Body Swap Film

Wyatt Moss-Wellington is Senior Lecturer in Digital Storytelling at the University of New England. He is the author of Cognitive Film and Media Ethics (Oxford UP, 2021), Narrative Humanism: Kindness and Complexity in Fiction and Film (Edinburgh UP, 2019), and co-editor of Refocus: The Films of Spike Jonze (Edinburgh UP, 2019).

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction: Body Swapping in, on, and as FilmWyatt Moss-Wellington and Kim WilkinsPart I: The Body Swap Film as GenreChapter 1. ‘I’m Turning into My Mother!’ Freaky Fridays from Archetype to AnecdoteKim WilkinsChapter 2. ‘Eighteen Going on Eighties’: The Teen Body Swap Comedy in 1980s HollywoodDan ClarkeChapter 3. Redressing ‘Trans-Body Film’: Transing Dating the EnemyJoanna McIntyre and Yves ReesPart II: Bodily Transformations in Film and TelevisionChapter 4. Performing Body-Swap: Oh My Ghost (2015) and Enchantment by SmallnessJinhee ChoiChapter 5. Wearing the Skin of Another: Human-Animal Shapeshifting in Contemporary American FilmMargo DeMelloChapter 6. Intersections of Metamorphosis and Medievalism: Uncovering Imperialism in Disney Princess FilmsSabina RahmanPart III: Body Swap HorrorsChapter 7. American Metamorphoses in John Frankenheimer’s Paranoid TrilogyDavid KellyChapter 8. The Post-Neoliberal Gaze of Jordan Peele’s Swapped BodiesKaitlin LakeChapter 9. The Sacred Body in Julie Ducournau’s TitaneBruce IsaacsPart IV: Body Swapping TechnologiesChapter 10. Oneself as Another: Empathy, Acting, and Technology in Body Swap FilmsJane StadlerChapter 11. Ellie and Me: Self-Embodiment and Cinematic Storytelling in The Last of UsRune KlevjerChapter 12. Nic Cage as Everyone: Facing Off Against User-Generated Body Swap MemesWyatt Moss-WellingtonAfterwords, AfterbodiesWyatt Moss-Wellington and Kim WilkinsBibliographyIndex

“A welcome, timely, and wide-ranging collection of essays on the body swap film. The volume is well-researched and considers films not only from Hollywood, where the body swap trope is principally derived, but in other global cinemas. In addition, the volume considers the digital body swap enabled by meme cultures, and the pleasures of player’s embodiment of video game avatars. It revisits some mainstays of the body swap trope, such as Freaky Friday, and combines this with less well-trodden examples. This is a well-written, engaging and interdisciplinary account of the body swap film.” • Frances Smith, University of Sussex