Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Red-White-Blue And Hong Kong Installation Art, Nga Ying Liu

Lingnan Theses

The purpose of this study is to analyse the interaction between art and contested notions of Hong Kong identity by examining recent installations that employ the red, white and blue-striped plastic fabric, locally known in Hong Kong as red-white-blue (紅白藍). The red-white-blue fabric has, in recent years, become a signifier of the collective identity of Hong Kong people and of the ‘Hong Kong spirit’, with specific reference to the traits of the working class in the 1960s. The repeated articulations of this material in artworks show that there are certain qualities in this material with which local people identify. This …

Appropriateness In Design, Wing Man, Karen Ma

Lingnan Theses

When the term ‘design object’ is used to refer to artifacts, we presuppose that they can serve mundane functions and provide aesthetic pleasure. In many cases, the visual form of a design object is a result of achieving aesthetic function and practical function. What is the relation between these two functions? In the design process, designers also strike a balance between aesthetic pursuit, utilitarian purpose and other factors, such as environmental protection. What is the balance of these aims (aesthetic aim and the non-aesthetic aims)? My research on this topic suggests that it may be useful to conceive it in …

Tele-Visioning Terror, Caroline Zekri

Re-visioning Terrorism

This paper is devoted to the relationship between terrorism and media, with a special focus on the theoretical notions of “icon”, “mass” and “distance”. It aims to show how the phenomenon of modern terrorism calls into question the essence of modern democracies and their systems of information, based on the distance between vision and event.

Symbolic Violence As Subtle Virulence: The Philosophy Of Terrorism, Jonathan Beever

Re-visioning Terrorism

Jean Baudrillard’s semiotic analysis of violence leads us to understand the form of violence as three-fold: aggressive, historical, and semiotically virulent. Violence of the third form is the violence endemic to terrorism. If violence has been typically understood as of the first two types, terrorism should be understood as the virulence of simulacra. The conflation of these types of violence explains the failure of militaristic responses to terrorism. This paper will explore Baudrillard’s conception of symbolic violence as the virulence of signs and help us come to terms with the semiotic foundation of terrorism.

Cinema, Systematic Terror, And The Aesthetics Of Passivity, Khatereh Sheibani

Re-visioning Terrorism

My presentation explores the aesthetics of passivity in in Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996) by the Palestinian director Elia Suleiman and Taste of Cherry (1997) by Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami. Both films employ non-actors, unconnected scenes, and disjointed narrative and discontinuous editing. They both employ similar cinematic and narrative techniques as by-products of wide-spread terror executed on social, political, and cultural levels. My presentation investigates the political and social restrictions in the late 1990s in Iran and the West Bank to show that similar forces under the reign of terror resulted in the aesthetics of passivity, muteness, and uncertainty in …

Marco Bellocchio's Buongiorno Notte And The Language Of Terrorists, Cosetta Gaudenzi

Re-visioning Terrorism

This essay investigates Marco Bellocchio’s Buongiorno, notte (2003), a movie which exploits language and soundtrack to fictionalize and revisit the historical 1978 kidnapping and murder of the Christian Democrat President Aldo Moro by the 1970s Italian left terrorist group Brigate Rosse. As I demonstrate, Bellocchio relies greatly on the language and soundtrack of Buongiorno, notte to convey his negative response to the BR’s kidnapping and murder of Moro, as well as to come to terms with his own political and cinematic past.

Arabs In Post- 9/11 Hollywood Films: A Move Towards A More Realistic Depiction?, Ouidyane Elouardaoui

Re-visioning Terrorism

This essay looks at the way a number of post-9/11 Hollywood films attempts to offer an image more reflective of the real Arabs. Contrary to a wide range of Hollywood films that have perpetuated a racially prejudiced image of Arabs, I argue that post-9/11 films, such as Babel (2006), represent Arabs as simple human beings with commonplace problems and identifiable worries. In my paper, I address these questions: how did the events of 9/11 help to change Hollywood’s portrayal of Arabs in contemporary Hollywood cinema? How do these contemporary films attempt to break free from the classical stereotypes about Arabs? …

Documenting Horror: The Use Of Sound In Non-Fiction 9/11 Films, Jesse Schlotterbeck

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Terrorism As Communication In Gregor Schnitzler’S Was Tun Wenn’S Brennt (2001) And Leander Scholz’S Rosenfest (2001), Sandra Dillon

Re-visioning Terrorism

This essay explores the connection of terrorism to communication, specifically to illocutionary and perlocutionary acts in Gregor Schnitzler’s Was tun wenn’s brennt and Leander Scholz’s novel Rosenfest. One cannot deny that violence plays an important role in German narratives about terrorism; however, the main focus of the works analyzed here is communication, which the narrative structure, the role of the spectator or reader and the main characters within the novel illustrate.

Forms Of (In)Visibility In Recent Spanish Films On Basque Terrorism, Jaume Martí-Olivella

Re-visioning Terrorism

This essay explores the omnipresence of the subject of (Basque) terrorism in Spanish political discourse and media representations in ways that construct the average citizen as both victim and voyeur of a terrorist subject always already rendered invisible either by its reduction to a legal “bare life”or by its figuration in terms of the unspeakable. My analysis centers on Jaime Rosales’ Bat Buruan/Tiro en la cabeza/Bullet In The Head,2008, arguably the most radical and unsettling of the Spanish cinematic figurations of the terrorist subject to date, where the spectator is forced to occupy such a paradoxical position as both …

Rebels Without A Cause: Youth And Terrorism In Contemporary Italian Film, Simona Bondavalli

Re-visioning Terrorism

This essay explores the representation of Italian terrorists in recent generational films set in the 1960s and 1970s. While they foreground the protagonists’ youth and celebrate it as a historically new condition, these coming-of-age narratives typically present radicalism either in terms of youthful idealism or youthful error, with corresponding nostalgic or revisionist approaches that obscure its ideological basis. An analysis of the selective generational appeal deployed by four recent films through narrative structure, style and casting highlights an alternative reading of the post-ideological approach to the representation of terrorism in the 21st century.

Knights Of Justice: Blockbuster Terrorism In Code Geass: Lelouch Of The Revolution, Aaron Choo, Wilson Koh

Re-visioning Terrorism

Vigilance, Vigilantism, And The Role Of The Citizen In Combating German Terror, 1967-1977, Todd Michael Goehle

Re-visioning Terrorism

By closely analyzing the Charles Bronson vehicle Death Wish -released to German speaking audiences as Ein Mann sieht rot- and the controversies that surrounded its West German debut in November 1974, the essay addresses broader debates about vigilance, Selbstjustiz (vigilante justice), and citizenship during the “Red Years” (1967-1977). Conceptualizing Selbstjustiz as a discursive site, I reveal how Ein Mann sieht rot’s representations of Selbstjustiz negotiated broader German anxieties about Americanization, masculinity, urban crime, the fascist past, state power, media effects and sensationalism, constructions of the citizen and the criminalized or terrorist “other,” and the responsibilities of the citizen in …

Interview With Brooke Jacobson, 2nd Interview (Audio), Heather Oriana Petrocelli

Center for the Moving Image Oral Histories

Heather Petrocelli interviewed Brooke Jacobson in her home in Portland, Oregon on her involvement with the Center for the Moving Image.

Brooke Jacobson is a retired PSU professor and the co-founder of the Northwest Film Center.

Interview With Jim Blashfield (Audio), Heather Oriana Petrocelli

Center for the Moving Image Oral Histories

Heather Petrocelli interviewed Jim Blashfield at his studio in Portland, Oregon on his involvement with the Center for the Moving Image.

Jim Blashfield is an award-winning filmmaker and media artist.

Media Services In North American Academic Libraries, Michael J. Miller

Publications and Research

Ongoing evolution of the Benjamin S. Rosenthal (BRL), Multimedia Commons was initially informed by a report from an internal task force and also by a four-year-long study of North American academic library media services units. A travel grant allowed for visits to the media service units of Barnard College, College of Staten Island - City University of New York, Columbia University, Georgetown University, New York University, University of Maryland - College Park, University of Massachusetts – Amherst, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, University of Texas – Austin. Visits have subsequently been made to the University of Washington – …

Interview With David Milholland, Part 1 (Audio), Heather Oriana Petrocelli

Center for the Moving Image Oral Histories

Heather Petrocelli interviewed David Milholland at the Northwest Film Center in Portland, Oregon on his involvement with the Center for the Moving Image.

David Milholland is a filmmaker, author, and co-founder of the Oregon Cultural Heritage Commission.

Out Of True, Andrew David Bryan

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, I will detail the process that went into the making of my thesis film, Out of True. The areas I will cover include Writing, Directing, Production Design, Cinematography, Editing, Sound, as well as Technology and Workflow. Special emphasis will be given to Directing and the new directing style I experimented with in an effort to create not only believable but engaging performances. I will then assess the success of this experiment through the use of audience questionnaires.

The Risk Factors Of Alcohol Abuse Among College Athletes, Jacob Jones

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Self-concept theory was used as a theoretical basis to investigate the utility of social norms alcohol prevention programs designed for college athletes. The predictive relationship among alcohol use and athletic identity, competitiveness, drinking game participation, and level of sport participation was investigated. It was discovered that drinking game participation is a significant predictor of total weekly alcohol use above and beyond the other predictors. In addition, drinking game participation and organized recreational sport participation were significant predictors of total binge drinking episodes. While controlling for drinking game participation and competitiveness, no significant differences were found in the amount of alcohol …

Still Hungover: Todd Phillips And Rape Culture, Terri Carney

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

As a textual critic who came of age in the '90s, it is difficult for me to talk about authorial intention. Indeed, most academics today tell their students to avoid declaring "The message" of a text, encouraging them instead to respect the multivalence of meaning, the slipperiness of poetic discourse, and the freedom of the author to engage discursive play without being pinned down by an absolute interpretation. But I confess that, despite my training, after having watched The Hangover and read all over the Internet about it, I can't help but wonder if director Todd Phillips is a misogynistic …