| Volume 41 Number 1 |
Lesbian Locations: The Production of Lesbian Bar Space in "The Killing of Sister George", 3-27 Kelly Hankin Abstract: This article offers a production history of the lesbian bar scene in Robert Aldrich's "The Killing of Sister George" (1968), the first Hollywood film shot in a lesbian nightclub. Reading this production alongside contemporaneous representations of lesbian bars, this essay shows how Aldrich's desire for "authenticity" is symptomatic of heterosexual desire to know and penetrate clandestine lesbian space. "Zero Patience", Genre, Difference, and Ideology: Singing and Dancing Queer Nation, 28-39 Christopher Gittings Abstract: John Greyson's "Zero Patience" (1993) de-scribes oppressive inscriptions of homosexuality by appropriating and subverting hegemonic systems of representation, such as the documentary and the Hollywood musical and horror genres. Drawing on the work of Louis Althusser, Richard Dyer, Lee Edelman, and Jean-Pierre Oudart, this essay provides an ideological mapping of the film's queer discursivities and genre codings to consider Greyson's dismantling of the spectral gay other constructed by a white, male heteronormative and homophobic camera eye. The Transnational Ga(y)ze: Constructing the East European Object of Desire in Gay Film and Pornography after the Fall of the Wall, 40-62 Nicholas F. Radel Abstract: Gay pornography employing men from formerly Communist Eastern Europe, including "My Polish Waiter" (1994), can be seen as acculturation narratives in which the Eastern European acts as a marker in the construction of American gay identities. These films thus formulate contemporary gay culture at the center of post--Cold War political and economic relations. The Elusive/Ubiquitous Representation of Rape: A Historical Survey of Rape in U.S. Film, 1903-1972, 63-90 Sarah Projansky Abstract: This article offers a historical analysis of rape in U.S. films from 1903 to 1972, using a critical feminist perspective that addresses gender, class, race, nationality, and their intersectionality. Despite the fact that the Hollywood Production Code forbade rape scenes, rape did appear; however, the strategies for representing it shifted. This essay examines the ubiquitous representations of implicit and explicit rape during this period and argues that rape is a central theme in American cinema. Film Stills Methodologies: A Pedagogical Assignment, 91-108 Barry J. Mauer Abstract: This essay describes an innovative film studies assignment in which students explore still photography and Hollywood cinema. The author and his freshman cinema studies students learned by doing--they created their own film stills after Cindy Sherman, employing frame analysis, semiotics, and Barthes's concept of the "third meaning" along the way. Introducing Students to Film [Introduction], 109-110 Robin Bates What "Kind" of Film History Do We Teach?: The Introductory Survey Course as a Pedagogical Opportunity, 110-114 Frank P. Tomasulo Teaching an Introductory Cinema Class to Production-Oriented Students, 114-116 Doreen Bartoni Cinema in the English Department Introductory Course, or, How to Make Film an "Element of Literature", 117-121 Peter Mascuch Promoting Deep Learning through the Use of Effective Textbooks, 121-127 Warren Buckland "It's Just a Movie": A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes, 127-134 Greg M. Smith Archival News, 135-143 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 144-155 Paula J. Massood, Sudhir Mahadevan |
| Volume 41 Number 2 |
The Ambiguous Aura of Hollywood Stars in Avant-Garde Found-Footage Films, 3-18 William C. Wees Abstract: When working with footage of Hollywood stars, avant-garde filmmakers subject these stars' images to a complex dialectic of critique and admiration, analysis and appreciation, deconstruction and reconstruction. The resulting images invest the stars' original auras with a new, more ambiguous significance. The Staging of the Bourgeois Imaginary in "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover" (1990), 19-40 Ruth D. Johnston Abstract: Against a backdrop of theorizations of the bourgeois subject and the grotesque body, abjection, and carnival, this essay analyzes the function of the "demarcating imperative" manifested in the spatial and temporal structures of "The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover" (1990) and relates these to its spectacles of disgust on the one hand and to the critique of consumer society on the other. Kieślowski and the Antipolitics of Color: A Reading of the "Three Colors" Trilogy, 41-66 Paul Coates Abstract: This essay aligns the emphasis on color in Krzysztof Kieślowski's "Three Colors" trilogy with his explicit renunciation of political discourse. The trilogy undermines the bipolarity so often associated with such discourse through the antithetical meanings its narratives associate with the colors and through the existentialism that propels each of the principal characters unexpectedly from one position to its opposite. Godard's "Comment Ça Va" (1976): From Information Theory to Genetics, 67-83 Kevin J. Hayes Abstract: Despite its poignancy and its wide-ranging cultural implications, "Comment Ça Va" (1976) remains one of Jean-Luc Godard's least-known films. Using technological theories of communication and applying new discoveries in genetics, Godard tells a self-reflexive story about a newspaperman's effort to make a video about the newspaper business and to make contact with his son that amounts to a virtual meta-essay on the communication process. An Excursion into the Lower Depths: Hollywood, Urban Primitivism, and "St. Louis Blues," 1929-1937, 84-108 Peter Stanfield Abstract: This essay considers how Hollywood presented the song "St. Louis Blues" in a number of movies during the early to mid-1930s. It argues that the tune's history and accumulated use in films enabled Hollywood to employ it in an increasingly complex manner to evoke essential questions about female sexuality, class, and race. Sounding Images in Silent Film: Visual Acoustics in Murnau's "Sunrise", 109-131 Melinda Szaloky Abstract: Silent cinema has an acoustic dimension that originates in the image and can be materialized through its plastic compositions. The twofold aim of this essay is to weigh several theories about how spectators comprehend "visual sounds" and to illustrate the masterful use of visual acoustics in F. W. Murnau's "Sunrise" (1927). Archival News, 132-141 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 142-151 Paula J. Massood, Sudhir Mahadevan |
| Volume 41 Number 3 |
Gauging a Revolution: 16mm Film and the Rise of the Pornographic Feature, 3-26 Eric Schaefer Abstract: This article suggests that during the late 1960s the introduction of 16mm film technology into an adult film marketplace dominated by 35mm production and exhibition precipitated a series of industrial adjustments that resulted in the development of the hardcore narrative feature. The "Twilight" Zone of Contemporary Hollywood Production, 27-37 Charles S. Tashiro Abstract: This essay examines the labor and production policies of contemporary Hollywood in an effort to stimulate an informed criticism of practice. Reel Revolutionaries: An Examination of Hollywood's Cycle of 1960s Youth Rebellion Films, 38-58 Aniko Bodroghkozy Abstract: This article analyzes how the major Hollywood studios attempted to lure youth audiences in 1969-1971 with a spate of films about campus activism and youth protest. The article also explores the responses to these representations by critics writing for the youth movement's underground newspapers. Inner-City Exhibition and the Genre Film: Distributing "Night of the Living Dead" (1968), 59-77 Kevin Heffernan Abstract: The controversy surrounding the 1968 release of "Night of the Living Dead" was the result of changes in the horror genre and efforts by the distributor, Continental, to exploit its diverse seasonal releases in several markets, including the afternoon matinee, art house, and inner-city neighborhood theater. Historiography and Sinification: Music in Chinese Cinema of the 1930s, 78-97 Yeh Yueh-yu Abstract: Sinification, in the sense of rendering Chinese, or indigenizing a foreign medium, has been a dominant discourse in Chinese film historiography. This article analyzes film music in Chinese cinema of the 1930s and argues that sinification should not be taken as a natural or inevitable process but instead should be viewed as a conditional, negotiated practice, subject to intertwined industrial and political mediations. Imagined Islands: "White Shadows in the South Seas" and Cultural Ambivalence, 98-121 Jeffrey Geiger Abstract: This essay examines the ways that W. S. Van Dyke's island romance, "White Shadows in the South Seas" (1928), reveals the imprint of both desire and anxiety at the heart of American representations of the South Pacific. The film also highlights the transitional and contradictory nature of American cultural, racial, and sexual discourses of the 1920s. Archival News, 122-129 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 130-139 Paula J. Massood, Sudhir Mahadevan |
| Volume 41 Number 4 |
Before and after the Fact: Writing and Reading Hitchcock's "Suspicion", 3-26 Rick Worland Abstract: This article combines a historical investigation with critical analysis of "Suspicion" (1941), a film long undervalued because of misinformation about its production history. This essay provides a documented account of "Suspicion" from novel to screenplay to release, considering issues of script adaptation, censorship, responses of preview audiences, and the promotion of Hitchcock as the movie's third star. Global Cinderella: "Sabrina" (1954), Hollywood, and Postwar Internationalism, 27-51 Dina M. Smith Abstract: Discourses on U.S. postwar foreign policy have found their way into Hollywood fare, particularly Billy Wilder's Cinderella films, such as "Sabrina" (1954). These films cast the period's gendered, dominant foreign policy discourses in the terms of the Hollywood Cinderella romance: orphan Europe can be seduced by American assistance. Hollywood Musicals and the Invention of Rio de Janeiro, 1933-1953, 52-67 Bianca Freire-Medeiros Abstract: This article reflects on the relationships among space, identity, and cinematic representations by looking at the ways in which Rio de Janeiro was represented in four Hollywood musicals: "Flying down to Rio" (1933), "That Night in Rio" (1941), "Road to Rio" (1947), and "Latin Lovers" (1953). The Wild East: Deconstructing the Language of Genre in the Hollywood Eastern, 68-94 John C. Eisele Abstract: This article argues for the existence of a genre of films termed the eastern that deals with the Middle East. Subgenres of the eastern (Arabian nights, sheik, foreign legion, foreign intrigue, and terrorist) vary in the degree of identification allowed the character of the Arab other, reflecting the political-historical context of their development, yet they share a number of narrative tropes that function as unifying attributes of the category as a whole. Post-Trauma and Historical Remembrance in Recent South Korean Cinema: Reading Park Kwang-su's "A Single Spark" (1995) and Chang Sŏn-u's "A Petal" (1996), 95-115 Kyung Hyun Kim Abstract: Two recent films made in South Korea exemplify that country's post-traumatic cinema by helping to reconcile painful public history through personalized perspectives. The depictions in these films of sensitive historical matters--the labor movement in the 1970s and the Kwangju uprising in 1980--demonstrate the difficulties of recuperating a salient political subject in a cinema previously disfigured by state violence. Fellini's Portrait of the Artist as Creative Problem Solver, 116-131 John C. Stubbs Abstract: In his autobiographical films, Federico Fellini creates a "legend" of himself and films that legend. In 8½ (1963), his portrait of the artist, Fellini presents the creative process as occurring more or less in Henri Poincaré's four stages: preparation, incubation, Eureka! moment, and verification, with an emphasis on stages 2 and 3. The harem sequence in 8½ illustrates incubation, and the ending is the Eureka! moment. Archival News, 132-140 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 141-152 Paula J. Massood, Sudhir Mahadevan |
| Volume 42 Number 1 |
Three Forgotten French Filmmakers: André Cayatte, Georges Rouquier, and Roger Leenhardt, 3-20 André Bazin, Bert Cardullo Abstract: These three review-essays by André Bazin were originally published in French in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Each treats a neglected, if not forgotten, director together with his most important film: respectively, André Cayatte and "Before the Deluge"; Georges Rouquier and "Farrebique"; and Roger Leenhardt and "The Last Vacation". The Gang's All Here: Generic versus Racial Integration in the 1940s Musical, 21-45 Sean Griffin Abstract: The integrated musical of the late 1940s (led by MGM) often excluded minority performers in an attempt to create a utopian environment. In contrast, Fox's nonintegrated musicals of the early 1940s negotiated a space for these performers, which, while problematic, created opportunities for individual agency. Black-Audience Westerns and the Politics of Cultural Identification in the 1930s, 46-70 Julia Leyda Abstract: This essay argues that the black-audience musical westerns of the late 1930s attempted to reconfigure African American national identity in their casting but also by strategically using anachronism and geographical juxtaposition. These westerns created a dual present by using the trope of contemporary Harlem alongside the nineteenth-century setting, thereby ironically echoing the western expansionist movement in a cinematic African American West. The Wrong Kind of Nickel Madness: Pricing Problems for Pittsburgh Nickelodeons, 71-96 Michael G. Aronson Abstract: This article explores the local conditions and determinants involved in the economic and cultural entrenchment of the nickel theater in Pittsburgh a full decade after Harry Davis opened his eponymous storefront nickelodeon. Ethnic Masculinity and Early Television's Vaudeo Star, 97-119 Susan Murray Abstract: This article discusses how the seemingly contradictory construction of many early television comedy stars bespeaks rather coherent symbolic constructions of ethnicity, masculinity, and anxieties over the changing demographics of the American cultural landscape. Film Censorship and Political Legitimation in South Korea, 1987-1992, 120-138 Seung Hyun Park Abstract: This article explores the relation between film censorship and political legitimacy in South Korea during the period from 1987 to 1992. Not only did censorship prevent local filmmakers from making films that the authorities thought would be offensive or detrimental to the government's political agenda, it also played a role in legitimating the hard-line right-wing regime. Archival News, 139-146 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 147-157 Paula J. Massood, Sudhir Mahadevan |
| Volume 42 Number 2 |
Pippi and Her Pals, 3-24 Christine Holmlund Abstract: This article explores the fascination of Swedish audiences with the forty-plus films based on Astrid Lindgren's children's books, "Pippi Longstocking" foremost among them. Following Lindgren's death in 2002, will these films continue to play a unifying function in an increasingly multicultural Sweden? "Rock-a-Bye, Baby!": Black Women Disrupting Gangs and Constructing Hip-Hop Gangsta Films, 25-40 Beretta E. Smith-Shomade Abstract: This essay examines the cultural specificity of the gangster genre. In hip-hop gangsta films, the inclusion of black women as central to the gangster business not only transforms the gangster genre but, more important, adheres to black cultural norms. The films "New Jack City," "Sugar Hill," and "Set It Off" serve as case studies. Arnoldian Humanism, or Amnesia and Autobiography in the Schwarzenegger Action Film, 41-56 Frank Grady Abstract: The 1991 science-fiction film "Total Recall" exhibits the kind of "political amnesia" that Michael Rogin has called an essential aspect of the "postmodern American empire." At the same time, the film insistently undermines the cinematic amnesia that helps to make film narrative possible, by repeatedly representing the cinematic apparatus within the film's own story. The relationship between these two impulses--broadly, the film's recuperation of its political content and its interrogation of its cinematic form--is the subject of this essay. Masculinity on the Front: John Huston's "The Red Badge of Courage" (1951) Revisited, 57-80 Guerric DeBona Abstract: John Huston's "Red Badge of Courage" (1951) is a marvelous example of literary capital under the strain of Cold War politics, the changing face of MGM, and a maverick director. Archival material reproduced and explicated in this essay suggests what might have been. Ambiguous Ecologies: Stardom's Domestic Mise-en-Scène, 81-100 Simon Dixon Abstract: The private lives of film stars are strangely contiguous with their roles. Consequently, a film star's home becomes an ambiguous ecology: part dwelling, part location. Hollywood's domestic staging in promotional/publicity photo shoots exposes the semifictional condition of the mechanism of stardom and suggests a cross-pollination between the art of the film industry and the life of suburban Los Angeles. Further, a star's masculinity as displayed through décor provides a measure of Hollywood's gendering of domestic space. Arguing with Ethnography: The Films of Bob Quinn and Pierre Perrault, 101-124 Jerry White Abstract: This article discusses the films of Pierre Perrault and Bob Quinn, which are engaged in a kind of discussion with ethnographic practice and nationalist discourse. Both filmmakers are fascinated by the experiences of those at the fringes of their nation-states, especially island and diasporic communities, favoring the exposition of ambiguity and hybridity over simplified understandings of national experiences. Archival News, 125-133 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 134-144 Paula J. Massood, Sudhir Mahadevan |
| Volume 42 Number 3 |
"New Films in Story Form": Movie Story Magazines and Spectatorship, 3-26 Adrienne L. McLean Abstract: This essay focuses on a seldom studied but long-lived and robust ancillary product of classical Hollywood cinema, the monthly movie story magazines devoted to article-length fictionizations of feature films. These magazines flourished in a variety of forms from the late 1920s through the 1970s. Looking for the Gaze: Lacanian Film Theory and Its Vicissitudes, 27-47 Todd McGowan Abstract: Film theory's encounter with Jacques Lacan has focused on the identification of the spectator with a gaze of mastery. This article argues that this involves a misreading of Lacan's concept of the gaze, and it focuses on the gaze as an instance of the object petit a. "To Hear and See the Matter": Communicating Technology in Michael Almereyda's "Hamlet" (2000), 48-69 Mark Thornton Burnett Abstract: This essay argues that Michael Almereyda's film of "Hamlet" (2000) is a distinctively postmodernist cinematic statement that charts the ways in which the act of film-making allows a release from the pressures of global capitalism at the same moment as it creates a space for the articulation of a coherent subjectivity. Eroticism in Itami's "The Funeral" and "Tampopo": Juxtaposition and Symbolism, 70-95 Zvika Serper Abstract: Itami creates eroticism in "The Funeral" (1984) and "Tampopo" (1985) by combining traditional Japanese notions of aesthetics with a contemporary attitude toward the depiction of sex. Similar to their manifestations in other traditional and modern Japanese performing and visual arts, the shape and color of clothing, covering/uncovering of the body, and objects are juxtaposed to give them symbolic sexual meaning. Demystification and Webtopia in the Films of Nelly Kaplan, 96-113 Lenuta Giukin Abstract: This essay analyzes the utopian world of Nelly Kaplan's films, in which the witty, subversive acts of her heroines become powerful statements in favor of women. Fascinating and horrifying at the same time, the alternatives Kaplan offers to patriarchy are not all that perfect, but her strong characters do reflect the filmmaker's determination to transform the world (Marx) and change life (Rimbaud). Home Again: Revisiting the New German Cinema in Edgar Reitz's "Die Zweite Heimat" (1993), 114-143 Johannes von Moltke Abstract: This critical reading of "Die Zweite Heimat," Edgar Reitz's 1993 sequel to "Heimat," argues that the thirteen-part series elaborates a self-reflexive commentary on the New German Cinema through tropes of "Heimat." The particular focus is on the nostalgic perspective Reitz takes in chronicling the demise of the aesthetic avantgarde toward the end of the 1960s. Archival News, 144-151 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 152-157 Paula J. Massood, Sudhir Mahadevan |
| Volume 42 Number 4 |
"It's Only a Piece of Meat": Gender Ambiguity, Sexuality, and Politics in "The Crying Game" and "M. Butterfly", 3-28 Leighton Grist Abstract: Presenting a primarily psychoanalytic discussion of "The Crying Game" and "M. Butterfly," this article elaborates on existing and predominantly homosexual readings of these films and examines the connotations of the particular relation that they imply between the sexual and the political. AIDS References in the Critical Reception of David Cronenberg: "It May Not Be Such a Bad Disease after All", 29-45 Ernest Mathijs Abstract: This essay argues that reception studies need to pay greater attention to topical and rhetorical references in film criticism. Specifically, the article analyzes references to AIDS in criticism of the films of David Cronenberg, with particular emphasis on "The Fly" (1986). The Genesis of "Days of Heaven", 46-62 Hubert Cohen Abstract: This article suggests that Old Testament stories are the source of much of the plot of Terrence Malick's second film, "Days of Heaven" (1978); that a transcendent power intervenes in its events; and that Malick has therefore created a religious film. "Long Live Death!" The End of Revolution in Luis Buñuel's "The Phantom of Liberty", 63-75 Julie Jones Abstract: The confrontation between France and Spain in the Napoleonic period imaged in the prologue to Luis Buñuel's "Phantom of Liberty" (1974) introduces themes explored throughout the film: the cultural and historical forces that shape national identity, the contradictory nature of freedom, the connection between political and psychological realities (Oedipal conflicts both), and the enduring presence of Francisco Goya. Making "It" in Hollywood: Clara Bow, Fandom, and Consumer Culture, 76-97 Marsha Orgeron Abstract: Fan magazines had a dramatic impact on actress Clara Bow's career and on female fandom more generally. This article examines Bow's 1927 star vehicle "It" as a parable for fan culture, particularly for the ways that fan magazines constructed their female readers and Hollywood films addressed their female spectators. Dazzled by the Light: Technological Entertainment and Its Social Impact in "Varieté", 98-115 Frances Guerin Abstract: This article proposes that E. A. Dupont's 1925 film "Varieté" both represents the variety acts that were so popular in Weimar Germany and becomes such an act itself. Simultaneously, the film depicts how variety shows aroused illicit sexual energy in their participants. Thus, through its discourse on the social effects of the burgeoning entertainment industry, "Varieté" can be interpreted as engaging analytically with the technological world in which it was produced. Archival News, 116-131 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 132-141 Paula J. Massood, Sudhir Mahadevan |
| Volume 43 Number 1 |
Film Noir Fascination: Outside History, but Historically so, 3-24 Oliver Harris Abstract: Film noir is a recognized object of historical fascination, but the structures of fascination internal to the films have yet to be analyzed and theorized historically. The work of Maurice Blanchot and Walter Benjamin helps locate the moral and political force of noir as it relates to cinema spectatorship and historical experience as defined by the fascinating image. Recontextualizing Copyright: Piracy, Hollywood, the State, and Globalization, 25-43 Shujen Wang Abstract: Drawing on theories of the state, networks, and globalization, this article examines issues of transnational copyright governance. Also under examination are the role of the state in its relations with transnational trade and legal regimes, Hollywood's struggle in fighting piracy, and the impact of digital technology on the market. Love's Labors Almost Lost: Managing Crisis during the Reign of "I Love Lucy", 44-62 Susan M. Carini Abstract: This article presents new research material on how Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz managed their public personas during the run of "I Love Lucy" (1951-1957). It also marks a first effort to analyze the effect of the "Red" scare on Ball and to assess her FBI file--an intriguing collection of primary material that, curiously, seems to have been assembled by a Lucy worshiper. Transnational Anatomies of Exile and Abjection in Milcho Manchevski's "Before the Rain" (1994), 63-84 Katarzyna Marciniak Abstract: This essay considers the discourses of liminality and "national purity" in Milcho Manchevski's "Before the Rain" (1994) in the context of contemporary transnational exilic cinema. Through its innovative narrative structure, the film self-consciously seeks to resist aesthetization and sublimation of abjection and mobilizes a critique of "authentic" citizenry. The Good Lynching and "The Birth of a Nation": Discourses and Aesthetics of Jim Crow, 85-104 Michele Faith Wallace Abstract: "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) is a landmark in the development of the feature film and in the history of American racial discourse in the Jim Crow period. This article proposes that the corrective for our current perspective on "The Birth of a Nation" is that we more thoroughly study how the techniques of feature film inscribe and underwrite dominant racial ideologies. The Society for Cinema Studies: A Personal Recollection of the Early Days, 105-112 Jack C. Ellis Archival News, 113-124 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 125-133 Paula J. Massood, Rebecca M. Gordon |
| Volume 43 Number 2 |
Perennial Detour: The Cinema of Edgar G. Ulmer and the Experience of Exile, 3-25 Noah Isenberg Abstract: This article offers an examination of the unusual career of Austrian-born filmmaker Edgar G. Ulmer. Several examples from the director's eclectic oeuvre are used to support the idea that exile is a vital strain in Ulmer's aesthetic and cultural sensibility. Love and Desire in the Cinema, 26-46 Torben Grodal Abstract: This essay compares romantic films with pornographic films and argues that the former focus on the establishment of personalized, exclusive relations--bonds of love--whereas the latter focus on anonymous desire. In addition, the article examines the evolutionary roots of love and desire and compares the explanatory value of evolutionary psychology with psychoanalysis for film studies. Punk Cinema, 47-66 Stacy Thompson Abstract: Despite the casual use to which the term "punk cinema" has been put since the inception of punk rock, the concept, as reimagined in this essay, denotes an identifiable aesthetic, bolstered by a correlative economics. Adherents of this model demand of cinema what punks have demanded of music--that it encourage production, in any medium. Punk cinema employs an open, writerly aesthetic, engages with history, and critiques its own commodification. It can be negatively defined as non-Hollywoodized, where a Hollywood aesthetic demands a closed, readerly text unconcerned with history and obfuscating its position within the relations of production. Punk films, such as "The Punk Rock Movie" (Don Letts, 1978) and "Rude Boy" (Jack Hazan, 1980), foreground their conditions of production, which stand as material signifiers of the possibility of making music or film, participating in critique, or doing both at once. Lost on Mulholland Drive: Navigating David Lynch's Panegyric to Hollywood, 67-89 Todd McGowan Abstract: In "Mulholland Drive", David Lynch creates a filmic divide between the experience of desire and the experience of fantasy, thereby revealing that, at the same time that it disguises the Real, fantasy also offers us a privileged path to it. In Focus: Teaching 9/11 [Introduction], 90-91 Louise Spence Applied Humanism: The Re:constructions Project, 91-95 Henry Jenkins Cultivating Critical Eyes: Teaching 9/11 through Video and Cinema, 96-99 Jacqueline Brady Teaching 9/11 and Why I'm Not Doing It Anymore, 100-105 Louise Spence Teaching through Feelings and Personal Beliefs: 9/11 as Case Study, 105-109 Sarah Projansky After the Fall: Cinema Studies Post-9/11, 109-115 B. Ruby Rich Teaching Film after 9/11, 115-118 Wheeler Winston Dixon Pedagogy, Film, and the Responsibility of Intellectuals: A Response, 119-127 Henry A. Giroux Archival News, 128-140 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 141-149 Paula J. Massood, Rebecca M. Gordon |
| Volume 43 Number 3 |
Naturalist and Classical Styles in Early Sound Film Acting, 3-17 Johannes Riis Abstract: Acting conventions entail specific ideas about emotions and their capacity to move the spectator. By combining a historical and a theoretical approach, this essay examines the sources and functions of expressiveness in acting in the early sound film period. Hard Hats and Movie Brats: Auteurism and the Class Politics of the New Hollywood, 18-41 Derek Nystrom Abstract: This essay discusses auteurism as a professional-managerial class strategy, examining in particular the role of auteurism in battles over film production during the rise of the New Hollywood. Of particular interest are the class politics of two New Hollywood films: Joe and Five Easy Pieces (both 1970). "Dancing through the Minefield": Passion, Pedagogy, Politics, and Production in "The Tango Lesson", 42-58 Lucy Fischer Abstract: This article provides an in-depth analysis of Sally Potter's "The Tango Lesson" (1997), viewing it as a highly theoretical and pedagogical work of feminist film theory. While creating a modernist narrative concerning her real-life adventures in learning the tango and falling in love with her dance instructor, Potter simultaneously touches on such complex issues as female authorship, sexual representation, the politics of romantic pleasure, the history of the film musical, and the cultural and gendered legacy of ballroom dancing. New Perceptions: Kinugasa Teinosuke's Films and Japanese Modernism, 59-78 William O. Gardner Abstract: This essay offers a reading of Kinugasa Teinosuke's independent silent films as responses to the traumatic experience of twentieth-century modernity. Of particular interest are the global and local intertexts in A Page of Madness and Crossways, their connections to the literary criticism of the shinkankakuha, or New Perception school, and the centrality of sensory perception in Kinugasa's work. In Focus: What Is Cinema? What Is Cinema Journal? [Introduction], 79-81 Frank P. Tomasulo New Media and Film History: Walter Benjamin and the Awakening of Cinema, 81-85 Catherine Russell The State of the Field: Notes Toward an Article, 85-88 E. Ann Kaplan Diversity or Dilution? Thoughts on Film Studies and the SCMS, 88-91 Barry Keith Grant The State of Things, 91-93 Robert Kolker Click This: From Analog Dreams to Digital Realities, 93-98 Anna Everett Parting Glances, 98-101 Jon Lewis Archival News, 102-111 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 112-121 Kirsten Moana Thompson, Rebecca M. Gordon |
| Volume 43 Number 4 |
The Global Return of the Wu Xia Pian (Chinese Sword-Fighting Movie): Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", 3-17 Kenneth Chan Abstract: In examining the way Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" grapples with cultural identity and Chineseness, this essay considers Lee's construction of an image of "China" in the film, as well as its feminist possibilities. These readings reveal Lee's conflicted critique of traditional Chinese cultural centrism and patriarchal hegemony. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon": A Diasporic Reading, 18-42 Christina Klein Abstract: This article proposes that Ang Lee's Chinese-language martial arts film, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", be seen as a work of diasporic cinema. The essay explores how the film's material production and its aesthetic form have been shaped by Lee's ties to his Chinese homeland, to other members of the Chinese diaspora, and to the Hollywood films of his American hostland. Aesthetic Identities: A Response to Kenneth Chan and Christina Klein, 43-52 James Schamus Indeterminate and Inhuman: Georgette Leblanc in "L'Inhumaine" (1924), 53-75 Maureen G. Shanahan Abstract: "L'Inhumaine" (Marcel L'Herbier, 1924) permits multiple subversive readings and queer spectatorial positions as a result of "Georgette Leblanc's" interventions in the narrative, the film's misquoting of post-World War I heterosexual paradigms, and citations to gay, lesbian, and queer figures. Projections of Rural Life: The Agricultural Film Initiative in France, 1919-39, 76-95 Alison Murray Levine Abstract: In the 1920s, the French government funded a rural cinema campaign designed to educate farmers about progressive farming techniques and to combat the "rural exodus" to the cities. This program, which brought film to the French countryside, is an early example of the state use of film for social change. In Focus: The Media and the New Cold War [Introduction], 96-97 Dennis Broe, Louise Spence Fox and Its Friends: Global Commodification and the New Cold War, 97-102 Dennis Broe Conglomeration, New Media, and the Cultural Production of the "War on Terror", 102-108 James Castonguay Fending off the Barbarians: Agit-Media and the Middle East, 108-114 Linda Dittmar Reevaluating the "Old" Cold War: A Dialectical Reading of Two 9/11 Narratives, 114-121 Patricia Keeton The Limits of the Cold War Analogy, 121-125 Anna McCarthy 9/11, the Useful Incident, and the Legacy of the Creel Committee, 125-131 Christopher Sharrett Complicity, 131-136 Noël Burch Archival News, 137-149 Scott Higgins, Sara Ross Professional Notes, 150-161 Kirsten Moana Thompson, Rebecca M. Gordon |
| Volume 44 Number 1 |
"That's Jazz Made in Germany!": "Hallo, Fräulein!" and the Limits of Democratic Pedagogy, 3-24 Jennifer Fay Abstract: Rudolf Jugert's 1949 German-jazz musical "Hallo, Fräulein!" transmutes and inverts many of the conventions of the Hollywood musical in order to comment on the cultural and racial stakes of the American occupation of Germany following World War II. Made under the supervision of the U.S. military government, the film unsettles the proposition of cultural reorientation and the definition of democratic culture in general. Disabling African American Men: Liberalism and Race Message Films, 25-48 John Nickel Abstract: This essay explores the intersection of liberal politics and depictions of disability in movies from the 1940s to 1960s that promote racial tolerance. "You're Next!": Postwar Hegemony Besieged in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers", 49-68 Katrina Mann Abstract: This essay explores the ways in which Don Siegel's "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" employs familiar postwar discourses of difference, namely racial masquerade, alien immigration, and sexual deviance, in its hyperbolic dramatization of the potential social, political, and personal disenfranchisement of postwar America's hegemonic white patriarchy. "Too Close for Comfort": "American Beauty" and the Incest Motif, 69-93 Kathleen Rowe Karlyn Abstract: Through a reading of the film "American Beauty," this article explains how the structure of father-daughter incest, working through displacement, has provided a narrative that links a series of recent cultural developments: the sexualization of ever-younger girls, cinema's erasure of mothers and of career women as sympathetic figures, and efforts to remasculinize the middle-aged white male. In Focus: Film History, or a Baedeker Guide to the Historical Turn [Introduction], 94-100 Sumiko Higashi Historiographic Method and the Study of Early Cinema, 101-107 Charles Musser History Can Work for You, You Know How to Use It, 107-112 Richard Abel Film History and the Two Presents of Feminist Film Theory, 113-119 Jane M. Gaines Woof, Warp, History, 119-126 Lee Grieveson The Future of the Past, 126-129 Janet Staiger Jargon and the Crisis of Readability: Methodology, Language, and the Future of Film History, 130-133 Steven J. Ross Does Film History Need a Crisis?, 134-138 Robert Sklar Collaborative Research, Doc?, 138-143 Donald Crafton Archival News, 144-154 Scott Higgins, Sara Ross Professional Notes, 155-166 Kirsten Moana Thompson, Rebecca M. Gordon |
| Volume 44 Number 2 |
"Made for the Masses with an Appeal to the Classes": The Triangle Film Corporation and the Failure of Highbrow Film Culture, 3-33 Rob King Abstract: Genteel culture failed to provide an effective model for the development of the early American film industry. The history of the Triangle Film Corporation exemplifies the conflict between highbrow ideals and commercial necessity and shows how consumer values transformed the aesthetic and ethical standards of the genteel middle class. The Mulatto Cyborg: Imagining a Multiracial Future, 34-49 LeiLani Nishime Abstract: Applying the literature of passing to cyborg cinema makes visible the politics of cyborg representations and illuminates contemporary conceptions of mixed-race subjectivity and interpolations of mixed-race bodies. The passing narrative also reveals the constitutive role of melancholy and nostalgia both in creating cyborg cinema and in undermining its subversive potential. The New Hollywood Racelessness: Only the Fast, Furious, (And Multiracial) Will Survive, 50-67 Mary C. Beltrán Abstract: This article interrogates the rise of the "multiculti" action film and the casting of multiracial actors as Hollywood action film protagonists. These trends are examined in light of shifts in U.S. ethnic demographics and youth-oriented popular culture. The (Un)Speakable FEMININITY in Mainstream Movies: Jane Campion's "The Piano", 68-88 Jaime Bihlmeyer Abstract: Jane Campion's film "The Piano" (1993) opens an uncanny space in mainstream movies where cinematic enunciation intersects with the linguistic and psychoanalytic innovations of the last half-century. This article presents a glimpse into the traces (semios) of FEMININITY as latent extra-Symbolic discourse in Campion's film. Restaging the War: "The Deer Hunter" and the Primal Scene of Violence, 89-106 Sylvia Shin Huey Chong Abstract: "The Deer Hunter's" controversial representation of the Vietnam War reveals how violence figures an imaginary relationship between the American subject and its Oriental other. This article examines the film's reception and relationship to media images of the war, particularly Eddie Adams's photograph "Saigon Execution." In Focus: Postfeminism and Contemporary Media Studies [Introduction], 107-110 Yvonne Tasker, Diane Negra Feminism, Postfeminism, Martha, Martha, and Nigella, 110-116 Charlotte Brunsdon Postfeminism from A to G, 116-121 Chris Holmlund Dressed to Kill: Postfeminist Noir, 121-127 Linda Mizejewski Postfeminism in the British Frame, 127-133 Justine Ashby Archival News, 134-145 Scott Higgins, Sara Ross Professional Notes, 146-154 Kirsten Moana Thompson, Rebecca M. Gordon |
| Volume 44 Number 3 |
Imagining and Promoting the Small-Town Theater, 3-19 Gregory A. Waller Abstract: This essay examines the small-town theater as business strategy, local institution, and culturally resonant myth in the early 1930s, focusing on trade press discourse and a series of stories published in the "Saturday Evening Post" that concern the operation of a movie theater in a small Indiana town. "Right and Wrong; That's [Not] All There Is to It!": "Young Mr. Lincoln" and American Law, 20-34 Virginia Wright Wexman Abstract: This essay draws on historiographic and anthropological models to explore the ways in which assumptions about the law may be deployed in works of mainstream cinema. Using "Young Mr. Lincoln" (1939) as an example, it argues that potentially conflicting legal paradigms can be reconciled through filmic narrative. Cinema and the Civilizing Process: Rethinking Violence in the World War II Combat Film, 35-63 J. David Slocum Abstract: This essay proposes an alternative critical approach to the "violence" of the "World War II" combat film. Guiding this approach is the idea of a "civilizing process" that attends both to specific representations in war films and to the institutional role of cinema in socializing and regulating individual behavior. The theoretical grounding here is the sociological work of Norbert Elias, whose major study, "The Civilizing Process," was first published in 1939. "Oh, I See....": "The Birds" and the Culmination of Hitchcock's Hyper-Romantic Vision, 64-80 John P. McCombe Abstract: This essay reads Alfred Hitchcock's thriller "The Birds" (1963) in the context of literary romanticism. The film reveals a debt to the romantic interest in a natural world that overpowers rational calculation and causality. Additionally, the film critiques educational practices that limit vision by imposing a false order on the sublime chaos of nature. In Focus: The Crisis in Publishing [Introduction], 81-82 Alexandra Juhasz "Oy Vey! Is It a Crisis or Is It Just Me?", 82-86 Leslie Mitchner Whose Crisis Is It?, 86-89 Patrice Petro Code Orange: Career Fear and Publishing, 89-92 Jamie Poster From the Crisis to the Commons, 92-95 Kathleen Fitzpatrick How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Crisis in Publishing, 95-98 Eric Smoodin Archival News, 99-106 Scott Higgins, Sara Ross Professional Notes, 107-120 Kirsten Moana Thompson, Terri Ginsberg |
| Volume 44 Number 4 |
"Yongzheng Dynasty" and Chinese Primetime Television Drama, 3-17 Ying Zhu Abstract: This essay contextualizes the phenomenal success, in the late 1990s, of the Chinese primetime television drama "Yongzheng Dynasty." It provides a formal analysis of the show from a comparative perspective and discusses its role in cultivating Chinese primetime drama as an economically viable and a culturally significant enterprise. Some like It Cold: Fetishism in Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity", 18-43 Hugh S. Manon Abstract: This essay employs psychoanalytic theory to identify a fetishistic imperative in the perfect crime that Walter Neff endeavors to commit in Billy Wilder's "Double Indemnity." By favoring ongoing manipulation over goal attainment and satisfaction, Walter Neff engages in a virtuoso cover-up that represents a paradigmatic noir deception, inviting viewers to fantasize that there may always be "more than meets the eye." Transnational Maleness: The Italian Immigrant in "Hell Drivers", 44-56 Elisabetta Girelli Abstract: This essay explores the representation and function of the Italian man in the 1950s "tough-guy" film "Hell Drivers," focusing on the dynamic interaction between Italianness and Britishness in the film's construction of a new antihero. Side of the Angels: Dalton Trumbo, the Hollywood Trade Press, and the Blacklist, 57-74 Tim Palmer Abstract: This essay recontextualizes Dalton Trumbo, HUAC, and the blacklist by analyzing Trumbo's personal archives, his writings in the Hollywood trade press, his work in the Screen Writers' Guild as editor of its official journal, "The Screen Writer," and his pivotal role in the anti-HUAC debates before he was imprisoned. In Focus: Children of the Blacklist, an Extended Family [Introduction], 75-79 Joanna E. Rapf Shock Waves, 79-85 Michael Butler What Was It like to Have a Blacklisted Father?, 85-89 David Eliscu Commie, Kiddie-Porn Days Gone by, 90-96 Daniel Gorney A Different Childhood, 96-100 Nikola Trumbo Behind the Curtains: The Blacklist Years, 100-104 Geraldine Van Dusen The Blacklist through New Eyes, 104-111 Bill Jarrico The Senate Small Business Committee Pizza Parlor, 112-115 Tim Hunter Archival News, 116-122 Scott Higgins, Sara Ross Professional Notes, 123-141 Kristen Moana Thompson, Terri Ginsberg |
| Volume 45 Number 1 |
Back Projection: Visualizing Past and Present Europe in "Zentropa", 3-21 Rosalind Galt Abstract: This article analyzes Lars von Trier's film "Zentropa" (1991), arguing that it uses cinematic space to articulate Europe's historical and geopolitical spaces. Of particular interest are the film's intertextuality, its layering of superimposed images, and the relationships that it suggests exist between East and West, postwar and post-Wall, Germany and Europe. "Military Enlightenment" for the Masses: Genre and Cultural Intermixing in South Korea's Golden Age War Films, 22-49 David Scott Diffrient Abstract: Although officially categorized as "military enlightenment" and "anticommunist" by the Park Chung Hee regime, the war films directed by Yi Man-hŭi (Lee Man-hee)--one of the most important auteurs in South Korea's cinematic Golden Age of the 1960s--transcend formulaic genre constraints and deserve special attention for their humanistic approach to the Korean War. Homologies of Space: Text and Spectatorship in All-Male Adult Theaters, 50-65 José B. Capino Abstract: This article examines spectatorship in all-male adult theaters through an adaptation of the work of Siegfried Kracauer, a reading of Jerry Douglas's film "The Back Row" (1972), and ethnographic research on three prominent adult cinemas in the United States. Radical Sissies and Stereotyped Fairies in Laurie Lynd's "The Fairy Who Didn't Want to Be a Fairy Anymore", 66-78 Gilad Padva Abstract: Laurie Lynd's film "The Fairy Who Didn't Want to Be a Fairy Anymore" (1992) examines the cultural mechanisms of normalization and masculinization in contemporary heterocentrist society. This article compares Lynd's essentialist approach to sexual identification, camp subculture, and the economy of sissyness and body politics with Hans Christian Andersen's tragic story "The Little Mermaid" and with Tim Burton's romantic fantasy "Edward Scissorhands" (1990). In Focus: The Place of Television Studies [Introduction], 79-82 William Boddy TV's Next Season?, 83-90 Lynn Spigel Welcome to the Viral Future of Cinema (Television), 90-97 John T. Caldwell Turn off TV Studies!, 98-101 Toby Miller Is Screen Studies a Load of Old Cobblers? And If So, Is That Good?, 101-106 John Hartley Studying Television: Same Questions, Different Contexts, 107-111 Horace Newcomb The Bad Object: Television in the American Academy, 111-117 Michele Hilmes Archival News, 118-125 Scott Higgins, Sara Ross Professional Notes, 126-139 Kirsten Moana Thompson, Terri Ginsberg |
| Volume 45 Number 2 |
Matthew Barney and the Paradox of the Neo-Avant-Garde Blockbuster Alexandra Keller and Frazer Ward The Academy and the Avant-Garde: A Relationship of Dependence and Resistance Michael Zryd Portrait of a Patriot's Son: Philip Ahn and Korean Diasporic Identities in Hollywood Hye Seung Chung Benshi as Stars: The Irony of the Popularity and Respectability of Voice Performers in Japanese Cinema Hideaki Fujiki In Focus: Writing for the American Screen, edited by James Schamus What a Screenplay Isn't by Howard Rodman
Split Personality: Random Thoughts on Writing for Theater and Film by José Rivera Archival News Scott Higgins and Scott Ross Professional Notes Kirsten Moana Thompson (with Terry Ginsberg) |
| Volume 45 Number 3 |
"Before She Was a Virgin . . .": Doris Day and the Decline of Female Film Comedy in the 1950s and 1960s Dennis Bingham Brand-Name Literature: Film Adaptation and Selznick International Pictures' Rebecca (1940) Kyle Dawson Edwards Sex Is Dangerous, So Satisfy Your Wife: The Softcore Thriller in Its Contexts David Andrews From the Portrait to the Close-Up: Gender and Technology in Still Photography and Hollywood Cinematography Patrick Keating In Focus: The Death of 16mm? edited by Heather Hendershot Archiving, Preserving, Screening 16mm by Jan-Christopher Horak Archival News Scott Higgins and Sara Ross Professional Notes Kirsten Moana Thompson (with Terri Ginsberg) Society for Cinema and Media Studies Membership Directory |
| Volume 45 Number 4 |
"Must the Players Keep Young?": Early Hollywood's Cult of Youth Heather Addison The Clothes Make the Fan: Fashion and Online Fandom when Buffy the Vampire Slayer Goes to eBay Josh Stenger "Have You Ever Seen the Inside of One of Those Places?": Psycho, Foucault, and the Postwar Context of Madness Cynthia Erb No(ir) Place to Go: Spatial Anxiety and Sartorial Intertextuality in Die Unberührbare Mattias Frey In Focus: Academic Labor, edited by Jonathan Buchsbaum "Yes, we are students, but we are also workers": Interviews of Student Strike Organizers at NYU, interviewed by Jonathan Buchsbaum and Penny Lewis Archival News Scott Higgins and Sara Ross Professional Notes Kirsten Moana Thompson (with Terri Ginsberg) Annotated Index to Volume 45 |