Product Description: A few days after 9/11, US Vice-President Dick Cheney invoked the need for the USA to work 'the dark side' in its global 'War on Terror'. In Cinema of the Dark Side, Shohini Chaudhuri explores how contemporary cinema treats state-sponsored atrocity, evoking multiple landscapes of state terror...read more

Product Description: Civilized Violence provides a social and historical explanation for the popular appeal of cinema violence. There is a significant amount of research on the effects of media violence, but less work on what attracts audiences to representations of violence in the first place...read more

Product Description: The Fascination of Film Violence is a study of why fictional violence is such an integral part of fiction film. How can something dreadful be a source of art and entertainment? Explanations are sought from the way social and cultural norms and practices have shaped biologically conditioned violence related traits in human behavior...read more

Product Description: For Elena del Río, extreme cinema is not only qualitatively different from the representations of violence we encounter in popular, mainstream cinema; it also constitutes a critique of the socio-moral system that produces (in every sense of the word) such violence...read more

Product Description: The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the subsequent US-led invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 profoundly affected all aspects of society, including cinema. Or did they? Even now, years after those horrific events, debate still rages over their impact on films...read more

Product Description: In this bold study of cinematic depictions of violence in the south, Deborah E. Barker explores the ongoing legacy of the “southern rape complex” in American film. Taking as her starting point D. W. Griffith’s infamous Birth of a Nation, Barker demonstrates how the tropes and imagery of the southern rape complex continue to assert themselves across a multitude of genres, time periods, and stylistic modes...read more

Product Description: Tracing the rise of extreme art cinema across films from Lars von Trier's The Idiots to Michael Haneke's Caché, Asbjørn Grønstad revives the debate about the role of negation and aesthetics, and reframes the concept of spectatorship in ethical terms.

Graphic cinematic violence is a magnet for controversy. From passionate defences to outraged protests, theories abound concerning this feature of modern film: is it art or exploitation, dangerous or liberating? This volume provides an examination of the history, merits and effects of cinematic "ultraviolence". Movie reviewers, cinematographers, film scholars, psycologists and sociologists all contribute essays exploring topics such as: the origins and innovations of film violence and attempts to regulate it; Hollywood's production code and the evolution of the ratings system; the explosion of screen violence following the 1967 releases of "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Dirty Dozen", and the lasting effects of these landmark films; the aesthetics of increasingly graphic screen violence; the implications of our growing desensitization to murder and mayhem, from "The Wild Bunch" to "The Terminator".

Product Description: Civilization seems to move ever more toward the power of words over weapons. But many people, especially Americans, still believe wrongs in life can be righted with a fist or a gun or a bomb. Cultural mythology lags reality and continues to send the message of regeneration through violence...read more

Product Description: This superb collection of essays illuminates the film portrayal of violence, masculinity, and power in a postcolonial context, showing how the cinema challenges, normalizes, or contests these major issues. Taking an interdisciplinary and comparative approach, drawing from literature, sociology, and media studies, the essays shed light on films about societal violence in postcolonial cultures, whether it be terrorism, suicide bombings, the underworld, organized crime, or mob violence...read more

Product Description: This collection considers film in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Eleven essayists address Hollywood movies, indie film, and post-cinematic media, including theatrical films by directors such as Steven Spielberg, Darren Aronofsky, Quentin Tarantino and Spike Lee, and post-cinematic works by Wafaa Bilal, Douglas Gordon and Peter Tscherkassky, among others...read more

No cultural product reveals our collective fascination with sexual violence more candidly than popular heterosexual pornographies. They showcase scenes of intense sexual aggression and cruelty that are gendered in repetitive, patterned configurations―configurations that are designed to arouse. Purcell uses comparative critical analyses of popular pornographic movies to explore common fantasies of sexual violence and how they have changed over the past forty years. Adopting a thick descriptive approach, she moves beyond the mere observation and recording of instances of sexism and violence, elucidating the changing aesthetics, themes, and conventions of depicted sexual aggression and showing how they have emerged in specific socio-historical contexts. Purcell also draws from a range of industry publications and fan forums to examine the fabric and function of misogyny and violence in viewers’ fantasies and everyday lives. By documenting how popular pornographies have changed over time, this study sheds new light the evolving desires and anxieties of the genre’s growing U.S. audience.

Product Description: Violent Women in Contemporary Cinema explores the representation of homicidal women in six contemporary films: Antichrist (Lars von Trier, 2009), Trouble Every Day (Claire Denis, 2001), Baise-moi (Coralie Thinh Thi and Virginie Despentes, 2000), Heavenly Creatures (Peter Jackson, 1994), Monster (Patty Jenkins, 2003) and The Reader (Stephen Daldry, 2008)...read more