The financial collapse of 2008 extended and deepened a prolonged, multilayered crisis that has transformed, often in unexpected ways, how we think about all aspects of social life. Amid these turbulent times, film studies scholars have begun to ask new questions and create fresh strategies in order to integrate intellectual and political work in ways that directly address our current predicament. This timely volume reconsiders the relationships between cinema and society at a time when neoliberal policies threaten not only civic culture but also nearly every aspect of human life. Screening the Crisis brings together established authors as well as brilliant young scholars in the field of film studies to explore the ways in which new tendencies in US cinema enhance awareness of the complexity of the problems facing contemporary society. The issues addressed include economic inequality, shifts in gender roles, racial conflicts, immigration, surveillance practices, the environmental crisis, the politics of housing, and the fragility of nationhood. These questions are explored through in-depth studies and contextualized analyses of a wide variety of recent films, genres, and filmmakers. With its ample range of topics and perspectives, this collection provides an essential reference work for those who want to research how US cinema has responded to the manifold interconnected crises that characterize our current times.
"List of Figures Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Foreword: Crisis and Critique Timothy Corrigan (University of Pennsylvania, USA) Introduction: Cinema and the Age of Crisis Juan A. Tarancón (University of Zaragoza, Spain) and Hilaria Loyo (University of Zaragoza, Spain) I. US Cinema in the Age of Crisis 1. It’s Always Been Crisis: Hollywood History Toby Miller (University of California, Riverside, USA) and Bill Grantham (Loughborough University, UK) 2. Independent Films in an Age of Crisis: Illuminating the Lives of Outsiders in Neoliberal America Cynthia Baron (Bowling Green State University, USA) II. Labor Crisis and the Neoliberal Subject 3. Limitless?: Neoliberal Femininity in the Post-recessionary Chick Flick Beatriz Oria (University of Zaragoza, Spain) 4. Screening Recessions through a Gendered Lens: Nostalgic and Critical Revisions of the Past from the Post-2008 Crisis Perspective Elena Oliete-Aldea (University of Zaragoza, Spain) 5. Screening Neoliberlism in Nightcrawler and The Wolf of Wall Street Stephen Felder (Irvine Valley College, USA) III. Technology and the State of Surveillance 6. The Shock Doctrines of The Social Network: Zuckerberg, Trump, and Surveillance Capitalism in Big-tech Cinema Ian Scott (Manchester University, UK) 7. “I Figured You were Probably Watching Us”: Performing Gender and Citizen Surveillance in Ex-Machina Kayla Meyers (Independent Scholar, USA) IV. The Housing Crisis and the Home Question 8. Stand Your Ground: Neoliberal Horrors, The Purge Franchise, and the Allegorical Moment of US Trauma Tony Grajeda (University of Central Florida, USA) 9. Horror, Race, and the Economics of Interiority: Homeowners in the Blumhouse Universe Leah Pérez (University of Southern California, USA) and William J. Simmons (University of Southern California, USA) 10. Resignifying the National Home: Gendered Domopolitics and Neoliberal Geographies of Exclusion in Debra Granik’s Cinema Hilaria Loyo (University of Zaragoza, Spain) V. Politics, Affect, and the Crisis of Public Values 11. S. Craig Zahler and White Identity Auteurism in the Age of Trump Carlos Gallego (St. Olaf College, USA) 12. A Crisis of Confidence: Fracture and Malaise in the US Polity in Dragged Across Concrete Fabián Orán Llarena (University of La Laguna, Spain) 13. ""I Guess It Comes from Being Poor"": Inequality, Affect, and Point of View in The Florida Project Juan A. Tarancón (University of Zaragoza, Spain) VI. Ecological Crisis and Visions of the Future 14. Who the Earth Is for: Reframing Rural Landscapes as Collective Polities in Leave No Trace and Beasts of the Southern Wild Tim Lindemann (Queen Mary University of London, UK) 15. Turning Over a New Leaf: Exploring Human-Tree Relationships in Film Virginia Luzón Aguado (University of Zaragoza, Spain) VII. Crisis and Violence in the Borderlands 16. “No One to Call Around Here. These Boys Is on Their Own”: The Postindustrial Frontier in Hell or High Water and the Western as a Landscape of the Crisis Luis Freijo (University of Birmingham, UK) 17. Bad Hombres at the Border: Masculinity and Mexico in Rambo: Last Blood Gregory Frame (Bangor University, UK) 18. We’re No Longer Here: Ya no estoy aquí as an Example of Neoliberalism and Economic Crisis in the US-Mexico Borderlands Roberto Avant-Mier (The University of Texas at El Paso, USA) Bibliography Index"
Hilaria Loyo is Associate Professor at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. She has written mainly on Hollywood film stars, the cultural reception of Marlene Dietrich, the representation of whiteness and Hollywood female blondes, trauma studies and transnational exchanges in Isabel Coixet’s films, and on the politics of space in cinema. Her work has appeared in various anthologies and journals. Her most recent publication can be found in The Velvet Light Trap (2019). Juan A. Tarancón is Lecturer at the University of Zaragoza, Spain. He has written on film genre theory, on representations of immigration and Mexican American culture, and on the work of John Sayles and Carlos Saura. His work has appeared in CineAction, Cultural Studies, The Quarterly Review of Film and Video, New Cinemas, and varied Spanish scholarly journals. He is co-editor of Global Genres, Local Films: The Transnational Dimension of Spanish Cinema (2016).
Reviews for Screening the Crisis: US Cinema and Social Change in the Wake of the 2008 Crash
Examining the dynamic interplay between screen cultures and various crises underpinning American society - poverty, homelessness, racism, ecological disaster, terrorism, war, and more - this book suggests ways in which mainstream and independent cinema alike have been exploring multiple intersecting dark undersides of contemporary American society. Contributors adopt a cultural studies approach to consider a wide variety of 21st-century films as archives of precarity, barometers of the affective experience of crisis, and, potentially, harbingers of change. --Pamela Robertson Wojcik, Professor in the Department of Film, TV, and Theatre, University of Notre Dame, USA Screening the Crisis' editors have assembled a volume that significantly updates the literature on cinema, crisis and austerity. Comprised of richly textured genre, industry and social histories, the book will be of use to both students and scholars alike. --Diane Negra, Professor of Film Studies and Screen Culture, University College Dublin, Ireland Screening the Crisis is an excellent, and very timely, new volume of scholarly essays that examines the impact of the post-2008 financial crisis as it has played out in American cinema. Engaging with some of the most important films of the 21st century, the collection provides impressive accounts of the multilayered ways in which the crisis took hold of, and shaped, American society. --Yannis Tzioumakis, Reader in Film and Media Industries, University of Liverpool, UK
