Articles

I write about cinema, literature, popular culture and the history of technology. You can find some of my articles here.

On disaster films

Independence Day

Spectacles of History: Race Relations, Melodrama, and the Science Fiction / Disaster Film

Published in Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture and Media Studies—50. 17: 2 (May 2002): 109-153.

  • A close analysis of the disaster film genre in the 1990s and after, from Twister and Dante’s Peak to Independence Day.
  • This was one of the first critical analyses of melodrama in contemporary Hollywood action films, and among the first to discuss disaster films in relation to race relations.
2012

Representing Politics in Disaster Films

In International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, 7:3 (Dec. 2011): 349-356.

  • Focusing on the question of responsibility in  disaster films after 9/11  and after Hurricane Katrina, with examples from The Day After Tomorrow and 2012.
  • I argue that recent disaster films have had to balance issues of political and social responsibility with the general question of emergency response, as the films feature natural accidents, environmental disasters, and corrupt government schemes.

On Alfred Hitchcock

psycho_1960 “Get out of the Shower!”: The ‘Shower Scene’ and Hitchcock’s Narrative Style in Psycho

In PopMatters, “Director Spotlight: Alfred Hitchcock,” Special Issue. 11 June 2010

  • For this short article I propose integrating the famous “shower scene” back into the narrative of Psycho as a film, in order to appreciate Hitchcock’s narrative innovations.
  • This article was part of a celebration for the 50 years since the release of Psycho in 1960.