Episode 146 - The Batwoman (René Cardona, 1968) (with Iain Robert Smith)

The Batwoman (René Cardona, 1968).

The Fantasy/Animation podcast takes listeners on a journey through the intersection between fantasy cinema and the medium of animation. Available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify and many of your favourite podcast hosting platforms!

The Fantasy/Animation podcast is back with a bang thanks to the Mexican superhero caper La mujer murcielago/The Batwoman (René Cardona, 1968), a transnational twist on the famed DC character. Joining Chris and Alex to discuss intellectual property, international adaptation, and the politics of the remake is Dr Iain Robert Smith, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London. Iain’s research focuses on the ways in which material is adapted across different national contexts, including what happens when Hollywood films are remade by (and for) other cultures. These areas were central to his monograph The Hollywood Meme: Transnational Adaptations in World Cinema (EUP, 2016), and developed further in the anthologies Media Across Borders (with Andrea Esser and Miguel Bernal-Merino, Routledge, 2016) and Transnational Film Remakes (with Constantine Verevis, EUP 2017). Topics for this episode include the postwar history of unlicensed remakes; critical approaches to remaking and imitation through strategies of appropriation and localisation; The Batwoman’s status as a Mexican lucha libre film; budget filmmaking, non-cinema, and the spectacle of different kinds of visual effects; and what René Cardona’s superhero feature has to say about how the industry of the transnational remake helps us make sense of U.S. cultural power and imperialism.

**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**

**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**

Suggested Readings

• Brown, William. 2018. Non-Cinema: Global Digital Film-making and the Multitude. New York: Bloomsbury Academic

• Leitch, Thomas. 2007. Film Adaptation and Its Discontents: From Gone with the Wind to The Passion of the Christ. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press.

• Rodriguez, Emily Rauber. 2020. “El Santo vs. Mystery Science Theater 3000: Lucha Libre’s Transnational Journey into American Popular Culture.” Velvet Light Trap 85 (Spring): 43-52.

• Scholz, Anne-Marie. 2013. From Fidelity to History: Film Adaptations as Cultural Events in the Twentieth Century. New York: Berghahn.

• Stam, Robert. 2000. “Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation," In James Naremore, ed. Film Adaptation, 54-76. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.

• Tierney, Dolores. 2019. “El vampiro y el sexo/The Vampire and Sex (René Cardona 1969): El Santo, sexploitation films and politics in Mexico 1968.” Porn Studies 6, no. 4: 411-427.

• Tierney, Dolores. 2019. “Latsploitation.” In The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema, eds. Ernest Mathijs and Jamie Sexton, 89-97. London: Routledge.