James Kendrick

James Kendrick is a film and media scholar whose work examines American cinema, screen censorship, genre, and changing production cultures. Hollywood Bloodshed is his 2009 Southern Illinois University Press study of Hollywood during the Reagan era. Through case studies of action, horror, and war films, Kendrick considers how studios responded to political conservatism, public controversy, marketing pressures, and the creation of the PG-13 rating. The book connects industrial decisions with broader arguments about what mainstream audiences would accept on screen. Kendrick is a professor of film and digital media at Baylor University, where his research also covers Steven Spielberg, cult cinema, and new technologies. Kendrick also authored a history of screen harm, Darkness in the Bliss-Out, and a BFI Film Classics volume on Midnight Cowboy. Hollywood Bloodshed therefore belongs to a sustained scholarly project about how popular films both reflect their historical moment and help shape public debate.