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Full-Text Articles in Film and Media Studies

Mulan: An Exploration Of Culture And Representation In Hollywood, Annie Okuhara, Bernadine Cortina, Hung Le, Ryan Nakahara, Jerry Zou Dec 2020

Mulan: An Exploration Of Culture And Representation In Hollywood, Annie Okuhara, Bernadine Cortina, Hung Le, Ryan Nakahara, Jerry Zou

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

'Mulan: An Exploration of Culture and Representation in Hollywood' is a presentation and detailed analysis of various representational, cultural, and minority-related issues in the context of Hollywood and western media. The presentation will focalize specifically around the recent live-action remake of the 1998 film "Mulan". The remake, premiered in March 2020, received critical backlash from various audiences (mostly from the BIPOC community), bashing the film for its misrepresentation of Ancient China and Ancient Chinese culture. Through this misrepresentation, the Hollywood film ultimately reflects views of cultural appropriation, misogyny, and overall minority underrepresentation in the United States. The research presents the …


Rose-Colored Genocide: Hollywood, Harmonizing Narratives, And The Cinematic Legacy Of Anne Frank’S Diary In The United States, Nora Nunn Sep 2020

Rose-Colored Genocide: Hollywood, Harmonizing Narratives, And The Cinematic Legacy Of Anne Frank’S Diary In The United States, Nora Nunn

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Drawing from literary and cultural studies, this paper situates U.S. adaptations of Anne Frank’s diary in the 1950s within a lineage of other films about historical genocide, including Schindler’s List, Hotel Rwanda, and The Killing Fields. Analysis of these narrative adaptations matters because it helps us better understand the danger of what critic Dominick LaCapra calls “harmonizing narratives,” or stories that provide the viewer with an “unwarranted sense of spiritual uplift” (14). Tracing the metamorphosis of Frank’s own diary from play to film adaptation, this article builds on existing scholarship to focus on how, in the wake …


Crazy Rich Asians: A Tale Of Immigration, Globalization And Consumption In East Asia, Giana M. Eckhardt, Finola Kerrigan Jun 2020

Crazy Rich Asians: A Tale Of Immigration, Globalization And Consumption In East Asia, Giana M. Eckhardt, Finola Kerrigan

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

We review the 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians in order to highlight its relevance for debates on immigration, globalization and consumption. In doing so, we argue that a new model of immigration for East Asians, distant and distinct from the American Dream, a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” narrative infused with an Asian ethic, is being valorized in the film. We also illuminate the complexities of East Asian representation on screen, as evidenced by varying receptions to the film in America and in various regions of Asia. And, finally, we note that while the film celebrates excess in consumption …


Crazy Rich Asians: Exploring Discourses Of Orientalism, Neoliberal Feminism, Privilege And Inequality, Devi Vijay Jun 2020

Crazy Rich Asians: Exploring Discourses Of Orientalism, Neoliberal Feminism, Privilege And Inequality, Devi Vijay

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

In this review of Crazy Rich Asians (2018), I examine elements of orientalism, neoliberal feminism, privilege and inequality that layer the film. Specifically, I interrogate the film’s American inflection of orientalism, surfacing a constant duel between essentialized Asian and American values, where what is American eventually wins out. Independent, entrepreneurial women are integral to this narrative of global capitalist accumulation. Yet, as the East meets the West in the globalized consumptive spaces of the super-rich, inequalities in the United States and Singapore are either repackaged under the myth of meritocracy, or conveniently erased. While the film demarcates a new Hollywood …


On The Banality Of Transnational Film, Ian Reyes, Justin Wyatt Jun 2020

On The Banality Of Transnational Film, Ian Reyes, Justin Wyatt

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

“Breakthrough” global blockbusters like Black Panther (2018) and Crazy Rich Asians (2018) create disturbances among critics and firms forced to wonder if such ripples of diversity will become waves of new cinema wiping out the hegemony of Hollywood and the global West. In this essay, we establish the context for this phenomenon in terms of film’s historical relationship to marketing. Through this context, we theorize a transnational aesthetic for global blockbusters, one that may serve to limit ripples of diversity, breaking waves of change against the rocks of a banal cinema of Americanized nothingness.


Globalization Tropes In Films: A Focus On Crazy Rich Asians, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Deniz Atik Jun 2020

Globalization Tropes In Films: A Focus On Crazy Rich Asians, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Deniz Atik

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.


“Un-American” Hollywood: Politics And Film In The Blacklist Era, Natalie Jarosz Apr 2020

“Un-American” Hollywood: Politics And Film In The Blacklist Era, Natalie Jarosz

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

This is a review of “Un-American” Hollywood: Politics and Film in the Blacklist Era, a 2007 volume edited by Frank Krutnik, Steve Neale, Brian Neve, and Peter Stanfield. It argues that the American Left was involved with creating films of true significance in the Hollywood system, in the context of post-war House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) blacklisting. There is also an examination of the Popular Front between liberals and communists before post-war tensions drew them further apart. There is a chapter about the “new” and “old” waves of the left in the context of 1960s and 1970s American cinema. …


Rethinking The Monstrous: Gender, Otherness, And Space In The Cinematic Storytelling Of Arrival And The Shape Of Water, Edward Chamberlain Feb 2020

Rethinking The Monstrous: Gender, Otherness, And Space In The Cinematic Storytelling Of Arrival And The Shape Of Water, Edward Chamberlain

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

Through comparing the Hollywood films Arrival and The Shape of Water, this article explicates the films’ similar portrayals of gender, social collaboration, and monstrosity. Although the mainstream media in the United States has linked the idea of the monstrous to larger global forces, the two films suggest that “the monster” exists much closer to home. Hence, this article makes the case that monstrosity occurs in a variety of formulations such as the actions of national authorities like governmental officials that oppress and endanger a myriad of American citizens as well as newcomers. Further, this article makes the case that …


The Others (2001) By Alejandro Amenábar In The Light Of Valentinian Thought, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski Feb 2020

The Others (2001) By Alejandro Amenábar In The Light Of Valentinian Thought, Fryderyk Kwiatkowski

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

The article offers a Valentinian interpretation of the Hollywood film The Others (2001). A particular attention is paid to the ways in which cinematic motifs and narrative elements of the film draw on myths, ideas and symbolic imagery present in Valentinian works, especially in the Gospel of Truth (NHC I, 3) and the Gospel of Philip (NHC II, 3). In the course of the heuristic analysis, the paper argues that although the film employs Valentinian ideas, it depicts different understanding of the world. This issue is addressed in the last part of the article by situating the film within broader …


Embodied Desire: Establishing The Transmasculine Viewer, Bel Simek Jan 2020

Embodied Desire: Establishing The Transmasculine Viewer, Bel Simek

Senior Projects Spring 2020

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.