Society for Cinema and Media Studies
March 4-7, 2004
Atlanta, GA
DEADLINE: August 15, 2003

Paper proposals are sought for the following conference panel:

"Reading Class Back Into Genre": With the publication of Nick Browne's Reconfiguring Film Genres, which calls, contra the structuralist moment, for an exploration of the cultural implications of genre, including its class aspects, and the publication of The Hidden Foundation, with its exploration of the class position and class contradictions of both the film noir and the action film, and in light of both the massive attack on working and middle class families by the Bush Administration in the form of tax and service cuts in the midst of, at the very least, an extended recession, and continuing corporate scandals, class is back on the table as a subject for consideration in film and media studies. This panel proposes to reopen the subject of class either by examining genres that have not been previously extensively viewed through this lens (for example, The Black Action Film as representative of 70s class tensions; The Classical American Musical as obscuring class when set against musicals from the same period from Egypt and India) or by revisiting genres where class has been an issue but seeing them in new ways (the police procedural as rolling back working class representation in the film noir and then being revived in light of the current return of the Cold War; the melodrama as mediating female workplace tensions in the 1950s). Another possible subject would be readings of the place of Euro- and Hollywood-centered genre studies in eliding class and how this might be addressed. Panelists might also define their own genres or genre variants that allow class to emerge in a more central way, such as the transglobal children's street film (Pixote, Los Olvidados, 400 Blows, City of God). Genre studies is an area often neglected as a site of the working out of class tensions and this panel aims to redress that oversight. Sponsored by the SCMS Caucus on Class.