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Media Crossroads

Intersections of Space and Identity in Screen Cultures

Media Crossroads cover image Read the Introduction

Book

Pages: 352

Illustrations: 46 illustrations

Published: March 2021

Editors: Paula J. Massood, Angel Daniel Matos, Pamela Robertson Wojcik

Contributors: Nicole Erin Morse, Matthew Payne, John Vanderhoef, Jacqueline Sheean, Amy Corbin, Joshua Glick, Noelle Griffis, Elizabeth Patton, Erica Stein, Desiree Garcia, Sarah Louise Smyth, Merrill Schleier, Peter C. Kunze, Ina Rae Hark, Kirsten Moana Thompson, Malini Guha

The contributors to Media Crossroads examine space and place in media as they intersect with sexuality, race, ethnicity, age, class, and ability. Considering a wide range of film, television, video games, and other media, the authors show how spaces—from the large and fantastical to the intimate and virtual—are shaped by the social interactions and intersections staged within them. The highly teachable essays include analyses of media representations of urban life and gentrification, the ways video games allow users to adopt an experiential understanding of space, the intersection of the regulation of bodies and spaces, and how style and aesthetics can influence intersectional thinking. Whether interrogating the construction of Portland as a white utopia in Portlandia or the link between queerness and the spatial design and gaming mechanics in the Legend of Zelda video game series, the contributors deepen understanding of screen cultures in ways that redefine conversations around space studies in film and media.

Contributors. Amy Corbin, Desirée J. Garcia, Joshua Glick, Noelle Griffis, Malini Guha, Ina Rae Hark, Peter C. Kunze, Paula J. Massood, Angel Daniel Matos, Nicole Erin Morse, Elizabeth Patton, Matthew Thomas Payne, Merrill Schleier, Jacqueline Sheean, Sarah Louise Smyth, Erica Stein, Kirsten Moana Thompson, John Vanderhoef, Pamela Robertson Wojcik

Praise

“Media Crossroads offers a remarkable set of essays that demonstrate the new insights that can emerge when we apply a purposeful intersectional lens in media studies. As we move through screen spaces of different types (past, present, public, private) in different media (television, cinema, video games, social media), we feel the exhilaration of this volume's collective experimental project to identify and interrogate spatialized structures of power across the media landscape.” - Jacqueline Najuma Stewart, author of Migrating to the Movies: Cinema and Black Urban Modernity

“Media Crossroads invites scholars to rethink space and intersectionality, including and going beyond the confines of cities, lands, and architectures. Its analysis of commercial, mainstream, and avant-garde film and media as well as its focus on intersectionality makes it an innovative and important contribution to film and media studies.” - Yeidy M. Rivero, author of Broadcasting Modernity: Cuban Commercial Television, 1950–1960

"The intersectional lens developed in [Media Crossroads] is original, vigorous, and reflective enough to alter the readers' perspectives towards media texts that they have seen before and the ones they will experience in the future. Its lasting influence will make the readers rethink, reconfigure, and reimagine the potential of intersectional space and identities on and offscreen." - Da Ye Kim, E3W Review of Books

"... in the book’s most accomplished chapters, intersectionality and space feel strongly and compellingly connected." - Ciara Moloney, Cineaste

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Paula J. Massood is Professor, Feirstein Graduate School of Cinema, City University of New York.

Angel Daniel Matos is Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies at Bowdoin College.

Pamela Robertson Wojcik is Professor of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame.

Table Of Contents

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Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction: Intersections and/in Space / Paula J. Massood, Angel Daniel Matos, and Pamela Robertson Wojcik  1
I. Digital Intersections
1. "Where Do Aliens Pee?": Bathroom Selfies, Trans Activism, and Reimagining Spaces / Nicole Erin Morse  21
2. The Queerness of Space and the Body in Nintendo's The Legend of Zelda Series / Angel Daniel Matos  34
3. The Digital Flâneuse: Exploring Intersectional Identities and Spaces through Walking Simulators / Matthew Thomas Payne and John Vanderhoef  50
II. Cinematic Urban Intersections
4. Blurring Boundaries, Exploring Intersections: Form, Genre, and Space in Shirley Clarke's The Connection / Paula J. Massood  67
5. Intersections in Madrid's Periphery: Cinematic Cruising in Eloy de la Iglesia's La semana del asesino (1972) / Jacqueline Sheean  82
6. Encounters and Embeddedness: The Urban Cinema of Ramin Bahrani / Amy Corbin  96
7. Perpetual Motion: Mobility, Precarity, and Slow Death Cinema / Pamela Robertson Wojcik  111
III. Urbanism and Gentrification
8. Senior Citizens under Siege: Number Our Days (1976) and Gray Power Activism in Venice / Joshua Glick  127
9. Music City Makeover: The Televisual Tourism of Nashville / Noelle Griffis  141
10. Portland at the Intersection: Gentrification and the Whitening of the City in Portlandia's Hipster Wonderland / Elizabeth A. Patton  155
11. Criminal Properties: Real Estate and the Upwardly Mobile Gangster / Erica Stein  167
IV. Race, Place, and Space
12. Dressing the Part: Black Maids, White Stars in the Dressing Room / Desirée J. Garcia  183
13. "I Do Not Know That I Find Myself Anywhere": The British Heritage Film and Spaces of Intersectionality in Amma Asante's Belle (2013) / Sara Louise Smyth  195
14. Queerness, Race, and Class in the Midcentury Suburb Film Crime of Passion (1956) / Merrill Schleier  206
15. Fair Play: Race, Space, and Recreation n Black Media Culture / Peter C. Kunze  221
V. Style and/as Intersectionality
16. The Toxic Intertwining of Small Town Lives in Happy Valley / Ina Rae Hark  237
17. Tattooed Light and Embodied Design: Intersectional Surfaces in Moana / Kirsten Moana Thompson  250
18. Vaguely Visible: Intersectional Politics in Bertrand Bonello's Nocturama (2016) / Malini Guha  262
Notes  275
Bibliography  303
Contributors  329
Index  335

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Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-1174-3 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-1061-6 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-2130-8 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478021308