Mothers of Invention

Film, Media, and Caregiving Labor

So Mayer, Corinn Columpar, So Mayer, Corinn Columpar

• Publisher: Wayne State University Press
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9780814348543
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Mothers of Invention: Film, Media, and Caregiving Laborconstructs a feminist genealogy that foregrounds the relationship between acts of production on the one hand and reproduction on the other. In this interdisciplinary collection, editors So Mayer and Corinn Columpar bring together film and media studies with parenting studies to stake out a field, or at least a conversation, that is thick with historical and theoretical dimension and invested in cultural and methodological plurality. In four sections and sixteen contributions, the manuscript reflects on how caregiving shapes the work of filmmakers, how parenting is portrayed on screen, and how media contributes to radical new forms of care and expansive definitions of mothering. Featuring an exciting array of approaches—including textual analysis, industry studies, ethnographic research, production histories, and personal reflection—Mothers of Invention is a multifaceted collection of feminist work that draws on the methods of both the humanities and the social sciences, as well as the insights borne of both scholarship and lived experience. Grounding this inquiry is analysis of a broad range of texts with global reach—fromthe films Bashu, The Little Stranger (Bahram Beyzai, 1989), Prevenge (Alice Lowe, 2016), and ADeal with the Universe (Jason Barker, 2018) to the television series Top of the Lake (2013–2017)and Jane the Virgin (2014–2019), among others—as well as discussion of the creative practices, be they related to production, pedagogy, curation, or critique, employed by a wide variety of filmand media artists and/or scholars. Mothers of Invention demonstrates how the discourse of parenting and caregiving allows the discipline toexpand its discursive frameworks to address, and redress, current theoretical, political, and social debates about the interlinked futures of work and the world. This collection belongs on the bookshelves of students and scholars of cinema and media studies, feminist and queer media studies, labor studies, filmmaking and production, and cultural studies.

Index

abortion, 134n21, 209, 212, 223, 225–26n7, 227n18

Abrams, Simon, 123

absent parents, 87

aca-fandom, 191–93, 194, 204–5

Adams, Jamie, 121

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi, 19, 20

adoption, 153, 156, 157, 159, 161. See also Bashu, Gharibe Kuchak (Bashu, the Little Stranger, 1986)

affective charge, 85–88, 95–96

aging, 315

Ahmed, Sara, 32

Almenoar, Mounira, 37

Almenoar-Webster, Herval, 37

Anderson, Kim, 278–79

anec-data, 20; and Raising Films’ Making It Possible survey, 21–27; and Raising Our Game report, 27–34; and We Need to Talk about Caring project, 34–38

animation, 94, 210, 211, 215, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221–22, 256

Anterea, Claire, 104

Anthropologist, The, 103–8

anthropology, and autoethnography and motherhood, 102–8

anxiety: of mothers in TV and film industries, 52–54; during pregnancy, 124, 125; Prevenge as text of prepartum, 128–31

a(p)parents, 288–89, 290, 293, 295, 297

“apparitional,” 290–92

Archibald, Jo-Ann, 281

Argüello-Avendaño, Hilda, 213

Arnold, Lorin Basden, 110, 111

Arrival (2016), 85, 90

artistic process, motherhood and, 65–68, 128–29, 136, 161, 238–39

Asian sex workers, 165–66

AskiBOYZ (2016), 276–77

autoethnography, and motherhood, 101–15

autonomy, pregnancy and loss of, 127

avant-garde, 250, 257, 259–60. See also experimental film and video

Baker, Sarah, 47–48, 54

Baldwin, James, 239

Banks, Mark, 46

Baraitser, Lisa, 6, 186, 187

Barker, Jason. See Deal with the Universe, A (2018)

Barker, Jennifer, 88

Barthes, Roland, 317

Bashu, Gharibe Kuchak (Bashu, the Little Stranger, 1986): mother in Iranian cinema and Iran-Iraq War films vers...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• I. Working Parents
• II. Aesthetics of Maternity
• III. Forms of Collectivity
• IV. Alternate Genealogies
• Contributors
• Index