Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance, Bob De Smith

Faculty Work Comprehensive List

"We have within us capacities only hinted at by our capes and birdfeather costumes."

Posting about ­­­­­­­­the central metaphor in the movie "Birdman" from In All Things - an online hub committed to the claim that the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ has implications for the entire world.

http://inallthings.org/the-unexpected-virtue-of-ignorance/

“For It Acordeth Noght To Kinde”: Remediating Gower’S Confessio Amantis In Machinima, Sarah L. Higley

Accessus

Visual adaptation of a medieval text, as tempting as it is in film of any kind, is never an easy conversion, and all the more so if the original is as formally structured as John Gower’s Confessio Amantis. This essay examines the philosophy and difficulties of making a “medieval motion picture” (animated and narrated by the author) reflect the message of three of Gower’s tales (“The Travelers and the Angel,” “Canace and Machaire,” “Florent”) as well as the multimedia properties of the manuscripts that house them, their illuminations beckoning us into colorful virtual worlds. In referencing theories of adaptation, …

Preface, Georgiana Donavin, Eve Salisbury

Accessus

Co-editors Georgiana Donavin and Eve Salisbury are delighted to feature the work of medievalist and machinimatographer Sarah L. Higley in this issue of Accessus. In a machinima production that debuted during the Third International Congress of the John Gower Society at the University of Rochester (30 June through 3 July, 2014), Higley refashions three tales from the Confessio Amantis for her film The Lover's Confession. In this issue of Accessus, we present the film and Higley's commentary on the intersections between her creative work with machinima and scholarly issues surrounding "The Tale of the Travelers and the …

Dr. Frankenstein's Hideous Progeny: A Typology Of The Mad Scientist In Contemporary Young Adult Novels And Computer Animated Film, Farran Leanne Norris Sands

Theses and Dissertations

The following study explores representations of mad scientists in a variety of novels for young adults, and in computer animated film for adolescents. Building from their typologies and furthering the work of scholars such as Glen S. Allen, Roslyn D. Haynes, and Sven Wagner, all of whom focus on texts for adult audiences, this study proposes and presents a typology of mad scientists as they are represented in texts for adolescents and young adults. Expanding the work of these scholars, this study aims to show where children's mad scientist texts both follow and deviate from current mad scientist typologies in …

Escape Artistry: Elisabeth Bergner And Jewish Disappearance In Der Träumende Mund (Czinner, 1932), Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

The late Weimar film Der träumende Mund culminates in the apparent but unconfirmed suicide of its female protagonist, played by Elisabeth Bergner. Bergner, whose background contributed to the film’s Jewish reception, and who later claimed to have written the film’s screenplay, left Germany and went into exile with director Paul Czinner in 1932. This film and the circumstances of its production and premiere link tragic modes of self-erasure, including the suicides of both many women and many German Jews, to notions of escape, emigration, and reemergence. Its success among Jewish spectators points to its enduring and international appeal.

La Poética Del Enrarecimiento En La Mujer Sin Cabeza (2008), De Lucrecia Martel, Karina Elizabeth Vázquez

Latin American, Latino and Iberian Studies Faculty Publications

El cine de Lucrecia Martel frecuentemente ha sido abordado desde perspectivas que privilegian las problemáticas de género, así como la memoria y el trauma en relación con la última dictadura militar argentina. Si bien estas miradas sobre la producción de Martel son apropiadas, especialmente aquellas que se enfocan en las relaciones familiares disfuncionales y las dinámicas de poder en los feudos provinciales, se ha dejado de lado el contenido crítico que presentan sobre el tema del empleo doméstico y la relación entre formas de precariedad laboral e impunidad social. Este ensayo propone una lectura de La mujer sin cabeza (2008), …

Scouted: An Inadvertent Archive From The Search For A Cinematic Vegas, Catherine Borg

Occasional Papers

This paper highlights the transformation of materials within the Mancuso Collection from utilitarian location scouting materials in the service of a film to historical record of the Vegas valley in 1994-95. Destined for disposal, these displaced artifacts are also an important record and reminder of the hidden labor and creative output of the many people who contribute to cultural products.

Manifestation Of Humanity And Humanism In Czechoslovak Cinema 1949-1953, Selma Rockova

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The period 1949-1953 was one of the most inhuman times in Czechoslovak history. Almost immediately after the Communists violently took over the country in 1948, the Communist party started a campaign of terror in order to spread fear. It made the society weak and obedient. The terror never disappeared completely but it lost its enormous intensity after Stalin's death in 1953. The end of 1940s and beginning of 1950s was a time of political trials with the party insiders. The false accusations and executions of the innocent people were used to demonstrate to the Soviet Union the power and loyalty …

Unhappy Together: Chinese Diaspora In Film, Jo Hsin Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The lives of people who move from one culture to another are similar in the range of experiences they encounter and different in how they interact with their particular circumstances. Cinematic representations of diaspora, accurately enough, also show general similarities and specific differences. In light of the concept of "accented cinema," we can compare and contrast film descriptions of Chinese immigrants in New York City. We view day to day events as they are interpreted by the host culture and we also understand that immigrants define their own experiences in terms of their home culture.

Two directors who are veterans …

Actuality Or Mystifying Spectacle? War In Cinema And Electronic Gaming, Christopher Robert Workoff

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This essay, using as a jump-off point François Truffaut's view that it is impossible to make a true anti-war film, examines the degree to which certain Hollywood films about war treat the subject as a spectacle for the audience. With the aid of critical articles discussing the war film's presentation from the standpoint of narrative and aesthetic, three films are examined for their ability (or lack thereof) to curtail the tendency of war as entertainment. Furthermore, with the increasing prominence of the videogame as a narrative medium, as well as the prevalence of game narratives dealing with war, the question …

Staging Quakerism In American Theatre And Film, James Emmett Ryan

Quaker Studies

Arguing that Quakers have been used as influential stock characters in American performance culture, this essay profiles several examples of Quakers as represented in American theater and film: John Murdock's play The Triumphs of Love (1795), Harry F. Millarde's lost silent film The Quack Quakers (1916), and the Academy Award winning film High Noon (1952). Paradoxically, in each of these productions, which range from farce to serious drama, Friends are shown as either claiming or as striving for unattainable moral and religious human ideals, but also as an exemplary community of individuals against which other Americans might and should be …

Tv Still Failing To Reflect Our Multicultural Society, Ian Kilroy

Articles

Irish television and media in 2015 still lacks diversity and does not reflect our multicultural society. An Op-Ed (opinion piece) in the Irish Times by a Dublin-based academic and lecturer in Technological University Dublin.

The Western Way: Democracy And The Media Assistance Model, Daire Higgins

Articles

International media assistance took off during a time where the ideological extremes of USA vs. USSR were set to disappear. Following the Cold War, international relations focused on democracy building, and nurturing independent media was embraced as a key part of this strategy. Fukayama called it the ‘End of History’, the fact that all other ideologies had fallen and Western style democracy was set to become the one common ideology. The US and UK led the way in media assistance, with their liberal ideas of a free press, bolstered by free market capitalism. America was the superpower, and forged the …

Neglecting The Subjects Of The Drag Performance In White Chicks, Hannah Sylvester

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

As a temporary transvestite film, White Chicks tackles racial issues as well as gender issues and performance. While the statements made on behalf of racial issues are strong, the statements concerning gender are much weaker. The paper will give a summary of the film followed by a description of it as a temporary transvestite film alongside other films within the genre. Issues concerning gender roles--specifically the concept of femininity--are addressed within the film, but are never challenged or changed. Indeed, society's heterosexual hegemony are upheld within this film as they are in similar films in the genre. Homosexual instances in …

Finding Aid To The Bern Porter Collection Of Contemporary Letters, Bern Porter, Colby College Special Collections

Finding Aids

Bern Porter (1911–2004) was an artist, writer, philosopher, and scientist who was involved in the development of the cathode ray tube, the Saturn V rocket, and the Manhattan Project, which he renounced upon learning of the bombing of Hiroshima. Also a pioneer in the arts, he is known for his landmark work as an author and publisher. He was an early practitioner of mail art and found and performance poetry and experimented with typography, sculpture, photography, artists’ books, and collage throughout his life. Porter lived and worked in New Jersey, New York, Tennessee, California, Guam, Alabama, and Tasmania. He finally …

Script Of The History Of The Caravan, Youssef Helmy

Papers, Posters, and Presentations

The Script of the Audio Documentary

Media Narratives And Drug Prohibition: A Content Analysis Of Themes And Strategies Promoted In Network News Coverage, 2000-2013, Maria M. Orsini

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Illicit drugs and drug users have been criminalized and stigmatized in social life and in mass media for more than a century in the United States. Researchers have reasoned that media accounts have contributed to the social construction of drug use as deviant behavior. Depictions of drugs and drug users which utilize alarmist rhetoric have been prevalent in media discourse and have targeted allegedly disreputable populations. The ideology which underpins drug prohibition, punitive public attitudes, and media sensationalism has contributed to the tendency of American society to disallow alternative approaches. This study examines the contribution of televised news broadcasts in …

Book Review: On Goldman's The American Jewish Story Through Cinema, David B. Levy

Touro University Libraries Publications and Research

The author provides a review of the book The American Jewish Story through Cinema, written by Eric Goldman.

Rodcon, Program, 2015, University Of Northern Iowa

RodCon Documents

Saturday, March 28, 2015 - 11:00am to 4:00pm

Program distributed at the event.

Welcome to the 2nd Annual Rod Library Mini Comic Con. The event is free and open to the public. Our goal is to provide an open forum for discussion about the theme of a networked society focused on popular culture, comics, and gaming. Our panel presentations are also focused on providing a forum for discussion about the complex issues of race, gender, class and social justice in popular entertainment. To see your entry, use the hashtag #RodCon15

The Leisured Testes: White Ball-Breaking As Surplus Masculinity In Jackass, Christina M. Tourino

English Faculty Publications

In Jackass: Number Two (2006), Bam Margera allows Ryan Dunn to brand his posterior with a hot iron depicting male genitalia. Bam cannot tolerate the pain enough to remain perfectly still, so the brand touches him several times, resulting in multiple images that seem blurry or in motion. Bam’s mother, who usually plays the role of game audience for his antics, balks when she learns that her son has been hurt as well as permanently marked. She asks Dunn why anyone would ever burn a friend. “Cause it was funny,” Dunn answers.[i]

Jackass mines the body in pain as …