The third volume in the Docalogue series, this book explores the significance of the documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness (2020), which became 'must-see-TV' for a newly captive audience during the global Covid-19 pandemic. The series – a true-crime, tabloid spectacle about a murder-for-hire plot within the big cat trade – prompts interesting questions about which documentaries become popular in particular moments and why. However, it also raises important questions related to the medium specificity of documentary in the streaming era, as well as the ethics of both human and animal representation. By combining five distinct perspectives on the Netflix documentary series, this book offers a complex and cumulative discourse about Tiger King’s significance in multiple areas including, but not limited to, animal studies, queer theory, genre studies, labor relations, and digital culture. Students and scholars of film, media, television, and cultural studies will find this book extremely valuable in understanding the significance of this larger-than-life true-crime documentary series.

The fourth volume in the Docalogue series, this book explores the significance of the documentary Honeyland (2019) in relation to documentary ethics, the representation of human and animal relations, environmental studies, genre theory, and documentary distribution. The film, focused on a Turkish-speaking woman in Macedonia who cultivates bees to produce honey through an ancient and environmentally sustainable method, raises important questions about the place of humans and economic activity within the broader ecosystem. The documentary also prompts critical reflection about the relationship between observation and storytelling, how the film festival circuit allows certain films to reach a wide audience, the ethics of ethnographic representation, the relationship between human and insect life, and to what extent film can allow us to experience others' life-worlds. By combining five distinct critical perspectives on a single documentary, this book acts both as an intensive scholarly treatment of the film and as a guide for how to analyze, theorize, and contextualize a documentary text. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of documentary studies, as well as those studying film and media more broadly.

As the inaugural volume in the Docalogue series, this book models a new form for the discussion of documentary film. James Baldwin's writing is intensely relevant to contemporary politics and culture, and Peck's strategies for representing him and conveying his work in I Am Not Your Negro (2016) raise important questions about how documentary can bring the work of a complex thinker like Baldwin to a broader public. By combining five distinct perspectives on a single documentary film, this book offers different critical approaches to the same media object, acting both as an intensive scholarly treatment of a film and as a guide for how to analyze, theorize, and contextualize a documentary. Undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars of film and media studies, communication studies, African American studies, and gender and sexuality studies will find this book extremely useful in understanding the significance of this film and the ways in which it offers insight into not only Baldwin and his writings but also wider historical and contemporary realities.

The third volume in the Docalogue series, this book explores the significance of the documentary series Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness (2020), which became 'must-see-TV' for a newly captive audience during the global Covid-19 pandemic. The series - a true-crime, tabloid spectacle about a murder-for-hire plot within the big cat trade - prompts interesting questions about which documentaries become popular in particular moments and why. However, it also raises important questions related to the medium specificity of documentary in the streaming era, as well as the ethics of both human and animal representation. By combining five distinct perspectives on the Netflix documentary series, this book offers a complex and cumulative discourse about Tiger King's significance in multiple areas including, but not limited to, animal studies, queer theory, genre studies, labor relations, and digital culture. Students and scholars of film, media, television, and cultural studies will find this book extremely valuable in understanding the significance of this larger-than-life true-crime documentary series.

This second book in the Routledge Docalogue series continues to model a new form for the discussion of documentary film, focusing on a new film and a different set of critical questions. Kedi (2016) is the first feature documentary by Turkish-American filmmaker Ceyda Torun. The film provides a window into the everyday lives of Istanbul street cats; their itinerant meanderings present a non-human perspective on this ever-changing, ancient city while at the same time exploring the meaningful impact these cats have on the humans they encounter. Kedi: A Docalogue brings together a diversity of perspectives on this film. By combining five distinct critical approaches to a single documentary, this book acts both as an intensive scholarly treatment and as a guide for how to analyze, theorize, and contextualize a documentary. Together, the essays in this book touch upon key topics in documentary studies, including animal studies, eco-documentaries, sound studies, and media industry studies, making them essential reading for scholars interested in contemporary documentary. They also provide useful case studies for teaching documentary film in courses on Contemporary Cinema, Cultural Studies, and Media Industries.

As the inaugural volume in the Docalogue series, this book models a new form for the discussion of documentary film. James Baldwin's writing is intensely relevant to contemporary politics and culture, and Peck's strategies for representing him and conveying his work in I Am Not Your Negro (2016) raise important questions about how documentary can bring the work of a complex thinker like Baldwin to a broader public. By combining five distinct perspectives on a single documentary film, this book offers different critical approaches to the same media object, acting both as an intensive scholarly treatment of a film and as a guide for how to analyze, theorize, and contextualize a documentary. Undergraduate and graduate students as well as scholars of film and media studies, communication studies, African American studies, and gender and sexuality studies will find this book extremely useful in understanding the significance of this film and the ways in which it offers insight into not only Baldwin and his writings but also wider historical and contemporary realities.

The Archive Effect: Found Footage and the Audiovisual Experience of History examines the problems of representation inherent in the appropriation of archival film and video footage for historical purposes. Baron analyses the way in which the meanings of archival documents are modified when they are placed in new texts and contexts, constructing the viewer's experience of and relationship to the past they portray. Rethinking the notion of the archival document in terms of its reception and the spectatorial experiences it generates, she explores the 'archive effect' as it is produced across the genres of documentary, mockumentary, experimental, and fiction films. This engaging work discusses how, for better or for worse, the archive effect is mobilized to create new histories, alternative histories, and misreadings of history. The book covers a multitude of contemporary cultural artefacts including fiction films like Zelig, Forrest Gump and JFK, mockumentaries such as The Blair Witch Project and Forgotten Silver, documentaries like Standard Operating Procedure and Grizzly Man, and videogames like Call of Duty: World at War. In addition, she examines the works of many experimental filmmakers including those of Peter Forgacs, Adele Horne, Bill Morrison, Cheryl Dunye, and Natalie Bookchin.

The Archive Effect: Found Footage and the Audiovisual Experience of History examines the problems of representation inherent in the appropriation of archival film and video footage for historical purposes. Baron analyses the way in which the meanings of archival documents are modified when they are placed in new texts and contexts, constructing the viewer's experience of and relationship to the past they portray. Rethinking the notion of the archival document in terms of its reception and the spectatorial experiences it generates, she explores the 'archive effect' as it is produced across the genres of documentary, mockumentary, experimental, and fiction films. This engaging work discusses how, for better or for worse, the archive effect is mobilized to create new histories, alternative histories, and misreadings of history. The book covers a multitude of contemporary cultural artefacts including fiction films like Zelig, Forrest Gump and JFK, mockumentaries such as The Blair Witch Project and Forgotten Silver, documentaries like Standard Operating Procedure and Grizzly Man, and videogames like Call of Duty: World at War. In addition, she examines the works of many experimental filmmakers including those of Peter Forgacs, Adele Horne, Bill Morrison, Cheryl Dunye, and Natalie Bookchin.

In contemporary culture, existing audiovisual recordings are constantly reused and repurposed for various ends, raising questions regarding the ethics of such appropriations, particularly when the recording  depicts actual people and events. Every reuse of a preexisting recording is, on some level, a misuse in that it was not intended or at least anticipated by the original maker, but not all misuses are necessarily unethical. In fact, there are many instances of productive misuse that seem justified. At the same time, there are other instances in which the misuse shades into abuse. Documentary scholars have long engaged with the question of the ethical responsibility of documentary makers in relation to their subjects. But what happens when this responsibility is set at a remove, when the recording already exists for the taking and repurposing? Reuse, Misuse and Abuse surveys a range of contemporary films and videos that appropriate preexisting footage and attempts to theorize their ethical implications.

The word "ventriloquism" has traditionally referred to the act of throwing one's voice into an object that appears to speak. Media Ventriloquism repurposes the term to reflect our complex vocal relationship with media technologies. The 21st century has offered an array of technological means to separate voice from body, practices which have been used for good and ill. We currently zoom about the internet, in conversations full of audio glitches, using tools that make it possible to live life at a distance. Yet at the same time, these technologies subject us to the potential for audiovisual manipulation. But this voice/body split is not new. Radio, cinema, television, video games, digital technologies, and other media have each fundamentally transformed the relationship between voice and body in myriad and often unexpected ways. This book explores some of these experiences of ventriloquism and considers the political and ethical implications of separating bodies from voices. The essays in the collection, which represent a variety of academic disciplines, demonstrate not only how particular bodies and voices have been (mis)represented through media ventriloquism, but also how marginalized groups - racialized, gendered, and queered, among them - have used media ventriloquism to claim their agency and power.

In contemporary culture, existing audiovisual recordings are constantly reused and repurposed for various ends, raising questions regarding the ethics of such appropriations, particularly when the recording depicts actual people and events. Every reuse of a preexisting recording is, on some level, a misuse in that it was not intended or at least anticipated by the original maker, but not all misuses are necessarily unethical. In fact, there are many instances of productive misuse that seem justified. At the same time, there are other instances in which the misuse shades into abuse. Documentary scholars have long engaged with the question of the ethical responsibility of documentary makers in relation to their subjects. But what happens when this responsibility is set at a remove, when the recording already exists for the taking and repurposing? Reuse, Misuse and Abuse surveys a range of contemporary films and videos that appropriate preexisting footage and attempts to theorize their ethical implications.