Dr. Lukinbeal's New Book Establishes the Foundational Frameworks of Film Geography
An Introduction to Film Geography: Foundational Frameworks and the Reel/Real Divide provides an exploration of the profound entanglement between film and geography, asserting that film is a powerful medium that significantly affects beliefs, attitudes, values, and perceptions of the world. The core methodological framework integrates transactionalism and phenomenology to visualize and document the transactions between humans, environment and film, establishing an ontological distinction between the filmic reel world of representation and the tangible real world of lived experience, while underscoring their mutual influence. This reel/real binary is critiqued and its pitfalls and foundational function explored. The analysis systematically applies a communication model (source, medium, receiver) to explore how film functions as mass media, conveying hegemony and ideology. Filmic representations, laden with cultural values, actively produce environmental meanings, standardize tastes, and often contribute to placelessness or the perpetuation of myths. Chapters detail the source (filmmakers' intent and the industry's economic impact and physical alteration of locations), the medium (its technological limitations and physical manifestation in cinemas/TV, which homogenizes culture), and the receiver (the "image consumer" whose real-world behavioral responses include tourism to film locations by "embodied tourists"). Ultimately, the book presents a comprehensive framework within which to situate the foundations of film geography.
