Project MUSE®: Science Fiction Film and Television - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/466
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Science Fiction Film and Television.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2008) through current issueLatest Articles: Science Fiction Film and TelevisionTWOProject MUSE®Science Fiction Film and Television1754-37891754-3770Latest articles in Science Fiction Film and Television. Feed provided by Project MUSE®The palimpsest of Anna and the Apocalypse: Film parody and the changing depiction of zombie outbreaks
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985611
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As zombies become increasingly common in popular culture – and, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us, an alarming proportion of the population becomes increasingly unwilling to face the realities of global contagion – I find myself asking the same question posed by Edgar Wright in his 2006 film Shaun of the Dead: if a zombie outbreak were to occur in real life, would anyone even notice?1 As we have all seen over the past five years, people have a remarkable ability to ignore potential threats – even existential ones – whether they be fictional zombies or real-world viruses, and this stubborn myopia represents one more thing that zombie narratives can teach us about. Indeed, the moment a zombie outbreak occurs on
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/466/image/coversmallThe palimpsest of Anna and the Apocalypse: Film parody and the changing depiction of zombie outbreaks2026-03-17text/htmlen-USThe palimpsest of Anna and the Apocalypse: Film parody and the changing depiction of zombie outbreaks2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®682372026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17Race, technology, and the animal: Posthuman solidarity in The Creator
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985612
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Within what Aylish Wood terms “fictions of technoscience” (2002, 177), robots and androids routinely function allegorically as an oppressed, marginalized community fighting for recognition of their personhood. The process of dehumanization gets metaphorically thrust upon metallic beings for whom visible otherness is writ onto the contours of their bodies. It is this process that gives rise to audiovisual social commentaries on not only enslavement, imperialism, and colonialism, but also on the ethical limitations of anthropocentrism and posthumanism’s problematic relationship to race (Kakoudaki 2014, 117). Gareth Edwards’s recent sf film, The Creator (2023), stages precisely this scenario, in which a synthetic
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/466/image/coversmallRace, technology, and the animal: Posthuman solidarity in The Creator2026-03-17text/htmlen-USRace, technology, and the animal: Posthuman solidarity in The Creator2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®814602026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17Quantum computers and predicting the future in Devs and Westworld
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985613
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“Whoever controls information will control the future.”The history of prediction can be traced to the nineteenth century and to the English writer H.G. Wells, who initiated social and technological prognostication, adopting the future consequences of human actions for forecasting and calling for an academic study of the future. In the new climate of prediction, from 1890 on, techno-optimist books were published as well as popular press forecasts on a variety of subjects, followed by futures-oriented educational approaches and philosophical ideas (Gidley 2017, 40). After the First World War, national planning emerged as a popular strategy worldwide, accompanied by forecasting and predicting the future with a strong
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/466/image/coversmallQuantum computers and predicting the future in Devs and Westworld2026-03-17text/htmlen-USQuantum computers and predicting the future in Devs and Westworld2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®1167702026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17Edward, Jeff, Blackbeard, Kraken: Name changes and intersectional identities in Our Flag Means Death
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985614
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HBO Max’s Our Flag Means Death (OFMD) debuted in March 2022 and rapidly gained a cult following among LGBTQIA+ viewers (Joho 2022). Described by its creator David Jenkins as an “historical pirate rom-com” (Jenkins 2022), the show is set in 1717 and is loosely inspired by the events and personages of the Golden Age of Piracy, including the two lead characters Blackbeard (Taika Waititi) and Stede Bonnet (Rhys Darby). While the show reinterprets certain historical personages and events through the perspectives of multiply marginalized people, I argue that OFMD moves well beyond constructing a realistic counter-historical narrative, offering a sharp departure not just from historical accuracy, but the laws of physical
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/466/image/coversmallEdward, Jeff, Blackbeard, Kraken: Name changes and intersectional identities in Our Flag Means Death2026-03-17text/htmlen-USEdward, Jeff, Blackbeard, Kraken: Name changes and intersectional identities in Our Flag Means Death2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®967042026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17Black zombies: A referendum on the living death penalty
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985615
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Southern trees bear a strange fruit Blood on the leaves and blood at the root Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.Hidden in plain sight against the backdrop of popular culture, a deep ideological structure in the global imagination exists with respect to the zombie, a structure that is initially difficult to articulate and map out: racism. I am interested here in the flesh-eating, ambulatory, and rotting corpse variety of zombies in speculative worlds of fiction, film, and television: fast zombies like those portrayed in Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002); the traditional zombies of the mega-smash AMC show The Walking Dead (2010–22) and its spinoffs, based on the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/466/image/coversmallBlack zombies: A referendum on the living death penalty2026-03-17text/htmlen-USBlack zombies: A referendum on the living death penalty2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®1028912026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17Disney Channel’s Extraordinary Girls: Gender in 2000’s Tween Sitcoms by Christina H. Hodel (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985616
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Following the publication of Laura Mulvey’s groundbreaking essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in 1975, feminist media studies emerged as a subfield of media studies, analyzing film, television, social media, and popular culture through a feminist lens.1 In the last three decades, postfeminism has become a common subject of feminist media criticism; Rebecca Hains, Dawn Currie, Rosalind Gill, Angela McRobbie, Michelle S. Bae, and a host of other prominent scholars have investigated postfeminism and its discourses of girl power in popular media. In her 2007 article “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility” from The European Journal of Cultural Studies, Gill defines postfeminism as a patterned
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/466/image/coversmallDisney Channel’s Extraordinary Girls: Gender in 2000’s Tween Sitcoms by Christina H. Hodel (review)2026-03-17text/htmlen-USDisney Channel’s Extraordinary Girls: Gender in 2000’s Tween Sitcoms by Christina H. Hodel (review)2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®143302026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17Monsters and Monstrosity in Media: Reflections on Vulnerability
ed. by Yeojin Kim and Shane Carreon (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985617
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Yeojin Kim and Shane Carreon bring together a host of fresh voices, media forms, and critical perspectives in their recent edited collection Monsters and Monstrosity in Media: Reflections on Vulnerability. The book is a punchy contribution demonstrating what monster studies in conversation with critical media studies has to offer the academic publishing landscape. In their own words, along with the additional voice of Anson Koch-Rein in the introduction:through collective scholarly effort, we rethink the monster on-screen as well as the notion of monstrosity not only as it represents perceived difference, (non)belongings, and disruptions of traditional identity markers, but also as it either implicitly endorses
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/466/image/coversmallMonsters and Monstrosity in Media: Reflections on Vulnerability
ed. by Yeojin Kim and Shane Carreon (review)2026-03-17text/htmlen-USMonsters and Monstrosity in Media: Reflections on Vulnerability
ed. by Yeojin Kim and Shane Carreon (review)2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®146232026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17Doctor Who and Gay Male Fandom: A Queer(ed) Media Franchise by Mike Stack (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985618
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Mike Stack’s Doctor Who and Gay Male Fandom: A Queer(ed) Media Franchise is, first of all, fascinating to me as a long-time fan of Doctor Who (1963–). Stack’s introduction makes it quite clear that the show has long been a queer phenomenon, even before sexual identity and orientation were depicted overtly. Throughout the entire work, Stack refers to a variety of sources – the people he interviewed, multiple episodes of both Doctor Who and its direct spinoff shows, and many respected theorists across various genres of literary theory. Importantly, he notes that his own work is a historical product. While this study is a glimpse of fandom, textual readings, and society as a whole, all of that can change over time.
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/466/image/coversmallDoctor Who and Gay Male Fandom: A Queer(ed) Media Franchise by Mike Stack (review)2026-03-17text/htmlen-USDoctor Who and Gay Male Fandom: A Queer(ed) Media Franchise by Mike Stack (review)2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®130712026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17Science Fiction Theatre by J.P. Telotte (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985619
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If any sf media has screamed for analysis, it must be the neglected Science Fiction Theatre, a bold and pattern-shattering series that taught sf creatives how to construct a gripping anthology series rather than a children’s space opera. The innovative Science Fiction Theatre navigated the storms of early syndicated television from April 9, 1955, to February 9, 1957, with a total of 78 episodes over the course of two seasons. In this book, J.P. Telotte shows how Science Fiction Theatre broke new ground in the way that its episodes appealed to an adult audience by means of certain plot, theme, and marketing choices, as outlined by Telotte in his analysis of three key episodes: “No Food for Thought” (May 14, 1955)
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/466/image/coversmallScience Fiction Theatre by J.P. Telotte (review)2026-03-17text/htmlen-USScience Fiction Theatre by J.P. Telotte (review)2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®154822026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17About the contributors
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985620
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Kyle William Bishop is a third-generation professor at Southern Utah University, where he teaches courses in film studies, American literature, and horror narratives. He has presented and published on a variety of popular culture texts, monster narratives, and cinematic adaptations, including Frankenstein, Dracula, The Birds, Fun Home, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Edgar Allan Poe, and, primarily, a number of diverse zombie narratives in both literature and film. He has a PhD in English from the University of Arizona and has published two monographs on zombies – American Zombie Gothic (2010) and How Zombies Conquered Popular Culture (2015) – and co-edited two scholarly collections – The Written Dead (2017) and The
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/466/image/coversmallAbout the contributors2026-03-17text/htmlen-USAbout the contributors2026-03-172026TWOProject MUSE®70682026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-17