A useful article in The Guardian on the long standing prejudices against fan fiction and its emergence from the dungeons of dubious subculture particularly since the advent of the internet. From Star Trek to Fifty Shades: how fanfiction went mainstream Mikaella Clements Wed 8 Aug 2018 The divide between a fanfiction writer and an original …
Sculpting in Time by Andrei Tarkovsky Andrey Tarkovsky (1989) Sculpting in Time. Reflections on the Cinema. Translated from the Russian by Kitty Hunter-Blair, University of Texas Press. My rating: ***** Publisher’s page. Includes table of contents and extract. I want to underline my own belief that art must carry man’s craving for the ideal, must …
In Praise Of Love by Alain Badiou My rating: *** Badiou, Alain with Truong, Nicolas (2012) In Praise Of Love. Trans. Peter Bush, London: Serpent’s Tail I approached this short essay interview about the notion of love (as it is enacted between lovers) with caution. I was not expecting a 75 year old male philosopher …
Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton My rating: 4 of 5 stars [Secular society] expects that we will spontaneously find our way to the ideas that matter to us and give us weekends off for consumption and recreation. Like science, it privileges discovery. It associates repetition …
Cult TV: The Essential Critical Guide by Jon E. Lewis My rating: **** Jon E. Lewis, Cult TV: The Essential Critical Guide, Pavilion Books, 1994. I noticed a few months ago that Google appears to have acquired Goodreads, a social networking and book cataloguing site to which I subscribe. At least that is my explanation …
Kim Newman, Doctor Who. London: BFI publishing, 2005. My rating: *** Doctor Who by Kim Newman Kim Newman is a well-known and prolific author of genre novels, overviews on cult and horror film and TV and a reviewer for the film magazine Empire. This book, an entry in the excellent BFI TV classics series, is …
Henry Jenkins, Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992. My rating: **** Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture by Henry Jenkins This is the seminal foundational text in terms of academic studies of fandom. Even if it was published in 1992 before the explosion of internet fandom and a more …
Cheryl Harris, Alison Alexander (eds). Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture, and Identity. Cresskill, N.J.: Hampton Press, 1998. My rating:*** Theorizing Fandom: Fans, Subculture and Identity by Cheryl Harris This is a rather useful edited collection about various media fandoms and fan practices. There is the usual stuff on slash included. Of course the book’s appearance in …
Slavoj Zizek. Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan Through Popular Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1991. My rating: *** Zizek paraphrases and inverts de Quincey’s famous propositions concerning murder: If a person renounces Stephen King, soon Hitchcock himself will appear to him dubious, and from here it is just a step to a disdain …
Sheenagh Pugh, The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context. Bridgend: Seren, 2005. My rating: **** The Democratic Genre: Fan Fiction in a Literary Context by Sheenagh Pugh This book offers an excellent and sympathetic overview of fan fiction as a literary form. The author uses material from both media and literary fandoms as …
