Robert Stam Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism, and Film. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. Parallax Re-visions of Culture and Society. Second printing. 0801845092 xiii/274 pages. Softcover volume, measuring approximately 6" x 9", is like new. ""Subversive Pleasures" offers the first extended application of Mikhail Bakhtin's critical methods to film, mass-media, and cultural studies. With extraordinary interdisciplinary and multicultural range, Robert Stam explores issues that include the "translinguistic" critique of Saussurean semiotics and Russian formalism, the question of language difference in the cinema, issues of national culture in Latin America, and "the carnivalesque" in literature and film. He discusses literary works by Rabelais, Shakespeare, and Jarry and treats films by Vigo, Buñuel, Wertmuller, Imamura, Mel Brooks, Monty Python, Marleen Gooris, and others. Now in paperback, "Subversive Pleasures" is a splendidly lucid introduction to the central concepts and analytical methods of Bakhtin and the Bakhtin circle."