Squid Cinema from Hell

'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.'
Laura U. Marks, Simon Fraser University, author of Hanan al-Cinema: Affections for the Moving Image (2015)
'This is a must-read book. The deranged duo of Brown and Fleming, writing as though Deleuze and Guattari dreamed up a book on an ill-advised 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.'
David Martin-Jones, University of Glasgow, author of Cinema Against Doublethink (2018)
'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. Brown and Fleming convincingly demonstrate that the tentacular and modular nature of digital media practices need more squid-thinking. Original and knowledgeable, 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)
Here be Kraken! The Squid Cinema from Hell, draws upon writers like Vilém Flusser, Donna J. Haraway, Graham Harman and Eugene Thacker to offer 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, it also daringly engages with media beyond cinema, including literature, music videos, 4DX, advertising, YouTube, artificial intelligence and more. Zounds! This unique and Lovecraftian book will change the way you think about, and with, our 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.
William Brown is a Reader in Film at the University of Roehampton, London.
David H. Fleming is a Senior Lecturer in the Communications, Media and Culture Division at the University of Stirling.
Cover image: Rory Perrott www.roryperrott.com
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edinburghuniversitypress.com
ISBN 978-1-4744-6372-0
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