Books

This examination of film and television remakes focuses explicitly on why – since the dawn of cinema – studios have remade films over and over again. Each chapter provides insight into the business of Hollywood, the motivations of filmmakers and also the pleasures for audiences, and offers a separate explanation for the whys of remaking. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach, the author draws from existing literature, close readings of films and a dataset of hundreds of film reviews, to provide a taxonomy and deep-dive into six unique rationales for remaking premade titles.

Sex and Sexuality in Modern Screen Remakes examines how sexiness, sexuality and revisited sexual politics are used to modernize film and TV remakes. This exploration provides insight into the ever-evolving—and ever-contested—role of sex in society, and scrutinizes the politics and economics underpinning modern media reproduction. More nudity, kinky sex, and queer content are increasingly deployed in remakes to attract, and to titillate, a new generation of viewers.

Analyzing Christmas in Film: Santa to the Supernatural focuses on the how Christmas is presented on the deluge of occasions when it appears. While most Christmas films are secular, religion makes many cameos, appearing through Nativity references, storylines involving spiritual rebirth, the framing of Santa as a Christ-like figure and the all-importance of family, be it the Holy family or just those gathered around the dining table. Also explored are popular narratives involving battles with stress and melancholy, single parents and Christmas martyrs, visits from ghosts and angels, big cities and small towns, break-ups and make-ups and the ticking clock of mortality.

Popular culture (film, narrative television, the news media, and advertising) present two very distinct pictures of the use of the Internet as related to intimacy. From news reports about victims of online dating, to the presentation of the desperate and dateless, the perverts and the deviants, a distinct frame for the intimacy/Internet connection is negativity. Both the positive and the negative media representations are categorised and analysed in this book to explore what they reveal about the intersection of gender, sexuality, technology and the changing mores regarding intimacy.

Written by an expert in media, popular culture, gender, and sexuality, this book surveys the common archetypes of Internet users—from geeks, nerds, and gamers to hackers, scammers, and predators—and assesses what these stereotypes reveal about our culture’s attitudes regarding gender, technology, intimacy, and identity.

Each chapter of this book explores a different stereotype of the Internet user, with key themes—such as gender, technophobia, and sexuality—explored with regard to that specific characterization of online users.

Through reference to over six hundred scenes from film and television—as well as a diverse and cross-disciplinary academic bibliography—Masturbation in Pop Culture investigates the role that masturbation serves within narratives while simultaneously mirroring our complicated relationship with the practice in real life and sparking discussions about a broad range of hot-button sexual subjects.

Flatulence … male nudity … abortion … masturbation: these are just a few of the taboo topics in the United States. What do culturally enforced silences about certain subjects say about our society—and our latent fears? This work provides a broad yet detailed overview of popular culture’s most avoided topics to explain why they remain off-limits and examines how they are presented in contemporary media—or, in many cases, delicately explored using euphemism and innuendo.

Drawing on a vast collection of menstruation scenes from film and television, this study examines and categorizes representations to unearth what they reveal about society and about our culture’s continuingly fraught relationship with female biology.

Perversion saturates everything from song lyrics to cinema to advertising and art. Caught in a quagmire that is at once sexy and revolting, thrilling and petrifying, individuals must manage their exposure and decide just how much they want these representations to influence their daily lives. So, how do we respond?

Cheating on the Sisterhood is a feminist analysis of the imbroglio of sexual politics, brute sociobiology. Drawing frankly on her own experience as the “other woman,” Rosewarne shows what happens when all three parties to the classic triangle happen to be feminists, each trotting out a different set of feminist arguments to justify, vilify, and rationalize his or her actions.

Despite decades of feminist awareness and activism, women continue to be portrayed in outdoor advertising in a limited and sexist manner. Sex in Public utilises a large outdoor advertising data collection to examine the contemporary outdoor advertising landscape, documenting the routine portrayal of women as thin, white, young and idle. This book examines why such portrayals are concerning for feminists as well as for public policy, and explores the advertising self-regulation systems that facilitate the display of such images.