[Commlist] Encountering the Impossible: The Fantastic in Hollywood Fantasy Cinema (SUNY Press)

New monograph
/Encountering the Impossible: The Fantastic in Hollywood Fantasy Cinema/ 
(SUNY Press).

https://www.sunypress.edu/(F(ox0gDH1S2WExoz9RQucEprdTVvACyUSy_R1xDa1j2FgGhTXkoO6OFiIyL1P4xgQA0gZa70kXMCHDAykAMljH9fFzbcRnVSdjs7Mxm5SSxTQv3hMQLpQHL-NNbPPJu_IBbAWBXQIzQh7tycruho9a4G_j0rh-pWRgAHJgNJ7ntMI1))/p-7150-encountering-the-impossible.aspx

*Summary*	

/The first academic explanation for how spectators use their 
imaginations as part of the experience and appreciation of popular 
fantasy filmmaking./

Hollywood fantasy cinema is responsible for some of the most lucrative 
franchises produced over the past two decades, yet it remains difficult 
to find popular or critical consensus on what the experience of watching 
fantasy cinema actually entails. What makes something a fantasy film, 
and what unique pleasures does the genre offer? In /Encountering the 
Impossible/, Alexander Sergeant solves the riddle of the fantasy film by 
theorizing the underlying experience of imagination alluded to in 
scholarly discussions of the genre. Drawing principally on the 
psychoanalysis of Melanie Klein and D.W. Winnicott, Sergeant considers 
the way in which fantasy cinema rejects Hollywood’s typically 
naturalistic mode of address to generate an alternative experience that 
Sergeant refers to as the fantastic, a way of approaching cinema that 
embraces the illusory nature of the medium as part of the pleasure of 
the experience. Analyzing such canonical Hollywood fantasy films as /The 
Wizard of Oz/, /It’s a Wonderful Life/, /Mary Poppins/, /Conan the 
Barbarian/, and /The Lord of the Rings/ movies, Sergeant theorizes how 
fantasy cinema provides a unique film experience throughout its 
ubiquitous presence in the history of Hollywood film production.

*Alexander Sergeant* is Senior Lecturer in Film and Media Studies at the 
University of Portsmouth. He is the coeditor (with Christopher Holliday) 
of /Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres/, 
which was Runner Up for Best Collection at the 2019 BAFTSS (British 
Association for Television & Screen Studies) awards. He is the 
co-founder of /Fantasy-Animation.org/ and co-host of the 
/Fantasy/Animation/ podcast.


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