest to anyone working in the field of safety management and design, including researchers, managers and students.