Cinematic Phenomenon Research Articles

Allusion as a means of implementing intertextuality in English-language online film review

The article discusses ways to actualize allusion as an intertextual element. Intertextual inclusions in the texts of the film review are designed to illustrate the degree of professional competence of the reviewer and his interpretative qualities using the comparative analytical method. Allusion, being a stylistic device for the realization of intertextuality, contains a certain pretext. This pretext performs the function of a precedent phenomenon associated with some collective invariant component of linguistic consciousness. The purpose of this article is to consider in film review the ways in which allusion functions as an intertextual reference. The empirical material of this study was a corpus of 30 movie reviews from 2021–2023, taken from the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Direct or indirect reference to a specific cinematic phenomenon not only increases the general erudition and awareness of the reader, but also serves as a means of providing a perlocative effect when reading this film review. Allusion, being a means of realizing the author’s pragmatic intentions, performs a comparative function by building intertextual references. The referents in film reviews are the names of films, directors, actors and other precedent units of the world of cinema.

Research On the ‘Southbound Filmmakers’ with Their National Images: Diaspora, Anxiety and Spiritual Identification

The ‘southbound filmmakers’ refers to a group of filmmakers who, during 1931--1966, went to the Southeast Asia from the cities like Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chongqing. They are one of the important parts of China’s filmmakers and their films is a significant attempt disseminating at abroad in the early days. To analyze the Southbound Filmmakers’ identity construction as well their activities such as living in the Southeast Asia, film-makings and dissemination, this paper adopts psychology, psychoanalysis, national identification, audience reception, etc., associated with theories like ‘culture, anxiety, identity and ideology’ under the overview of behavioral science. The ‘Southbound filmmakers’ is not only a group of filmmakers, but a historical concept and a special cinematic phenomenon. The diaspora complex and national identification were the important spiritual pillars for the filmmakers to carry on their film and social activities in the Southeast Asia. The Sounthbound films’ dissemination overseas is a helpful attempt for the Chinese films. Even though the filmmakers had different subjective activities and varied film contents, it objectively strengthened Chinese films’ connections with its foreign counterparts, promoted China’s films’ influences and increased Chinese culture’s dissemination in other countries, which is significant and has a long-time effect.

21세기 한국영화, ‘가난 혐오’와 청년

This is an era in which people do not regard absolute poverty as their own problem. However, the low rates of poverty and the seeming ease of escaping from poverty mean that the poor have to bear a greater stigma. As evidenced by the emergence of various words that hate the poor, poverty has become a shame that must be thoroughly concealed. Poverty is becoming a disease of the mind, beyond just economic difficulties.BR This article focuses on contemporary Korean films that put poverty at the center of the narrative. Films after the 2010s, which focused on poverty as a problematic reality of young people, are the main subjects of research. Under the premise that cinema is essentially the story of a community belonging to the public realm, I will examine the way poor young people are being narrativised on the screen, and through it, I will try to reveal the main affect of this era. The Films that imagines poverty provide an opportunity to discuss the value systems that dominate this era and the psychological reality shared throughout society, along with the opportunity to face our inner desires and anxieties’.BR The current films, which put poor young people at the center of the narrative, erased the connection with the social reality of the times, unlike the past, when poverty was contextualized as closely related to the history of the nation. Poverty is represented as a very personal problem. Today’s young people have been living hard in high-intensity competition since childhood, but the reward for it is very small. As the difficulties of growth faced by the young generation and the variables of choice and responsibility intervene, a more complex and dark psychological landscape depicting poverty was created in the film.BR In these films, the young man is represented as a ‘homeless’ wandering in search of a place to sleep, in a situation of isolation in which all personal relationships are disintegrated. In addition, various hate speeches that distinguish and constantly stigmatize poor young people appear every time, and among them, the self-hatred that poor young people in the same situation spit out toward each other requires attention. Although the state of mind differs depending on gender, most films carefully depict the process by which the space occupied by the poor young people becomes narrower, the moment when the relationship is broken and they are stigmatized and insulted. These films, which end in destruction or isolation without any hope, bring to the fore a more gloomy affect than modern people’s sense of alienation. The image of a young man who chooses the path of subordination rather than bocoming a master forms a depressing self-portrait of a young generation with anxiety about a dead-end world and self-hatred.BR What lies behind this cinematic phenomenon is meritocracy that brings meritism to the fore. Meritocracy, a regime that dominates the minds of people of this era, is democratic compared to Aristocracy, but it causes continuous anxiety and produces hatred. Under meritocracy, which connects ability, performance and reward in a straight line, ordinary people are more likely to feel frustrated and have the feelings of losers and drive everyone into a state of psychological poverty. Furthermore, as neoliberal values are internalized, a very desperate perception of reality and self-hatred are prevalent. These problems cannot be overcome by individual will alone, but can be solved only when the entire community cooperates together. Cinema, a kind of public record, can be an affective way to reduce the wounds of the heart and prevent hatred by alleviating the pressures from meritocracy and performance.

Mockumentary Genre as a Cinematic Phenomenon of the Postmodern Age

The purpose of the research is to analyze the forms of artistic embodiment of mockumentary as a cinematic phenomenon of the postmodern era. By the purpose, the following tasks are set: to analyze the relatively new genre of mockumentary for the field of cinematography; to study the prerequisites for the formation of the genre, to determine the formal genre characteristics and specific tools of mockumentary filmmakers; to analyze stylistic and functional evolution of mockumentary films during the second half of the twentieth – early twenty-first century; to establish the factors that ensured the growth of the genre’s popularity in the postmodern era. The research methodology consists in the application of the following theoretical methods: analysis of the mockumentary phenomenon to determine the basic characteristics of the genre; a method of comparison regarding the functions of feature and non-feature films; a method of generalizing the processes and trends common to all spheres of the postmodern period culture; a method of abstraction about artistic means, which are equally characteristic of both documentary cinema and the mockumentary film genre. A systemic principle, namely a structural-functional approach, was also used to examine individual elements of the mockumentary genre and their relationship as constituent parts within the genre. The scientific novelty is caused primarily by addressing the phenomenon of mockumentary precisely in the context of postmodernism and conducting a detailed analysis of characteristic genre features. Also, the research singles out the reasons for the emergence of a new genre and the growth of its popularity. Conclusions. The article analyzes the reasons for the emergence of the mockumentary genre and the growth of its popularity during the second half of the 20th – the beginning of the 21st century. By analyzing individual samples of the genre, its characteristic stylistic and technical features have been revealed, and subcategories of the genre and the tools of mockumentary filmmakers have been formulated. The role of the mockumentary genre in the development of contemporary cinema has been determined.

Simulating the Meaning and Meaning of the Simulation: New Narrative Strategies in the Video (Analysing the Clip “Iridescent” by Linkin Park)

<i>“What kind of narrative games does cinema play?”</i> – These questions are particularly relevant in relation to such a cinematic phenomenon as the clip, which by the end of the XX century formed into a quasi-short film, which is a synthesis of web design and cinema, and is an ontological borderline of the film text. One of the latest narrative strategies with a flourish featured in the Linkin Park video for the main soundtrack of the movie "transformers 3: Dark side of the moon. The entire movie text of the clip is a manifestation of the hyperreal in all its features: empty no space, relatable discrete time, visual simulacra, devoid of its own meaning, but simulating similarity to images of real cinema. Moreover, the clip is full of so-called Semo-simulations, i.e. signs that are similar in outline to the signs of the ancient civilizations of Egypt and Sumer, but they are not, i.e. there is no meaning behind these figures. However, if all of the above complete content of the clip-this work would not make sense. In the video, there is a "third element" (Eisenstein) because all the Grand visual simulation created within the Hyper/art, which is cinema, met with poetic text and music. The poetry and music of the song "Iridescent" come into conflict, almost in denial of what is unfolding on the screen. The very name of the song "Descended from the rainbow" refers to the old Byzantine and Orthodox icons on which Christ depicted sitting on a rainbow, the entire text of the song is an internal monologue, turning to God for help after disappointments, losses, and spiritual devastation. It is the music track and the text that are the elements of existence that finally bring the narrative of the video to the realm of intellectual phantoms, which gives the audience a sense of freedom, the presence of a higher good force and true human reality, which (for now?) simulacra and simulations of meaning will not destroy it.

Fear and Loathing in the Americas: White Fanatics and the Cinematic Colonial Mindset

White Saviors and Magical Negros are well-established cinematic archetypes that have been identified, analyzed, and subsequently labeled as unadvisable storytelling tropes due to their innate cultural arrogance and racially offensive undertones. The following paper classifies a related cinematic phenomenon the author calls the White Fanatic. By analyzing three recent films in which white lead characters suffer existential crises and demand relief from Magical Natives, the paper makes the case that the White Fanatic represents a colonial mindset shared by filmmakers who continue to emphasize the experience of European colonizers at the expense of Indigenous peoples.The three films included in this analysis are Zama (2017), directed by Lucrecia Martel; The Lost City of Z (2016), directed by James Gray; and Embrace of the Serpent (2015), directed by Ciro Guerra. The author concludes that such stories are more sensitive to Native cultures than previously accepted versions of the White Savior. However, the essay calls for greater Indigenous representation that is uncorrupted by fanatical white protagonists.

Screenings

FQ Columnist Paul Julian Smith discusses a new cinematic phenomenon that has emerged in Mexico in the last five years: the transgender documentary. Three features have appeared so far, all by first-time directors: Morir de pie (To Die Standing Up, Jacaranda Correa, 2011), Quebranto (Disrupted, Roberto Fiesco, 2013), and Made in Bangkok (Flavio Florencio, 2015). The films are self-proclaimed stories of love, even as they testify intermittently to disruption or affliction (quebranto, from quebrar or “to break” as cited in one title). This article examines the three commonalities of these films: they address their protagonists’ activity either in the performing arts or in politics; their geographical reach extends beyond the borders of the Mexican state; and their transnational narratives break out of the barriers of subjectivity to embrace an analysis of intersubjectivity.

Lincoln's Body: The President in Popular Films of the Sesquicentennial

Lincoln's Body:The President in Popular Films of the Sesquicentennial Craig A. Warren (bio) The sesquicentennial of the American Civil War has made Abraham Lincoln a cinematic phenomenon. As Americans contemplate the 150th anniversary of the conflict, filmmakers have turned to Lincoln—perhaps the central figure of those years—as a means of commemorating and interpreting the war. Of late, he has emerged as the subject of several television movies and at least one straight-to-rental zombie picture. More notably, the president's life and legacy inspired three major motion pictures early this decade: the 2010 courtroom drama The Conspirator, followed in 2012 by the action-fantasy film Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and the political drama Lincoln. As expected, scholars have critiqued the historical accuracy and social vision of each film. Yet, few have compared how these works represent the president's physicality, body language, and attire. What values are signaled by different portrayals of Lincoln's face and body? And how do casting, posture, and wardrobe convey messages about the sixteenth presidency and its achievements? By examining Lincoln's embodiment across the three major films, we can better understand how filmmakers wish to interpret Union and Emancipation for early twenty-first century audiences.1 Nearly a century and a half after his death, the image of Abraham Lincoln permeates American society in both obvious and unexpected ways. Stamped on U.S. currency, Lincoln's likeness can be found in billfolds and piggy banks from Alaska to Florida. If few Americans pause to study the president's profile on the humble penny, far grander representations draw widespread appreciation. At the Lincoln Memorial, arguably the most revered of all monuments in Washington, D.C., a marble rendition of the Great Emancipator ponders the new millennium from his elevated seat. More than fifteen hundred miles away, in the Black Hills of South Dakota, Lincoln's granite visage participates in the Mount Rushmore pantheon of American presidents. Complementing his face as it appears on cash and [End Page 146] statuary, photographs of the sixteenth president inundate schools and public spaces, and artists and historians comment at length about the man's "extraordinary" countenance. A recent picture book, Lincoln, Life-Size (2009), features enlarged photographs of the politician's lined and poignant face. These blown-up images, the publisher intones, grant readers an "unprecedented window into Lincoln's soul." For those wishing to see Lincoln impersonators, opportunities exist at battlefield reenactments, museums, and historical society events. Nationwide, the Association of Lincoln Presenters promotes 150 "living Lincolns," gaunt and bearded men who don the iconic stovepipe hat to "educate, entertain, and inspire" their fellow citizens. The face of George Washington may be immediately familiar to most Americans, but few have a sense of the first president's physique. By contrast, Lincoln's body is as famous as his head. Long, lean, angular, and often awkward, it is an essential part of his popular image. Indeed, the most famous monuments to Lincoln portray his form from head to toe.2 The ubiquity of Lincoln's image in the popular imagination poses a challenge to filmmakers wishing to represent him on the screen. Viewers have deep-seated expectations for how Honest Abe should look, and how his body should occupy the space around him. Moreover, most audiences are accustomed to seeing Lincoln frozen in photographs, drawings, bronze, and stone. No matter what choices a director makes, a moving, breathing, speaking Lincoln will upset standard ways of engaging the president—and perhaps lead viewers to resist the presentation. In many respects, director Robert Redford eludes the problem in The Conspirator, a film about the trial and execution of Mary Surratt, the woman who owned the boarding house where those plotting against Lincoln often met. The movie poster for the film features the marble face of the Lincoln Memorial, but Lincoln himself is almost entirely absent from the screen. In an early sequence that portrays John Wilkes Booth's attack on the president and the immediate aftermath, Redford shows Lincoln only from a distance or in momentary glimpses. The late Gerald Bestrom, a longtime Lincoln impersonator, assumed the role of the wounded president for these limited shots...

A GLOBAL CINEMATIC ZONE OF ANIMAL AND TECHNOLOGY

Taking the animal and the machine as two ontological others of the human, this paper looks into how they “are added to” and “replace” the humanist others based on race, gender, class, etc. in contemporary cinema. This “supplement” urges us to reframe identity politics and cultural studies in a larger “polis” emerging between and encompassing both the human world, which becomes ever more globally homogenized, and its radical environment, natural or technological. The topic is a global cinematic phenomenon that even local films directly embody. The animal is captured on the boundaries between “the symbolic” and “the real,” between “the actual” and “the virtual” in the artistic works of Werner Herzog, Apichatpong Weerasethakul, and Peter Greenaway. The machine convolutes the issues of informatics, embodiment, and cyborgism, often through SF fantasy that pervades Hollywood blockbusters and Japanimation. The rare amalgam of animal–machine receives further attention in David Cronenberg's films, and becoming-animal/-machine in Avatar empowers the human in the posthuman sense of biopower that transforms the body and registers it on a larger network. From this perspective, discourses on the animal (zooesis) and technology (technesis) work together to bring a new political potential. Animality and technology no longer form a naïve dichotomy of nature vs. civilization but combine in ways of making more visible the new condition of life. It unfolds in a cinematic “zone,” an ephemeral “clearing” for “bare life” within the globalized world. This zone exists in the exceptional state of temporary potential to de-/repoliticize any humanistic politics.

Grasping Glamour

Grasping Glamour Megan E. Williams (bio) The Glamour System. By Stephen Gundle and Clino T. Castelli. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. 2006. Glamour: A History. By Stephen Gundle. New York: Oxford University Press. 2008. Glamour in Six Dimensions: Modernism and the Radiance of Form. By Judith Brown. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2009. Glamour: Women, History, Feminism. By Carol Dyhouse. New York: Zed Books. 2010. “Never underestimate the power of glamour,” wrote journalist and style authority Lucia van der Post in Lessons in Grace and Elegance, her 2007 guide to chic living. “Even the plainest woman can be glamorous,” she assures her [End Page 41] readers. “It’s quite different from beauty.”1 Although writers seeking to vary their verbiage often use “glamour” interchangeably with “beauty,” glamour is different from beauty and, as cultural historian Stephen Gundle suggests, is “notoriously difficult to define” (2). Whereas excellent scholarly treatments of beauty culture abound, very little scholarship treating glamour as a cultural phenomenon existed when I started researching the significance of African American singer, actress, and activist Lena Horne—a woman whose name is synonymous with glamour—in 2004. Thankfully, within the past decade, scholars have published a handful of articles and the first, much-needed, book-length studies of glamour.2 These include Stephen Gundle’s The Glamour System (2006) and Glamour: A History (2008), Judith Brown’s Glamour in Six Dimensions: Modernism and the Radiance of Form (2009), and Carol Dyhouse’s Glamour: Women, History, Feminism (2010). The author of several essays on the subject of glamour, Stephen Gundle offers two volumes, The Glamour System, co-authored with professional designer Clino T. Castelli, and Glamour: A History, which address the theory and history of this ever-present, yet elusive, phenomenon. In The Glamour System, Gundle is concerned with outlining the historical roots of glamour as “a structure of enticement” (16). In the first part of the book, Gundle traces the origins of glamour to early nineteenth-century Europe, when the bourgeoisie supplanted the aristocracy, and traces its production through the first half of the twentieth century. He explores the interconnection between glamour and modern nineteenth-century cities as sites of “social display” that promoted a culture of spectacle and consumerism, theatre and theatricality (22). Analyzing glamour as a gendered system, constructed as feminine, Gundle discusses four types of women—the high society woman, the courtesan, the actress, and the showgirl—produced as “bearers of glamour” by this “culture of display” (44). Following his analysis of glamour’s “lengthy formative phase” in Europe, Gundle contends that Hollywood refashioned glamour as a “cinematic phenomenon” during the interwar years (62). In the second half of the book, Gundle defines the glamour system as “a system of visual enchantment” that uses seduction to obscure its role in maintaining “the capitalist system” and bourgeois hegemony (86, 21, 14). He explores this structural phenomenon through eight “scenarios,” primarily imagined by Castelli, which emphasize the association between glamour and material culture (16). In an effort to further challenge notions of glamour as “a timeless phenomenon” with “the consistency and significance of candy-floss,” Gundle’s second book-length treatment of this topic, Glamour: A History, extends his earlier analysis of the changing implications of glamour for British and American women and men to the present (19, 6). He outlines the development of glamour, from its emergence in the literary works of Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron to the flashy magnificence of European royalty, the spectacle of the modern city, the emergence of the nouveau riche, and the courtesans—“the glamour queens”—of nineteenth-century Britain and France (78). As with his discussion [End Page 42] of the phenomenon’s evolution in The Glamour System, Gundle emphasizes the significance of stage actresses and showgirls as arbiters of early twentieth-century glamour and the importance of interwar Hollywood’s expertly fashioned film stars as “the most complete embodiment of glamour” ever constructed (172). In Glamour, Gundle broadens his study, moving beyond the Hollywood studio system of the twenties, thirties, and forties, to highlight the role of Parisian couture—especially Christian Dior’s “New Look”—in shaping fifties glamour. Likewise, he argues, Hollywood films set in Rome and the Riviera featuring...

Lost in translation? Ghost music in recent Japanese Kaidan films and their Hollywood remakes

Western audiences in recent years have been intrigued by the cinematic phenomenon popularly known as J-Horror. Critical attention has been paid to more to the Hollywood remakes than to the original Japanese films. Comparing such Hollywood films as The Ring, The Grudge, and Dark Water with their models, this essay focuses on the various soundtracks' use of a particular ghostly noise. It argues that whereas the soundtracks of the Japanese Kaidan films in various ways sustain an aesthetic/theatrical tradition that is centuries old, the Hollywood remakes miss an important point by appropriating the sound but not its context.

A Mexican Nouvelle Vague : The Logic of New Waves under Globalization

Abstract: This article historicizes the cinematic phenomenon of "new waves" in an effort to descry the set of conditions for their emergence. By deeming the nation-state one such condition, the essay contends that new waves will disappear or find new purpose under globalization. The Mexican "new wave" suggests this new purpose.

Up-to-Date Magic: Theatrical Conjuring and the Trick Film

During the first decade of the twentieth century, "up-to-date magic" was a theatrical and cinematic phenomenon that entertained audiences around the world. This article traces an integrated history of stage and screen that connects the styles of magic performed in turn-of-the-century vaudeville and music-hall theatres to the modes of cinematic illusion seen in contemporaneous trick films. Attention is paid to the work of Georges Méliès and Gaston Velle—French magicians who became prolific early filmmakers—to exhibition contexts where live illusions were seen alongside trick films, and to the divide that opened between conjuring and cinema as a result of differing attitudes toward the importance of mystery and secrecy.

Medieval McGuffins: The Arthurian Model

The Round Table Medieval McGuffins: The Arthurian Model NORRIS J. LACY In our continuing efforts to comprehend and define medieval merhods of literary composition, it is crirical ro use, or at least consider, all the approaches available to us. Those approaches obviously include everything we can learn from medieval manuals of rheroric, from authors' own commentary, and other sources conremporaneous wirh the texts in question. However, in many instances a modern concept, even if drawn from a non-literary conrexr, may offer a useful key to the function of earlier texts. This essay will examine the potential applicability of a cinematic phenomenon to a study ofmedieval narrarive, and specifically to Arthurian romance. That phenomenon is the McGuffin. The concept of a McGuffin was fundamentally Alfred Hitchcock's, though it came to him as an anecdote recounted by a friend. As one version of the story has it, Two men were traveling by train from London ro F.dinburgh. In the luggage rack overhead was a wrapped parcel. What have you there?' asked one of rhe men. 'Oh, that's a MacGuffin,' replied the other. 'What's a MacGuffin?' It's a device for trapping lions in the Scottish Highlands.' 'But there aren't any lions in the Scottish Highlands.' 'Well, then, that's no MacGuffin. This anecdote, however amusing, does little or norhing to clarify the term, but fortunately, Hitchcock and others were sometimes less enigmatic and more informative. Here, then, is a preliminary but standard definirion for our purposes: a McGuffin is a plot element that exists to propel the story but that may have little orno intrinsic importance. 'For example, in Hitchcock's movie North by Northwest, thugs are on the look out for a character named George Kaplan. Roger Thornhill, an ad executive, gets mistaken for Kaplan and so he is chased instead. Meanwhile Thornhill himself rries ro find Kaplan who doesn't even exist.'4 An even mote revealing example, I believe, is from Hitchcock's Psycho. It is the robbery ar the beginning. That event leads us to expect a chase and an attempt to recover the money, but of course rhar is not at all what the film is about. The robbery serves simply to introduce Janet Leigh into the motel and into the shower, thus plunging us into the middle ofa situation that we could not have been led to expect. ARTHURIANA IJ.4 (2005) 53 54ARTHURIANA Hitchcock's definitions and descriptions were inconsistent and sometimes even contradicrory. However, in most instances his explanations do agtee on rhe cenrral point: a McGuffin is something—a person, an objecr, an event—the primary purpose ofwhich is to motivate the characrers and rherefore the plot, whether or nor that 'something' possesses any implicit significance. Hitchcock once temarked that in spy films the McGuffin is usually important or 'secret papers,' even though they are often imporrant only because someone has srolen rhem or is trying to steal them, and the consequences oftheir loss might be dire. We may not even know the subject of these documents, and even ifwe did know, what is in them is no more important rhan anything else that mighthe in them. As long as the characrers think something is important, and that 'something' propels rhe plot, we are dealing wirh a McGuffinization. A review ofa David Mamer film, Ronin, says much rhe same thing: The 'McGuffin,' coined by Alfred Hitchcock, is a plot device that drives the motivations of the characters. It is not important what the McGuffin is, or how it works—what is important is that the characters feel that it is important. In David Mamct's directorial debut 'The Spanish Prisoner,' the McGuffin is a mathematical model that would allow a company to profit from the stock market. In 'Ronin,' the McGuffin is the briefcase—nobody knows what's inside, but they do know that it is important enough to kill for it.' One additional example, this one drawn from the current television series 24. The recenr two seasons have presented national crises related to terrorism—a nuclear bomb in one, a deadly virus in rhe other. Each one provides the impetus for exactly one season (twenty-four...

Giving up the ghost: spirits, ghosts, and angels in mainstream comedy films

Giving Up the provides an in-depth analysis of comedy and romantic ghost films. Using post-Freudian, Lacanian and feminist approaches, Giving Up the examines a range of popular movies, including Heaven Can Wait (1978), Truly, Madly, Deeply (1991) and (1990). Katherine A. Fowkes outlines startling similarities among recent ghost films and films from the late 1930s and 1940s, speculating on the significance of ghosts and angels as subjects of film narrative. Giving Up the explores gender blurring to achieve an alternate conception of voyeurism and visual distance in cinema, linking films as diverse as the melodramatic Always (1986) and the comedy Ghost Dad (1990). Fowkes provides an analysis of films that traditionally have been overlooked by academics and popular critics as being mere fantasy and fluff. She reveals a significant cinematic phenomenon that defines ghost films as a distinct and important genre related not only to fantasy, romance and comedy, but also to melodrama, occult and horror. A counterpoint to body genres, such as the slasher and male-focused action movies which focus obsessively on the physical body, ghost films take up an opposite strategy by engaging in a denial of the body. Emblematic of a cultural confusion with - or an insistence on working through - problems of gender, comedy ghost films can be related to horror films and other Hollywood genres through their common difficulty with gendered identities. Fowkes ultimately argues that the devices used in ghost films prove to be uniquely suited to a comic and romantic agenda, both visually and narratively. A creative, original work on a neglected genre of films, Giving Up the investigates the present popularity of comedy ghost films and explains their appeal to both male and female audiences.