Keywords in Subversive Film / Media Aesthetics

Keywords offers a conversational journey through the overlying terrains of politically engaged art and artistically engaged politics, combining a major statement on subversive aesthetics, a survey of radical film strategies, and a lexicon of over a thousand terms and concepts.

• No other book combines an ambitious essay on radical politics and aesthetics in film with a lexicon of terms and ideas, many of which are new and innovative
• Creates and illustrates over a thousand terms and concept, drawing its examples from a wide range of media
• Provides a broad timespan, covering the very ancient (Ramayana, Aristotle) to the most current (digital mashups, memes)
• Uniquely discusses the areas of film, television and the internet within one book
• No other book combines an ambitious essay on radical politics and aesthetics in film with a lexicon of terms and ideas, many of which are new and innovative

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1

1 An Aesthetics of the Commons 29

The Aesthetic Commons 30

From Columbus to Indigenous Media 32

First Peoples, First Features 37

The Storytelling Commons 42

Revisionist Adaptation and the Literary Commons 47

Cultural Indigenization 53

The Archival Commons and the Ab]original Musical 58

2 The Upside]Down World of the Carnivalesque 68

The People’s Second Life 68

Sacred Parody 72

Festive]Revolutionary Practices 76

Unruly Women 79

Polymorphous Celebrations 83

Stand]up Comedy and Nuclear Catastrophe 86

Contemporary Fools 90

Pedagogic Humor and Provocation 94

Tropes of Social Inversion 98

Offside Cinema 100

3 Political Modernism and Its Discontents 107

The Two Avant]Gardes 108

The Brechtian Legacy 110

Beyond Brecht 120

The Affective]Corporeal Turn 126

The Rediscovery of Pleasure 133

The Legacy of the V]Effect 136

Political Cinema in the Age of the Posts 139

4 The Transmogrification of the Negative 145

An Aesthetic of Mistakes 146

Third Cinema: From Hunger to Garbage 148

Sublime Detritus 154

The Recombinant Sublime 158

Anthropophagic Modernism 161

Situationist Détournement 165

Culture Jamming 168

Neo]Situationism and the Aesthetics of Failure 171

Media Jujitsu 175

The New Kino]Eye: Vision Machines 178

5 Hybrid Variations on a Documentary Theme 185

The Fiction–Documentary Continuum 185

Murderous Reenactments 189

The Mediatic Spectrum 193

From Representation to Self]Presentation 199

The Strategic Advantages of Hybridization 206

Performative Films 211

The Essay Film and Mockumentaries 215

6 Hollywood Aristotelianism, the Fractured Chronotope, and the Musicalization of Cinema 225

Hollywood Aristotelianism: the Orthodox Chronotope 225

Alternatives to Aristotle: the Menippean Strain 233

Pop Culture Anachronism and the Chronotope of the Road 239

Baroque Modernism and the Marvelous American Real 244

Trance]Modernism 246

Contrapuntal Variations 251

Transformative Becomings 258

The Shape]Shiftings of Popular Culture 266

Metaphysical Cine]Poetry 268

7 Aesthetic/Political Innovation in the Digital Era 276

Beyond Accelerationism: Digital Montage and Duration 282

Tools of Engagement: Interactivity and Digital Détournement 285

IRL Subversions: Tactical Media and Digital Materialism 288

In Guise of a Conclusion 292

Index 298

Robert Stam is University Professor at New York University. He has authored, co-authored and edited 17 books on film, cultural theory, national cinema, and postcolonial studies. His books include Francois Truffaut and Friends (2006), Literature through Film (2005), Film Theory: An Introduction (2000), and Tropical Multiculturalism (1997). He is co-author, with Ella Shohat, of Race in Translation (2012), Flagging Patriotism (2006), and Unthinking Eurocentrism (1994).

Richard Porton is the author of Film and the Anarchist Imagination (1999) and editor of Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals (2009). One of the editors of Cineaste magazine, his work on film has appeared in Cinema Scope, Sight & Sound, and The Daily Beast.

Leo Goldsmith is a PhD candidate in the Department of Cinema Studies at New York University. He is the Film Editor of The Brooklyn Rail. Keywords in Subversive Film/Media Aesthetics offers an exciting conversational journey through the overlying terrains of politically engaged art and artistically engaged politics. At once scholarly and entertaining, the book combines a major statement on subversive aesthetics, a survey of radical film strategies, and a comprehensive lexicon of concepts.

Keywords defines, creates, and illustrates over a thousand terms and concept, drawing its examples from a wide range of media. Moving beyond political modernism, the book dramatically expands the definition of political cinema at a time when radical film might not mean a feature or a documentary but rather a music video, a Colbert episode, or a digital mash-up. Each chapter explores a different ‘current’ within the broad range of alternative aesthetics, covering an Aesthetic of the Commons; the Carnivalesque and Festive-revolutionary Practices; Political Modernism and post-Brechtian Performance; the Transmogrification of the Negative, the Hybridization of Documentary and fiction; and the Fractured Chronotope, and the Musicalization of Cinema.

An invaluable text for anyone interested in contemporary politics, aesthetics, and the media, Keywords offers a cornucopia of old and new strategies available for use by critics as well as by artists.

"Keywords is no list of PC jargon, but rather an almost Borgesian carnival of concepts that inspires something akin to hope. Flipping through these pages is like being at a party where the brightest, most passionate thinkers and dreamers have gathered to celebrate the role of the critical imagination as a tool for genuine social change.”
James Schamus, Oscar-nominated screenwriter (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and Professor, Columbia University

“Keywords offers a scintillating coffee-house style conversation about radical aesthetics and film. With seemingly effortless erudition, the book leads the reader through hundreds of illuminating concepts and filmic examples that crisscross the usual geographic and disciplinary boundaries, in an intellectual experience both enjoyable and informative. A subversive tour de force.”
Stephen Duncombe, Associate Professor, New York University

“The thrillingly expansive field of vision of this astonishing book synthetically gathers up multiple media, cultures and historical eras as part of an energizing project whose ultimate objective is nothing less than profound social transformation through art and culture.”
Girish Shambu, film blogger and Associate Professor, Canisius College