Books by Mike Wayne

How England's political cultures are being eroded by neoliberalism

This is an accessible guide to key Marxist concepts and how to apply them to contemporary cultural analysis.*BR**BR*Drawing on Marx, Lukacs, Gramsci, Habermas, Jameson and others, the book retools and redeems key concepts such as class, the mode of production, culture industries, the state, base-superstructure, ideology, hegemony, knowledge and social interests, and commodity fetishism. It also includes analysis of film, television, the internet and print media. Using case studies including Disney, Big Brother to the spirits and spectres in such films as The Others, The Devil's Backbone and Dark City, it illuminates the fetishisms of culture and society under capital.*BR**BR*Exploring the relevance of each concept to understanding the media, Wayne explains why Marxism is an important critical methodology for the media student to engage with. He foregrounds the theoretical and political shifts that have led to its marginalisation in recent years, and highlights how and why these trends are changing as once more, people return to Marx and Marxism to understand the world around them.

Third Cinema is a cinema committed to social and cultural emancipation. In this book, Mike Wayne argues that Third Cinema is absolutely central to key debates concerning contemporary film practices and cultures.*BR**BR*As a body of films, Third Cinema expands our horizons of the medium and its possibilities. Wayne develops Third Cinema theory by exploring its dialectical relations with First Cinema (dominant,commercial) and Second Cinema (arthouse, auteur). Discussing an eclectic range of films, from Evita to Dollar Mambo, The Big Lebowski to The Journey, Amistad to Camp de Thiaroye, Political Film explores the affinities and crucial political differences between First and Third Cinema. *BR**BR*Third Cinema's relationship with Second Cinema is explored via the cinematic figure of the bandit (Bandit Queen, The General, Eskiya). The continuities and differences with European precursors such as Eisenstein, Vertov, Lukacs, Brecht and Walter Benjamin are also assessed. The book is a polemical call for a film criticism that is politically engaged with the life of the masses.