The Aesthetic Paradox of Pleasurable Fear

By Julian Hanich

Why can fear be pleasurable? Why do we sometimes enjoy an emotion we otherwise desperately wish to avoid? And why are the movies the predominant place for this paradoxical experience? These are the central questions of Julian Hanich’s path-breaking book, in which he takes a detailed look at the various aesthetic strategies of fear as well as the viewer’s frightened experience. By drawing on prototypical scenes from horror films and thrillers like Rosemary’s Baby, The Silence of the Lambs, Seven and The Blair Witch Project, Hanich identifies five types of fear at the movies and thus provides a much more nuanced classification than previously at hand in film studies. His descriptions of how the five types of fear differ according to their bodily, temporal and social experience inside the auditorium entail a forceful plea for relying more strongly on phenomenology in the study of cinematic emotions. In so doing, this book opens up new ways of dealing with these emotions. Hanich’s study does not stop at the level of fear in the movie theater, however, but puts the strong cinematic emotion against the backdrop of some of the most crucial developments of our modern world: disembodiment, acceleration and the loosening of social bonds. Hanich argues that the strong affective, temporal, and social experiences of frightening movies can be particularly pleasurable precisely because they help to counterbalance these ambivalent changes of modernity.

ISBN: 9780415871396

Published March 15 2010 by Routledge.

A Survey

Edited by Yoke-Lian Lee

This new title in the Politics of . . . series will address the major theme of the politics of gender. Chapters on a variety of issues, contributed by experts in the field of gender, will include Human Trafficking and EU Law, Gender in International Relations, the Gender Politics of Philosphy/Political Theory, the Construction of Masculinity in Hollywood Movies, the Politics of Law, and the Politics of Mainstreaming Gender in the Peace and Security Agenda of the African Union.

An A–Z glossary will offer supplementary information on key terms, with entries including abortion, Commission on the Status of Women, ecofeminism, equal access, human rights, migration, population control, and sex tourism.

ISBN: 9781857434934

Published March 12 2010 by Routledge.

By Heidi Campbell

This lively book focuses on how different Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities engage with new media. Rather than simply reject or accept new media, religious communities negotiate complex relationships with these technologies in light of their history and beliefs. Heidi Campbell suggests a method for studying these processes she calls the "religious-social shaping of technology" and students are asked to consider four key areas: religious tradition and history; contemporary community values and priorities; negotiation and innovating technology in light of the community; communal discourses applied to justify use.

A wealth of examples such as the Christian e-vangelism movement, Modern Islamic discourses about computers and the rise of the Jewish kosher cell phone, demonstrate the dominant strategies which emerge for religious media users, as well as the unique motivations that guide specific groups.

ISBN: 9780415349567

Published March 12 2010 by Routledge.

The Charisma of Criticism

By H. Aram Veeser

This insightful critical biography shows us an Edward Said we did not know. H. Aram Veeser brings forth not the Said of tabloid culture, or Said the remote philosopher, but the actual man, embedded in the politics of the Middle East but soaked in the values of the West and struggling to advance the best European ideas. Veeser shows the organic ties connecting his life, politics, and criticism.

Drawing on what he learned over 35 years as Said's student and skeptical admirer, Veeser uses never-before-published interviews, debate transcripts, and photographs to discover a Said who had few inhibitions and loathed conventional routine. He stood for originality, loved unique ideas, wore marvelous clothes, and fought with molten fury. For twenty years he embraced and rejected, at the same time, not only the West, but also literary theory and the PLO. At last, his disgust with business-as-usual politics and criticism marooned him on the sidelines of both.

The candid tale of Said's rise from elite academic precincts to the world stage transforms not only our understanding of Said—the man and the myth—but also our perception of how intellectuals can make their way in the world.

ISBN: 9780415902649

Published March 09 2010 by Routledge.

Disturbing Differences

Edited by Marianne Liljeström, Susanna Paasonen

Affect has become something of a buzzword in cultural and feminist theory during the past decade. References to affect, emotions and intensities abound, their implications in terms of research practices have often remained less manifest. Working with Affect in Feminist Readings: Disturbing Differences explores the place and function of affect in feminist knowledge production in general and in textual methodology in particular. With an international group of contributors from studies of history, media, philosophy, culture, ethnology, art, literature and religion, the volume investigates affect as the dynamics of reading, as carnal encounters and as possibilities for the production of knowledge. Working with Affect in Feminist Readings asks what exactly are we doing when working with affect, and what kinds of ethical, epistemological and ontological issues this involves. Not limiting itself to descriptive accounts, the volume takes part in establishing new ways of understanding feminist methodology.

ISBN: 9780415481397

Published March 08 2010 by Routledge.

A Practical Guide

By Andy Bull

Multimedia Journalism: A Practical Guide offers clear advice on working across multiple media platforms and includes guides to creating and using video, audio, text and pictures.

It contains all the essentials of good practice and is supported by an immersive website at www.multimedia-journalism.co.uk which demonstrates how to apply the skills covered in the book, gives examples of good and bad practice, and keeps the material up to date and in line with new hardware, software, methods of working and legislation. The book is fully cross-referenced and interlinked with the website, which offers the chance to test your learning and send in questions for industry experts to answer in their masterclasses.

Split into three levels - getting started, building proficiency and professional standards, this book builds on the knowledge attained in each part, and ensures that skills are introduced one step at a time until professional competency is achieved. This three stage structure means it can be used from initial to advanced level to learn the key skill areas of video, audio, text, and pictures and how to combine them to create multimedia packages. Skills covered include:

• Writing news reports, features, email bulletins and blogs
• Building a website using a content management system
• Measuring the success of your website or blog
• Shooting, cropping, editing and captioning pictures
• Recording, editing and publishing audio reports and podcasts
• Shooting, editing and streaming video and creating effective packages
• Creating breaking news tickers and using Twitter
• Using and encouraging user generated content
• Interviewing and conducting advanced online research
• Subediting, proofreading and headlining, including search engine optimisation
• Geo-tagging, geo-coding and geo-broadcasting

ISBN: 9780415478229

Published March 03 2010 by Routledge.

The Social World of Adolescence in the Information Age

By Gustavo Mesch, Ilan Talmud

The debate on the social impact of information and communication technologies is particularly important for the study of adolescent life, because through their close association with friends and peers, adolescents develop life expectations, school aspirations, world views, and behaviors.

This book presents an up-to-date review of the literature on youth sociability, relationship formation, and online communication, examining the way young people use the internet to construct or maintain their inter-personal relationships. Using a social network perspective, the book systematically explores the various effects of internet access and use on adolescents’ involvement in social, leisure and extracurricular activities, evaluating the arguments that suggest the internet is displacing other forms of social ties. The core of the book investigates the motivations for online relationship formation and the use of online communication for relationship maintenance. The final part of the book focuses on the consequences, both positive and negative, of the use of online communication, such as increased social capital and online bullying.

Wired Youth is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students of adolescent psychology, youth studies, media studies and the psychology and sociology of interpersonal relationships.

ISBN: 9780415459938

Published March 03 2010 by Routledge.

The Culture and Politics of 'Hero'

Edited by Gary D. Rawnsley, Ming-Yeh T. Rawnsley

The film Hero, directed by Zhang Yimou and released in 2002, is widely regarded as the first globally successful indigenous Chinese blockbuster. A big expensive film with multiple stars, spectacular scenery, and astonishing action sequences, it touched on key questions of Chinese culture, nation and politics, and was both a domestic sensation and an international hit. This book explores the reasons for the film’s popularity with its audiences, discussing the factors which so resonated with those who watched the film. It examines questions such as Chinese national unity, the search for cultural identity and role models from China’s illustrious pre-communist past, and the portrayal of political and aesthetic values, and attitudes to gender, sex, love, and violence which are relatively new to China. The book demonstrates how the film, and China’s growing film industry more generally, have in fact very strong international connections, with Western as well as Chinese financing, stars recruited from the East Asian region more widely, and extensive interactions between Hollywood and Asian artists and technicians. Overall, the book provides fascinating insights into recent developments in Chinese society, popular culture and cultural production.

ISBN: 9780415453158

Published March 01 2010 by Routledge.

The Views of Producers around the World

By Dafna Lemish

Screening Gender on Children’s Television offers readers insights into the transformations taking place in the presentation of gender portrayals in television productions aimed at younger audiences. It goes far beyond a critical analysis of the existing portrayals of gender and culture by sharing media professionals’ action-oriented recommendations for change that would promote gender equity, social diversity and the wellbeing of children.

Incorporating the author’s interviews with 135 producers of children’s television from 65 countries, this book discusses the role television plays in the lives of young people and, more specifically, in developing gender identity. It examines how gender images presented to children on television are intertwined with important existential and cultural concerns that occupy the social agenda worldwide, including the promotion of education for girls, prevention of HIV/AIDS and domestic violence and caring for ‘neglected’ boys who lack healthy masculine role models, as well as confronting the pressures of the beauty myth.

Screening Gender on Children’s Television also explores how children’s television producers struggle to portray issues such as sex/sexuality and the preservation of local cultures in a profit-driven market which continually strives to reinforce gender segregation. The author documents pro-active attempts by producers to advance social change, illustrating how television can serve to provide positive, empowering images for children around the world.

Screening Gender on Children’s Television is an accessible text which will appeal to a wide audience of media practitioners as well as students and scholars. It will be useful on a range of courses, including popular culture, gender, television and media studies. Researchers will also be interested in the breadth of this cross-cultural study and its interviewing methodology.

ISBN: 9780415482059

Published February 26 2010 by Routledge.

Edited by Yeoh Seng Guan

This book presents a comprehensive, full-length analysis of the uses of media and communication technologies by different social actors in Malaysia. Unlike other studies of the media in Malaysia which concentrate on "political economy" or "freedom of the media" approaches, this book focuses on the ways in which different media forms have constituted cultural practices and power relations amongst particular audiences and publics. It also examines the ways in which technologies of varying scales and range have been appropriated for various subaltern purposes and counter-hegemonic agendas. Drawing upon recent case studies on the deployment of different media – including mainstream and independent films, television programming, black metal music, community rituals, political advertising, the internet, and artistic visual installations – it provides valuable insights into the complex, vibrant ways in which these different media forms have negotiated with the dominant cultural representations of Malaysian society. The book makes an important contribution to the emergent disciplines of media studies and cultural studies in Malaysia.

ISBN: 9780415552462

Published February 24 2010 by Routledge.