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The Body Swap Film

Edited by Wyatt Moss-Wellington and Kim Wilkins

346 pages, 21 ills., bibliog., index

ISBN  978-1-83695-670-9 $135.00/£104.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (September 2026)

eISBN 978-1-83695-671-6 eBook Not Yet Published


View CartYour country: - edit Recommend to your LibraryAvailable in GOBI®

Reviews

“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

Description

An enduring yet underexamined tradition in popular cinema, body swap narratives have captivated audiences across cultures and genres. This volume offers the first study of the ‘body swap’ film, examining notable examples such as the Freaky Friday films alongside comedies, horrors, and hybrid forms shaped by bodily transformation. Extending beyond cinema, Contributors trace the trope’s evolution across television, videogames, digital platforms, online identity practices, and avatar relationships. Grounded in film studies yet interdisciplinary in scope, the collection engages gender theory, race theory, trans scholarship, transnational media studies, and philosophy to illuminate how body swapping reshapes understandings of identity, embodiment, and power in global media culture.

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).

Kim Wilkins is Associate Professor of Media Aesthetics at the University of Oslo. She is the author of American Eccentric Cinema, Gentrifying Scenes: Cities on Screen and co-editor of Refocus: The Films of Richard Linklater, Refocus: The Films of Spike Jonze, A24: Culture, Aesthetics, Identity, Radical Auteur: The Cinema of Ari Aster, and the Screen dossier, 'Metamodern Pastiche', as well as numerous journal articles and anthology essays on contemporary culture, film, and television.

Subject: Film and Television StudiesCultural Studies (General)Gender Studies and Sexuality


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