| Volume 36 Number 1 |
The Well-Furnished Interior of the Masses: Kirsanoff's "Menilmontant" and the Streets of Paris, 3-17 Richard Prouty Abstract: Dmitri Kirsanoff's "Menilmontant" poses an alternative to commercial cinema by foregrounding shock experience and by constructing a narrative logic of the commodity based on loss and substitution. Blocking "Blockade": Partisan Protest, Popular Debate, and Encapsulated Texts, 18-38 Greg M. Smith Abstract: A history of the preproduction, publicity, and partisan protest of "Blockade" (1938) reveals that popular culture institutions create "encapsulated texts," selected portions of the text that enter into public debate. Dance, Flexibility, and the Renewal of Genre in "Singin' in the Rain", 39-54 Peter N. Chumo II Abstract: In "Singin' in the Rain" (1952), dance and physical flexibility become metaphors for generic flexibility, the ability to move among different forms of entertainment and survive Hollywood's transition to talkies. Dr. Hobbes's Parasites: Victims, Victimization, and Gender in David Cronenberg's "Shivers", 55-74 David Sanjek Abstract: "Shivers" (1975) depicts a venereal parasite infecting both male and female characters, but the manner in which women are victims as well as victimizers problematizes the function of the monster in this and other David Cronenberg films. Sally Potter's "Orlando" and the Neo-Baroque Scopic Regime, 75-93 Cristina Degli-Esposti Abstract: In referring to issues of gender b(l)ending, Sally Potter's filmic version of Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" uses a neo-baroque style of representation for its commentary on the postfeminist climate. Dialogue Carl Plantinga Responds to Dirk Eitzen's "When Is a Documentary?: Documentary as a Mode of Reception" ("Cinema Journal" 35:1), 94-96 Carl Plantinga Dirk Eitzen Responds, 96-97 Dirk Eitzen Professional Notes, 98-103 Robert Lang, Greg Martino |
| Volume 36 Number 2 |
"Draped Crusaders": Disrobing Gender in "The Mark of Zorro", 3-16 Catherine Williamson Abstract: "Secret identity" adventure narratives such as "The Mark of Zorro" invoke queer textuality when one character runs the spectrum of gender identities. Such queerness is always contained, however, by the text's conservative political agenda. Performance and Persona in the U.S. Avant-Garde: The Case of Maya Deren, 17-40 Maria Pramaggiore Abstract: Maya Deren's persona illustrates the similarities between practices of stardom in mainstream and alternative film, and Deren's use of film as a performative art highlights the relationship between film images and persona. The Obscene Seen: Spectacle and Transgression in Postwar Burlesque Films, 41-66 Eric Schaefer Abstract: In their original historical context, burlesque films of the period 1945 to 1960 displayed excess, parody, polymorphous desire, and gender fluidity, qualities that challenged normative gender roles and restrictions on sexual expression. Space, Place, and Spectacle: The Crisis Cinema of John Woo, 67-84 Tony Williams Abstract: The post-1986 Hong Kong cinema of John Woo is an apocalyptic crisis cinema, an urban vision forming part of a "legitimation crisis" that involves an aesthetic of political, historical, and cultural density. The Ideological Impediment: Feminism and Film Theory, 85-99 Jennifer Hammett Abstract: Feminist film theory has too long equated representation with alienation and error, causing it to become embroiled unnecessarily in questions of epistemology. The struggle should not be over representation, but over representations; what is needed to challenge patriarchy is not an altered epistemological relation to the real, but altered representations. Film Pedagogy Classroom Strategies for Film/Media, 100-101 Frank P. Tomasulo Teaching Mise-en-Scène Analysis as a Critical Tool, 101-106 Tricia Welsch Film and Media Education, K-12, 106-109 Susan Hunt Teaching for Learning: Do They Learn What You Teach?, 109-114 Diane Carson Pluralism versus the Correct Position, 114-119 Peter Lehman Professional Notes, 120-127 Robert Lang, Greg Martino |
| Volume 36 Number 3 |
Louise Brooks, Star Witness, 3-24 Amelie Hastie Abstract: Most of what we know about Louise Brooks can be traced back to Brooks herself; Brooks thus becomes a witness of cinema history rather than just a pure cinematic image. Audiences on the Verge of a Fascist Breakdown: Male Anxieties and Late 1930s French Film, 25-55 Robin Bates Abstract: The reception histories of three late 1930s French films--"Katia, Règle du jeu", and "Quai des brumes"--give insight into film's impact on anxious viewers. Mickey Meets Mondrian: Cartoons Enter the Museum of Modern Art, 56-72 Bill Mikulak Abstract: The Museum of Modern Art's activities on behalf of animated films carefully balanced an elitist disdain for mass culture against Iris Barry's belief that popular entertainment should be preserved and disseminated as art. From "Minority Film" to "Minority Discourse": Questions of Nationhood and Ethnicity in Chinese Cinema, 73-90 Yingjin Zhang Abstract: The "minority film" genre in mainland Chinese cinema and the "minority discourse" in Chinese film criticism destabilize such analytic categories as "ethnicity," "race," and "nation-state." Men in Leather: Kenneth Branagh's "Much Ado about Nothing" and Romantic Comedy, 91-105 Celestino Deleyto Abstract: "Much Ado about Nothing" revisits Shakespearean comedy in order to explore the sexual discourse of contemporary romantic comedy, highlighting both cultural changes in gender relationships and the threat of homosexuality. Film Pedagogy Teaching Film Production and Cinema Studies, 106-107 Frank P. Tomasulo Media Practice: Notes toward a Critical Production Studies, 108-112 Joanne Hershfield, Anna McCarthy Theory to Practice: Integrating Cinema Theory and Film Production, 113-117 Frank P. Tomasulo Teaching Digital Media, 117-122 Stephen Mamber The Internship Experience: A Practical Guide, 122-126 Stephen Tropiano In Memoriam: Richard deCordova (1956-1996), 127 Jon Lewis Professional Notes, 128-135 Robert Lang, Greg Martino |
| Volume 36 Number 4 |
A Seed for Change: The Engenderment of "A Florida Enchantment", 3-21 R. Bruce Brasell Abstract: The treatment of gender and same-sex desire in "A Florida Enchantment" defines the film as a hermaphroditic text that contains simultaneous but divergent readings. "The Only 'I' in the World": Religion, Psychoanalysis, and "The Dybbuk", 22-42 Ira Konigsberg Abstract: The recently restored film "The Dybbuk" recreates an Eastern European Jewish culture wiped out by the Nazis while providing extraordinary insights into religion in general and the mystical tradition of Judaism with its male and female Godhead. The Direction of "North by Northwest", 43-56 Christopher D. Morris Abstract: Hermeneutic criticism of "North by Northwest" traces the direction of the change in Thornhill's character, but a deconstructive reading finds the film questioning the concept of direction. Machine as Messiah: Cyborgs, Morphs, and the American Body Politic, 57-75 Doran Larson Abstract: The Liquid Metal Man of "Terminator 2" exposes ambiguities in the figure of the American body politic that have existed for over three hundred years; in contrast, the reprogrammed T101 suggests a body politic as cyborg and offers false assurances of popular control over mass democracy under late capitalism. "Stop Reading Films!": Film Studies, Close Analysis, and Gay Pornography, 76-97 John Champagne Abstract: Film studies in the heteronormative academy relies on close analysis to contain the threat and promise gay porno offers to both men and women, straight and gay. Dialogue Manhattan's Nickelodeons New York? New York! William Uricchio and Roberta E. Pearson Comment on the Singer-Allen Exchange, 98-102 William Uricchio, Roberta E. Pearson Oy, Myopia! A Reaction from Judith Thissen on the Singer-Allen Controversy, 102-107 Judith Thissen Manhattan Melodrama. A Response from Ben Singer, 107-112 Ben Singer Archival News, 113-116 Brian Taves Professional Notes, 117-123 Robert Lang, Gregory Martino |
| Volume 37 Number 1 |
Reforming "Jackass Music": The Problematic Aesthetics of Early American Film Music Accompaniment, 3-22 Tim Anderson Abstract: The musical aesthetics of the nickelodeon changed from a "music hall" formation, where audiences establish a dialogical relationship between music and film, to a more "theatrical" formation that respects the primacy of the on-screen master text. French Cinema's Other First Wave: Political and Racial Economies of "Cinéma colonial," 1918 to 1934, 23-46 David H. Slavin Abstract: In Morocco in the early 1920s, film directors and French protectorate officials produced successful films that expressed a policy of indirect colonial rule through realistic settings, spectacular battle scenes, and paternalistic attitudes toward colonial peoples. OWI Meets the Monsters: Hollywood Horror Films and War Propaganda, 1942 to 1945, 47-65 Rick Worland Abstract: Certain 1940s horror films were revised to meet the needs of wartime propaganda; "Return of the Vampire" (1943), for instance, marks an intriguing genre variation in which vampire Bela Lugosi surfaces in Britain during the Blitz. The Ambiguity of Entertainment: Chinese Cinema in Japanese-Occupied Shanghai, 1941 to 1945, 66-84 Poshek Fu Abstract: The Chinese cinema under Japanese Occupation during World War II has been peripheralized in the official narrative of the history of Chinese cinema, but the films of the Occupation force us to rethink the multivalent, ambiguous relations between politics and film art. Visual Perception and Motion Picture Spectatorship, 85-100 Trevor Ponech Abstract: Movie spectatorship involves two kinds of perceptual activities: sensory contact with the cinematic image and epistemic access to the image along with further objects, situations, and events. Archival News, 101-107 Brian Taves Professional Notes, 108-116 Robert Lang, Greg Martino |
| Volume 37 Number 2 |
Theorizing Mainstream Female Spectatorship: The Case of the Popular Lesbian Film, 3-17 Karen Hollinger Abstract: This article discusses recent theorizations of the relationship between female spectators and such popular lesbian films as "Personal Best", "Lianna", "Desert Hearts", and "Claire of the Moon." Besides Fists and Blood: Hong Kong Comedy and Its Master of the Eighties, 18-34 Jenny Kwok Wah Lau Abstract: An analysis of "Modern Security Guards" (1981) reveals the importance of comedy to Hong Kong cinema during the 1980s and demonstrates how Hong Kong films should be read within their own sophisticated cultural and political context. The Construction of Black Male Identity in Black Action Films of the Nineties, 35-48 Kenneth Chan Abstract: In five recent black action films designed for crossover appeal, such factors as capitalism and the drug trade, racial self-hatred, and the geopolitics of ghetto space have influenced the construction of a 1990s black male identity. Postmodern Double Cross: Reading David Cronenberg's "M. Butterfly" as a Horror Story, 49-64 Asuman Suner Abstract: In light of recent developments in feminist and postcolonial theory, the genre conventions of "M. Butterfly" remain consistent with David Cronenberg's earlier style of horror film. Spectacles of Death: Clint Eastwood and Violence in "Unforgiven", 65-83 Carl Plantinga Abstract: By placing "Unforgiven" in the context of the western genre and Clint Eastwood's prior films and by using a broadly cognitive approach, this essay shows how the film elicits conflicted emotional responses to the violence it depicts. Dialogue Preaching Pluralism: Pluralism, Truth, and Scholarly Inquiry in Film Studies, 84-90 David Bordwell Reply to David Bordwell, 90-92 Peter Lehman A Response to Peter Lehman's Essay "Pluralism versus the Correct Position", 92-95 Stuart Minnis Reply to Stuart Minnis, 95-97 Peter Lehman Archival News, 98-102 Brian Taves Professional Notes, 103-109 Robert Lang, Greg Martino |
| Volume 37 Number 3 |
Race and Romance in "Bird of Paradise", 3-15 Joanne Hershfield Abstract: The marketability of King Vidor's "Bird of Paradise" was linked to the ways the film brought to the surface cultural repressions of forbidden desires around the trope of racialized sexuality. Adaptation, Censorship, and Audiences of Questionable Type: Lesbian Sightings in "Rebecca" (1940) and "The Uninvited" (1944), 16-37 Rhona J. Berenstein Abstract: This article analyzes the intertextual relationship between "Rebecca" and "The Uninvited," highlighting the "ghosting" of lesbianism in the act of representation and addressing the mediating role of censorship vis-à-vis sex perversion. Melodrama, Realism, and Race: World War II Newsreels and Propaganda Film, 38-61 Sumiko Higashi Abstract: Dissolving the line between fiction and nonfiction, World War II newsreels and propaganda films are melodramas that represent history as a Manichaean struggle and constitute realist discourse that reinscribes racial and class hierarchies. "Baraka": World Cinema and the Global Culture Industry, 62-82 Martin Roberts Abstract: Through a discussion of Ron Fricke's global documentary "Baraka," this article calls for a recontextualization of "World Cinema" within the larger field of the contemporary global culture industry. Staging Methods, Cinematic Technique, and Spatial Politics, 83-108 Sabine Haenni Abstract: Although theater imagines social integration and one unified space, only the feature film, through crosscutting and in ways that recall the utopias of progressive urban planning, can "manage" such integration and address a mass audience. Archival News, 109-113 Brian Taves Professional Notes, 114-122 Robert Lang, Gregory Martino |
| Volume 37 Number 4 |
The Public and Private Lives of a Sentimental Bloke, 3-18 David Boyd Abstract: The Australian film "The Sentimental Bloke" (1919) illustrates the complex relationship between changing modes of cinematic spectatorship and the specific social and cultural contexts of a film's circulation. Hollywood, the Dream House Factory, 19-36 Catherine Jurca Abstract: "Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House" (1948) should be read as a public relations effort to dramatize the film industry's American allegiances at a volatile time in studio history. Films without a Face: Shock Horror in the Cinema of Georges Franju, 37-58 Adam Lowenstein Abstract: Georges Franju's contribution to the horror genre--through his films "Blood of the Beasts" (1949) and "Eyes Without a Face" (1959)--is "shock horror": the employment of graphic, visceral shock to access the historical substrate of traumatic experience. From "The Loveless to Point Break": Kathryn Bigelow's Trajectory in Action, 59-81 Christina Lane Abstract: Examining Kathryn Bigelow's movement from independent countercinema to mainstream Hollywood, this article compares "The Loveless" and "Near Dark" to "Blue Steel" and "Point Break" and discusses how Bigelow's work balances contradictory issues of gender and ideology. Animalizing "Jurassic Park's" Dinosaurs: Blockbuster Schemata and Cross-Cultural Cognition in the Threat Scene, 82-103 Robert Baird Abstract: All films cue spectators to apply schemata, but the production history of "Jurassic Park" reveals a conscious implementation of "animalized" dinosaurs placed in threat scenes--elements that made the film accessible to a global audience. Archival News, 104-112 Brian Taves Professional Notes, 113-123 Robert Lang, Greg Martino |
| Volume 38 Number 1 |
Darkening Ethan: John Ford's "The Searchers" (1956) from Novel to Screenplay to Screen, 3-24 Arthur M. Eckstein Abstract: Some film scholars charge that director John Ford was complicit in the savage racism of "The Searchers'" central character, Ethan Edwards. This essay demonstrates that Ford viewed Ethan as a negative, psychologically damaged, and tragic figure. By comparing the changes made from the source novel to the shooting script to the final film, a constant darkening of Ethan's personality is revealed--most of it directly attributable to director John Ford. Manager, Buddy, Delinquent: "Blackboard Jungle's" Desegregating Triangle, 25-39 Beth McCoy Abstract: Representing a crucial step in the development of the interracial buddy movie, "Blackboard Jungle" uses a white male "other" to both sidestep segregationist anxiety about racial amalgamation and unite a "classless" black masculinity with a white middle-class one. The film thus emblematizes midcentury American desegregation's liberal and conservative, national and global functions. Fighting Films: Race, Morality, and the Governing of Cinema, 1912-1915, 40-72 Lee Grieveson Abstract: The concern to regulate cinematic images of the African American boxer Jack Johnson and the movement of Johnson himself became linked during the years 1912-15 with a broader regulation and definition of motion pictures. Questions of Chinese Aesthetics: Film Form and Narrative Space in the Cinema of King Hu, 73-97 Héctor Rodríguez Abstract: The concept of Chinese aesthetics, when carefully defined and circumscribed, illuminates the relationship between narrative space and cultural tradition in the films of King Hu. Chinese aesthetics is largely based on three ethical concerns that may be termed nonattachment, antirationalism, and perspectivism. Citizen, Communist, Counterspy: "I Led 3 Lives" and Television's Masculine Agent of History, 98-114 Michael Kackman Abstract: This article discusses the 1950s television espionage program "I Led 3 Lives" in the context of historical realism, Cold War anti-Communism, and domestic gender relations. Based on the real-life exploits of a Communist informer, the show treats Communist subversion as a gendered threat to state and individual authority. Archival News, 115-124 Brian Taves Professional Notes, 125-129 Robert Lang, Gregory Martino |
| Volume 38 Number 2 |
Queering the (New) Deal: Lesbian and Gay Representation and the Depression-Era Cultural Politics of Hollywood's Production Code, 3-35 David M. Lugowski Abstract: Queer representation was common in American cinema during the Great Depression, and the records of Hollywood's Production Code Administration prove that those images were read as such at the time. Queerness was criticized because it refracted traditional masculinity imperiled by the socioeconomic crisis, yet it was essential as entertainment and ideological prop. Rock 'n' Roll Sound Tracks and the Production of Nostalgia, 36-51 David R. Shumway Abstract: Music plays a central role in the production of nostalgia in the nostalgia film genre. An analysis of some of these films--especially "The Graduate", "Easy Rider", "American Graffiti", and "The Big Chill"--and their respective music tracks demonstrates that the genre should not be associated with a particular politics. Including Ourselves: The Role of Female Spectators in Agnès Varda's "Le Bonheur" and "L'Une chante, l'autre pas", 52-71 Ruth Hottell Abstract: Throughout her career, Agnès Varda has exposed the theory behind her practice and brought previously marginalized groups to the foreground in her films, including spectators in the interpretative, creative process. This article studies the general manifestations of engaged cinematic practices by focusing on two specific films directed by Varda, "Le Bonheur" and "L'Une chante, l'autre pas." The Soldier, the Girl, and the Dragon: Battles of Meanings in Post-Soviet Cinematic Space, 72-97 Lily Avrutin Abstract: This essay explores the cinema of simulacra and focuses on the connection between myth and metatextuality in the posttotalitarian cinema of the former Soviet Union, especially in the experimental film-collage "Scorpion's Gardens" (1991), directed by Oleg Kovalov. New theoretical concepts and methods--semantic drama and semantic investigation--are employed in the context of exploring a national cinema as a cultural process. American Film in Quebec Theater, 98-110 Germain Lacasse Abstract: Between 1915 and 1930 in Quebec, American films were integrated into local theater: burlesque shows with lectured films; film parody taking the form of monologue, dialogue, or lecture; and even theater texts that borrowed their subjects and narratives from American films. Several authors specialized in the latter genre, and some films were even adapted into two or three theater versions. In fact, this rewriting was another form of appropriation and nationalization of foreign culture narratives. Archival News, 111-121 Brian Taves Professional Notes, 122-125 Robert Lang |
| Volume 38 Number 3 |
"I Do Want to Live!": Female Voices, Male Discourse, and Hollywood Biopics, 3-26 Dennis Bingham Abstract: Complicating cherished assumptions about film biography, the fifties, and female spectatorship, "I Want to Live!" finds male filmmakers identifying with a female protagonist in opposition to the male institutions of the media and the law in a work that aligns melodrama with realism. Devouring Creation: Cannibalism, Sodomy, and the Scene of Analysis in "Suddenly, Last Summer", 27-49 Kevin Ohi Abstract: Exploring the erotics of baiting in "Suddenly, Last Summer" (1959), this essay examines the figural links among madness, cannibalism, sodomy, lobotomy, the talking cure, and visual and narrative structure in the film. It questions the political and erotic stakes involved in the film's use of the spectacle of gay male sex as a disruption to its narrative of a psychoanalytic cure and as a fuel and figure for cinematic absorption. Stereotypical Strategies: Black Film Aesthetics, Spectator Positioning, and Self-Directed Stereotypes in "Hollywood Shuffle" and "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka", 50-66 Harriet Margolis Abstract: Writers/directors Robert Townsend and Keenan Ivory Wayans both use a strategy of self-directed stereotypes in "Hollywood Shuffle" and "I'm Gonna Git You Sucka," their initial contributions to the surge of African American feature filmmaking that came out of Hollywood in the late 1980s. Wayans attacks stereotyping as process, presented by the media as a means of conceptualizing the world, whereas Townsend attacks specific, individually expressed stereotypes more than the process of stereotyping itself. If using self-directed stereotypes is accepted as a valuable contribution to a developing aesthetic of African American cinema, then what do these two films tell us about differences in how the strategy may be employed? Representing the Spaces of Diaspora in Contemporary British Films by Women Directors, 67-90 Anne Ciecko Abstract: This essay examines the ways in which two important recent narrative feature films by British women directors, "Bhaji on the Beach" and "Welcome II the Terrordome," challenge conceptions of "black" British filmmaking, cultural identities, and racial politics. "Pōru Rūta"/Paul Rotha and the Politics of Translation, 91-108 Abé Mark Nornes Abstract: British documentary filmmaker and author Paul Rotha had a great influence on filmmakers in prewar Japan. In fact, translations of his book "Documentary Film" were the "Bible" for both militarist and leftist documentarists and critics. Various translations of Rotha's book, however, displayed the marks of self-imposed censorship or misreading and changed his socialist leanings into support for the imperial state of Japan. Such cross-cultural discourse allowed the Rotha volume to become the site of politicized thought in the Japanese film community. Archival News, 109-113 Brian Taves Professional Notes, 114-120 Robert Lang, Greg Martino |
| Volume 38 Number 4 |
"I Didn't Know Anyone Could Be so Unselfish": Liberal Empathy, the Welfare State, and King Vidor's "Stella Dallas", 3-23 Anna Siomopoulos Abstract: The rhetoric of multiple identification in "Stella Dallas" (1937) promotes a welfare ethic of redistribution by suggesting that the sympathetic response of charity can substitute for a more pointed critique of consumer capitalism. Posing the Subject: Sex, Illumination, and "Pumping Iron II: The Women", 24-44 Douglas Sadao Aoki Abstract: Because the female bodybuilder in "Pumping Iron II: The Women" is constituted by being posed, she is the subject par excellence. This article considers that filmic subject through a logic of sex, strength, and semiotics. The Americanization of Molly: How Mid-Fifties TV Homogenized "The Goldbergs" (And Got "Berg-Iarized" in the Process), 45-67 Vincent Brook Abstract: This article traces the transformation of the early television program "The Goldbergs" (1949-56) from an ethnic working-class sitcom into a suburban middle-class "domestic melodrama" in the "Father Knows Best" mold, thereby challenging received notions regarding the ethnic working-class sitcom's "legitimizing function" for early commercial television. Real Emotional Logic: Persuasive Strategies in Docudrama, 68-85 Steven N. Lipkin Abstract: Docudrama justifies its arguments by establishing connections between actuality and filmic re-creation. Three basic means of relating data and claims--models, sequences, and interactions--encourage such connections between document and drama, the known and the speculative. Twentieth Century-Fox's cycle of postwar semidocumentaries provides a precedent for persuasive strategies characteristic of today's film and television docudramas. Techniques and Approaches for Teaching Film and Video Courses [Introduction], 86-87 Tricia Welsch Teaching French National Cinema, 88-93 Christopher Faulkner Screening the Nation: Rethinking Options, 93-97 Toby Miller Foreign Exchange: German Expressionism and Its Legacy, 98-102 Tricia Welsch How to Use Video in Large Film Classes (Read No Further If Your Students Are All Future Godards or Professors of Film), 102-108 Rebecca Bell-Metereau Archival News, 109-120 Brian Taves Professional Notes, 121-128 Robert Lang, Greg Martino |
| Volume 39 Number 1 |
"Come on Home with Me": "42nd Street" and the Gay Male World of the 1930s, 3-22 Leonard J. Leff Abstract: In 1933, when the fairy was the most visible representative of American gay culture, Warner Bros.' "42nd Street" portrayed its lead character, Julian Marsh, as a "masculine homosexual" who lent a gay sensibility to the film's narrative and the musical numbers that animated it. Lois Weber's "The Blot": Rewriting Melodrama, Reproducing the Middle Class, 23-53 Jennifer Parchesky Abstract: This 1921 film about the economic and emotional struggles of an impoverished professor's family dramatizes the intense struggles over gender and class ideologies in the early 1920s. Weber's formal innovations transform conventions of melodrama and realism to articulate visually the cultural anxieties centered on the reproduction of a changing middle class. "Torn Curtain's" Futile Talk, 54-73 Christopher D. Morris Abstract: While conceding the story's moral ambiguities, most critics of "Torn Curtain" ultimately concur with the popular judgment of the film as a satire flawed by a weak script, production problems, and even the director's indifference. This deconstructive study reads the film as a narrative of the illusion of mutual understanding, one that puts into question political, ethical, and religious distinctions. Private Knowledge, Public Space: Investigation and Navigation in "Devil in a Blue Dress", 74-89 Mark L. Berrettini Abstract: Carl Franklin's "Devil in a Blue Dress" (1995) uses film noir's critical potential to present a studied assessment of Los Angeles' "dark" criminal terrain as it is defined by the color line. In this regard, the film pays significant attention to figures historically marginalized in postwar L.A. "Almost Worse than the Restrictive Measures": Chicago Reformers and the Nickelodeons, 90-112 J. A. Lindstrom Abstract: This essay examines the reform movement's response to the nickelodeon boom in Chicago and shows that it was cautiously supportive of moving pictures while simultaneously promoting the need for municipal government to become more responsible for recreational activities for youth. Archival News, 113-120 Brian Taves Professional Notes, 121-130 Robert Lang, Greg Martino |
| Volume 39 Number 2 |
"We Do Not Ask You to Condone This": How the Blacklist Saved Hollywood, 3-30 Jon Lewis Abstract: The Hollywood blacklist evolved out of and impacted on a complex set of economic conditions. This essay focuses on the ways in which certain collusive strategies put in place to control the industry workforce in 1947 enabled the studios to regain control over the entertainment marketplace after the Second World War. Blaxploitation Horror Films: Generic Reappropriation or Reinscription?, 31-50 Harry M. Benshoff Abstract: The intersection of racial identity and narrative structure in blaxploitation horror films produced a potential critique of both social and generic racism, as well as a significant variation in how the genre classically figures normality and monstrosity. Finding Ourselves on a "Lost Highway": David Lynch's Lesson in Fantasy, 51-73 Todd McGowan Abstract: The difficulties in watching David Lynch's "Lost Highway" stem from the unique way in which the film distinguishes between desire and fantasy. Whereas most films depict a seamless continuity between the two impulses, "Lost Highway" separates them, revealing how fantasy serves as a respite from the ambiguity of desire. The Road Movie Rediscovers Mexico: Alex Cox's "Highway Patrolman", 74-99 David Laderman Abstract: By focusing on genre, landscape, and gender in relation to Mexican national identity, a close reading of Alex Cox's 1992 Mexican road movie, "Highway Patrolman (El patrullero)," reveals the complexities and contradictions of contemporary transnational, independent filmmaking. "The "Mother" of All Battles": "Courage under Fire" and the Gender-Integrated Military, 100-120 Susan E. Linville Abstract: "Courage Under Fire" (1996) goes a long way toward affirming the goal of gender and racial integration in the contemporary armed services, but it is also defined by images, elisions, and subtexts that point equivocally to other historical and cultural vantage points, perspectives that erode and destabilize the film's overtly forward-looking vision. Archival News, 121-130 Brian Taves Professional Notes, 131-139 Robert Lang, Anne Morey |
| Volume 39 Number 3 |
Oscar Micheaux's "Body and Soul" and the Burden of Representation, 3-29 Pearl Bowser, Louise Spence Abstract: This essay explores Oscar Micheaux's silent drama "Body and Soul" (1925) and some of the critical discourses of the period. It also addresses the politics of racial identity and the quest for racial unity in a period when the class structure within the African American community was becoming more stratified. Lester Walton's "Écriture Noir": Black Spectatorial Transcodings of "Cinematic Excess", 30-50 Anna Everett Abstract: For many scholars and students of American film history, the black press campaign against D. W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" (1915) signifies the founding moment of significant black writing on the cinema. This essay investigates the pre-Birth film criticism of "New York Age" columnist Lester A. Walton so as to challenge that misconception and recover a lost legacy of early black film spectatorship. Sound Strategies: Lang's Rearticulation of Renoir, 51-65 Tricia Welsch Abstract: Fritz Lang directed "Scarlet Street" in a triangulated response to his previous film, "The Woman in the Window", and to Jean Renoir's "La Chienne", which it explicitly remakes. The ambivalent relation among the films is most clear in Lang's treatment of sound, which reverses Renoir's practice. Cowboys and Free Markets: Post-World War II Westerns and U.S. Hegemony, 66-91 Stanley Corkin Abstract: This essay looks at the historical phenomenon of the western as a focal genre in postwar America. Through discussion of Howard Hawks's "Red River" and John Ford's "My Darling Clementine", it shows how the western was well suited to convey important ideological rationales for postwar U.S. foreign policy, including the inevitability of American expansion and the strategies for hegemony that guided the Truman administration's foreign policy. "A Struggle of Contending Stories": Race, Gender, and Political Memory in "Forrest Gump", 92-115 Jennifer Hyland Wang Abstract: Forrest Gump revises popular memories of the 1960s through its representations of gender and race and its visualization of postwar history. This essay examines how political conservatives used the film to articulate a traditional version of recent American history and to define their political ground in the 1994 congressional elections. Archival News, 116-126 Brian Taves Professional Notes, 127-134 Paula J. Massood, Anne Morey |
| Volume 39 Number 4 |
"White Man's Book No Good": D. W. Griffith and the American Indian, 3-26 Gregory S. Jay Abstract: D. W. Griffith made some thirty short films on Indian subjects during the Biograph years. Yet these mostly melodramatic treatments have received little critical attention. Analyzing films such as "The Call of the Wild", "A Romance of the Western Hills", and "The Massacre", this essay explains how the apparently sympathetic representation of the Native American still adheres to the logic of white supremacy eventually enunciated in "The Birth of a Nation". The British Culture Industries and the Mythology of the American Market: Cultural Policy and Cultural Exports in the 1940s and 1990s, 27-42 Paul Swann Abstract: This article compares the marketing and reception of British motion pictures in the U.S. market during the 1940s and 1990s. In both eras, British filmmakers were captivated by the fantasy of conquering the American marketplace. They viewed their movies as a fundamentally new kind of product that made it possible to challenge Hollywood on its own terrain. Crossing Borders: Time, Memory, and the Construction of Identity in "Song of the Exile", 43-59 Patricia Brett Erens Abstract: This article analyzes the construction of memory in Ann Hui's "Song of the Exile" as it intersects with issues of cultural identity, national allegory, and women's autobiographies. Stanley Kwan's "Center Stage": The (Im)possible Engagement between Feminism and Postmodernism, 60-80 Shuqin Cui Abstract: Analysis of the star image of Ruan Lingyu, constructed in the early Chinese films of the 1930s and rearticulated in Stanley Kwan's "Center Stage" (1992), demonstrates the contradictions between feminism and postmodernism. In addition, when placed in the context of Hong Kong's return to China, the fragmented female image reveals a concern for the uncertain relations between history and representation. Connecting Film/Media Studies to Student Experiences [Introduction], 81-83 Ramona Curry Connecting to Film History through Writing, 83-89 Robin Bates Teaching "The Scent of Green Papaya" in Saigon: Cinema in International Context, 89-93 Linda C. Ehrlich Critical Media Studies and the North American Media Literacy Movement, 94-101 Jim Wehmeyer Archival News, 102-117 Brian Taves Professional Notes, 118-128 Paula J. Massood, Anne Morey |
| Volume 40 Number 1 |
Under "Western Eyes": The Personal Odyssey of Huang Fei-Hong in "Once upon a Time in China", 3-24 Tony Williams Abstract: Rather than being read in exclusively postmodernist terms, Tsui Hark's series "Once upon a Time in China" may be understood as a new version of a Hong Kong cinematic discourse involving historical "interflow." It deals with dispersion, China's relationship to the outside world, and strategic forms of reintegration designed to strengthen national identity. Soap Opera in China: The Transnational Politics of Visuality, Sexuality, and Masculinity, 25-47 Sheldon H. Lu Abstract: This essay examines Chinese television drama in the 1990s. It focuses on soap operas involving transnational romances between Chinese men and Russian and American women. The construction of Chinese masculinity through the foreign woman has become a new way of imagining national identity in the age of globalization. Early Cinema and Modernity in Latin America, 48-78 Ana M. López Abstract: This article traces the introduction and development of the cinema in Latin America, exploring the complex global interactions and transformational experiments that marked the diffusion of the medium in the context of international trends as well as in relationship to the continent's incipient modernity. The essay's comparative frame-work points to new patterns and observations that exceed the boundaries of discrete national histories. "The Purest Knight of All": Nation, History, and Representation in "El Cid" (1960), 79-103 Mark Jancovich Abstract: This article examines the Samuel Bronston production of "El Cid" (1960) and analyzes the process of cultural hybridization through which various myths of the Spanish national hero are stitched together and, in the process, reinterpreted to produce an epic movie for an international market. Caliban's Books: The Hybrid Text in Peter Greenaway's "Prospero's Books", 104-126 James Tweedie Abstract: This essay discusses Peter Greenaway's "Prospero's Books" as an allegory of the adaptation of canonical literature to cinema, with "The Tempest'"s colonial concerns refigured as a confrontation between a "masterful" original and an "unfaithful" follower. The essay then situates the film's meditation on the literary artifact and neobaroque aesthetics in opposition to the discourses of heritage circulating in Thatcherite Britain. Archival News, 127-137 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 138-146 Paula J. Massood, Anne Morey |
| Volume 40 Number 2 |
From Feminine Masquerade to Flâneuse: Agnès Varda's Cléo in the City, 3-16 Janice Mouton Abstract: In Agnès Varda's "Cléo" from 5 to 7 (1961), the protagonist's transformation from feminine masquerade to flâneuse occurs as a result of her involvement with a city, specifically Paris. Positing the possibility of a female flânerie, this essay establishes a connection between Agnès Varda and the writers George Sand and Virginia Woolf, thereby showing how a woman walker--a flâneuse--lays claim to subjectivity. The Big Picture: Theatrical Moviegoing, Digital Television, and beyond the Substitution Effect, 17-34 Kevin J. Corbett Abstract: This article traces the cultural history of the movie theater, revealing that both cultural forces and industrial imperatives are likely to preserve the theater, despite the threat that it will be "substituted for" by digital television, with its promise of filmlike screen size and picture/sound quality. Distribution, the Transient Audience, and the Transition to the Feature Film, 35-56 Michael Quinn Abstract: This historical essay argues that early feature-length films were not simply a new production trend; they represented a series of developments in distribution and exhibition based on differentiation. Indeed, the American film industry of the early 1910s followed several competing models of distribution in an effort to differentiate between the uniqueness of the feature and the standardization fostered by the short-subject program. "Place" and the Modernist Redemption of Empire in "Black Narcissus" (1947), 57-77 Priya Jaikumar Abstract: The coherence of an imperial narrative is predicated on the continuation of the colonial place as a backdrop. In Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's "Black Narcissus" (1947), the fictional Himalayan community of "Mopu" becomes central enough to impede assumptions projected onto it. However, the threat of narrative collapse is averted by a visibly modernist preoccupation with the (imperial) self and the film's redemptive theme. "Memoria Dextera Est": Film and Public Memory in Postwar Germany, 78-97 Olaf Hoerschelmann Abstract: This article investigates the struggles over public memory in postwar Germany. The representation of the Red Army Fraction (RAF) terrorist movement indicates the power of official memory. However, examples from the New German Cinema demonstrate that the creation of countermemories remained possible even at the peak of terrorism in the "German Autumn" of 1977. Archival News, 98-105 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 106-115 Paula J. Massood, Anne Morey |
| Volume 40 Number 3 |
A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory, 3-24 Jason Mittell Abstract: This essay argues that genres are cultural categories that surpass the boundaries of media texts and operate within industry, audience, and cultural practices as well. Offering a television-specific approach, the article explores media genres by incorporating contemporary cultural theory and exemplifying its discursive approach with a brief case study. The Genre Film as Booby Trap: 1970s Genre Bending and "The French Connection", 25-46 Todd Berliner Abstract: Genre-bending films rely on viewers' habitual responses to generic codes, misleading audiences into expecting conventional outcomes. "The French Connection" (1971) exploits spectators' expectations of police-detective-film formulas and thereby catches viewers offguard, creating a more unsettling experience than the genre traditionally provides. "No One Knows You're Black!": "Six Degrees of Separation" and the Buddy Formula, 47-68 Jennifer Gillan Abstract: Fred Schepisi's "Six Degrees of Separation" (1993) is an art-house film that plays with the buddy film formula, highlighting its inconsistencies and its contrived resolutions of complex issues surrounding racial and sexual anxieties and looking relations. The Naked Truth: "Showgirls" and the Fate of the X/NC-17 Rating, 69-93 Kevin S. Sandler Abstract: In 1990, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) replaced the X rating with the NC-17 category--No Children 17 and under Admitted. The new designation took effect immediately and was copyrighted so that adult filmmakers--who appropriated the X for pornography in 1968--could no longer unilaterally apply it to their films. MGM/UA's "Henry & June" became the first major studio film to receive the outermost rating since 1979. The NC-17's immediate inheritance of the veneer of the X rating, and the subsequent box-office failure of "Showgirls" (1995), reaffirmed the economic liability of the rating system's adults-only category. Fighting Films: The Everyday Tactics of World War II Soldiers, 94-112 William Friedman Fagelson Abstract: American soldiers watching movies near the front lines during World War II talked back to the screen, interacting with the texts and with each other. Archival News, 113-122 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 123-130 Paula J. Massood, Anne Morey |
| Volume 40 Number 4 |
The Legacy of Mario Camerini in Vittorio De Sica's "The Bicycle Thief" (1948), 3-17 Carlo Celli Abstract: Mario Camerini (1895-1981) was an Italian film director who directed Vittorio De Sica in romantic comedies in the 1930s. The thematic links between Camerini's films starring De Sica and De Sica's later neorealist work, such as "The Bicycle Thief," reveal a continuity between prewar and postwar Italian cinema usually assumed to be lacking. A Mountain of a Ship: Locating the "Bergfilm" in James Cameron's "Titanic", 18-35 Robert von Dassanowsky Abstract: An examination of James Cameron's "Titanic" (1997) reveals its structural and narrative roots in the "German Bergfilm" genre and strong relationship to Leni Riefenstahl's "Tiefland" (1945-1954). The popular appeal of "Titanic's Bergfilm" message suggests gender-role repression and a postmodern American correspondence to the social conditions of Weimar Germany. Orientalism as Alterity in Israeli Cinema, 36-54 Dorit Naaman Abstract: This article deals with the representation of Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians in the Israeli cinema of the 1970s and 1980s, specifically the phenomenon of "passing," whereby ethnicity and race are interchangeable in casting and plot. Such passing can empower Middle Eastern Jews to deconstruct ethnic stereotypes, while excluding Palestinians from participating in public discourse. Reigniting Japanese Tradition with "Hana-Bi", 55-80 Darrell William Davis Abstract: This article interrogates Kitano "Beat" Takeshi's "Hana-Bi" ("Fireworks", 1997) for its appropriation of traditional Japanese iconography and its insertion into a global marketplace for Asian auteur-gangster films. Kurosawa's "Dreams": A Cinematic Reflection of a Traditional Japanese Context, 81-103 Zvika Serper Abstract: The structure, content, means of expression, philosophical thought, and images in Kurosawa's "Dreams" (1990) offer an unconscious reflection of the traditional aristocratic "nō" theater in particular, as well as of other Japanese folkloristic and aesthetic sources. Archival News, 104-110 Eric Schaefer, Dan Streible Professional Notes, 111-123 Paula J. Massood, Anne Morey |