Popular Culture Review Vol. 23, No. 1, Winter 2012 | Page 109

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