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Katherine Fusco, "Hollywood's Others: Love and Limitation in the Star System" (Columbia UP, 2025)
We tend to think about movie stars as either glamorous or relatable. But in the 1920s and 1930s, when the Hollywood star system was taking shape, a number of unusual stars appeared on the silver screen, representing groups from which the American mainstream typically sought to avert its eyes. What did it mean for a white entertainment columnist to empathize with an ambiguously gendered Black child star? Or for boys to idolize Lon Chaney, famous for portraying characters with disabilities? Hollywood's Others: Love and Limitation in the Star System (Columbia UP, 2025) explores the affective ties between white, non-disabled audiences and the fascinatingly different stars with whom they identified—but only up to a point. Katherine Fusco argues that stardom in this era at once offered ways for viewers to connect across group boundaries while also policing the limits of empathy. Examining fan magazines alongside film performances, she traces the intense audience attachment to atypical celebrities and the ways the film industry sought to manage it. Fusco considers Shirley Temple’s career in light of child labor laws and changing notions of childhood; shows how white viewers responded to Black music in depictions of the antebellum South; and analyzes the gender politics of conspiracy theories around celebrity suicides. Shedding light on marginalized stardoms and the anxieties they provoked, Hollywood’s Others challenges common notions about film’s capacity to build empathy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
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Alice Lovejoy, "Tales of Militant Chemistry" (U California Press, 2025)
In Tales of Militant Chemistry (U of California Press, 2025), Alice Lovejoy tells the untold story of film as a chemical cousin to poison gas and nuclear weapons, shaped by centuries of violent extraction. The history of film calls to mind unforgettable photographs, famous directors, and the glitz and hustle of the media business. But there is another tale to tell that connects film as a material to the twentieth century's history of war, destruction, and cruelty. This story comes into focus during World War II at the factories of Tennessee Eastman, where photographic giant Kodak produced the rudiments of movie magic. Not far away, at Oak Ridge, Kodak was also enriching uranium for the Manhattan Project--uranium mined in the Belgian Congo and destined for the bomb that fell on Hiroshima. While the world's largest film manufacturer transformed into a formidable military contractor, across the ocean its competitor Agfa grew entangled with Nazi Germany's machinery of war. After 1945, Kodak's film factories stood at the front lines of a new, colder war, as their photosensitive products became harbingers of the dangers of nuclear fallout. Following scientists, soldiers, prisoners, and spies through Kodak's and Agfa's global empires, Lovejoy links the golden age of cinema and photography to colonialism, the military-industrial complex, radioactive dust, and toxic waste. Revelatory and chilling, Tales of Militant Chemistry shows how film became a weapon whose chemistry irrevocably shaped the world we live in today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
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Patricia Aufderheide, "Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy" (U California Press, 2024)
Kartemquin Films: Documentaries on the Frontlines of Democracy (U California Press, 2024) traces how filmmaker-philosophers brought the dream of making documentaries and strengthening democracy to award-winning reality—with help from nuns, gang members, skateboarders, artists, disability activists, and more. The evolution of Kartemquin Films—Peabody, Emmy, and Sundance-awarded and Oscar-nominated makers of such hits as Hoop Dreams and Minding the Gap—is also the story of U.S. independent documentary film over the last seventy years. Patricia Aufderheide reveals the untold story of how Kartemquin developed as an institution that confronts the brutal realities of the industry and society while empowering people to claim their right to democracy. Kartemquin filmmakers, inspired by pragmatic philosopher John Dewey, made their studio a Chicago-area institution. Activists for a more public media, they boldly confronted in their own productions the realities of gender, race, and class. They negotiated the harsh terms and demands of commercial media, from 16mm through the streaming era, while holding fast to their democratic vision. Drawing on archival research, interviews, and personal experience, Aufderheide tells an inspiring story of how to make media that matters in a cynical world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
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Excalibur
We’ve seen many attempts at transferring Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur and its variants onto the screen, but none of them capture the spirit of the original quite like Excalibur, John Boorman’s 1981 film that can be called, without insult, “aggressively two-dimensional.” Join us for a conversation about how Boorman makes the experience of watching a film like the experience of reading the legends. We also talk about the two best portrayals of King Arthur: Nigel Terry and Graham Chapman. If the conversation makes you want to read the original material, you can find a great edition of Le Morte d’Arthur here. Incredible bumper music by John Deley. Please subscribe to the show and consider leaving us a rating or review. You can find over three hundred episodes wherever you get your podcasts. Follow the show on X and on Letterboxd–and email us any time at [email protected] with requests and recommendations. Also check out Dan Moran’s substack, Pages and Frames, where he writes about books and movies, as well as his many film-related author interviews on The New Books Network. Check out Mike Takla’s substack, The Grumbler’s Almanac, for commentary on offbeat topics of the day. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
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Thomas Christian Bächle and Jascha Bareis eds., "The Realities of Autonomous Weapons (Bristol UP, 2025)
Autonomous weapons exist in a strange territory between Pentagon procurement contracts and Hollywood blockbusters, between actual military systems and speculative futures. For this week's Liminal Library, I spoke with Jascha Bareis, co-editor of The Realities of Autonomous Weapons (Bristol UP, 2025), about how these dual existences shape international relations and cultural imagination. The collection examines autonomous weapons not just as military hardware but as psychological tools that reshape power dynamics through their mere possibility. These systems epitomize what the editors call "the fluidity of violence"—warfare that dissolves traditional boundaries between human decision and machine action, between targeted strikes and algorithmic inevitability. Bareis and his contributors trace fascinating connections between fictional representations and military doctrine—how Terminator narratives influence Pentagon planning while actual weapons development feeds back into artistic imagination. The book wrestles with maintaining "meaningful human control" over systems designed to operate faster than human thought, a challenge that grows more urgent as militaries worldwide race toward greater autonomy. Each chapter reveals how thoroughly we need to rethink human-machine relationships in warfare, from the gendered coding of robot soldiers in film to the way AI imaginaries differ between Silicon Valley and New Delhi. Autonomous weapons force us to confront uncomfortable realities about agency, violence, and the increasingly blurred line between human judgment and algorithmic certainty. Links: A Clean Kill? the role of Patriot in the Gulf War Statement delivered by Germany on Working Definition of LAWS / “Definition of Systems under Consideration” The Silicon Valley venture capitalists who want to ‘move fast and break things’ in the defence industry Hype Studies 'The Gatekeepers' documentary Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/film
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