Footnote #54 - Cult Cinema (with Iain Robert Smith)
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!
Fresh from their discussion of La mujer murcielago/The Batwoman (René Cardona, 1968), Chris and Alex are once again joined by Dr Iain Robert Smith, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at King’s College London, to undertake a 10-minute introduction to cult and cult cinema. Listen as the trio offer a closer look at the politics of ‘cult’ as a critical and cultural category; what it means to negotiate obsessive reception and fandom in the analysis of film, and the extent to which cult operates as a type of cinema; the oppositional quality of cult and its uneven relationship to the mainstream; the implied gender politics of the so-called ‘masculinity of cult’ and questions of inclusion and exclusion; and the enjoyment of both studying and taking part in the kinds of participatory cultures that have shaped the global canon of cult.
**Fantasy/Animation theme tune composed by Francisca Araujo**
**As featured on Feedspot’s 25 Best London Education Podcasts**
Suggested Readings
Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. London and New York: Routledge.
Hollows, Joanne. 2003. “The Masculinity of Cult.” In Defining Cult Movies: the Cultural Politics of Oppositional Taste, eds. Mark Jancovich, Antonio Lazaro Reboll, Julian Stringer, and Andy Willis, 35-53. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Jancovich, Mark. 2002. “Cult Fictions: Cult Movies, Subcultural Capital and the Production of Cultural Distinctions.” Cultural Studies 16, no. 2: 306–322.
Mathijs, Ernest, and Xavier Mendik, eds. 2007. The Cult Film Reader. Berkshire: Open University Press.
Mathijs, Ernest, and Jamie Sexton, eds. 2011. Cult Cinema: An Introduction. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell Publishing.
Mathijs, Ernest, and Jamie Sexton, eds. 2019. The Routledge Companion to Cult Cinema. London: Routledge.
Thornton, Sara. 1995. Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital. Cambridge: Polilty Press.