About

As one of the dominant C20th & C21st entertainment forms, the cinema remains a central focus of this journal. However, the cinema has also had many competitors – especially in more recent times. Computer and console games, comic books, the internet, music, theme parks and their attractions – all have their own role to play in the history of entertainment media. Likewise, entertainment media did not come into being with the emergence of the cinema in the late C19th. Optical and audio media technologies have a rich history in entertaining audiences with their audio-visual modes of expression. Like the multiple rays of light refracted from the materiality of a single lens, entertainment media share common concerns with respect to the audiences they address.

Each creates its own illuminations and variations. These variations may be refractions resulting from media historicity: magic lanterns, zoetropes, automata – all had their own histories and functions, yet their forms (along with others) impacted on early film technology which, in turn, developed its own identity, one that continued to transform as it approached the C21st, particularly as it embraced digital technology. Likewise, current entertainment may share a franchise icon – Batman, Spiderman, James Bond, Astro Boy… But, like lenses, these iconic figures create alternative audience experiences as they disperse and transform in the context of alternate media – films, comic books, animated cartoons, computer games. And so it continues. Their materiality aside, entertainment media also possess a refractory nature: they are often obstinate, stubborn, wayward, perverse, and disobedient, refusing to be pinned down by critical responses that seek to homogenize their nature.

Refractory: a Journal of Entertainment Media reflects on these and many other aspects of entertainment experiences, and seeks to explore the fun and, often, serious dimensions to their form.

Categories

Archives

Editors:

Board:

Jessica Balanzategui

Lecturer, Swinburne University

Jessica is currently leading two interdisciplinary research projects supported by Research Development Grants. One explores the histories and futures of cinema exhibition in Australia with a particular focus on the rise of the immersive experience and entertainment destination. The other examines how digital technologies are reshaping our understandings of children’s play, combining perspectives from media and childhood studies, neuroscience and education. Jessica’s work has appeared in refereed journals such as Studies in Australasian Cinema, The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture, Horror Studies, M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture and Refractory: A Journal of Entertainment Media, and in edited collections published by Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, McFarland and Lexington. Her book, The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema: Ghosts of Futurity at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century, will be published in 2018 with Amsterdam University Press/The University of Chicago Press.

César Albarrán-Torres

Lecturer, Swinburne University

César Albarrán-Torres had two favourite films growing up: Cronenberg’s The Fly and Lynch’s The Elephant Man. He is lecturer in Media and Communication at Swinburne University of Technology (Melbourne), where he teaches Popular Culture of Asia and Global Screen Studies. He has been widely published in academic and non-academic titles as a film and literary critic, author and translator. He is the former editor of Cine PREMIERE magazine (Mexico) and the founding editor of www.cinepremiere.com.mx, the most widely read film website in the Spanish-speaking world. He researches on film, social media, television, politics and, weirdly, gambling. His book Digital Gambling: Theorizing Gamble-Play Media will be published by Routledge in May 2018.

Dan Golding

Lecturer, Swinburne University

In 2016 Dan co-authored his first book, Game Changers: From Minecraft to Misogyny, the Fight for the Future of Videogames for Affirm Press with Leena van Deventer, and is awaiting publication of his second book with the University of Minnesota Press, Star Wars After Lucas, which traces the development of the Star Wars franchise under Disney. Dan has recently published academic work on VR, cinema, and videogames. Dan is the cohost of What Is Music for the ABC, as well as Art of the Score, a podcast about film music. Dan also makes popular video essays about film and music, and his channel has achieved over one million views. As a journalist, Dan has over 200 publications in a wide range of venues, and was awarded the ‘Best Games Journalist’ award at the 11th Annual Australian IT Journalism ‘Lizzie’ awards. 

Founding Editor:

Angela Ndalianis (Swinburne University of Technology)

  • Geraldine Bloustien (School of Communication, University of South Australia)
  • Jim Collins (Film, Television and Theater, University of Notre Dame)
  • Felicity Colman (Kings College)
  • Leonie Cooper (School of Art and Design, Monash University)
  • Wendy Haslem (Cinema Studies, Melbourne University)
  • Henry Jenkins 3 (Comparative Media Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
  • Michael Hammond (Film Studies, University of Southampton)
  • Louise Krasniewicz (University of Pennsylvania)
  • Glenn Man (English and Film, University of Hawaii)
  • Christian McCrea (Games, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University – RMIT)
  • Rikke Schubart (Media and Cultural Studies, University of Southern Denmark)
  • Liam Burke (Cinema and Screen, Swinburne University of Technology)