Fredric Jameson and Film Theory: Marxism, Allegory, and Geopolitics in World Cinema

by Keith B. Wagner (Editor), Jeremi Szaniawski (Editor), Michael Cramer (Editor), Dudley Andrew (Contribution by), John Mackay (Contribution by)

Overview

Frederic Jameson and Film Theory is the first collection of its kind, it assesses and critically responds to Fredric Jameson’s remarkable contribution to film theory. The essays assembled explore key Jamesonian concepts—such as totality, national allegory, geopolitics, globalization, representation, and pastiche—and his historical schema of realism, modernism, and postmodernism, considering, in both cases, how these can be applied, revised, expanded and challenged within film studies. Featuring essays by leading and emerging voices in the field, the volume probes the contours and complexities of neoliberal capitalism across the globe and explores world cinema's situation within these forces by deploying and adapting Jamesonian concepts, and placing them in dialogue with other theoretical paradigms. The result is an innovative and rigorously analytical effort that offers a range of Marxist-inspired approaches towards cinemas from Asia, Latin America, Europe, and North America in the spirit of Jameson's famous rallying cry: 'always historicize!'.  

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781978808867
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	01/14/2022
Pages:	278
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.80(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

KEITH B. WAGNER is an assistant professor of global media and culture and director of doctoral research in film and media studies at University College London in the United Kingdom. He is the coeditor of Neoliberalism and Global Cinema: Capital, Culture and Marxist Critique.

JEREMI SZANIAWSKI is an assistant professor of film studies and comparative literature, and the Amesbury Professor of Polish language and culture at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He is the author of The Cinema of Alexander Sokurov: Figures of Paradox.

MICHAEL CRAMER is a professor of cinema studies at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, New York. He is the author of Utopian Television: Roberto Rossellini, Peter Watkins, and Jean-Luc Godard Beyond Cinema.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Always Historicize the Moving Image! Fredric Jameson's Place in Film Studies Michael Cramer Jeremi Szaniawski Keith B. Wagner 1

1 Feeling Film as the Pulse of the Postmodern Condition: On Jameson's "On Diva" Dudley Andrew 33

2 Allegory and Accommodation: Vertov's Three Songs of Lenin (1934) as a Stalinist Film John Mackay 54

3 Nostalgia, Melancholy, and the Persistence of Stalin in Polish Cinema Jeremi Szaniawski 70

4 Jameson, Angelopoulos, and the Spirit of Utopia Paul Coates 90

5 Jameson and Japanese Media Theory: A Virtual Dialogue Naoki Yamamoto 111

6 Where Jameson Meets Queer Theory: Queer Cognitive Mapping in 1990s Sinophone Cinema Alvin K. Wong 131

7 A Jamesonian Reading of Parasite (2019): Homes, Real Estate Speculation, and Bubble Markets in Seoul Keith B. Wagner 146

8 Strategies of Containment in Middle-Class Films from Mexico and Brazil Mercedes Vázquez 165

9 The Neoliberal Conspiracy: Jameson, New Hollywood, and All the President's Men Michael Cramer 180

10 The Conspiracy Film, Hollywood's Cultural Paradigms, and Class Consciousness Mike Wayne 201

11 A Theory of the Medium Shoe: Affective Mapping and the Logic of the Encounter in Fredric Jameson's The Geopolitical Aesthetic Pansy Duncan 223

12 "An American Utopia" and the Politics of Military Science Fiction Dan Hassler-Forest 235

Afterword Fredric Jameson 252

Acknowledgments 257

Notes on Contributors 259

Index 263