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The Squid Cinema From Hell
Kinoteuthis Infernalis and the Emergence of Chthulumedia
by William Brown and David H. Fleming
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Book Presentation:
A philosophical study of cephalopods in cinema and contemporary media
• Offers up a 'posthuman' understanding of film and media, charting the historical relationships between cephalopods and cinema, especially in the digital age
• Draws on work by authors such as Vilém Flusser, Donna J. Haraway, Graham Harman and Eugene Thacker
• Engages with contemporary discourses of speculative realism, object-oriented ontology, animal studies and the weird in order to chart the relationship between cinema and cephalopods
• Takes in examples from Europe, North America, South America and Asia, across a range of media, including cinema, literature, music videos, 4DX, advertising, websites, YouTube videos, artificial intelligence, VR and more
Here be Kraken! The Squid Cinema From Hell draws upon writers like Vilém Flusser, Donna J. Haraway, Graham Harman and Eugene Thacker to offer up a critical analysis of cephalopods and other tentacular creatures in contemporary media, while also speculating that digital media might themselves constitute a weird, intelligent alien. If this were not enough to shiver ye timbers, the book engages with contemporary discourses of posthumanism, speculative realism, object-oriented ontology and animal studies to suggest that humans are the products of media rather than media being the products of humans.
Including case studies of films by Denis Villeneuve, Park Chan-wook and Céline Sciamma, The Squid Cinema From Hell also provides a daring engagement with various media beyond cinema, including literature, music videos, 4DX, advertising, websites, YouTube, Artificial Intelligence and more. Zounds! This unique and Lovecraftian book will change the way you think about, and with, our contemporary, media-saturated world. For as we contemplate the abyss, the abyss looks back at us – and chthulumedia, or media at the end of human times, begin to emerge.
About the authors:
William Brown is a Senior Lecturer in Film at the University of Roehampton, London. He is the author of various books, including Non-Cinema: Global Digital Filmmaking and the Multitude (Bloomsbury, 2018) and Supercinema: Film-Philosophy for the Digital Age (Berghahn, 2013). He is also a maker of micro-budget films, including En Attendant Godard (2009), Selfie (2014) and This is Cinema (2019).
David H. Fleming is a Senior Lecturer in the Communications, Media and Culture Division at the University of Stirling. He is the author of Unbecoming Cinema (2017) and co-author of Squid Cinema from Hell (2020, EUP) and Chinese Urban Shi-nema (2020). He is also co-editor of Cinema, Identities and Beyond (2009).
Press Reviews:
An excellent framework for how to look at cinema through a cephalopodic lens without giving in to the fetishizing impulse that the authors see as endemic to many fields dealing in the hybridization of human/object/ animal theories […] this text is especially useful in establishing an imaginative map of how to approach or engage with media in the winter of 2022, as the globe is deluged, over and over, with world-historic events that destabilize reality. Put differently, this is perhaps the best time for a text that destabilizes how we think of squid, cinema, time, being, and erotics to help imagine futures in an increasingly unstable world.– Genevieve Newman, Synoptique
This is a must-read book. To say that it's standout, or stands out, would be an understatement. The deranged duo of Brown and Fleming, writing as though Deleuze and Guattari dreamed up a book on an ill-advised convertible road trip to Vegas, have produced some of the most thought-provoking, ground-breaking, mind-enhancing, occult-embracing, change-inspiring, octo-punny, scholarship on film and ecology ever. With examples ranging from Scarlett Johansson to The Handmaiden (inspired by thinkers from Spinoza to Haraway to Flusser), this innovative work at the convergence of the post-human and the post-cinematic challenges us to think (and feel) anew about our cephalopodic world. Is this, somehow, more than a book? Is it, in fact, an Arrival-style portal into another idea of what is possible for the future of academic writing in the Chthulucene? I hope so. One day we may end up living under water, and if so, this may be the survival manual we all need. Will its tentacles take hold of your mind? Even if the suckers don’t grab you, I guarantee you won’t be bored.– David Martin-Jones, author of Cinema Against Doublethink (2018).
Why did we have to wait so long for a cephalopodic media archaeology? Finding the limber mollusc at the heart of twentieth century systems theory and neuroscience, capitalism and cinema, Brown and Fleming show that modern culture has long been embraced by a tentacular abstract line, immersed in an inky and vaporous haptic space. The authors’ eight-limbed persona writes with a giddily empathic style that will grip you, squeeze you, and leave you pleasantly limp.– Laura U. Marks, Simon Fraser University, author of Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image (2015)
Inspired by Flusser and Bec’s Vampyrotheuthis Infernalis and many other sci-phy philosophy and posthuman media theory, this book takes us on a strange and yet serious ‘eight legged’ tour along the omnipresence of the cephalopod in cinema. Arguing that squids and octopuses are media, Brown and Fleming convincingly demonstrate that the tentacular and modular nature of digital media practices need more squid-thinking. Original and knowledgeable, and deliciously written this book presents provocative thoughts for (and from) the future of our media world and deserves highest recommendation.– Patricia Pisters, University of Amsterdam, author of The Neuro-Image: A Deleuzian Film-philosophy of Digital Screen Culture (2012)
See the publisher website: Edinburgh University Press
> From the same authors:
> On a related topic:
Cinema of/for the Anthropocene (2025)
Affect, Ecology, and More-Than-Human Kinship
Dir. Katarzyna Paszkiewicz and Andrea Ruthven
Subject: Theory
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