Film and Media Studies Commons^™

"Everyone Leaves Me Behind”: How Harmful Tropes In Fiction Impact Autistic Women, Sara E. Allard

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Until now, females with ASD have been ignored by healthcare professionals, policymakers, and the general public. The unique presentation of autistic women and girls is now in the cultural spotlight within not just the advocacy and scientific community, but also the arts. Female autistic characters are getting increased representation across literature and television, yet their narratives are still often stuck in the past. Most authors and screenwriters have yet to understand the specific struggles that female autistics face compared to their male counterparts, relying on the outdated, reductive perceptions that have plagued them for decades.

This article outlines three harmful …

Not The Absentminded Professor: Autistic Experience And Representation In Academia, Martin Brick

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

While there are many facets of a career in academia that may be amendable to autistics, the discipline also presents a number of challenges. These hardships can be exacerbated by misunderstandings or even discrimination from colleagues and administrator with pre-existing assumptions of autistic behavior erroneously based on media representations. This essay will examine literary and television representations of autistics working in university settings to argue that the nature of such portrayals negatively impacts the popular view of autistic scholars. Comedy is frequently used to highlight social awkwardness and other behavioral deviance, perpetuating Damian Milton’s double-empathy problem.

Visions Of A Captured Mind: Using Expressive Film Techniques To Convey The Experience Of Liberty Deprivation As A Neurodiverse Individual, Sam H. Grant, Ken Fero

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

In this article, I make the case for the use of expressive film techniques to convey the emotional, or affective, experience of neurodiverse people who have been subjected to liberty restricting practices and policy. I do this by discussing my own experience with film practice as a man living with autism, presenting a broader philosophical case for how artistic modes of communication can close affective and social divisions between neurodiverse and neurotypical people, explaining why it is the cinematic techniques I advocate for are uniquely suited to neurodiverse people, and then I showcase some of my own work as a …

Sharp Stick Grasps At Autistic Women’S Liminal Vulnerability, Meaghan Krazinski

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This film analysis of Sharp Stick by Lena Dunham critically explores how the film uptakes representations of the ideas around the vulnerabilities of Autistic women in popular culture, and yet does not explicitly name them as such. This liminality is critical and plays into the intersectional analysis that the author engages around the way vulnerability and Autistic identity is interpreted and read. The author draws upon McDermott's (2022) "neurotypical gaze" in an analysis that shows how traditional tropes around Autistic women’s vulnerability are social constructions that are brought into relief by stereotypes around race, gender, and ability. The author uses …

Autism-As-Machine Metaphors In Film And Television Sound, Erin Felepchuk

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

Around the turn of the millennium, there was an outpouring of autistic representation in literature, film, and television. These resulted in a multitude of new cultural texts that reinforced damaging metaphors about autism that had previously emerged in medical discourse. In film and television, autistic people are portrayed through a variety of metaphors: as impenetrable fortress, missing puzzle pieces, confusing aliens, and as malfunctioning robots or supercomputers. In this paper, I examine the role of film and television sound in reinforcing the metaphor of autistic people as “unfeeling machines.” The unfeeling machine metaphor is personified through sound tracks that deploy …

Parasite: A Film Review On Capitalism, John K. Kim

Cinesthesia

Bong Joon Ho’s critically acclaimed Parasitebrings a refreshing perspective on capitalist ideology that dominates the Western world today. Its clever and thrilling commentary on the various aspects of capitalist ideology is as vast as it is sophisticated. The aim of this paper is to use Zizek’s ideas on ideology and Foucalt’s work on discourse to unpack some of the main arguments the movie makes about capitalism. I begin by discussing the film’s central commentary on capitalist tenets and move onto the film’s use of “unspoken” or “unassimilable” statements. I close with a brief discussion on the symbolic significance of …

Butts, Blood, And Bombs: The American Occupation’S Effect On Japanese Cinema, Dan Geary

Cinesthesia

An in depth examination of the effects that the American Occupation of Japan after the end of the second World War had on Japanese cinema, both in terms of artistic output and restrictions within the industry itself.

Eighth Grade: Found Footage And Found Story, Kaleb A. Liermann

Cinesthesia

An in-depth examination of Eighth Grade's (Burhnam, 2017) relationships with the concept of Kracauer's Found Story and the Found Footage subgenre.

A Change In Theatre, Ben Friedman

Cinesthesia

A look at the evolution of war cinema in the United States from the days Classical Hollywood through final years of the New American Cinema.

Truffaut’S L’Enfant Sauvage (The Wild Child, 1970): Evoking Autism And The Nascent “Eugenic Atlantic”, Joy C. Schaefer

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This essay analyzes François Truffaut’s L’Enfant sauvage (The Wild Child, 1970) as an early representation of autism that metaphorizes the neurodiverse child as the colonial subject. The film takes place in 1798, only a decade after the French Revolution, and depicts the true events of the “wild boy of Aveyron,” a feral child found in the Southern French forest when he was twelve years old. Before the film’s production, Truffaut—who also plays the boy’s teacher, Dr. Jean-Marc Itard—collected articles and books on autism and viewed videos of autistic children to create his main character’s behavioral patterns. The film …

La Batalla Del Cine Chileno: Chilean Cinema’S History Of Resisting Hollywood, Alexander V. Berdy

Cinesthesia

The United States has been a global superpower for over a century now and that first place title also extends to Hollywood. Since WWI the Hollywood system has controlled the global film market by exporting their films all over the world. These American films took profits from many national cinemas but they have also influenced filmmakers worldwide to do some spectacular things; especially in countries like Chile. The story of Chile’s film industry shares a lot of similarities with European filmmaking. There seems to be a common theme of countries failing to beat American import films, then resisting the commercial …

Cinematic Auteurism, And The New Wave Sensibilities Of Sofia Coppola's "Lost In Translation", Benjamin Brewster

Cinesthesia

This paper seeks to illustrate the auteurism and the cinematic influences present in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, specifically through the lenses of the gender and historical modes of cultural film analysis. It argues that Sofia Coppola’s personal brand of auteurism permeates the film in a variety of distinct and important ways, and that much of the film’s success can be traced back to both her auteurism at work, and to the subtle but distinct nods made therein to the historical cinematic movement known as the French New Wave. It seeks to attack these ideas on two distinct but …

A Short History Of Film And Censorship In Mainland China, Rebecca E. Harvey

Cinesthesia

This paper discusses the history of film in Mainland China and the censorship that followed and its effects on Mainland Chinese media and filmmakers today.

Overheard And Misheard: The Paranoid Unreliable Narrator Of The Conversation, Ryan Jones

Cinesthesia

The Conversation is a character study of an individual consumed by his fear of the death of privacy. Each of the film’s major formal elements ultimately seek to trap the audience in the world of Harry Caul: the paranoia, the desperate need for privacy, the isolation. Through careful sound and visual design, the film keeps its audience at the level of its characters and implicates them in the fear that pushes the protagonist to overturn his life. This paper seeks to describe the formal aspects of the film which produces these reactions.

A Culture Of Loyalty And Secrecy: Spotlight And The Power Of Organized Religion In America, Sara E. Juarez

Cinesthesia

The paper utilizes the imagery and story of Tom McCarthy's 2015 film Spotlight to create reveal how deeply rooted Christian values are in American society. The paper also challenges this dominant ideology by highlighting the corrupt institutional efforts to maintain a pure image of the Church.

Love Simon As A Modern, Gay Coming-Of-Age Narrative: A New Point Of Contention And Engagement For Queer And Popular Culture, John H. Haley Jr.

Cinesthesia

Historically, coming-of-age romantic comedy stories depicted on screen have been centered around heterosexual couples; the 2018 film Love, Simon challenged conventions by depicting a gay protagonist while building on the traditions of the genre. This paper aims to examine the effect of this film on fan behavior and critical perception of the genre. Examining the impact of Love, Simon reveals how an unconventional narrative both expanded how viewers and critics understood the genre while also inspiring new forms of fan engagement with the film. The author concludes that this groundbreaking narrative, by providing a previously unavailable opportunity for a wider …

An American Oilscape: The Affective Emotionalism Of Petroleum In There Will Be Blood, Maren Loveland

Cinesthesia

Underlying the physical and ideological lives of Americans is the pulsating force of oil, a power dictating not only modes of transportation and energy, but the emotions and ideas of societies dependent on the exploitation of this natural resource. Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood displays the evolution of the Californian landscape under the pressure of the oil industry, demonstrating to the audience the emotionalism imbued within oil, separating it from pure physicality and introducing it as the ideological pulse underlying California. Drawing on the vernacular of Maria Löschnigg’s work, “Sublime Oilscapes,” I posit that the closeness of oil …

The Power Of The Documentary: Examining The Effectiveness Of Ava Duvernay’S 13th, Sara E. Juarez

Cinesthesia

No abstract provided.

The Gang Beats The Odds: It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia's Consistent Popularity, Matt Nutile

Cinesthesia

No abstract provided.

Can I Have A Look?: A Formal Analysis Of Hitchcock And The Art Of Suspense In "Rear Window", Kevin S. Brennan

Cinesthesia

The legendary director Alfred Hitchcock has one goal, to make audiences squirm at the edges of their seats. Rear Window, one of his most critically acclaimed, studied and, according to Hitchcock himself, cinematic films. The way he shot this film and used the tools in his cinematic tool belt all enhance the suspense of his masterpiece. His use of sound, camera movement, scene set-up, actors, writing and more all come together to create a supreme work of suspense.

But I'M A Cheerleader: Queer In Content And Production, Syd Martin

Cinesthesia

No abstract provided.

Aspects Of Moonlight, Emma Keenan

Cinesthesia

No abstract provided.

It’S Not About You—It’S About Me, Robert F. Johnson

Peer Reviewed Articles

Hold Me, a film written and directed by Teace Snyder (2016) was distributed by email to palliative care clinicians and educators. The viewpoint presented here is not a review of this movie as a drama for entertainment. Rather it reviews the film to address the suggestion by its producers that it could serve as an adjunct to palliative care professional education.

The Representation Of Trans Women In Film And Television, Nikki Reitz

Cinesthesia

No abstract provided.

Marvel Films As Effective Cinema Therapy, Lucas Nielsen

Cinesthesia

Marvel Cinematic Universe films and a variety of superhero films, in conjunction with the ideologies of superheroes, provide a form of therapeutic benefit in coping with trauma and establishing trauma narrative.

Breaking The Celluloid Ceiling, Kellie Ann Cassel

Cinesthesia

The ignorance of the current state of gender equality in the film industry is not just on the rise, but the knowledge of such has been non existent for decades. Women were largely involved in the film industry during the turn of the century, until sound film became popular and Hollywood turned into a big business. As of 2016, only seven percent of the top filmmakers are women. The lack of female filmmakers in Hollywood is not only effecting the women who are trying to make a living doing what they love, but also the young and old female audiences …

Movies In Medicine: Cinema Therapy For Children Suffering From Chronic Health Conditions, Wesley D. Buskirk

Cinesthesia

Children suffering from chronic health conditions endure many traumatic experiences, which often result in physiological turmoil. Physiological turmoil from posttraumatic stress can negatively impact pediatric patients' treatments and frequently requires therapy to promote psychological well-being, physical health, and lifelong coping methods. Cinema therapy, also known as movie therapy, utilizes narrative-based audiovisual stimuli as a therapeutic catalyst for child medical patients suffering from chronic health conditions.

Faint Glimmers Of Civilization: Mediated Nostalgia And “The Grand Budapest Hotel”, Jamie L. Bick

Cinesthesia

This paper explores how Wes Anderson strategically uses nostalgia in his 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel as a form of social commentary on the European interwar period and its relation to the current historical era.

Understanding Loss Of Self In "My Beautiful Broken Brain", Erika P. Collin

Cinesthesia

No abstract provided.

The Value Of Parental Co-Viewing On Children And Families, Alison Work

Cinesthesia

When we think back to movie watching in the sixties, we typically picture a family sitting around the television and experiencing the film together. Nowadays, it is common for parents to put on a movie for their child to watch while they focus on other tasks. In our modern, fast paced environment, with movies available to stream at all times, the act of watching a movie as a family has become increasingly rare, and there has been a lack of parental monitoring of media. Consequently, films are not being utilized to their full potential. Films can have a tremendous impact …