Epidemic Cinema: The Rise of a Genre (Routledge Advances in Film Studies)

Synopsis

This book examines the recent trend in global cinema to feature infectious disease. As the global crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic materialised the anxieties and discourses of world risk that had long been portrayed in popular media, the book provides a novel definition of the epidemic film genre and offers a systematic look into the narrative and stylistic conventions that characterise it. Epidemic Cinema traces the evolution of the genre from its early cinematic origins to establish the founding principles of a genre standing at the crossroads between science-fiction and horror. It draws on close textual analysis to show how the pandemic reified one of the central predicaments of epidemic narratives: the constant tension existing between free-floating phenomena and the impulse to control and resist such phenomena, ultimately epitomised by the trope of the border. Showing how infectious diseases offer a rich allegorical frame which cinema uses to articulate timely anxieties of growingly invisible and deterritorialised risks, the author presents the prevalence of contagion in popular culture as a symptom of this growingly viral and virus-ridden context, both in its most literal and metaphorical sense. This insightful study will interest students and scholars of film studies, global cinema, science-fiction, horror, popular culture and genre theory.

Copyright:

2024

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

ISBN-13:

9781003823766

Related ISBNs:

9781032541365, 9781003415336, 9781032541358

Publisher:

Taylor and Francis

Date of Addition:

12/07/23

Copyrighted By:

Julia Echeverría

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Entertainment, Horror, Nonfiction, Art and Architecture, Science Fiction and Fantasy, Social Studies

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.