The Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinemas

Description

The Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinemas provides novel insight into the rapidly developing genre of science fiction. In contemporary film, science fiction is a key locus both for displaying and for imaginatively addressing social and cultural issues. Today, popular modes of this cinema have transformed the nature of the genre, directly incorporating pressing concerns about racial tensions, the environment, and gender inequality, among other cultural and social issues. This volume defines these new modes as slant forms of science fiction, changing a genre most often associated with the icons of science and technology into a substantially new range of science fiction cinemas. This handbook presents two groups of essays, both of which explore what these new science fiction cinemas address and how viewers can better navigate these films. The first group of essays provides a contextual and historical definition for a selection of slant types, featuring analyses of examples such as Afrofuturism, biopunk cinema, feminist science fiction, heterotopic spaces, and superhero cinema. The second group offers a broader theoretical vantage on some of the critical and revolutionary slants informing contemporary science fiction, including topics like bioethics, cult behaviors, gender and queer theory, and posthumanism. From exploring new theoretical approaches to highlighting new cultural attitudes, this volume presents the science fiction cinema not only as a flexible and adaptable process, but also as a reflection of contemporary culture's own evolution. Cover The Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinemas Copyright Contents Slant Screens Image Captions Acknowledgments Contributors I. Introduction 1. Introduction: Slant Screens/​Slant Screenings II. The Slant Screens of New Science Fiction Cinema 2. Afrofuturist Cinema 3. Biopunk Film 4. Cli-​Fi Cinema 5. Ethnogothic Film 6. Femspec Science Fiction 7. Heterotopias 8. Kaiju Film 9. Magical Realism Science Fiction 10. Steampunk Cinema 11. Superhero Science Fiction III. New Slants on Science Fiction Films 12. The Anthropocene and Ecosophy 13. Biopolitics and Bioethics 14. Cult Behaviors 15. Digital Science Fictions 16. Feminist Materialism 17. Object-​Oriented Ontology and Science Fiction Cinema 18. Posthumanism 19. Queer Cinema 20. Utopianism Filmography Index