Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Rounds, Levels, And Waves: The Early Evolution Of Gameplay Segmentation, Jose Zagal, Clara Fernandez-Vara, Michael Mateas

Jose P Zagal

This article explores the early evolution of the structure and management of gameplay in videogames. We introduce the notion of gameplay segmentation to capture the role that design elements like level, boss, and wave play in videogames, and identify three modes of segmentation. Temporal segmentation limits, synchronizes and/or coordinates player activity over time. Spatial segmentation breaks the game’s virtual space into sub-locations. Challenge segmentation presents the player with a sequence of self-contained challenges. We describe each mode, and additional sub-modes, by analyzing vintage arcade games. Our analyses illustrate how these games represent a “primordial soup” in which many current game …

Gender And Fan Culture Series: Round 15 Part 1 On Confessions Of An Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog Of Henry Jenkins, Suzanne Scott

Suzanne Scott

Guest Blogger with Bob Rehak

Gender And Fan Culture Series: Round 15 Part Ii On Confessions Of An Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog Of Henry Jenkins,, Suzanne Scott

Suzanne Scott

Guest Blogger with Bob Rehak

Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wunderkind, Leo Lensing

Leo A Lensing

No abstract provided.

At Home In The Museum: Pierre Loti, Self-Collected, Self-Possessed, Anthony Purdy

Anthony Purdy

Suspended between metaphor and metonymy, between the spatial logic of the collection and the scenario of the personal that was the life of its owner, Pierre Loti's house in Rochefort participates in the same transvestism as his novels. This article explores the house museum as a heterotopia in which the synchronous time of the collection is open to disruption by the souvenir's reference to past events, to the biography of the collector.

Queer Transitions In Contemporary Spanish Culture: From Franco To La Movida, Gema Pérez-Sánchez

Gema Pérez-Sánchez

Gema Pérez-Sánchez argues that the process of political and cultural transition from dictatorship to democracy in Spain can be read allegorically as a shift from a dictatorship that followed a self-loathing “homosexual” model to a democracy that identified as a pluralized “queer” body. Focusing on the urban cultural phenomenon of la movida, she offers a sustained analysis of high queer culture, as represented by novels, along with an examination of low queer culture, as represented by comic books and films. Pérez-Sánchez shows that urban queer culture played a defining role in the cultural and political processes that helped to move …

Collaborative Games: Lessons Learned From Board Games, Jose Zagal, Rick Jochen, Hsi Idris

Jose P Zagal

Collaborative mechanisms are starting to become prominent in computer games, like massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs); however, by their nature, these games are difficult to investigate. Game play is often complex and the underlying mechanisms are frequently opaque. In contrast, board games are simple. Their game play is fairly constrained and their core mechanisms are transparent enough to analyze. In this article, the authors seek to understand collaborative games. Because of their simplicity, they focus on board games. The authors present an analysis of collaborative games. In particular, they focus on Reiner Knizia’s LORDOFTHERINGS, considered by many to be the …

Postcards From The Edge: Reference & Instruction For Film Studies [Presentation File], Nedda Ahmed

Nedda H Ahmed

No abstract provided.

Postcards From The Edge: Reference & Instruction For Film Studies [Resource List File], Nedda Ahmed

Nedda H Ahmed

No abstract provided.

Man In A Suitcase: Tulse Luper At Compton Verney, Anthony Purdy, Bridget Elliott

Anthony Purdy

Exploring in the gallery space the possibilities of an experimental intermediality, Luper at Compton Verney deploys the suitcase both as an emblem for key moments of twentieth-century history, including Auschwitz , and as a recurrent device in twentieth-century art. This essay examines the intersections of art and history in an exhibition space conceived as a complex heterotopian play of "other spaces," such as suitcase installations, vitrine displays, film projections, video screenings, drawings, and maps.

Die Letzten Tage Der Menschheit: Vorbilder Zu Abu Ghraib, Leo A. Lensing

Leo A Lensing

No abstract provided.

Carlo Michelstaedter’S La Persuasione E La Rettorica: A Translation And Commentary, Carlo Michealstaedter, Russell Valentino, Cinzia Blum, David Depew

David J Depew

This translation of Carlo Michelstaedter’s Persuasion and Rhetoric brings the powerful and original work of a seminal cultural figure to English-language readers for the first time. Ostensibly a commentary on Plato’s and Aristotle’s relation to the pre-Socratic philosophers, Michelstaedter’s deeply personal book is an extraordinary rhetorical feat that reflects the author’s struggle to make sense of modern life. This edition includes an introduction discussing his life and work, an extensive bibliography, notes to introduce each chapter, and critical notes illuminating the text. Within hours of completing Persuasion and Rhetoric, his doctoral thesis, 23-year-old Michelstaedter shot himself to death. The text …

Desire, Heavenly Bodies, And A Surrealist's Fascination With The Celestial Theatre, John Hatch

John G. Hatch

In 1922, the German Surrealist artist Max Ernst produced a montage work that included a woman's bare buttocks protruding out of the rings of Saturn. It is, to say the least, an unusual combination of images, but one that addresses some very basic human impulses. Largely, It expresses Ernst's understanding that inscribed upon the night sky are some of our deepest held fears and fantasies. Ernst sought to generate contemporary rephrasings of our mythologizing of the cosmos in a complex and often enigmatic way, drawing on such varied sources as Freudian psychology, late nineteenth-century symbolism, alchemy, and Surrealism. Ultimately, Ernst …

The Science Behind Francesco Borromini's Divine Geometry, John Hatch

John G. Hatch

No abstract provided.

Their Place On The Stage: Black Women Playwrights In America., Elizabeth Brown-Guillory

Elizabeth Brown-Guillory

This is the first book-length study of black American women playwrights. It will be useful to scholars in the fields of black and women's literature and an excellent source of background reading in graduate and undergraduate courses on American women playwrights. The author's training as both a scholar and a playwright is evident in this book. Choice This important contribution to African American and women's studies analyzes the dramatic works of America's black women playwrights. The plays of such writers as Alice Childress, Lorraine Hansberry, and Ntozake Shange are examined in light of the tradition from which they emerged. Brown-Guillory …

Textual Realisations, Judith (Judie) Cross

Judith (Judie) L Cross

The images in children's texts are vessels in which meaning is codified. Images are codified by their creator and decoded by the reader/viewer. This coding varies depending on the format of the text, the audience and the relationship between text and its context. Video versions of children's stories, may initially appear similar to their printed counterparts, but their meanings are usually significantly different. The reading/ viewing experience of various realisations is, in fact, essentially different although this may not be immediately apparent to the child reader / viewer. -- The profiles of ten children's stories are described in order to …

The Horizontal Walk: Marilyn Monroe, Cinemascope, And Sexuality

Lisa Cohen

No abstract provided.

Awakenings [Foley Editor], John Duvall

John Duvall

Stephen Kings' It, Tommy Wallace

3 Digital Curation

Havana [Foley Editor], John A. Duvall

John Duvall

No abstract provided.

Dances With Wolves [Foley Editor], John A. Duvall

John Duvall

The War Of The Roses [Foley Editor], John A. Duvall

John Duvall

No abstract provided.