Description
The Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinemas provides novel insight into the rapidly developing genre of science fiction. In contemporary film, science fiction is a key locus both for displaying and for imaginatively addressing social and cultural issues. Today, popular modes of this cinema have transformed the nature of the genre, directly incorporating pressing concerns about racial tensions, the environment, and gender inequality, among other cultural and social issues. This volume defines these new modes as slant forms of science fiction, changing a genre most often associated with the icons of science and technology into a substantially new range of science fiction cinemas.This handbook presents two groups of essays, both of which explore what these new science fiction cinemas address and how viewers can better navigate these films. The first group of essays provides a contextual and historical definition for a selection of slant types, featuring analyses of examples such as Afrofuturism, biopunk cinema, feminist science fiction, heterotopic spaces, and superhero cinema. The second group offers a broader theoretical vantage on some of the critical and revolutionary slants informing contemporary science fiction, including topics like bioethics, cult behaviors, gender and queer theory, and posthumanism. From exploring new theoretical approaches to highlighting new cultural attitudes, this volume presents the science fiction cinema not only as a flexible and adaptable process, but also as a reflection of contemporary culture's own evolution.
Table of Contents
I. Introduction1. Slant Screens, Slant Screenings, J. P. TelotteII. The Slant Screens of New Science Fiction Cinema2. Afrofuturist Cinema, De Witt Douglas Kilgore 3. Biopunk, Lars Schmeink4. Cli-Fi Film, Mark Bould5. Ethno-Gothic Cinema, Susana Morris6. Femspec Science Fiction, Susan George 7. Heterotopias, Joan Gordon8. Kaiju Film, Bradley Schauer9. Magical Realism Science Fiction, Gerald Duchovnay10. Steampunk, Thomas Lamarre11. Superhero Science Fiction, Angela NdalianisIII. New Slants on the Science Fiction Film12. The Anthropocene/Ecosophy, Gerry Canavan13. Bioethics/Biopolitics, Sherryl Vint14. Cult Behaviors, Jeffrey Weinstock15. Digital Science Fictions, Charles Tryon16. Feminist Materialism, Frances McDonald17. Object-Oriented Ontology, Levi R. Bryant18. Posthumanism, J. P. Telotte19. Queer Cinema, Catherine Constable and Matt Denny20. Utopianism, Caroline EdwardsIV. A Select Slant Screens Filmography
