New Slants and New SF Cinemas ed. by J.P. Telotte (review)

Reviewed by: New Slants and New SF Cinemased. by J. P. Telotte Troy Michael Bordun New Slants and New SF Cinemas. J. P. Telotte, ed. The Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinemas. Oxford UP, 2023. xviii+ 338 pp. 165 hc. In his exceptional introduction to sf genre studies, J. P. Telotte lays out the organizational principle of The Oxford Handbook of New Science Fiction Cinemas: the volume will not locate the "Platonic idea" of the genre (quoting Edward James) but will explore " slant formsof sf" (11, 10; emphasis in original). The contributing authors show how contemporary sf films shift and divert attention away from traditional genre conventions while incorporating concerns typically associated with other generic forms. Telotte details three ways in which the scholars in the volume approach contemporary sf cinema: through fractured forms, through critical/theoretical windows, and through "'special filters' through which audiences see and appreciate" the films (18). The authors here examine a plethora of twentieth and twenty-first century End Page 126films; academically oriented readers will find many chapters to pique their interests. As one might expect from a Handbook, most chapters function as overviews of a respective topic; other chapters advance an argument closer to what one might find in a journal or edited collection on a more narrowly focused area of inquiry. Many chapters share a common structure, making for a straightforward read, whether cover-to-cover or by subject. Susana M. Morris's contribution, "Ethnogothic Film, " is a good example. Morris begins with the contemporary stakes of the slant and defines it as sf cinema featuring Black protagonists that "troubles dominant tropes of the uncanny and abject so that those deemed monstrous must deal with the specter of themselves and those who dehumanize them" (72-73). Then she locates gothic antecedents, provides twentieth-century examples, and concludes with an original reading of a contemporary ethnogothic film, Jordan Peele's Get Out (2017). Telotte files Morris's chapter in part one of the volume, "Slant Screens of New SF Cinema, " on the fractured forms noted above. Her contribution complements De Witt Douglas Kilgore's opening chapter on Afrofuturist cinema. His typology of Afrofuturist films as thin, strong, and revolutionary, and his historical overview from Space is the Place (John Coney, 1974) to Black Panther (Ryan Coogler, 2018) suggests a rich array of works in this slant. Part one leans on the social and political significance of new sf cinemas. Susan A. George offers some novel insights into feminist speculative fiction (femspec). She reminds readers of the secondary place of women in twentieth-century sf cinema; not until Alien (Ridley Scott, 1979) and Terminator 2 (James Cameron, 1991) do women become the heroes of the story. These films "opened the door to a host of strong, heroic, often genetically engineered, enhanced, or synthetic new-millennium sf women who ushered in new values and cultural perspectives, " although many twenty-first century femspec films depict traditionally beautiful women performing their impressive physical feats in "tight leather outfits" (92). George concludes with close readings of two popular examples of "femspec perspectives and feminist ideologies" (93), Alex Garland's AI-thriller Ex Machina (2015) and Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck's superhero flick Captain Marvel (2019). The Marvel Cinematic Universe gets a longer treatment in Angela Ndalianis's gloss on the superhero genre. She reads Istvan Csicsery-Ronay's "seven beauties of science fiction" in the inaugural MCU film Iron Man (Jon Favreau, 2008). Ndalianis's chapter is an exciting way forward for studies of superhero cinemas as sf rather than fantasy. Gerald Duchovnay advances a study of magical realism sf film, another type closely linked with fantasy. After outlining the challenges of defining magical realism and its literary and film precursors, Duchovnay reads Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape of Water (2017) as a prime example. He reads the film biographically, stylistically, and thematically across the director's oeuvre. Then he supports the argument by identifying its narrative based on reality, the "strange effect" of the fantastic End Page 127on that reality (in this case, the gill-man), and its specificity of setting (the 1950s) (133). Steampunk cinema and kaiju film put further. . .