Cindy Sherman’s Office Killer: Another Kind of Monster

Dearest reader,

I am delighted to announce the release of
CINDY SHERMAN’S OFFICE KILLER: ANOTHER KIND OF MONSTER!

Here’s the cover:

And here’s the official blurb:

One of the twentieth century’s most significant artists, Cindy Sherman has quietly uprooted conventional understandings of portraiture and art, questioning everything from identity to feminism. Critics around the world have taken Sherman’s photographs and extensively examined what lies underneath. However, little critical ink has been spilled on Sherman’s only film, OFFICE KILLER, a piece that plays a significant role both in Sherman’s body of work and in American art in the late twentieth century. Dahlia Schweitzer breaks the silence with her trenchant analysis of this film, exploring it on a variety of levels, combating head-on the art world’s reluctance to discuss the movie and arguing that it is only through a close reading of the film that we can begin to appreciate the messages underlying all of Sherman’s work.

Would you like to celebrate the launch of ANOTHER KIND OF MONSTER with me? Because we’re having a party at SKYLIGHT BOOKS in Los Angeles next Wednesday, and I’d love to see you there. Here are the details:

SKYLIGHT BOOKS
and DAHLIA SCHWEITZER
present ANOTHER KIND OF MONSTER
featuring a reading, then a Q&A session, then a signing
1818 Vermont Avenue in Los Angeles / Wednesday, the 7th of May, at 7:30PM

I presented an excerpt from my book at NYU in February. Here’s a photo from that event. (That’s Dorine–aka Carol Kane–up on the screen.)

Thanks to my publishers, INTELLECT BOOKS and UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS,  I was also afforded the opportunity to sneak-preview ANOTHER KIND OF MONSTER at THE SOCIETY FOR CINEMA AND MEDIA STUDIES conference in Seattle in March. Here are some photos from the event.

That’s Tania Modleski, academic rockstar, and Julia Lesage, editor of JUMP CUT, with me. I love attending conferences and meeting brilliant people like this!

Speaking of brilliant minds, while at SCMS, I also met  DR. WILL BROOKER, editor of CINEMA JOURNAL. Here’s what he has to say about ANOTHER KIND OF MONSTER :

…(it) is not just a study of this critically-, commercially-, and perhaps even criminally-overlooked film: it is an immersion into the world of OFFICE KILLER. Schweitzer’s deft, witty, and empathetic prose takes the reader from the corporate space of CONSTANT CONSUMER magazine, throughthe confining domestic structures of the film’s protagonist, down to the basement where her victims find a new home. As our tour guide through this female-centred environment, Schweitzer encourages our sympathy in strange, surprising places, pointing out telling details, cluing us into the cultural context, and analysing the uneasy atmosphere. If OFFICE KILLER is the movie of Sherman’s famous photographs, this is another kind of text that deserves to be considered alongside them: an authentic and compelling love letter from Schweitzer to Sherman.

As some of you already know, this book is intended as a “cross-over” of sorts. Of course I’d love to  it to be read  (or at least known)  by people in art/film/media studies. Who wouldn’t? But I also wanted to appeal to film buffs…   movie lovers… people who are passionate about the cinema, whether the genre is camp or horror or just plain different. Which is why I decided to provide some additional background in THE LOS ANGELES REVIEW OF BOOKS.  When it comes out on May 7th, please consider checking it out.

Again, I really would love to see you next Wednesday at Skylight Books. So, if you can make it, please do! Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ll update you soon–promise!  Love…

— Dahlia