Jessica Balanzategui is a Senior Lecturer in Cinema and Screen Studies and a Chief Investigator in the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies at Swinburne University of Technology. Jessica's research examines screen genres, in particular horror and the Gothic, and also genres for and about children. As part of these areas of focus, her research also examines how genre, storytelling, and aesthetics operate in digital cultures (such as YouTube, subscription video on demand services, and online scary storytelling cultures), and in tandem, the impacts of technological, industrial, and cultural change on screen genres and their audiences.
Major subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) services including Netflix and Apple TV+ target a wide ... more Major subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) services including Netflix and Apple TV+ target a wide range of consumers through catalogs that house a diverse variety of genres. However, as the SVOD ecology has evolved, services have emerged that focus on particular genres, and thus target enthusiasts of specific content types. This article examines the horror-focused SVOD service "Shudder" to highlight how these genre-specific SVOD services curate content in ways that differ from major services like Netflix. Unlike the top-tier generalist SVODs, niche services like Shudder do not appeal to users via personalized algorithmic recommendation of titles from a seemingly limitless catalog: instead, these services are branded around the affective pleasures of and fan cultures surrounding specific genres. Our analysis of Shudder combines interface and genre analysis to illuminate how the platform offers a "phenomenal experience" of generic immersion in ways that reflect on new intersections between SVOD platforms, genre, nostalgia, and cinephilic subcultures.
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2022
This article contributes to research on children's YouTube, online video genres and media consump... more This article contributes to research on children's YouTube, online video genres and media consumption practices by focusing on genres that take shape at the intersection of digital media content and embodied sensation and in particular 'oddly satisfying' (OS) videos. This type of content has become popular on YouTube, where examples of satisfying and OS content include the manipulation or movement of a range of colourful or tactile materials such as slime, kinetic sand or icing a cake. To document the evolution and key characteristics of this genre, we analyse YouTube videos using content analysis methods. Our findings show the characteristics of this sensory genre can be understood through the concept of visual tactility, which highlights the synaesthetic feel of watching these videos. Further, we identify and examine how OS videos demonstrate ambiguities in children's YouTube content, audiences and regulation by overlapping with other sensory genres and more adult content, such as ASMR. This analysis thus situates this sensory genre in relation to the developing study of children's YouTube entertainment industries and media regulation.
Disney is a brand long associated with the production of family content and a continually repleni... more Disney is a brand long associated with the production of family content and a continually replenished suite of child stars. The 2019 launch of Disney+ leveraged these heritage child stars in its tightly curated home page, stressing nostalgia and a wholesome brand image around the figure of the child. This article explores how the Disney+ interface aesthetics, catalogue organisation and other paratexts negotiate heritage child stars in the context of managing the Disney brand narrative in the streaming era. Streaming interfaces offer a new form of star ephemera, as former child stars are recontextualised under new thematic banners on Disney+. However, this careful curation on the Disney+ interface is ultimately unable to contain the instability of child stars as emblems of lost youth, a tension that becomes particularly evident in the case of
Since late 2017, journalists, advocacy groups, and policy-makers have expressed serious concerns ... more Since late 2017, journalists, advocacy groups, and policy-makers have expressed serious concerns about popular genres of video content on YouTube that target child viewers but which are not child-appropriate according to extant definitions and cultural expectations. This article combines a discourse and thematic analysis of 54 news articles and opinion pieces about 'disturbing' children's genres on YouTube with textual analysis of the two genres at the centre of this reportage. The analysis illuminates why the formal, aesthetic, and thematic qualities of these particular child-oriented YouTube genres trouble existing cultural expectations around children's media. I argue that the genres addressed in the reportage share a key quality that I refer to as the 'algorithmic uncanny': common semantic and syntactic features that foster among reporters a perception that algorithms have played a key role in not only distributing the content but in shaping its aesthetic and thematic agendas.
Throughout the past decade, a multimodal type of internet
storytelling has developed that extends... more Throughout the past decade, a multimodal type of internet storytelling has developed that extends upon the early Web 2.0 viral narrative practices of chain emails as well as pre-digital folkloric storytelling traditions such as the ghost story and urban legend. This popular mode of digital storytelling, known broadly as ‘Creepypasta’, is produced and consumed according to folkloric practices that in turn shape its form and aesthetics. The author suggests that a precise genre has emerged out of the originally wide-ranging terrain of Creepypasta, a generic mode constituted of specific thematic preoccupations and aesthetics that she refers to as ‘the digital gothic’. Through analysis of the foundational story ‘Candle Cove’, the article outlines the digital gothic’s anxious preoccupation with dead and residual media, and with the interface between technological and personal change. She demonstrates how ‘Candle Cove’ deconstructs nostalgia in its tense negotiation of the relationship between analogue and digital cultures. The author’s analysis thus illuminates how vernacular online genres such as the digital gothic productively work through the aesthetic and conceptual tensions underpinning technological change in the networked digital era.
This article examines the influence of ride film attractions on the rise of commercial, mainstrea... more This article examines the influence of ride film attractions on the rise of commercial, mainstream 4D cinemas in the 2010s. While 4D cinema is typically positioned as an innovative response to declining cinema attendance, we argue that 4D cinema has its roots in earlier developments outside the multiplex cinema space and can be traced to a long history of immersive, 4D cinema experiences that offered more sensorially invasive cinematic experiences. While highlighting examples of early attempts to alter the sensory dominance of audiovision in pre-1960s cinema, the primary focus of this article will be the late 1980s, particularly the 1990s. It was during this decade that the film industry, as part of a growing conglomerate media structure, began to experiment with and solidify multisensory cinematic experiences. This form of experimentation, which pushed the boundaries of traditional film viewing beyond a passive form of entertainment, primarily took place in the context of the theme park, which was itself emerging as a major player in entertainment culture.
In 2016, Netflix committed to “doubling down on kids and families” [1] through increased child an... more In 2016, Netflix committed to “doubling down on kids and families” [1] through increased child and family-oriented Originals [2]. Netflix’s most successful and well-known Original series, Stranger Things, (2016- ) significantly contributed to the creation of a new middle ground of shared family viewing in the subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) ecology, in which Netflix resists broadcast TV approaches to family audiences. This influenced the evolution of the contentious new Netflix micro-genre “Family Watch Together TV,” which encompasses family-oriented science fiction, horror and fantasy. In turn, Disney+’s launch campaign was anchored to its flagship Original, the family-oriented but violent Star Wars series The Mandalorian (2019-). Through these key texts and genres, Netflix and Disney+ are consolidating a new dark family terrain in the streaming sector that unsettles traditional paradigms of family viewing.
Netflix launched its “Family Watch Together TV” micro-genre tag the year after Stranger Things. Showrunners and creators, the Duffer brothers, claim Stranger Things was rejected 15 to 20 times by various television networks, with the networks suggesting the series would only be suitable for broadcast if the content and focus were made more suitable for children, or if it was re-positioned as an explicitly adult-oriented show [3]. Rejecting this demand to tailor the series to a broadcast TV-era vision of the family demographic, the Duffer brothers sold the concept to Netflix. Despite a US rating of TV-14, the plethora of child-oriented merchandise around Stranger Things — such as child-sized t-shirts — suggests a broader reach, even if Netflix remains characteristically cagey about its viewing data. Since the debut of Stranger Things, there has been a continuous stream of commentary about whether younger children should be allowed to watch the program with their families [4].
Through the character of Danny Torrance, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining influenced a new model of ... more Through the character of Danny Torrance, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining influenced a new model of uncanny child character that has become a key trope of the horror genre since the film’s release in 1980. This type of character is neither wholly victim nor wholly villain, and works through some of the deepest ambivalences rooted within ideologies of childhood. I contend that The Shining can thus be considered an important cultural contribution to philosophies of childhood for the way it interrogates the complex conceptual nexus between child and adult subjectivities, nostalgia, and traumatic memory in the Western cultural imaginary. A specific type of supernatural horror film that engages with the uncanny dimensions of this nexus would follow Kubrick’s The Shining. Released 39 years later, Mike Flanagan’s belated sequel Doctor Sleep (2019) self-consciously illuminates the ongoing cultural influence of this aesthetically fertile uncanny child trope. As will be outlined in the latter half of this essay, Doctor Sleep takes on the aesthetic, conceptual, and narrative challenge of depicting a “grown up” Danny Torrance, in so doing underscoring the significant influence of The Shining on the horror genre’s uncanny children.
On-demand streaming video services, including the video-sharing platform YouTube and the subscrip... more On-demand streaming video services, including the video-sharing platform YouTube and the subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) service Netflix, have replaced television to become the most popular means of accessing video content amongst children in a number of countries. This article offers a methodological provocation, contending that this context calls for the integration of traditions in screen studies – namely audience research and genre analysis – with approaches to platform analysis drawn from digital media studies. Such an interdisciplinary methodology promises to illuminate how new children’s genres have formed in the streaming video ecology and how these genres circulate culturally, including how children engage with these content types. The article canvasses key trends and gaps in the extant research on children’s media on streaming video platforms and advocates for new lines of inquiry that work across disciplinary borders. The proposed combination of methods operates in parallel with and builds on a valuable body of media industries work that addresses changing production settlements and distribution practices in children’s media with the rise of the streaming video ecology.[3] Unlike this extant work, the approach suggested in this article concentrates on the textual features of children’s genres on streaming video platforms and addresses how these genres and the distribution architectures that deliver them are received, interpreted, and understood by their child audiences.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the multifaceted socio-cultural functions of Australian chi... more The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the multifaceted socio-cultural functions of Australian children's television. As social distancing measures forced school students to study from home, local children's TV producers and distributors contributed to home-based learning. Yet, in response to the pandemic, the Federal Government has indefinitely suspended Australian children's television quotas, the regulatory framework that sets minimum hours of local children's content for commercial television broadcasters. In response to government imposed budgetary restraints, public broadcaster, the ABC, has also made redundances in its children's content department. Such changes have occurred at a critical juncture in which the sector's long-standing contributions to the education of Australian children and pedagogy of local teachers, caregivers and parents have been brought to the fore. We argue that this pedagogical function is a core but often overlooked element of the socio-cultural value of the sector that has been highlighted during the pandemic.
Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 2018
Films have long been organised according to genre categories grounded by thematic and
narrative c... more Films have long been organised according to genre categories grounded by thematic and narrative conventions. Yet while these taxonomies have remained relatively static in industrial and academic discourse over the past two decades, the digital age has given rise to new modes of film distribution and consumption. This article presents preliminary findings from an audience research project carried out in collaboration with Australian media company Village Roadshow investigating genre and spectatorship. The findings suggest that in an era characterised by video-on-demand, screen convergence, and personalised recommendation systems, the existing categorisation strategies favored by the film industry and screen studies scholars may no longer align with the practices and priorities of contemporary audiences. The article presents findings from a pilot study that examined the discursive processes that constitute genre as a cultural practice in the digital age through identifying how respondents classified and described certain films. The research also sought to explore the extent to which these classification practices aligned with or diverged from existing genre paradigms. The findings provide an audience-centered understanding of the shifting landscape of film distribution and consumption, as streaming services such as Netflix motivate significant transformations in the way films are accessed, understood, and consumed. Considering the influence of both traditional genre categories and new forms of categorisation and consumption driven by streaming services, the article demonstrates how contemporary audiences link films as diverse as Moonlight (Jenkins 2016), Deadpool (Miller 2016), and Psycho (Hitchcock 1960) based on style, narrative structure, and affective experience, thereby illuminating how audiences conceive of and relate to genre in this period of industrial flux. This research offers analytical strategies grounded in audience research aimed at re-evaluating genre in an era of personalised content curation, niche content categorisation, and on-demand access to films.
In 2016, The Melbourne Museum staged the world premiere of Jurassic World: The Exhibition, a glo... more In 2016, The Melbourne Museum staged the world premiere of Jurassic World: The Exhibition, a globally touring exhibition inspired by Universal Pictures' blockbuster film, Jurassic World (2015), featuring animatronic dinosaurs created by Melbourne's Creature Technology. The exhibition had the most successful opening month of any exhibition at the Museum to date, selling over 100,000 tickets. Yet Jurassic World also met with controversy for its theme park-esque design and pervasive branding, prioritization of spectacle and attraction over cultural heritage and education, and seamless integration of fact and fiction. In this article, we carry out a close analysis of Jurassic World's combination of theme park and museum exhibition practices, situating the exhibition as a particularly significant example of the developing trend towards the creation of immersive 'narrative environments' in twenty-first century museums, as museums increasingly draw upon the devices of popular entertainment to engage and attract guests. Drawing from Norman Klein's model of the 'scripted space' and Joseph Pine and James Gilmore's 'experience econ-omy', which has its roots in Disney theme parks, our analysis shows how Jurassic World plays with the boundaries of fact and fiction in a way that self-reflexively interrogates the contemporary relationship between popular entertainment and museums.
The horror genre is a particularly fraught category in academic and mainstream critical discourse... more The horror genre is a particularly fraught category in academic and mainstream critical discourse about Australian film genres. Australian horror films are often framed as either ‘Australian Gothic’ or ‘Ozploitation,’ terms that prioritise issues of national identity, class and taste rather than genre. The oppositional relationship of these terms presents an obstacle to the widespread acceptance – both scholarly and popular – of local horror films. This is illuminated by a comparison of two recent Australian horror releases and their domestic receptions, Wolf Creek 2 (McLean, Greg. 2014. Wolf Creek 2. Film. Adelaide: Duo Art Productions and Emu Creek Pictures) and The Babadook (Kent, Jennifer. 2014. The Babadook. Blu-Ray DVD. Melbourne: Umbrella Entertainment). Wolf Creek 2 was one of the most lucrative Australian films of 2014, however it was critically panned in large part due to its perceived commercialism and low-genre status. By contrast, The Babadook was the most critically praised Australian film of 2014, however the film received a limited domestic release. This paper explores how both The Babadook’s meagre domestic release and its near-universal critical praise can be related to its association with the high-art Australian Gothic tradition. Yet the film unsettles firmly entrenched art/genre, nationalism/commercialism dichotomies.
The horror genre is in large part defined by a distinctive use of sound, which facilitates the ef... more The horror genre is in large part defined by a distinctive use of sound, which facilitates the effects by which it is defined. The genre is unique in its creative deployment of sound to activate and intensify dread and shock, and to launch what Peter Hutchings describes as ‘comprehensive assaults upon the senses’. This assaultive use of sound is central to the genre’s characteristic provocation of feelings of entrapment and peril, for, unlike the image, sound resists the viewer’s attempts at momentary escape. The recent supernatural horror film Sinister (Derrickson, 2012) powerfully illustrates the complex associations between sound and image upon which the horror genre relies to conjure its effects. Much of the thematic and aesthetic intensity of Sinister emerges from deeply unsettling interactions between sound and image created by the ambiguous layering of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. Echoing earlier haunted media films such as The Ring (Verbinski, 2002), Derrickson’s film revolves around Super 8 film reels that house a malevolent supernatural being. This article examines the augmentation of analogue aesthetics in Sinister, and argues that sound is central to the film’s simultaneous evocation and troubling of Super 8’s conventional nostalgic connotations. To achieve this, Derrickson pairs macabre Super 8 imagery with the eerie sounds of hauntology, a form of experimental electronic music that emerged around the turn of the millennium and takes troubled nostalgia as its core theme. The hauntological soundscape of Sinister accompanies the Super 8 footage not only to enhance the sonic textures of technological obsolescence, but to incite conflicted feelings of nostalgia-gone-wrong. As a result, the soundscape of Sinister not only foments the film’s most potent affects, but develops much of its subtext.
Major subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) services including Netflix and Apple TV+ target a wide ... more Major subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) services including Netflix and Apple TV+ target a wide range of consumers through catalogs that house a diverse variety of genres. However, as the SVOD ecology has evolved, services have emerged that focus on particular genres, and thus target enthusiasts of specific content types. This article examines the horror-focused SVOD service "Shudder" to highlight how these genre-specific SVOD services curate content in ways that differ from major services like Netflix. Unlike the top-tier generalist SVODs, niche services like Shudder do not appeal to users via personalized algorithmic recommendation of titles from a seemingly limitless catalog: instead, these services are branded around the affective pleasures of and fan cultures surrounding specific genres. Our analysis of Shudder combines interface and genre analysis to illuminate how the platform offers a "phenomenal experience" of generic immersion in ways that reflect on new intersections between SVOD platforms, genre, nostalgia, and cinephilic subcultures.
Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, 2022
This article contributes to research on children's YouTube, online video genres and media consump... more This article contributes to research on children's YouTube, online video genres and media consumption practices by focusing on genres that take shape at the intersection of digital media content and embodied sensation and in particular 'oddly satisfying' (OS) videos. This type of content has become popular on YouTube, where examples of satisfying and OS content include the manipulation or movement of a range of colourful or tactile materials such as slime, kinetic sand or icing a cake. To document the evolution and key characteristics of this genre, we analyse YouTube videos using content analysis methods. Our findings show the characteristics of this sensory genre can be understood through the concept of visual tactility, which highlights the synaesthetic feel of watching these videos. Further, we identify and examine how OS videos demonstrate ambiguities in children's YouTube content, audiences and regulation by overlapping with other sensory genres and more adult content, such as ASMR. This analysis thus situates this sensory genre in relation to the developing study of children's YouTube entertainment industries and media regulation.
Disney is a brand long associated with the production of family content and a continually repleni... more Disney is a brand long associated with the production of family content and a continually replenished suite of child stars. The 2019 launch of Disney+ leveraged these heritage child stars in its tightly curated home page, stressing nostalgia and a wholesome brand image around the figure of the child. This article explores how the Disney+ interface aesthetics, catalogue organisation and other paratexts negotiate heritage child stars in the context of managing the Disney brand narrative in the streaming era. Streaming interfaces offer a new form of star ephemera, as former child stars are recontextualised under new thematic banners on Disney+. However, this careful curation on the Disney+ interface is ultimately unable to contain the instability of child stars as emblems of lost youth, a tension that becomes particularly evident in the case of
Since late 2017, journalists, advocacy groups, and policy-makers have expressed serious concerns ... more Since late 2017, journalists, advocacy groups, and policy-makers have expressed serious concerns about popular genres of video content on YouTube that target child viewers but which are not child-appropriate according to extant definitions and cultural expectations. This article combines a discourse and thematic analysis of 54 news articles and opinion pieces about 'disturbing' children's genres on YouTube with textual analysis of the two genres at the centre of this reportage. The analysis illuminates why the formal, aesthetic, and thematic qualities of these particular child-oriented YouTube genres trouble existing cultural expectations around children's media. I argue that the genres addressed in the reportage share a key quality that I refer to as the 'algorithmic uncanny': common semantic and syntactic features that foster among reporters a perception that algorithms have played a key role in not only distributing the content but in shaping its aesthetic and thematic agendas.
Throughout the past decade, a multimodal type of internet
storytelling has developed that extends... more Throughout the past decade, a multimodal type of internet storytelling has developed that extends upon the early Web 2.0 viral narrative practices of chain emails as well as pre-digital folkloric storytelling traditions such as the ghost story and urban legend. This popular mode of digital storytelling, known broadly as ‘Creepypasta’, is produced and consumed according to folkloric practices that in turn shape its form and aesthetics. The author suggests that a precise genre has emerged out of the originally wide-ranging terrain of Creepypasta, a generic mode constituted of specific thematic preoccupations and aesthetics that she refers to as ‘the digital gothic’. Through analysis of the foundational story ‘Candle Cove’, the article outlines the digital gothic’s anxious preoccupation with dead and residual media, and with the interface between technological and personal change. She demonstrates how ‘Candle Cove’ deconstructs nostalgia in its tense negotiation of the relationship between analogue and digital cultures. The author’s analysis thus illuminates how vernacular online genres such as the digital gothic productively work through the aesthetic and conceptual tensions underpinning technological change in the networked digital era.
This article examines the influence of ride film attractions on the rise of commercial, mainstrea... more This article examines the influence of ride film attractions on the rise of commercial, mainstream 4D cinemas in the 2010s. While 4D cinema is typically positioned as an innovative response to declining cinema attendance, we argue that 4D cinema has its roots in earlier developments outside the multiplex cinema space and can be traced to a long history of immersive, 4D cinema experiences that offered more sensorially invasive cinematic experiences. While highlighting examples of early attempts to alter the sensory dominance of audiovision in pre-1960s cinema, the primary focus of this article will be the late 1980s, particularly the 1990s. It was during this decade that the film industry, as part of a growing conglomerate media structure, began to experiment with and solidify multisensory cinematic experiences. This form of experimentation, which pushed the boundaries of traditional film viewing beyond a passive form of entertainment, primarily took place in the context of the theme park, which was itself emerging as a major player in entertainment culture.
In 2016, Netflix committed to “doubling down on kids and families” [1] through increased child an... more In 2016, Netflix committed to “doubling down on kids and families” [1] through increased child and family-oriented Originals [2]. Netflix’s most successful and well-known Original series, Stranger Things, (2016- ) significantly contributed to the creation of a new middle ground of shared family viewing in the subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) ecology, in which Netflix resists broadcast TV approaches to family audiences. This influenced the evolution of the contentious new Netflix micro-genre “Family Watch Together TV,” which encompasses family-oriented science fiction, horror and fantasy. In turn, Disney+’s launch campaign was anchored to its flagship Original, the family-oriented but violent Star Wars series The Mandalorian (2019-). Through these key texts and genres, Netflix and Disney+ are consolidating a new dark family terrain in the streaming sector that unsettles traditional paradigms of family viewing.
Netflix launched its “Family Watch Together TV” micro-genre tag the year after Stranger Things. Showrunners and creators, the Duffer brothers, claim Stranger Things was rejected 15 to 20 times by various television networks, with the networks suggesting the series would only be suitable for broadcast if the content and focus were made more suitable for children, or if it was re-positioned as an explicitly adult-oriented show [3]. Rejecting this demand to tailor the series to a broadcast TV-era vision of the family demographic, the Duffer brothers sold the concept to Netflix. Despite a US rating of TV-14, the plethora of child-oriented merchandise around Stranger Things — such as child-sized t-shirts — suggests a broader reach, even if Netflix remains characteristically cagey about its viewing data. Since the debut of Stranger Things, there has been a continuous stream of commentary about whether younger children should be allowed to watch the program with their families [4].
Through the character of Danny Torrance, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining influenced a new model of ... more Through the character of Danny Torrance, Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining influenced a new model of uncanny child character that has become a key trope of the horror genre since the film’s release in 1980. This type of character is neither wholly victim nor wholly villain, and works through some of the deepest ambivalences rooted within ideologies of childhood. I contend that The Shining can thus be considered an important cultural contribution to philosophies of childhood for the way it interrogates the complex conceptual nexus between child and adult subjectivities, nostalgia, and traumatic memory in the Western cultural imaginary. A specific type of supernatural horror film that engages with the uncanny dimensions of this nexus would follow Kubrick’s The Shining. Released 39 years later, Mike Flanagan’s belated sequel Doctor Sleep (2019) self-consciously illuminates the ongoing cultural influence of this aesthetically fertile uncanny child trope. As will be outlined in the latter half of this essay, Doctor Sleep takes on the aesthetic, conceptual, and narrative challenge of depicting a “grown up” Danny Torrance, in so doing underscoring the significant influence of The Shining on the horror genre’s uncanny children.
On-demand streaming video services, including the video-sharing platform YouTube and the subscrip... more On-demand streaming video services, including the video-sharing platform YouTube and the subscription-video-on-demand (SVOD) service Netflix, have replaced television to become the most popular means of accessing video content amongst children in a number of countries. This article offers a methodological provocation, contending that this context calls for the integration of traditions in screen studies – namely audience research and genre analysis – with approaches to platform analysis drawn from digital media studies. Such an interdisciplinary methodology promises to illuminate how new children’s genres have formed in the streaming video ecology and how these genres circulate culturally, including how children engage with these content types. The article canvasses key trends and gaps in the extant research on children’s media on streaming video platforms and advocates for new lines of inquiry that work across disciplinary borders. The proposed combination of methods operates in parallel with and builds on a valuable body of media industries work that addresses changing production settlements and distribution practices in children’s media with the rise of the streaming video ecology.[3] Unlike this extant work, the approach suggested in this article concentrates on the textual features of children’s genres on streaming video platforms and addresses how these genres and the distribution architectures that deliver them are received, interpreted, and understood by their child audiences.
The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the multifaceted socio-cultural functions of Australian chi... more The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the multifaceted socio-cultural functions of Australian children's television. As social distancing measures forced school students to study from home, local children's TV producers and distributors contributed to home-based learning. Yet, in response to the pandemic, the Federal Government has indefinitely suspended Australian children's television quotas, the regulatory framework that sets minimum hours of local children's content for commercial television broadcasters. In response to government imposed budgetary restraints, public broadcaster, the ABC, has also made redundances in its children's content department. Such changes have occurred at a critical juncture in which the sector's long-standing contributions to the education of Australian children and pedagogy of local teachers, caregivers and parents have been brought to the fore. We argue that this pedagogical function is a core but often overlooked element of the socio-cultural value of the sector that has been highlighted during the pandemic.
Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, 2018
Films have long been organised according to genre categories grounded by thematic and
narrative c... more Films have long been organised according to genre categories grounded by thematic and narrative conventions. Yet while these taxonomies have remained relatively static in industrial and academic discourse over the past two decades, the digital age has given rise to new modes of film distribution and consumption. This article presents preliminary findings from an audience research project carried out in collaboration with Australian media company Village Roadshow investigating genre and spectatorship. The findings suggest that in an era characterised by video-on-demand, screen convergence, and personalised recommendation systems, the existing categorisation strategies favored by the film industry and screen studies scholars may no longer align with the practices and priorities of contemporary audiences. The article presents findings from a pilot study that examined the discursive processes that constitute genre as a cultural practice in the digital age through identifying how respondents classified and described certain films. The research also sought to explore the extent to which these classification practices aligned with or diverged from existing genre paradigms. The findings provide an audience-centered understanding of the shifting landscape of film distribution and consumption, as streaming services such as Netflix motivate significant transformations in the way films are accessed, understood, and consumed. Considering the influence of both traditional genre categories and new forms of categorisation and consumption driven by streaming services, the article demonstrates how contemporary audiences link films as diverse as Moonlight (Jenkins 2016), Deadpool (Miller 2016), and Psycho (Hitchcock 1960) based on style, narrative structure, and affective experience, thereby illuminating how audiences conceive of and relate to genre in this period of industrial flux. This research offers analytical strategies grounded in audience research aimed at re-evaluating genre in an era of personalised content curation, niche content categorisation, and on-demand access to films.
In 2016, The Melbourne Museum staged the world premiere of Jurassic World: The Exhibition, a glo... more In 2016, The Melbourne Museum staged the world premiere of Jurassic World: The Exhibition, a globally touring exhibition inspired by Universal Pictures' blockbuster film, Jurassic World (2015), featuring animatronic dinosaurs created by Melbourne's Creature Technology. The exhibition had the most successful opening month of any exhibition at the Museum to date, selling over 100,000 tickets. Yet Jurassic World also met with controversy for its theme park-esque design and pervasive branding, prioritization of spectacle and attraction over cultural heritage and education, and seamless integration of fact and fiction. In this article, we carry out a close analysis of Jurassic World's combination of theme park and museum exhibition practices, situating the exhibition as a particularly significant example of the developing trend towards the creation of immersive 'narrative environments' in twenty-first century museums, as museums increasingly draw upon the devices of popular entertainment to engage and attract guests. Drawing from Norman Klein's model of the 'scripted space' and Joseph Pine and James Gilmore's 'experience econ-omy', which has its roots in Disney theme parks, our analysis shows how Jurassic World plays with the boundaries of fact and fiction in a way that self-reflexively interrogates the contemporary relationship between popular entertainment and museums.
The horror genre is a particularly fraught category in academic and mainstream critical discourse... more The horror genre is a particularly fraught category in academic and mainstream critical discourse about Australian film genres. Australian horror films are often framed as either ‘Australian Gothic’ or ‘Ozploitation,’ terms that prioritise issues of national identity, class and taste rather than genre. The oppositional relationship of these terms presents an obstacle to the widespread acceptance – both scholarly and popular – of local horror films. This is illuminated by a comparison of two recent Australian horror releases and their domestic receptions, Wolf Creek 2 (McLean, Greg. 2014. Wolf Creek 2. Film. Adelaide: Duo Art Productions and Emu Creek Pictures) and The Babadook (Kent, Jennifer. 2014. The Babadook. Blu-Ray DVD. Melbourne: Umbrella Entertainment). Wolf Creek 2 was one of the most lucrative Australian films of 2014, however it was critically panned in large part due to its perceived commercialism and low-genre status. By contrast, The Babadook was the most critically praised Australian film of 2014, however the film received a limited domestic release. This paper explores how both The Babadook’s meagre domestic release and its near-universal critical praise can be related to its association with the high-art Australian Gothic tradition. Yet the film unsettles firmly entrenched art/genre, nationalism/commercialism dichotomies.
The horror genre is in large part defined by a distinctive use of sound, which facilitates the ef... more The horror genre is in large part defined by a distinctive use of sound, which facilitates the effects by which it is defined. The genre is unique in its creative deployment of sound to activate and intensify dread and shock, and to launch what Peter Hutchings describes as ‘comprehensive assaults upon the senses’. This assaultive use of sound is central to the genre’s characteristic provocation of feelings of entrapment and peril, for, unlike the image, sound resists the viewer’s attempts at momentary escape. The recent supernatural horror film Sinister (Derrickson, 2012) powerfully illustrates the complex associations between sound and image upon which the horror genre relies to conjure its effects. Much of the thematic and aesthetic intensity of Sinister emerges from deeply unsettling interactions between sound and image created by the ambiguous layering of diegetic and non-diegetic sounds. Echoing earlier haunted media films such as The Ring (Verbinski, 2002), Derrickson’s film revolves around Super 8 film reels that house a malevolent supernatural being. This article examines the augmentation of analogue aesthetics in Sinister, and argues that sound is central to the film’s simultaneous evocation and troubling of Super 8’s conventional nostalgic connotations. To achieve this, Derrickson pairs macabre Super 8 imagery with the eerie sounds of hauntology, a form of experimental electronic music that emerged around the turn of the millennium and takes troubled nostalgia as its core theme. The hauntological soundscape of Sinister accompanies the Super 8 footage not only to enhance the sonic textures of technological obsolescence, but to incite conflicted feelings of nostalgia-gone-wrong. As a result, the soundscape of Sinister not only foments the film’s most potent affects, but develops much of its subtext.
Celebrities depend upon fans to sustain their popularity and livelihood, and fans are happy to ob... more Celebrities depend upon fans to sustain their popularity and livelihood, and fans are happy to oblige. With social media they can follow their favorite (or least favorite) celebrities’ every move, and get glimpses into their lives, homes, and behind-the-scenes work. Fans interact with celebrities now more than ever, and often feel that they have a claim on their time, attention, and accountability. In Fame and Fandom, the contributors examine this tumultuous dynamic and bring together celebrity studies and fan studies like never before.
In case studies including Supernatural, Harry Styles, YouTube influencers, film location sites, Keanu Reeves, and celebrities as fans, readers find new approaches to fan/celebrity encounters and parasocial relationships. This is the go-to volume on the symbiotic relationship between fame and fandom.
Reviews
“Too often fame and fandom have been studied as separate or discrete phenomena. In this groundbreaking edited collection not only are they powerfully brought together, but their manifestations and mutations are explored in both on and offline spaces. Transnational and contemporaneous in nature, with a wonderful set of case studies, Fame and Fandom will be on every serious celebrity and fandom scholar’s bookshelves by the end of the year.”—Sean Redmond, Deakin University
“I was highly impressed by this book and its scope, focus, and standard of scholarship. The research here asks new questions, vitally challenging some of the assumptions and work that has come before. Overall, this work makes a beautifully strong and valuable contribution to fan and celebrity studies.”—Lucy Bennett, Cardiff University
This book examines how the iconic character Hannibal Lecter has been revised and redeveloped acro... more This book examines how the iconic character Hannibal Lecter has been revised and redeveloped across different screen media texts.
Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter has become one of Western culture’s most influential and enduring models of monstrosity since his emergence in 1981 in Red Dragon, Thomas Harris’ first Lecter book. Lecter is now at the centre of an extensive cross-mediated mythology, the most recent incarnation of which is Bryan Fuller’s television program, Hannibal (NBC, 2013-2015). This acclaimed series is the focus of Hannibal Lecter’s Forms, Formulations, and Transformations, which examines how Fuller’s program harnesses the iconic character to experiment with traditional boundaries of genre, medium, taste, and narrative form. Featuring chapters from established and emerging screen and popular culture scholars from around the world, the book outlines how the show operates as a striking experiment with televisual form and formula. The book also explores how this experimentation is embodied by the boundary-defying character, the savage cannibalistic serial killer, practicing psychiatrist, and cultured art enthusiast, Hannibal Lecter.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Quarterly Review of Film and Video.
AVAILABLE IN OPEN ACCESS at OAPEN via the link below:
http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=100... more AVAILABLE IN OPEN ACCESS at OAPEN via the link below:
The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema illustrates how global horror film depictions of children re-conceptualised childhood at the turn of the twenty-first century. By analysing an influential body of transnational horror films, largely stemming from Spain, Japan, and the US, Jessica Balanzategui shows how millennial uncanny child characters resist embodying growth and futurity, unravelling concepts to which the child's symbolic function is typically bound. The book proposes that complex cultural and industrial shifts at the turn of the millennium resulted in these potent cinematic renegotiations of the concept of childhood. By demonstrating both the culturally specific and globally resonant properties of these frightening visions of children who refuse to grow up, the book outlines the conceptual and aesthetic mechanisms by which long entrenched ideologies of futurity, national progress, and teleological history started to waver at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Screening the Gothic in Australia and New Zealand: Contemporary Antipodean Film and Television, 2022
The early twenty-f irst century saw the emergence of a transnational cycle of supernatural horror... more The early twenty-f irst century saw the emergence of a transnational cycle of supernatural horror films with gothic themes and aesthetics, many of which featured uncanny child figures. Two Australian films that self-reflexively participated in this transnational cycle are Lake Mungo (2008) and The Babadook (2014). This chapter examines how these two Australian films contribute to this international Gothic horror cycle and related genre trends in ways that 'localize' globally resonant film genres. I argue that Lake Mungo and The Babadook integrate culturally specific media traditions and contexts with contemporary transnational film genre preoccupations in a self-consciously 'glocal' generic manoeuvre.
Children, Youth and International Television, 2022
During the 1990s, the horror anthology series became a popular mode of children's television, inf... more During the 1990s, the horror anthology series became a popular mode of children's television, influenced in large part by two globally popular North American television programs, the Canadian-US series
In the 1990s, the horror anthology series – a format previously designed for adult audiences – be... more In the 1990s, the horror anthology series – a format previously designed for adult audiences – became a popular mode of children’s television programming. The Canadian-US co-productions Goosebumps (Deborah Forte, 1995-1998) and Are You Afraid of the Dark? (D.J. MacHale, 1990-2000) are two of the most signicant examples of 1990s children’s horror television. Both programs extend upon the themes, aesthetics, and narrative forms of earlier anthology programs for adults which shaped horror’s generic format on television, such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Alfred Hitchcock Hour (Alfred Hitchcock, 1955-1965), The Twilight Zone (Rod Serling, 1959-1964; 1985-1989), Rod Serling’s Night Gallery (Jack Laird, 1969-1974), and Tales from the Crypt (Richard Donner, 1989-1996).1 This chapter explores how Goosebumps and Are You Afraid of the Dark? (AYAOTD?) modulate the form and aesthetics of these earlier adult-oriented, horror-inected anthologies for a child audience.2 In particular, I consider how these programs seek to incite fear and dread while balancing the requirement to present themes and content classied suitable for a child audience, in turn mediating the shifting dynamics of children’s entertainment in the 1990s.
Terrifying Texts: Essays on books of good and evil in horror cinema, 2018
From Faust (1926) to The Babadook (2014), books have been featured in horror films as warnings, g... more From Faust (1926) to The Babadook (2014), books have been featured in horror films as warnings, gateways, prisons and manifestations of the monstrous. Ancient grimoires such as the Necronomicon serve as timeless vessels of knowledge beyond human comprehension, while runes, summoning diaries, and spell books offer their readers access to the powers of the supernatural—but at what cost? This collection of new essays examines nearly a century of genre horror in which on-screen texts drive and shape their narratives, sometimes unnoticed. The contributors explore American films like The Evil Dead (1981), The Prophecy (1995) and It Follows (2014), as well as such international films as Eric Valette’s Malefique (2002), Paco Cabeza’s The Appeared (2007) and Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond (1981).
The self-conscious attempt to emphasise the material, human roots of the supervillain’s character... more The self-conscious attempt to emphasise the material, human roots of the supervillain’s characterisation can be related to the filmmakers’ attempts to underscore the live-action spectacle offered by comic book adaptations in a way that distinguishes the films from their comic book source texts. The focus on the supervillain’s facial transformation sets cinematic construction apart from that of the superhero. The significance of the material interplay between extra-diegetic star and diegetic character can be seen in the tendency to construct the supervillain around quirks of the actor’s own facial features. Electro is also a man–machine hybrid diegetically, for Jamie Foxx is an immaterial constellation of electrical circuits, the result of innocent human character Max Dillon being embroiled in a malfunction at OsCorp’s power grid. The centrality of facial transformation to the construction of the supervillains foments complex dialectic tensions between attraction and repulsion, diegesis and extra-diegesis, and human performance and its technological augmentation.
Chapter in the book:
Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters: Essays on Cinema’s Holy Terrors, ... more Chapter in the book:
Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters: Essays on Cinema’s Holy Terrors, Ed. Sean Moreland and Markus Bohlmann, McFarland. 225-243. ISBN: 978-0-7864-9479-8
159 rapacious expansionism – makes it, in the context of a gendered violence epidemic, an extreme... more 159 rapacious expansionism – makes it, in the context of a gendered violence epidemic, an extremely important site for the analysis of media images and their contexts as when these players misbehave, they make waves far beyond their acts. With Vulnerability and Exposure: Footballer Scandals, Masculine Identity and Ethics, Rob Cover has made an indispensible contribution to understanding these phenomena over the last decade. While there is plenty of lurid detail, ranging from sex scandals and rape, it is not merely an analysis of what has been, but what could be. As the title suggests, Cover draws deeply and inventively on Judith Butler's work in ethics and vulnerability in scaffolding the normative frameworks of behaviours – enshrined and unspoken – and how they could be conceived otherwise. The frame here is of the millennial iteration of the scandal complex: news breaking, reportage, PR, apologies, confessions, the discourses of self-help, psychology and mateship. The analysis centres around humanity rather than restriction: who is taken to be human and how, and vulnerable, and how organisations and media frames proceed from there to produce impressions and narratives that reflect these constructions. Specifically, Cover blends thematic and event-based case studies: the St Kilda Schoolgirl, homophobia, the demons of drugs, gambling and alcohol, and the spectre of rape and group sex. Much of the analytical purchase comes from how, throughout these disparate addictions, crimes and acts of sexual, physical and mental violence, there is a consistent individualisation of ethical responsibility for those rendered vulnerable – be it Ben Cousins or Lara Bingle. For this author, such simplistic moralising at best obfuscates, with the AFL's teflonic responsibilisation of individuals a reflection of the neoliberal governmentalities of behaviour that underpin the organisa-tion's worst tendencies. There is not much glory: from partner-swapping rapes, players stepping over abject and objecti-fied women and the vilification and abandonment of Kim Duthie. But in putting forward an alternative ethics, Cover elucidates an ethics of care, rather than the object-and-other base that currently sits under extant codes of 'behaviour', such as the AFL's Respect and Responsibility. Instead of treating women like the other, the always-already potential victim of male footballers, Cover suggests AFL requires an ethical reconstruction that places vulnerability, and with it the dignity of the subject, at the centre of everything from gender relations to the thick bravado of male bonding and the pitfalls of drug abuse, as well as the reckless approach to physical danger which sees players injured from the highest to the lowest levels of the game. By looking beneath the mythology of the game and the swirls of scandals, this work envisions a brighter, safer sport.
Since late 2017, journalists, advocacy groups, and policy-makers have expressed serious concerns ... more Since late 2017, journalists, advocacy groups, and policy-makers have expressed serious concerns about popular genres of video content on YouTube that target child viewers but which are not child-appropriate according to extant definitions and cultural expectations. This article combines a discourse and thematic analysis of 54 news articles and opinion pieces about ‘disturbing’ children’s genres on YouTube with textual analysis of the two genres at the centre of this reportage. The analysis illuminates why the formal, aesthetic, and thematic qualities of these particular child-oriented YouTube genres trouble existing cultural expectations around children’s media. I argue that the genres addressed in the reportage share a key quality that I refer to as the ‘algorithmic uncanny’: common semantic and syntactic features that foster among reporters a perception that algorithms have played a key role in not only distributing the content but in shaping its aesthetic and thematic agendas.
This article examines the influence of ride film attractions on the rise of commercial, mainstrea... more This article examines the influence of ride film attractions on the rise of commercial, mainstream 4D cinemas in the 2010s. While 4D cinema is typically positioned as an innovative response to declining cinema attendance, we argue that 4D cinema has its roots in earlier developments outside the multiplex cinema space and can be traced to a long history of immersive, 4D cinema experiences that offered more sensorially invasive cinematic experiences. While highlighting examples of early attempts to alter the sensory dominance of audiovision in pre-1960s cinema, the primary focus of this article will be the late 1980s, particularly the 1990s. It was during this decade that the film industry, as part of a growing conglomerate media structure, began to experiment with and solidify multisensory cinematic experiences. This form of experimentation, which pushed the boundaries of traditional film viewing beyond a passive form of entertainment, primarily took place in the context of the theme park, which was itself emerging as a major player in entertainment culture.
Throughout the past decade, a multimodal type of internet storytelling has developed that extends... more Throughout the past decade, a multimodal type of internet storytelling has developed that extends upon the early Web 2.0 viral narrative practices of chain emails as well as pre-digital folkloric storytelling traditions such as the ghost story and urban legend. This popular mode of digital storytelling, known broadly as ‘Creepypasta’, is produced and consumed according to folkloric practices that in turn shape its form and aesthetics. The author suggests that a precise genre has emerged out of the originally wide-ranging terrain of Creepypasta, a generic mode constituted of specific thematic preoccupations and aesthetics that she refers to as ‘the digital gothic’. Through analysis of the foundational story ‘Candle Cove’, the article outlines the digital gothic’s anxious preoccupation with dead and residual media, and with the interface between technological and personal change. She demonstrates how ‘Candle Cove’ deconstructs nostalgia in its tense negotiation of the relationship bet...
This article examines the influence of ride film attractions on the rise of commercial, mainstrea... more This article examines the influence of ride film attractions on the rise of commercial, mainstream 4D cinemas in the 2010s. While 4D cinema is typically positioned as an innovative response to declining cinema attendance, we argue that 4D cinema has its roots in earlier developments outside the multiplex cinema space and can be traced to a long history of immersive, 4D cinema experiences that offered more sensorially invasive cinematic experiences. While highlighting examples of early attempts to alter the sensory dominance of audiovision in pre-1960s cinema, the primary focus of this article will be the late 1980s, particularly the 1990s. It was during this decade that the film industry, as part of a growing conglomerate media structure, began to experiment with and solidify multisensory cinematic experiences. This form of experimentation, which pushed the boundaries of traditional film viewing beyond a passive form of entertainment, primarily took place in the context of the theme park, which was itself emerging as a major player in entertainment culture.
The horror genre is a particularly fraught category in academic and mainstream critical discourse... more The horror genre is a particularly fraught category in academic and mainstream critical discourse about Australian film genres. Australian horror films are often framed as either ‘Australian Gothic’ or ‘Ozploitation,’ terms that prioritise issues of national identity, class and taste rather than genre. The oppositional relationship of these terms presents an obstacle to the widespread acceptance – both scholarly and popular – of local horror films. This is illuminated by a comparison of two recent Australian horror releases and their domestic receptions, Wolf Creek 2 (McLean, Greg. 2014. Wolf Creek 2. Film. Adelaide: Duo Art Productions and Emu Creek Pictures) and The Babadook (Kent, Jennifer. 2014. The Babadook. Blu-Ray DVD. Melbourne: Umbrella Entertainment). Wolf Creek 2 was one of the most lucrative Australian films of 2014, however it was critically panned in large part due to its perceived commercialism and low-genre status. By contrast, The Babadook was the most critically praised Australian film of 2014, however the film received a limited domestic release. This paper explores how both The Babadook’s meagre domestic release and its near-universal critical praise can be related to its association with the high-art Australian Gothic tradition. Yet the film unsettles firmly entrenched art/genre, nationalism/commercialism dichotomies.
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Journal Articles by Jessica Balanzategui
storytelling has developed that extends upon the early Web 2.0 viral
narrative practices of chain emails as well as pre-digital folkloric
storytelling traditions such as the ghost story and urban legend. This
popular mode of digital storytelling, known broadly as ‘Creepypasta’, is
produced and consumed according to folkloric practices that in turn
shape its form and aesthetics. The author suggests that a precise genre
has emerged out of the originally wide-ranging terrain of Creepypasta,
a generic mode constituted of specific thematic preoccupations and
aesthetics that she refers to as ‘the digital gothic’. Through analysis of the
foundational story ‘Candle Cove’, the article outlines the digital gothic’s
anxious preoccupation with dead and residual media, and with the
interface between technological and personal change. She demonstrates
how ‘Candle Cove’ deconstructs nostalgia in its tense negotiation of
the relationship between analogue and digital cultures. The author’s
analysis thus illuminates how vernacular online genres such as the digital
gothic productively work through the aesthetic and conceptual tensions
underpinning technological change in the networked digital era.
Netflix launched its “Family Watch Together TV” micro-genre tag the year after Stranger Things. Showrunners and creators, the Duffer brothers, claim Stranger Things was rejected 15 to 20 times by various television networks, with the networks suggesting the series would only be suitable for broadcast if the content and focus were made more suitable for children, or if it was re-positioned as an explicitly adult-oriented show [3]. Rejecting this demand to tailor the series to a broadcast TV-era vision of the family demographic, the Duffer brothers sold the concept to Netflix. Despite a US rating of TV-14, the plethora of child-oriented merchandise around Stranger Things — such as child-sized t-shirts — suggests a broader reach, even if Netflix remains characteristically cagey about its viewing data. Since the debut of Stranger Things, there has been a continuous stream of commentary about whether younger children should be allowed to watch the program with their families [4].
narrative conventions. Yet while these taxonomies have remained relatively static in
industrial and academic discourse over the past two decades, the digital age has given rise
to new modes of film distribution and consumption. This article presents preliminary
findings from an audience research project carried out in collaboration with Australian
media company Village Roadshow investigating genre and spectatorship. The findings
suggest that in an era characterised by video-on-demand, screen convergence, and
personalised recommendation systems, the existing categorisation strategies favored by the
film industry and screen studies scholars may no longer align with the practices and
priorities of contemporary audiences.
The article presents findings from a pilot study that examined the discursive
processes that constitute genre as a cultural practice in the digital age through identifying
how respondents classified and described certain films. The research also sought to explore
the extent to which these classification practices aligned with or diverged from existing
genre paradigms. The findings provide an audience-centered understanding of the shifting
landscape of film distribution and consumption, as streaming services such as Netflix
motivate significant transformations in the way films are accessed, understood, and
consumed. Considering the influence of both traditional genre categories and new forms of
categorisation and consumption driven by streaming services, the article demonstrates how
contemporary audiences link films as diverse as Moonlight (Jenkins 2016), Deadpool (Miller
2016), and Psycho (Hitchcock 1960) based on style, narrative structure, and affective
experience, thereby illuminating how audiences conceive of and relate to genre in this
period of industrial flux. This research offers analytical strategies grounded in audience
research aimed at re-evaluating genre in an era of personalised content curation, niche
content categorisation, and on-demand access to films.
storytelling has developed that extends upon the early Web 2.0 viral
narrative practices of chain emails as well as pre-digital folkloric
storytelling traditions such as the ghost story and urban legend. This
popular mode of digital storytelling, known broadly as ‘Creepypasta’, is
produced and consumed according to folkloric practices that in turn
shape its form and aesthetics. The author suggests that a precise genre
has emerged out of the originally wide-ranging terrain of Creepypasta,
a generic mode constituted of specific thematic preoccupations and
aesthetics that she refers to as ‘the digital gothic’. Through analysis of the
foundational story ‘Candle Cove’, the article outlines the digital gothic’s
anxious preoccupation with dead and residual media, and with the
interface between technological and personal change. She demonstrates
how ‘Candle Cove’ deconstructs nostalgia in its tense negotiation of
the relationship between analogue and digital cultures. The author’s
analysis thus illuminates how vernacular online genres such as the digital
gothic productively work through the aesthetic and conceptual tensions
underpinning technological change in the networked digital era.
Netflix launched its “Family Watch Together TV” micro-genre tag the year after Stranger Things. Showrunners and creators, the Duffer brothers, claim Stranger Things was rejected 15 to 20 times by various television networks, with the networks suggesting the series would only be suitable for broadcast if the content and focus were made more suitable for children, or if it was re-positioned as an explicitly adult-oriented show [3]. Rejecting this demand to tailor the series to a broadcast TV-era vision of the family demographic, the Duffer brothers sold the concept to Netflix. Despite a US rating of TV-14, the plethora of child-oriented merchandise around Stranger Things — such as child-sized t-shirts — suggests a broader reach, even if Netflix remains characteristically cagey about its viewing data. Since the debut of Stranger Things, there has been a continuous stream of commentary about whether younger children should be allowed to watch the program with their families [4].
narrative conventions. Yet while these taxonomies have remained relatively static in
industrial and academic discourse over the past two decades, the digital age has given rise
to new modes of film distribution and consumption. This article presents preliminary
findings from an audience research project carried out in collaboration with Australian
media company Village Roadshow investigating genre and spectatorship. The findings
suggest that in an era characterised by video-on-demand, screen convergence, and
personalised recommendation systems, the existing categorisation strategies favored by the
film industry and screen studies scholars may no longer align with the practices and
priorities of contemporary audiences.
The article presents findings from a pilot study that examined the discursive
processes that constitute genre as a cultural practice in the digital age through identifying
how respondents classified and described certain films. The research also sought to explore
the extent to which these classification practices aligned with or diverged from existing
genre paradigms. The findings provide an audience-centered understanding of the shifting
landscape of film distribution and consumption, as streaming services such as Netflix
motivate significant transformations in the way films are accessed, understood, and
consumed. Considering the influence of both traditional genre categories and new forms of
categorisation and consumption driven by streaming services, the article demonstrates how
contemporary audiences link films as diverse as Moonlight (Jenkins 2016), Deadpool (Miller
2016), and Psycho (Hitchcock 1960) based on style, narrative structure, and affective
experience, thereby illuminating how audiences conceive of and relate to genre in this
period of industrial flux. This research offers analytical strategies grounded in audience
research aimed at re-evaluating genre in an era of personalised content curation, niche
content categorisation, and on-demand access to films.
In case studies including Supernatural, Harry Styles, YouTube influencers, film location sites, Keanu Reeves, and celebrities as fans, readers find new approaches to fan/celebrity encounters and parasocial relationships. This is the go-to volume on the symbiotic relationship between fame and fandom.
Reviews
“Too often fame and fandom have been studied as separate or discrete phenomena. In this groundbreaking edited collection not only are they powerfully brought together, but their manifestations and mutations are explored in both on and offline spaces. Transnational and contemporaneous in nature, with a wonderful set of case studies, Fame and Fandom will be on every serious celebrity and fandom scholar’s bookshelves by the end of the year.”—Sean Redmond, Deakin University
“I was highly impressed by this book and its scope, focus, and standard of scholarship. The research here asks new questions, vitally challenging some of the assumptions and work that has come before. Overall, this work makes a beautifully strong and valuable contribution to fan and celebrity studies.”—Lucy Bennett, Cardiff University
Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter has become one of Western culture’s most influential and enduring models of monstrosity since his emergence in 1981 in Red Dragon, Thomas Harris’ first Lecter book. Lecter is now at the centre of an extensive cross-mediated mythology, the most recent incarnation of which is Bryan Fuller’s television program, Hannibal (NBC, 2013-2015). This acclaimed series is the focus of Hannibal Lecter’s Forms, Formulations, and Transformations, which examines how Fuller’s program harnesses the iconic character to experiment with traditional boundaries of genre, medium, taste, and narrative form. Featuring chapters from established and emerging screen and popular culture scholars from around the world, the book outlines how the show operates as a striking experiment with televisual form and formula. The book also explores how this experimentation is embodied by the boundary-defying character, the savage cannibalistic serial killer, practicing psychiatrist, and cultured art enthusiast, Hannibal Lecter.
The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Quarterly Review of Film and Video.
http://www.oapen.org/search?identifier=1004118;keyword=balanzategui
The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema illustrates how global horror film depictions of children re-conceptualised childhood at the turn of the twenty-first century. By analysing an influential body of transnational horror films, largely stemming from Spain, Japan, and the US, Jessica Balanzategui shows how millennial uncanny child characters resist embodying growth and futurity, unravelling concepts to which the child's symbolic function is typically bound. The book proposes that complex cultural and industrial shifts at the turn of the millennium resulted in these potent cinematic renegotiations of the concept of childhood. By demonstrating both the culturally specific and globally resonant properties of these frightening visions of children who refuse to grow up, the book outlines the conceptual and aesthetic mechanisms by which long entrenched ideologies of futurity, national progress, and teleological history started to waver at the turn of the twenty-first century.
Style and Form in the Hollywood Slasher Film. Ed. Wickham Clayton, Palgrave MacMillan. 161-179. ISBN: 978-1-1374-9646-1
Children in the Films of Steven Spielberg. Ed Adrian Schober and Debbie Olson. 2016. Lexington Books. 183-206. ISBN: 978-1-4985-1884-0
Monstrous Children and Childish Monsters: Essays on Cinema’s Holy Terrors, Ed. Sean Moreland and Markus Bohlmann, McFarland. 225-243. ISBN: 978-0-7864-9479-8
Exploring Bodies in Time and Space, Ed. Loyola McClean, Lisa Stafford and Mark Weeks, Inter-Disciplinary Press.180-190. ISBN: 978-1-8488-8246-1
The Supernatural Cinema of Guillermo del Toro, Ed. John Morehead, McFarland. 76-92. ISBN: 978-0-7864-9595-5