The paper is ‘finished’. By that I mean it has been submitted for the PhD level course I am doing in Sweden. I realised my paper was testing the internal thresholds of the ‘essay’ medium in its attempted becoming-book. I had to discipline it through a code of spatialised scholarly convention. My argument was not going to spill from my pages into others. It was to be trapped!!!!
HU HA HAHAAHAHAhahahah HUHAHAHAhahahaha HUAHAHAhahahahah… [that was an evil laugh]
Anyway… so I have all these other examples that I have started on and could easily be turned into chapter length pieces, for example, one is on Pulp Fiction and the other is on the Matrix frachise (in both I explore sequel as repeated simulacra, albeit in different ways). I treat them both to the hot light of my ‘sequel’ interrogative methodology. Then there is a chapter on the political economy of enthusiasm (that I am going to have to write for my thesis), perhaps this can be my back burner project throughout my thesis. Some of the ideas are very similar. Plus it allows me to explore concepts in a different milieu.
I have contacted a few journals to see if there is any interest in publishing it. It is something of a mongrel paper, not quite cinema studies and not quite philosocultstuds, there is even a becoming-political economy about it, too. I am feeling very tired just thinking about it. Below is a copy of the email I sent off to one journal:
Dear editorial collective,
I am enquiring about the possibility of submitting a paper for submission. The problem is I have very little experience in the ‘cinema’ field. The only thing I have had published remotely related to cinema is an article I wrote for Street Machine magazine on the 100 Best Car Movies of All Time (the top five were selected by readers). I can send you a first draft of this if you like, although the published version and my initial version are quite different in some aspects. The paper was written for a PhD level course on ‘Mediated Cultures’ I am taking in Sweden as I am here on exchange. In some respects my article is a response to having to ‘deal’ with media in my thesis. My PhD thesis is on modified-car culture. I also have an interview with Mr A, the executive producer of the Getaway in Stockholm series of films, soon to be published in Autosalon magazine. Meeting up with one of the makers of GiS was a central reason for coming to Sweden.
Needless to say the sequels paper is more of a hoon understanding of cinema than a cinephile understanding (if that at all makes sense). I found the ‘problem’ of the sequel very intriguing and something that has not really been dealt with in the current cinema literature. I outline what is at stake for fans of film series and the ‘Hollwood cinema machine’ that makes them. I am not sure what to do with the paper, but I think it is at least worth finding out if you might be interested. Below are the title and abstract details.
Ciao,
Glen Fuller.Title: movie sequels, movie events and the political economy of enthusiasm
Abstract: This paper is written in response to fan backlash against the Alien vs Predator movie. I explore the conundrum of the ‘inferiority of the blockbuster sequel’. The contemporary state of Hollywood cinema allows for and indeed encourages the production of sequels due to the emergence of the movie as ‘media event’: the blockbuster. The ‘blockbuster’ is defined in terms of how it is and is not what Dayan Katz and Elihu Katz’s call a ‘media event’. The specific problem for fans and the Hollywood cinema machine is the period between the ‘original’ movie-event and the ‘sequel’ movie-event. There is an affective momentum building/manipulation process associated with this in-between period and it is explored using the conceptualised tools of anticipation and expectation. The relationship between fan-based enthusiasm and what Jonathan Beller calls the Cinematic Mode of Production is explored in relation to the specific role of ‘desire’. The Hollwood cinema machine and the enthusiasm of fans have different stakes in the problem of the sequel. The Spiderman franchise is offered and explored as an example of the successful blockbuster sequel.
I am not sure how this will ‘fly’ with editors of a cinema journal… Also, I have sent a copy to the guy I was arguing with on IMDb message boards about the Alien vs Predator film. I stick the boot (book?) into Paul W.S. Anderson in this article. I am not sure if he was to ever read the paper he would actually understand what I am talking about (that is not a slight against his intelligence, it is just my argument draws on so-called ‘high theory’ that requires extensive reading just to get a grasp of it).
very tired… need some food… fuck, Pimp My Ride is on tonight… new series! very tired…