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Volume 15, Issue 2, 2024
- Editorial
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- Chapman Features
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Feedback, Fugitivity, and Overexposure: Monique Walton’s Dark Matters and the Criterion Channel’s Afrofuturism Collection
More LessMonique Walton’s 2010 film Dark Matters paradoxically masters the sounds and images of fugitivity through the use of overexposure, feedback, and static. This work approaches Walton’s fugitive practices through an Afrofuturist lens, and critiques the formalities and codification of its inclusion in Criterion’s Afrofuturism collection. To analyze Afrofuturism from a fugitive perspective is not just to analyze storylines that focus on African diasporic subjects, but also how the filmmakers surpass the limitations of filmic strategy to approach the uncommunicable aspects of Black experience. Afrofuturism can bring a new, fugitive imagination to an audience often fed settler singularities. And, as we see in Dark Matters, new futures can be formally imagined, allowing filmmakers to depict Black experiences not as visual truths that can be neatly packaged, but as something that exists outside the containments of traditional imaging modes.
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Crip Fatale: Deviance and Dis/Ability in Otto Preminger’s The Man with the Golden Arm (1955)
More LessThe treatment and reception of female characters in mid-century American cinema has undergone significant scholarly review in previous decades; yet the existence of disabled female characters within film noir remains unacknowledged. Taking The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) as its case study, this essay unravels the construction, fault lines, function, and symbolism of impairment in the history of early cinema and postwar America. It focuses in on the peculiar positioning of Zofia Machine as a disabled femme fatale—an inherent contradiction within the universe of noir cinema. By reconstructing the historic meanings, ideas, and assumptions, embodied in the imagery of disabled womanhood, the present work introduces the novel archetype and narrative of the crip fatale, occupying a space between existing conceptions of hegemonic femininity and corporeal normalcy.
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Marta Rodríguez: When Cinema Unleashes Social Change and Serves as a Historic Archive
More LessMarta Rodríguez is one of the first documentarians in Colombia. Her filmography focuses on exposing human rights violations through film. Her approach as a filmmaker is ethnographic, characterized by using the camera as an observer, and portraying the reality of her subjects without imposing personal narratives. Her work has triggered social change and her documentaries have become part of the archive of Colombian history. The following article describes how she uses her ethnographic method as a filmmaker and the impact of her approach in making cinema for social change.
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- UNCW Features
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Parasite: The Microcosm of Power Chasm Under the Hypercapitalism Paradigm
By Yixuan MaParasite (기생충, 2019), a genre hybrid film by South Korean auteur Bong Joon-Ho, skillfully blends comedy, thriller, and tragedy to depict the stark power differentials between impoverished families and wealthy elites. Serving as a microcosm, the film unveils the entrenched hierarchy perpetuated by hypercapitalism in South Korea, echoing real-life disparities exacerbated since the 1997 Asian financial crisis. Through an analysis of the economic dependency, sociocultural divides, and neocolonialist ideological discrimination depicted in the film, alongside Bong’s filmmaking with inextricable ties to Hollywood capital, this study reveals the pervasive nature of imbalanced power relations. It underscores how hypercapitalism self-replicates and transmits social stratification and structural inequalities to create the next warped generations.
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“Bro, You Just Filmed Cringe!”: Cringe Cinema and So-Bad-It’s-Good in the Internet Age
More LessThe following article explores the rise of “cringe culture” in online ecosystems and applies the spirit of internet irony to movies considered “so bad, they’re good.” Drawing from scholarship on camp, trash, and historical badfilm, I advance a twenty-first-century canon of cringe cinema, sourced from social media and online forums, divided into films that encourage our compassion or conversely, provoke our contempt. Finally, I contend that the internet plays a radical new role in the nature of cult spectatorship and debate if cringe is mere schadenfreude or the next generation in the politics of taste.
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Hybridized and Hyphenated Ethnic American Identity in Rocky IV: The Ordinary Whiteness of the American Action Hero in Reagan-Era Cinema
By Ciara WhelanThe emergence of the “European American” in the later years of the twentieth century signified a departure from definitions of American citizenship and subjectivity limited to the racial semantics of homogenous whiteness. This shift in the discourse around ethnic whiteness is inflected in film after the 1960s, and Rocky IV (1985) is an example of ethnic representation in American cinema that sought to redefine the American man as an ethnic white patriarch. The film is specifically a part of the neoconservative wave of anti-communist films in the 1980s that attend to American individualism and the production of heroic and hegemonic white masculinity while reinscribing this hero with ethnicity.
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Representations of Doubling in Film: Can Two Become One?
By Ann ZhangDevelopments in visual effects technology have diversified the selection of strategies by which filmmakers can create character “doubles.” This article compares modernist and postmodernist cinema through an approach to the human subject and doubling as represented by image technology. In particular, it investigates the examples of Ingmar Bergman’s Persona (1966) and Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan (2010), two films in which doubling functions similarly in the narrative.
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- Chapman Featurettes
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How Ideology Asks Masculinity and Femininity to Be Complementary: An Interview with Hilary Neroni
More LessAn interview with author Hilary Neroni to discuss her book The Violent Woman. Beginning with a review of the book, the interview then begins with questions about masculinity and violent women in film in recent years before transitioning to questions about psychoanalysis. This includes her own interest in the subject as well as why it is a topic so easily dismissed in film studies. Lastly, Neroni shares her future writing plans.
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Exploring the Multiverse: A Deep Dive into Rachel Noll James’s Ingress (2023)
Authors: Colette Victorino and Grace GarrouThe interview explores the depths of Ingress (2023), a film directed by Rachel Noll James. The film follows the journey of Riley Carol (Rachel James) and Daniel Cassanders (Christopher Clark) as they explore parallel dimensions and confront their individual truths. After losing her husband, Riley uncovers her ability to travel across various dimensions and embarks on an adventure that intertwines existential questions with science-fiction elements. The film dives into themes of human connection and identity through the multiverse and quantum physics lens. James’s unique perspective and storytelling talents enhance the film’s mystique, leaving room for important discussions about our universe.
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A Conversation with a Hollywood Veteran: Opening Weekend
More Less“A Conversation with a Hollywood Veteran: Opening Weekend” discusses the influence of the Hollywood industry and the marketing strategies for promoting films. The interview delves into the challenges of working in the film sector, motivations for entering the industry, resilience, and the profound impact of movies on audiences.
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Working Corporate for Hollywood’s Biggest Film Studios: An Interview with Jacquelyn Kim
More LessJacquelyn Kim has over ten years of experience working in corporate positions for some of the biggest entertainment production studios. She has devoted an incredulous amount of time and effort into the promotion of studio brands and products, working strategically to create unique experiences and excitement among fandoms across the globe. In this interview, Kim relives her time working within the film/television industry, sharing her experiences and challenges of working in corporate for big studios. She also shares her advice for current film students looking to gain traction for a career path within the film industry.
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Knowing the Difference: Identification and Existentialism in A.I. Artificial Intelligence
By Carol LiddleThe article seeks to create a new understanding of Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) by examining how the film elicits sympathy from its viewer toward David (Haley Joel Osment), an android designed to look and act like a human child. Metz and Baudry’s concept of identification is introduced to explain the phenomenon, and a formal analysis is conducted to support it. Furthermore, Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist views are used to draw a distinction between humans and artificial intelligence, encouraging caution toward media that blurs that line.
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- Book Reviews
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Transformative Power of Music in the World of Dennis Hopper
More LessReview of: Transformative Power of Music in the World of Dennis Hopper
Music and Sound in the Films of Dennis Hopper, Stephen Lee Naish (2024)
New York: Routledge, 92pp., ISBN: 9781032737690 (hbk), $66.99
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The Fictional Reality of Abbas Kiarostami
More LessReview of: The Fictional Reality of Abbas Kiarostami
Abbas Kiarostami Interviews, Monika Raesch, ed. (2023)
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 166pp., ISBN: 9781496844873 (pbk), $25.00
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The Significance of the Children’s Horror Film Genre
By Angelina EapReview of: The Significance of the Children’s Horror Film Genre
Horror Films for Children: Fear and Pleasure in American Cinema, Catherine Lester (2023)
New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 232pp., ISBN: 9781350265127 (pbk), $39.95
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Black Women and the Changing Television Landscape, Lisa M. Anderson (2023)
Authors: Taylor Fetterman and Celia RammelReview of: Black Women and the Changing Television Landscape, Lisa M. Anderson (2023)
New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 176 pp., ISBN: 9781501393631 (pbk), $22.95
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Simply Sublime: How Art and Cinema Shape History
By Emma WuReview of: Simply Sublime: How Art and Cinema Shape History
Art and the Historical Film: Between Realism and the Sublime, Gillian McIver (2022)
New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 280pp., ISBN: 9781501384769 (hbk), $120
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- Flim Reviews
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Burning (2018)
More LessReview of: Burning (2018)
South Korea
Director Lee Chang-dong
Runtime 145 minutes
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Her: Exploring the Connection of Human–AI Relationships
More LessReview of: Her: Exploring the Connection of Human–AI Relationships
Her (2013)
USA
Director Spike Jonze
Runtime 126 minutes
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