Chapters

Kaijū (Japanese for ‘strange beasts’), or daikaijū (large strange beasts), have experienced something of a resurgence over the past decade or so. Transnational films based on RKO’s King Kong and Toho Studios’ Godzilla films have presented the monsters not in their traditional metaphorical guise as harbingers of nuclear or environmental disaster, but as restorative creatures, Titans set to restore balance to a crisis zone created by humans. Jonas Andreasen Lysgaard, Stefan Bengtsson, Martin Hauberg-Lund Laugesen argue in Dark Pedagogy: Education, Horror and the Anthropocene (2019) that ‘the human responses to exposure to terrible nonhuman reality’ in the face of climate disaster oscillate between denial and insanity leading to human extinction. Such responses, they argue, help motivate ‘educational practices dealing with environmental, sustainability and climate change issues’ (p. 8-9). This chapter explores the ramifications of the ‘dark pedagogies’ in recent kaijū cinema, from Godzilla (2014) to Shin Godzilla (2016) and Godzilla vs. Kong (2021). This is not to explore how the monsters embody metaphors of global catastrophe, but to explore how these films provide a dark pedagogical strain of humanity’s growing sense of irrelevance in the face of the climate emergency. Across many kaijū films, human agency becomes a secondary consideration – the giant monstrous figures are rarely destroyed by human intervention. The kaijū, or Titans, themselves provide restorative succour and glimpses of hope, only for the cycle to repeat itself again while humanity witnesses its own vain attempts to deny the threat or counteract it with ‘mad science’. That such threats care little for human agency or the arbitrary lines of nation borders (the films take place across several continents), the hyper-object kaijū do less to warn us of our hubris and impact on the environment, than to show us, in gothic fashion, our helpless against such a catastrophe of our own creation.

In this chapter I am mainly concerned with one of the supporting roles in Sweet and Lowdown, Samantha Morton’s Hattie, the mute laundress that Emmet meets (and abandons). Morton’s performance was a breakthrough role – she was Oscar nominated – and a break in terms of process. As her character had no dialogue, Allen allowed her to read the whole script before production, where other actors are only permitted to read their own dialogue (Zacharek, 1999). Much of the critical reception of the film concerned her performance (Penn was also nominated for an Oscar, but his contribution attracted much less attention), both positively and negatively. I attend to some of that reception, particular because it so implicates an auteurist reading of the work, but also the ways in which it is balanced with praise for Morton’s role, because it seems like such as standout in Allen’s work.

Founded in 2000, Legendary Entertainment are one of Hollywood’s most successful production and financing companies. As an independent, they helped produce some of Hollywood’s most successful films, including Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy (2005-12), Inception (2010) and the Hangover trilogy (2009-2013). In 2016, Legendary became a subsidiary of Dalian Wanda, one of China’s most prominent property and development companies, who also own major stakes in global cinema chains in Australia, Europe and the US. Wanda’s deal represented a substantial foreign cultural investment, as well as the acquisition of properties that had significant appeal in Asian markets, namely the monster movies Pacific Rim (2013) and Godzilla (2014). This chapter explores Legendary Entertainment following the acquisition by Wanda and the growing transculturality of their output as a production company. While the company has acted as finance partner (through its relationship with Universal) for a number of films by African-American directors, most notably Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman (2018), it has developed a series of properties that exhibit significant levels of transcultural blending, multicultural casting and, in Mette Hjort’s (2010) terms, globalizing and modernizing transnationalism aligned with Wanda’s corporate strategy. The approach to intellectual property through films such as Pokémon Detective Pikachu (2019) and Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019) emphasizes Legendary’s appeal to both US and global markets, particularly in China, where both films grossed a substantial part of their international box office (in the case of the latter, 20% more than the Domestic US gross). With the addition of specifically transcultural approaches to genre and stardom (including the casting of Chinese stars such as Zhang Ziyi), Legendary’s production output represents a specific form of contemporary transnational Hollywood. As Appadurai’s disjunctive model of a global cultural economy (1990) was constituted via a merger of flows of capital, individuals and media, Legendary’s transnationalism and transculturality speak strongly to how global Hollywood mediates such flows, both economically and textually.

this paper explores the culture of memes surrounding the film’s anticipated release. The abundance of memes referenced everything from the political conflicts surrounding masks and anti-Covid protests, workers’ rights, as well as the inevitable ‘Team Monke (sic)’ vs. ‘Team Lizard’ face-off. Further memes also referenced other superhero movies, such as the ‘Save Mothra!’ meme that appropriated the ‘Save Martha’ one from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Zach Snyder, 2016), and those that adopted the Captain America: Civil War (Joe & Anthony Russo, 2016) Steve Rogers/Tony Stark argument memes. Bernie Sanders even made his obligatory appearance following the Biden inauguration. As Wiggins (2019) contends, memes constitute an ideological practice as well as a frame for media narratives to develop. The meme culture surrounding Godzilla vs. Kong, this paper argues, is no different, its proximity to the turbulent events of 2020 helping fans to develop a critical and political performance that reworked existing memes. Furthermore, the appropriation of memes from both DC and Marvel cinematic universes helps us understand how we might think about both of these titans as superheroes in a way that isn’t always extended to giant monsters.

Throughout this chapter, I explore the local, regional and transnational exploitation of the kaijū eiga. The notion of exploitation here is more along the lines of generic commercial exploitation, rather than terminology in relation to an exploitation cinema. As I.Q. Hunter has argued, “[g]iven cinema’s tendency to repetition, imitation, remakes and ‘sequelitis’, it is often difficult to disentangle exploitation, except by its substandard budget, from the usual methods of cashing in on box-office hits.” The exploitation of the kaijū eiga to a significant degree relies strongly on aspects of repetition and recycling, as the development of most genres do. Following the success of Gojira, Tōhō in particular instituted a lengthy cycle of science-fiction films (the genre of which we might see the kaijū eiga most productively as a sub-genre) with giant monsters, robots and threats from inner and outer space. Other Japanese studios also followed suit and produced their own variations on the Godzilla formula, as did a number of other film industries, in East Asia and beyond.

From the Lindenhurst settings of Hartley’s early Long Island films, ‘the local’ has been a key concern in his work. Even though his later work flirted with international locations, where the city plays a key role in Amateur, No Such Thing, The Girl from Monday and especially Fay Grim (even though Berlin stands in for parts of Queens), the aesthetic of Hartley’s work has remained singularly defined and local. This chapter will explore the aspect of ‘being local’ (to use Hartley’s words) in some of Hartley’s later work, especially the second Possible Films collection of short films (comprising The Apologies, Implied Harmonies, Adventure, Accomplice and A/Muse) and Meanwhile, a short feature intended only for the small screen. The chapter will argue that Hartley’s local approach to locations (including shooting in his own apartment and offices), space and theme is one that spans this collection of experimental work, even though the productions were separated by Hartley’s time in Berlin and New York. In many regards, the local is defined as obsessively small or limited, which allows Hartley to explore themes relating to personal interaction (Meanwhile), obsession (A/Muse) and artistic production (a theme that runs throughout Hartley’s oeuvre, from Flirt onwards). As such, the chapter will connect later developments in Hartley’s work that are rarely covered in writing about the filmmaker with the earlier, arguably more popular, phase of his career. In so doing, the chapter will also intersect with Hartley’s development as a guardedly independent filmmaker, his move away from the Indiewood sector and growing reliance on crowdfunding to fund new work, as he did for the DVD release of Meanwhile, and the attempt to fund of Ned Rifle. The local is a defining feature of Hartley’s approach to both the aesthetic and business of filmmaking. Crowdfunding situates Hartley in close proximity to his audience, and extends the locality of the content into the production of his recent work and its distribution. As part of its conclusions, the chapter considers how this methodology and aesthetic positions Hartley in relation to the development of independent cinema – while the studios have gobbled up indie production and distribution – and how more marginal and artistic voices outside the mainstream continue to remain relevant with their audiences and how digital technology is connecting them to streams of funding and distribution. Perhaps paradoxically, the local is here being enabled by the transnational.

This chapter explores the enduring legacy and fascination surrounding the Hitchcock branding. Since his death in 1980, Hitchcock has continued to fascinate audiences, scholars, critics and culture in general. By exploring the repeated rereleases of Hitchcock’s work on DVD (despite the relative youthfulness of the format, Psycho has already been released in seven different DVD editions in the UK alone), and Varese Sarabande's series of reissues of Herrmann soundtracks on CD, this chapter looks at how the co-authorship of Herrmann and Hitchcock has been contextualised, narrativised and conceptualised in different ways by the artefacts included in the reissued, remastered and recontextualised versions of Hitchcock’s work with Herrmann (and Herrmann’s work without Hitchcock). Drawing on recent scholarship on the DVD as ‘auteur machine’ by Catherine Grant, and new work on authorship by C. Paul Sellors, the chapter argues that the digital reconceptualization of authorship struggles to account for a notion of collaboration.

In many regards Waitress displays several hallmarks of an indie crossover comedy: its bittersweet female comedy about pregnancy, domestic estrangement, sex and pies is typically quirky and the cast features recognisable television stars, Keri Russell (Felicity), Nathan Fillion (Firefly), Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm) and Andy Griffith, combined with the independent kudos of its director-writer-star Adrienne Shelly, best known for her roles in Hal Hartley's The Unbelievable Truth (1989) and Trust (1990). However, none of this significantly marked the film's position in the indiewood marketplace or its lasting legacy for independent cinema. On November the 1st 2006, after the completion of the film and its acceptance at Sundance (although the notice hadn't yet been sent), Shelly was murdered in her apartment-office by a teenage construction worker. The murder overshadowed the film's screening at Sundance in January 2007, and the film sold within hours, to Fox Searchlight, for a figure reportedly in the region of $5million. Shelly's death also determined elements of the film's marketing and release on DVD, as well as its reception, at Sundance and in release, promoting the Adrienne Shelly Foundation, a non-profit organisation awarding grants to emerging female filmmakers. This paper explores the construction of the narrative of tragedy around the film's release and reception (which is totally at odds with the film's content), as well as its legacy in the development of female filmmaking talent.

This chapter explores The Happiness of the Katakuris not, as critics would dub it, a “zombie musical”, but as a hybrid generic experience typical of cult cinema. By examining the film’s critical recpetion, which generally struggles to grasp the hybridity of the film’s intermingling of generic traditions or attempts to explain it via recourse to the organising logic of the auteur, the paper will argue that Katakuris is a more traditional cult experience of transgression and hybridity than its reception, and promotion, has tended to promote. In addition, the argument will position the film in close proximity to key social and economic circumstances that help historicise the thematic and narrative concerns of the film (those not necessarily shared by its source material), while also setting the film in the context of more recent Japanese cinema in those generic contexts from which it draws, namely the musical and the zombie-horror film. While the Katakuris can be seen as a hybrid experience, it is not an isolated occurrence in Japanese cinema, although it might be seen as something of a forerunner of some generic traditions (certainly those eventually reaching the west).

This chapter explores Donovan’s distinctive idiolect and his status as a cult star identified broadly with independent cinema. I argue however that Donovan’s identifiable idiolect is problematised by its specific relationship with one director in particular: Hal Hartley. Donovan’s appearances in Hartley’s films are notable for the non-naturalist, minimal performance style employed by Hartley’s regular ensemble of performances, including Adrienne Shelly, Bill Sage, Elina Löwensohn, Thomas Jay Ryan and James Urbaniak. However, responses to Hartley’s work, often single out Donovan as Hartley’s onscreen “muse,” and his work is more closely associated with Hartley’s work than any other performer (or director) for its distinctive stylisation. Consequently, I explore both the Hartley-Donovan collaboration and its reception amongst critics and fans of Hartley’s work, as well as Donovan’s work without Hartley. This chapter explores an alternative to cult star performances characterised by excess or irony, arguing that cult star performances and personae are often constructed in the relationship between cult actors and directors, as well as in traditional discourses of independence. Donovan’s cult status can be understood within these discourses and becomes a test case for understanding the interpretation and promotion of cult performance idiolects.

By engaging with narrative and viewer memory, Eternal Sunshine explores the cinematic representation of memory. Gondry’s film portrays both the objective and subjective sides of memory, as affective imagery capable of reproducing the alterity of subjective experience in the viewer, whilst simultaneously exploring the problematic “presentness” of the cinematic image. The image itself is both past and present, a memory of a pro-filmic recorded event. In its representation of character memory, Eternal Sunshine explores the temporal limits of the objective image, layering past and present within the narrative to invite the viewer to explore their own experience of mediated memory images which will subsequently take the viewer on a similar journey to the characters: an exploration of the problematic nexus of objective and subjective in the interplay between current perception and its inescapable meshing of past images and subjective affect. As Paul Grainge notes, many recent films have mapped onto “contemporary concern[s] with the unsettled boundaries between reality and simulation in the constitution of remembered identity and experience. If concerns with the history, community and tradition govern the former, a preoccupation with fantasy, subjectivity and fabrication inform the latter.” Eternal Sunshine is ultimately concerned with the latter, with memory that is inherently subjective, as well as subject to external manipulation from mediated images like films, something Gondry’s repetitions function to inspire in the viewer’s own experience of this film.

The recent Hollywood remakes of J-Horror Cinema have raised many questions surrounding the translatability of signs across cultural boundaries. This paper examines the visual and aural content of the video tapes in Nakata Hideo’s Ringu (1998) and Gore Verbinski’s The Ring (2002), and explores the cultural specificity of each. The fragmentary use of Japanese characters is Nakata’s film is replaced in Verbinski’s version by images dictated by a rigid narrative logic that supports a framework of meaning in the film. I argue that the use of culturally specific imagery in the videotapes in both films has a significant determining effect on issues of gender, genre and narrative symbolism.

Since its debut in 2003, the re-imaged Battlestar Galactica has repeatedly produced images that metaphorically allegorise contemporary political conflicts. From its initial images of Cylon suicide bombers and the conflict between religious ideologies through to engagement with the Iraq War and images of occupation, torture and morally ambivalent human resistance, the series has presented imagery and narrative threads that engage with the popular political zeitgeist of the early twenty-first century. While this displays one of the central tenets of the best examples of Sci-Fi television, BSG’s political subtext, combined with a harsh documentary-style realist aesthetic, hints at its location within a growing trend of mainstream texts that has developed since 9/11 and the inception of Bush’s War on Terror. TV series like BSG and 24 (2001-present), in addition to films such as Paul Greengrass’ Bourne films (2004 & 2007) and United 93 (2006), have explored contemporary socio-political issues through the use of generic tropes in conjunction with documentary-realist aesthetics. This recent trend hints at broader cultural implications of the relationship between real and fantasy in the post-9/11 cultural climate. Commentators such as Slavoj Žižek and Geoff King have explored the negotiation of a symbolic or spectacular realism with fantasmatic images following the 2001 terrorist acts. Žižek in particular sees the relationship between fantasy and reality in terms of a “repression” of “fantasmic backgrounds” in a reaffirmation of reality. The recent wave of realist genre texts can be viewed in this light as a negotiation of reality and fantasy, especially where political allegory is concerned, as in BSG. This paper will examine the implied confrontation of real and fantasy in BSG’s generic allegorisation of contemporary political and ideological conflict. Playing close attention to the aesthetic stylisation of the series and narrative arcs such as season three’s Cylon occupation of New Caprica, in which the dynamic of earlier seasons was reversed, the paper will argue that the political and religious allegories of BSG function in a constant negotiation between the generic fantasy elements and realist sensibilities of the show. The science fiction “fantasmatic backgrounds” of BSG form a backdrop to the “reality” of the series’ exploration of contemporary subjects. Therefore, the paper will situate BSG as a significant example of Sci-Fi television, whilst also locating the show within a broader cultural thread of media texts that has responded to changes in the recent political climate in both form and content.