Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Ahead of Print, 2024)

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Ahead of Print, 2024)

In 1998, Judy Singer coined the term neurodiversity to describe the variance in human neurology in a non-pathological way, countering the mainstream understanding of certain neurotypes as disordere...

In Quentin Tarantino’s film Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, the director meticulously recreates 1969 Los Angeles. The film, however, presents a highly stylized interpretation of that period in hist...

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 51, No. 4, 2023)

The Canadian television comedy Schitt’s Creek (2015–2020) tells the story of the Rose family after they are reduced to poverty through the machinations of a criminal business manager and must take ...

Jim Jarmusch’s 2019 zombie flick The Dead Don’t Die uses comedy to both critique the zombie genre and confront the many horrors of twenty-first century life. Zombies are symbols for human anxieties...

This article examines Guz Khan’s innovative television comedy Man Like Mobeen (2017–2023), explaining how it serves the BBC’s 2016 remit to produce socially-cohesive representations, portraying Bri...

This research investigates in detail the surprisingly successful US box-office performance of Jess Franco’s first women-in-prison (WIP) production, 99 Women (1968), which for one week in May 1969 h...

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 51, No. 4, 2023)

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 51, No. 4, 2023)

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 51, No. 3, 2023)

The popular and immensely successful British TV-series Downton Abbey (2010–2015) has been interpreted alternately as an escapist fantasy or as a retrogressive text which performs the ideological wo...

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 51, No. 3, 2023)

With roots in an earlier film about well-heeled human guests in an android-populated theme park modeled after an Old West experience, Westworld is a recent offering in HBO’s ongoing pursuit of qual...

The television series Tales from the Loop, released in 2022, launches an ambitious attempt to revise the traditional gothic iconography of the violent intrusion of technology into pastoral spaces. ...

Horror films directed by women are uniquely suited to problematize the psychic experience of reproductive loss. This article analyzes Emma Tammi’s The Wind (2018) to understand how the film’s horri...

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 51, No. 3, 2023)

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 51, No. 3, 2023)

Abstract Netflix’s reboot series Cobra Kai (2018–present) depicts an intergenerational negotiation of masculinities as the men from the original Karate Kid mentor Gen Z students. Reagan-era masculine norms and measures of manhood are tested by the teens as they face twenty-first-century challenges. Static performances of masculinity fail to meet the demands of new situations; thus, the mentors and

Abstract Bernarr Cooper (1912–1999) led the Bureau of Mass Communications of the New York State Education Department from 1962 to 1982. During its heyday—roughly between 1970 and 1980—the Bureau produced or coproduced more than 1,500 educational programs, distributed widely to public schools and libraries across the state of New York. This article draws the story of Cooper and the Bureau out of the

ABSTRACT Except for a brief representation of her as a child in The King’s Speech (2010), Queen Elizabeth II’s life has been adapted to the screen through The Queen (2006) and A Royal Night Out (2015). Moreover, the release of the TV series The Crown has added a new perspective to the ways in which the queen’s life has been revised, rewritten, and adapted, although the dynamics of film and of television

Abstract The post-hardware heroine is argued to be the latest revision of action heroines since the 1990s, emerging into a parodic postmodern paradigm that recalls compensatory reactions exhibited by the “beefcake” cinema of the 1980s that is inextricably caught up in nostalgia and desire. For Yvonne Tasker, muscular, built male bodies the likes of Schwarzenegger and Stallone are reactions to a then-new

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 51, No. 2, 2023)

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 51, No. 2, 2023)

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 51, No. 2, 2023)

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 51, No. 1, 2023)

Abstract The Netflix time-travel series Dark exhibits many motifs found in ancient Athenian tragedy, from themes to modes of presentation. These include the use of myth, emphasis on houses and family trauma, mirror scenes, and other techniques for showing parallel events across generations, acts of murder and incest, preoccupation with fate, and divine intervention in the form of deus-ex-machina appearances

Abstract In recent decades, scholars have recognized close connections between Western film and Greek and Roman antiquity, a relationship HBO’s Westworld brings into sharp relief through classical themes, characterizations, and allusions. Two episodes from season 2 in particular have a heavy classical bent. Episode 4 (“Riddle of the Sphinx”) casts park owner James Delos as an Oedipus figure who, in

Abstract This article focuses on Black representations of Greco-Roman goddesses in film and on television, exploring the historical and ideological conditions which have allowed audiences to react neutrally or favorably toward such representations. Adopting the transmedial perspective, the intersecting forces that have gradually disjointed conceptions of the gods and goddesses of Greek mythology in

Abstract The TV show Supernatural (2005–2020) features itinerant brothers Sam and Dean Winchester battling pagan gods from ancient Greco-Roman mythology who pose a threat to the present-day American way of life. The show utilizes two key concepts to define perils to American culture and values: the frontier myth and the myth of American exceptionalism. In a remote town in Alaska (i.e., the frontier)

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 50, No. 4, 2022)

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 50, No. 4, 2022)

Abstract Although alternate histories have been present since the early days of televised science fiction, the genre didn’t take off until the streaming era of television began. Direct-targeted advertising, a glut of content, the maturation of the genre, and the historical instability of the twenty-first century intersected in the alternate-history genre, making it not only an important artistic genre

Abstract This article examines a 1962 episode of The Defenders as a landmark scripted drama that staged a debate about unplanned pregnancies and abortion access in the early network era. “The Benefactor” served as a test of television networks’ authority, and its success created space for more open discussion of controversial topics in prime time.

Abstract The Korean War is paradoxically remembered in the United States as “The Forgotten War.” While there are many reasons for this amnesia, the war’s representation in American popular culture, and cinema in particular, remains a key factor. Looking beyond the narrow canon of Korean War film “classics,” this article surveys a broad spectrum of American-produced Korean War films made since 1951

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 50, No. 4, 2022)

Abstract Building from Helena Hammond’s discussion of Disney’s legacy films, there are three kinds of Disney legacy films designed specifically around Disney’s animated classics: legacy re-releases when classic animated films are brought “out of the vault”; legacy remakes which fairly faithfully remake the original animated classics with the story and plot more or less intact; and legacy retellings

ABSTRACT An analysis of Pose (2018–2021) shows that the way HIV/AIDS suffering was represented in this series was very different to earlier representations. In particular, multimodal analysis is deployed to show how the series contributes to the provision of opportunities for audiences to identify and empathize with people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA). At a critical discourse level of analysis, Pose

Abstract The soap opera Dark Shadows (ABC, 1966–1971) gradually took on elements from horror movies, including an immensely popular vampire character. This article examines how the mixing of genre elements took place and how it changed the show’s audience and messaging.

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 50, No. 3, 2022)

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 50, No. 3, 2022)

ABSTRACT TV mini-series and international hit Normal People (2020) introduced the character of Connell Waldron to the world. Connell’s character was not only well-received but he also created a following of his own. From his clothes, to his looks, to his character, Connell became an obsession for many. An analysis of the character of Connell with regard to the portrayal of his masculinity is presented

Abstract At first glance, the Netflix series Stranger Things places itself within the category of monstrous feminine narratives by introducing preteen Eleven as the series’ human monster. The show pits her against literal monsters which, like adolescents, exist in a physically transformative and liminal space. However, while the series initially appears to reinforce the stereotype of young females

ABSTRACT The twenty-first century TV landscape is dominated by high-gloss quality dramas, experimental single-camera comedies, and auteur dramedies. These shows use nihilism and irony to signify their inclusion in the newest pantheon of sociopolitical relevance: Woke TV. A textual analysis of One Day at a Time (Netflix/Pop, 2017–2020) and The Baby-Sitters Club (Netflix, 2020–), however, challenges

Abstract The article studies Dante’s Commedia and its influence on American televisual culture. In addition to exploring how the poem has shaped the audience’s perception of the afterlife, it observes how the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997–2003) interweaves, appropriates, and adapts the medieval text into its series arc. Throughout its production, Buffy the Vampire Slayer received

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 50, No. 2, 2022)

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 50, No. 2, 2022)

Published in Journal of Popular Film and Television (Vol. 50, No. 2, 2022)

ABSTRACT Through close analysis of the supporting role played by black jazz musician Jon Batiste on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, this article examines how the legacy of minstrelsy shapes late night comedy in the twenty-first century formally, spatially, and acoustically. For the majority of The Late Show’s history, Batiste has primarily operated as a voice without a body, or an acousmêtre, incorporated

Abstract While many celebrate Mae West as a sex symbol and feminist icon, she wrote herself into a mentoring role during the Great Depression as well. Few remember that West wrote or cowrote most of her own scripts, and in those parts—as well as in other nonfiction writing—she counseled women, young people, even a congregation. Among the messages in her themes, characterizations, plotlines, and dialogue

ABSTRACT Babylon Berlin (ARD/Sky, 2017–) depicts Germany’s Weimar Republic by way of complex genericity, drawing especially on the era’s internationally recognizable associations with film noir and the musical. While this reflects its position in a transnational “quality” television landscape, its generic frameworks also draw out ambiguous historical tensions difficult to capture in a realist mode

ABSTRACT This article argues that MGM’s 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz allegorizes both cultural and political responses to teen pregnancy in the 1930s, a decade which not only saw other movies address similar woman’s rights issues, but also saw legislation which eased restrictions on abortion. Part of the film’s universal appeal is its ability to represent unmarried, pregnant women from all economic

Abstract This essay gives much-needed critical attention to the 1980s sitcom, The Facts of Life. While the show was a spinoff to the series Diff’rent Strokes, I make a case that its true creative and cultural debt is to a far different source: Louisa May Alcott’s 1868 novel, Little Women.

Abstract As the screen superhero genre enters the revisionist phase of its evolution, its status as a genre overwhelmingly dependent on the adaptation of preexisting material provides a challenge to established models of generic revision. The faithful adaptation of a revisionist comic does not in itself constitute a revisionist film or series. HBO’s miniseries adaptation of Watchmen serves as an example

Abstract The essay analyzes the film, Joe May’s Asphalt (1929), with specific attention to the representation of the city in the film, emphasizing the role of urban experience in the 1920s and the psychology of the city. This essay explores the novel and superficial experience of the metropolis in Asphalt and the ways in which it captures modern urban surface culture within its historical and cultural

(2021). COLD WAR FILM GENRES Edited by Homer B. Pettey. Edinburgh UP, 2018. 280 pp. $110 hardcover. Journal of Popular Film and Television: Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 232-232.

(2021). THE STREAMING OF HILL HOUSE: ESSAYS ON THE HAUNTING NETFLIX ADAPTATION Ed. Kevin J. Wetmore, Jr. Jefferson: Mcfarland & Company, 2020. 282 pp. $39.95 paper. Journal of Popular Film and Television: Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 233-234.

(2021). WOMEN IN THE WESTERN Ed. Sue Matheson. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 2020. 360 pp. $110.00 hardcover. Journal of Popular Film and Television: Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 234-235.

(2021). WOMEN MAKE HORROR: FILMMAKING, FEMINISM, GENRE. Edited by Alison Peirse. Rutgers UP, 2020. 270 pp. $29.95 paper. Journal of Popular Film and Television: Vol. 49, No. 4, pp. 235-236.