The Films o f James Cameron: Critical
Essays
Mathew Wilhelm Kapell & Stephen McVeigh, eds.
McFarland, 2011
Continuing its tradition of pop culture excellence, McFarland has recently
published a collection of critical essays, edited by Mathew W. Kapell and
Stephen McVeigh of Swansea University UK, centering upon the films of one of
Hollywood’s now legendary filmmakers. Ironically paralleling its own subject
matter, Kapell and McVeigh’s compilation of essays—like the eponymic films
of James Cameron—proves similarly filled with minor flaws, unexplored
implications, and portions not as immediately accessible to the un-initiated—
which, nevertheless—fail to undermine the exceptional, thought-provoking, and
highly original content of the total work. Despite a few overlooked grammatical
errors, or instances of stylistic awkwardness, nearly all of the ten essays
included present highly engaging, entertaining, and effortlessly readable
examinations of varying aspects of Cameron’s oeuvre, based in theories ranging
from the political, historical, philosophical, and psychological, to the stylistic,
gendered, othered, and mythical.
Encompassing a wide range of cross-disciplinary perspectives, the
collection holds insights applicable beyond pop culture studies, and many of the
essays—especially those on representations of the Other, both in terms of gender
and of culture—could be advantageously incorporated into courses concerned
with such subjects. For the most part, the essays included provide well-balanced,
strikingly readable marriages of critique and theory, explained in such a way as
to neither demean readers nor leave them in the dark. Understandably, an
inherent knowledge of and familiarity with the films of not only Cameron, but of
his past and current contemporaries, is implicitly assumed of readers. Allusions
to Cameron's dialogue are seamlessly woven into the various arguments
themselves. Nonetheless, brief—relevant—plot summations are almost always
provided, necessarily contextualizing the authors' respective assertions.
Many of the authors cite the same key scenes from Cameron’s body of
work—even going so far as to quote verbatim dialogue in several places—
however, these moves avoid redundancy because of the ways in which each
scholar re-interprets the scenes’ significance, providing similar, but ultimately
different, summations of, and implications for, the same content. Doing so
showcases the ways in which Cameron’s work truly can be read—as the
conclusion asserts—in a mythic fashion, readily supporting multiple readings
based in far reaching critical perspectives.
However, despite the comparative readability of the other eight essays,
Kaufman’s contribution on “The Emergence of Archetypal Homosexual
Themes,” as well as Isaacs’ contribution on “Art, Image and Spectacle,” proved