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What the popularity of the Fast and Furious film franchise says about Hollywood blockbusters and media production

Fast and Furious Franchising charts the transformation of Hollywood through the story of one of its most successful cinematic universes. Released in 2001, The Fast and the Furious became an unexpected hit, developing into a seven-billion-dollar media franchise with nine direct sequels (so far), one “sidequel,” copious spin-offs, and licensing deals from board games to theme park rides.

Dan Hassler-Forest shows how Fast and Furious paved the way for a new form of serialized storytelling that balanced new distribution practices and expansion into international markets with a savvy awareness of representational politics. By following the series’s development over the past twenty-five years, Fast and Furious Franchising reveals distinct phases that reflect larger media-industrial trends: the postclassical blockbuster era of the early 2000s; the emergence of the megafranchise between 2008 and 2014; the franchise’s “imperial” era, from 2015 through 2019; and the postpandemic crisis era of media saturation and franchise fatigue.

While examining this rapidly changing media landscape, Hassler-Forest offers lively, insightful analyses of the films as they have embraced ever-more-ludicrous plots and unlikely character turns while always maintaining their signature faith in the power of family. As he illuminates the role of the Fast and Furious movies in the global entertainment industry, Hassler-Forest shows how the films’ improbable success proves Dominic Toretto’s adage that, whether “you win by an inch or a mile . . . winning’s winning.”

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Brenda Werth’s Fictions of the Real traces the transformation of “the real” and its transnational conceptualization by Argentine artists in the twenty-first century, focusing on artists who engage in both documentary theater and filmmaking. Werth places the work of Lola Arias, Romina Paula, Federico León, Mariano Pensotti, and Grupo Krapp in dialogue with the distinct but intertwined lineages of theater and film, exploring the intermedial dimensions of these artists’ theatrical work, resonances in their documentary films, and the transmedial relationships between their documentary plays and films. Focusing on the dynamic and shifting context of Argentina between 1998 and 2023, a period roughly bookmarked by the economic crisis of 2001 and the COVID-19 pandemic, this book explores how these artists disrupt the relations of power and counter political manipulation with their own evocative fictions of the real as they engage in the roles of translators, curators, researchers, archivists, and collaborators.

With his thumbprint on the most ubiquitous films of childhood, Walt Disney is widely considered to be the most conventional of all major American moviemakers. The adjective "Disneyfied" has become shorthand for a creative work that has abandoned any controversial or substantial content to find commercial success.

But does Disney deserve that reputation? Douglas Brode overturns the idea of Disney as a middlebrow filmmaker by detailing how Disney movies played a key role in transforming children of the Eisenhower era into the radical youth of the Age of Aquarius. Using close readings of Disney projects, Brode shows that Disney's films were frequently ahead of their time thematically. Long before the cultural tumult of the sixties, Disney films preached pacifism, introduced a generation to the notion of feminism, offered the screen's first drug-trip imagery, encouraged young people to become runaways, insisted on the need for integration, advanced the notion of a sexual revolution, created the concept of multiculturalism, called for a return to nature, nourished the cult of the righteous outlaw, justified violent radicalism in defense of individual rights, argued in favor of communal living, and encouraged antiauthoritarian attitudes. Brode argues that Disney, more than any other influence in popular culture, should be considered the primary creator of the sixties counterculture—a reality that couldn't be further from his "conventional" reputation.

"The most sensational, perpetual teenager in the world.” —Jim Henson

"To know him was to love him, and we do." —Mark Hamill
 
Funny Boy: The Richard Hunt Biography tells the life story of a gifted performer whose gleeful irreverence, sharp wit and generous spirit inspired millions. Richard Hunt was one of the original main five performers in the Muppet troupe. He brought to life an impressive range of characters on The Muppet Show, Sesame Street, Fraggle Rock and various Muppet movies, everyone from eager gofer Scooter to elderly heckler Statler, groovy girl Janice to freaked-out lab helper Beaker, even early versions of Miss Piggy and Elmo. Hunt also acted, directed and mentored the next generation of performers. His accomplishments are all the more remarkable in that he crammed them all into only 40 years. 

Richard Hunt was just 18 years old when he joined Jim Henson’s company, where his edgy humor quickly helped launch the Muppets into international stardom. Hunt lived large, savoring life’s delights, amassing a vivid, disparate community of friends. Even when the AIDS epidemic wrought its devastation, claiming the love of Hunt’s life and threatening his own life, he showed an extraordinary sense of resilience, openness and joy. Hunt’s story exemplifies how to follow your passion, foster your talents, adapt to life’s surprises, genuinely connect with everyone from glitzy celebrities to gruff cab drivers – and have a hell of a lot of fun along the way.

A provocative peek into this complicated film as a space for subversion, activism, and imaginative power

While both fans and foes point to Mad Max: Fury Road’s feminist credentials, Furious Feminisms asks: is there really anything feminist or radical happening on the screen? The four authors—from backgrounds in art history, American literature, disability studies, and sociology—ask what is possible, desirable, or damaging in theorizing feminism in the contested landscape of the twenty-first century. Can we find beauty in the Anthropocene? Can power be wrested from a violent system without employing and perpetuating violence? 

This experiment in collaborative criticism weaves multiple threads of dialogue together to offer a fresh perspective on our current cultural moment. 

Forerunners: Ideas First
Short books of thought-in-process scholarship, where intense analysis, questioning, and speculation take the lead