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Encountering the Impossible by Alexander Sergeant
The first academic explanation for how spectators use their imaginations as part of the experience and appreciation of popular fantasy filmmaking.
2022 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title
Shortlisted for the 2022 Best First Monograph Award presented by the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies
Hollywood fantasy cinema is responsible for some of the most lucrative franchises produced over the past two decades, yet it remains difficult to find popular or critical consensus on what the experience of watching fantasy cinema actually entails. What makes something a fantasy film, and what unique pleasures does the genre offer? In Encountering the Impossible, Alexander Sergeant solves the riddle of the fantasy film by theorizing the underlying experience of imagination alluded to in scholarly discussions of the genre. Drawing principally on the psychoanalysis of Melanie Klein and D.W. Winnicott, Sergeant considers the way in which fantasy cinema rejects Hollywood's typically naturalistic mode of address to generate an alternative experience that Sergeant refers to as the fantastic, a way of approaching cinema that embraces the illusory nature of the medium as part of the pleasure of the experience. Analyzing such canonical Hollywood fantasy films as The Wizard of Oz, It's a Wonderful Life, Mary Poppins, Conan the Barbarian, and The Lord of the Rings movies, Sergeant theorizes how fantasy cinema provides a unique film experience throughout its ubiquitous presence in the history of Hollywood film production.
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Fantastic Voyages of the Cinematic Imagination
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Wastelands and Wonderlands
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From Doors to Screens
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The Biopolitical Turn in World Cinema
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Language Without Borders
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Overhearing Film Music
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On Shoreless Sea
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Haunting the World
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Celluloid Babel
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Happiness and Tears, After Cavell
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Eccentric Laughter
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Brief Encounters
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Déjà Viewed
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Plastic Time
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Visions in the Frame
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Hitchcock and Hospitality
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The Celluloid Atlantic
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Cavell on Film
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Torturous Etiquettes
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The Slapstick Camera
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Action, Action, Action
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Hollywood Films in North Africa and the Middle East
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Seeing Symphonically
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Reluctant Sleuths, True Detectives
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Writ on Water
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Curtains of Light
Alexander Sergeant is Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at the University of Portsmouth. He is the coeditor (with Christopher Holliday) of Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres, which was Runner Up for Best Collection at the 2019 BAFTSS (British Association for Television & Screen Studies) awards. He is the founder of Fantasy-Animation.org and co-host of the Fantasy/Animation podcast.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781438484594 |
| ISBN 10 | 1438484593 |
| Title | Encountering the Impossible |
| Author | Alexander Sergeant |
| Series | Suny Series Horizons Of Cinema |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | State University of New York Press |
| Year published | 2021-08-01 |
| Number of pages | 268 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |