Theorizing Stupid Media: De-Naturalizing Story Structures in the Cinematic, Televisual, and Videogames [Paperback]

This book explores the stupid as it manifests in mediathe cinema, television and streamed content, and videogames. The stupid is theorized not as a pejorative term but to address media that fails to conform to established narrative conventions, often surfacing at evolutionary moments. The Transformers franchise is often dismissed as being stupid because its stylistic vernacular privileges kinetic qualities over conventional narration. Similarly, the stupid is often present in genre fails like mother!, or in instances of narrative dissonancejoyously in Adventure Time; more controversially in Gone Home where a story feels off It also manifests in ludonarrative dissonance when gameplay and narrative seemingly run counter to one another in videogames like Undertale and Bioshock. This book is addressed to those interested in media that is quirky, spectacle-driven, or generally hard to placestupid!

1.The Stupider the Better.- 2.The Stupid in the Contemporary Hollywood Vernacular: Spectacularly Stupid Transformers.- 3.The Stupid in Genre Fails.- 4.The Stupid as Narrative Dissonance.- 5.The Stupid as Ludonarrative Dissonance.- 6.Conclusion: Well That Was Stupid.

Aaron Michael Kerner is a Professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University, USA. His previous publications include: Extreme Cinema (2016), Torture Porn in the Wake of 9/11 (2015), and Film and the Holocaust (2011).

Julian Hoxter is an Associate Professor in the School of Cinema at San Francisco State University, USA. His previous publications include: Off the Page: Screenwls9