Film and Media Studies Commons^™

East Asian "China Doll" Or "Dragon Lady"?, Joey Lee

Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections

This paper argues that the representation of East Asian women in popular media is harmful through its exaggerated portrayal of the ‘China Doll’, and ‘Dragon Lady’, ultimately further exoticizing and dehumanizing East Asian women, ensuring the dominance of the West. I will study these portrayals and their impacts through historical and modern film, modern magazines, and intersectional oppression that the restrictive categorizations place upon women of East Asian descent.

Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, And Environmental Narrative By Alexa Weik Von Mossner, David Tagnani

The Goose

Review of Alexa Weik von Mossner's Affective Ecologies: Empathy, Emotion, and Environmental Narrative.

Texture And Narrative In Wall-E And Tangled, Emily Sider

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

“The Robocop We Deserve”: Post-Human Transformations And Social Critique In Paul Verhoeven’S And Jose Padilha’S Robocop, Mynt Marsellus

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Papa’S Got A Brand New Kino German Wartime Memory In Edgar Reitz’S Heimat: A Chronicle Of Germany, Nathan Maclean

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Ageing In Action: Hollywood’S Ageing Ensemble Action Hero Series, Philippa Gates

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

This paper explores the treatment of ageing in the ensemble action hero series RED (2010 and 2013) starring Bruce Willis and Helen Mirren and The Expendables (2010, 2012, and 2014) starring Sylvester Stallone and other 1980s action stars. These two series combine action with comedy to thematize two sets of issues in relation ageing—first, about competence and usefulness and, second, about meaningful relationships. In the RED series, these two overarching concerns are linked explicitly to ageing whereas, in the Expendables films, these concerns replace those about ageing. In other words, the Expendables series mainly ignores ageing and presents its heroes …

Border Insecurity: Reading Transnational Environments In Jim Lynch’S Border Songs, Jenny Kerber

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

This article applies an eco-critical approach to contemporary American fiction about the Canada-US border, examining Jim Lynch’s portrayal of the British Columbia-Washington borderlands in his 2009 novel Border Songs. It argues that studying transnational environmental actors in border texts—in this case, marijuana, human migrants, and migratory birds—helps illuminate the contingency of political boundaries, problems of scale, and discourses of risk and security in cross-border regions after 9/11. Further, it suggests that widening the analysis of trans-border activity to include environmental phenomena productively troubles concepts of nature and regional belonging in an era of climate change and economic globalization. Cet …

Crossing America’S Borders: Chinese Immigrants In The Southwesterns Of The 1920s And 1930s, Philippa Gates

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

Today, when we think of the film Western, we think of a genre dominated by Anglo-American heroes conquering the various struggles and obstacles that the nineteenth-century frontier presented to settlers and gunslingers alike—from the daunting terrain and inclement environment of deserts, mountains, and plains to the violent opposition posed by cattle ranchers and Native Americans. What we tend to forget, most likely because the most famous Westerns of the last seventy-five years also forgot, is that Chinese immigrants played an important role in that frontier history. As Edward Buscombe confirms, “[g]iven the importance of their contribution, particularly to the construction …

Based On Actual Events: Surveillance, Fear And Crime Control In Found-Footage Horror Films, Cassandra Persaud

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

In recent years, found-footage horror films have reappeared with increasing popularity, leading to its recognition as the current horror subgenre du jour. Its amateur style of filmmaking has allowed the subgenre to explore public concerns around the growth of technology, the use of surveillance, and crime control. Found-footage horror films offer a unique platform for analysis as they are framed around presenting the ‘footage’ in the film as factual or reality. In this research study, themes and narratives around the use of surveillance and the production of the docile body in found-footage horror films were examined. The study involved an …

In Search Of Lost Selves: Memory And Subjectivity In Transnational Art Cinema, Anders J. Bergstrom

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation begins from the position that cinema’s ongoing persistence as a specific operation of subjective perception is intimately related to the questions of self and memory it raises. Even as digitization and global capitalism have ostensibly led to the creation of a “post-cinematic” culture, cinematic forms and practices remain inextricably related to the larger (often unacknowledged) metaphysical concerns of the cultures and social contexts in which they continue to signify. These concerns—which include beliefs in perceptual realism, the relations between images and the past, and notions of selfhood—shape both the production and consumption of cinema as a tool which …

The God-Camera Of Theology And Memory In Terrence Malick’S The Tree Of Life, Sherry Coman

Consensus

Terrence Malick’s film The Tree of Life presents a personal and emotionally-laden memory play that is visually and symbolically “framed” by theological and biblical contexts that are both explicit and implicit. This paper explores how the film’s constantly moving camera and elliptical editing help to establish a trope for depicting how God moves in the lives of the characters. Through non-traditional film production and presentation techniques, Malick manifests a theme of “God as ultimate artist” who participates with us in the restoration of what is broken, and who makes “all things new”.

Animals In Irish Literature And Culture Edited By Kathryn Kirkpatrick And Borbála Faragó, Geneviève Pigeon

The Goose

Review of Kathryn Kirkpatrick and Borbála Faragó's Animals in Irish Literature and Culture.

The Canadian Horror Film: Terror Of The Soul Edited By Gina Freitag And Andre Loiselle, Jennifer Schell

The Goose

Review of Gina Freitag's and Andre Loiselle's The Canadian Horror Film: Terror of the Soul

Petrography, The Tar Sands Paradise, And The Medium Of Modernity, Warren Cariou, Jon Gordon

The Goose

This article engages with the artistic practice of petrography, the art of creating photographic images through the action of sunlight upon bitumen, the heavy-oil material that is the source of the petroleum in the Athabasca tar sands. It presents several examples of petrographs that document the process of industrial bitumen mining itself. Further, it theorizes the ways in which both the process of producing petrographs and the act of engaging with them as a viewer require a degree of collaboration normally absent from our consumption of petroleum as the medium of modernity. A key argument of the paper is the …

No More Mind Games: Content Analysis Of In-Game Commentary Of The National Football League’S Concussion Problem, Jeffrey Parker

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

American (gridiron) football played at the professional level in the National Football League (NFL) is an inherently physical spectator sport, in which players frequently engage in significant contact to the head and upper body. Until recently, the long-term health consequences associated with on the field head trauma were not fully disclosed to players or the public, potentially misrepresenting the dangers involved in gameplay. Crucial to the dissemination of this information to the public are in-game televised commentators of NFL games, regarded as the primary conduits for mediating in-game narratives to the viewing audience. Using a social constructionist theoretical lens, this …

The Struggle To Be Heard: Toronto's Postproduction Sound Industry, 1968 To 2005, Katherine E. Quanz

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This dissertation examines how economic and technological changes shaped the sounds of Canadian cinema, from the modern industry’s founding in the late 1960s to the widespread adoption of digital editing software in the early 2000s. By focusing on the labour and craft practices that coalesced in Toronto’s postproduction companies, I argue that such practices engendered a critical shift in the sonic style of Canadian film sound. Whereas fiction films initially featured a sonic style developed by the National Film Board of Canada for documentary production, filmmakers eventually adopted a style strongly identified with Hollywood cinema. Although it is tempting to …

Panic At The Drive-In: Affordance, Moral Panic, And Drive-In Theatres, Maria Chatzifilalithis

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Caribou, Petroleum, And The Limits Of Locality In The Canada–Us Borderlands, Jenny Kerber

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

his article discusses Karsten Heuer’s 2006 book Being Caribou in light of debates in ecocriticism and border studies about how to define the local in the context of environmental problems of vast range and uncertain temporality. It explores how Heuer’s book about following the Porcupine Caribou herd’s migration engages in multiple forms of boundary crossing—between countries, between hemispheric locations, and between species—and shows how insights from Indigenous storytelling complicate the book’s appeal to environmentalist readers by asserting a prior, transnational Indigenous presence in the transboundary landscapes of present-day Alaska and the Yukon.

Moving Environments: Affect, Emotion, Ecology, And Film Edited By Alexa Weik Von Mossner, Ted Geier

The Goose

Ted Geier reviews Completely Affecting: The Cinematics of Environmental Concern and Real Change, edited by Alexa Weik von Mossner.

Green Documentary: Environmental Documentary In The 21st Century By Helen Hughes, David M. Lawrence

The Goose

David M. Lawrence reviews Green Documentary: Environmental Documentary in the 21st Century by Helen Hughes.

Remediating The Past: Doing “Periodical Studies” In The Digital Era, Maria Dicenzo

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Stuart Hall: An Exemplary Socialist Public Intellectual?, Herbert Pimlott

Communication Studies Faculty Publications

This article offers an assessment of the Stuart Hall’s role as a socialist public intellectual during the 1980s and the circulation of his Thatcherism thesis via public interventions writing for the periodical, Marxism Today.

Contrary to most assessments of the influence of scholars and public intellectuals, which are based upon an implicit assumption that their widespread circulation are a result of the veracity and strength of the ideas themselves, this article focuses on the processes of production and distribution, including the intellectual’s own contribution to the ideas’ popularity by attending conferences and public rallies, writing for periodicals, and so …

“You Are Turning Into A Hive Mind”: Storytelling, Ecological Thought, And The Problem Of Form In Generation A, Jenny Kerber

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

This article discusses the relationship between literary form and contemporary ecological anxiety in Douglas Coupland’s novel Generation A. Coupland’s speculative fiction envisions a possible future in the wake of Colony Collapse Disorder, but the more generalized eco-anxiety the novel explores is applicable to a number of contemporary environmental issues ranging from climate change to ocean acidification. I argue that Coupland’s novel invites readers to consider the problem of representing ecological problems characterized by global scale, temporal uncertainty, and multiple origins. I then explore how Coupland responds to these challenges by stretching form in two directions. First, he juxtaposes and …

The Assimilated Asian American As American Action Hero: Anna May Wong, Keye Luke, And James Shigeta In The Classical Hollywood Detective Film, Philippa Gates

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Capitalist Childhood In Film: Modes Of Critique, Susan Ferguson

Journalism

This paper explores the latent political meanings of cinematic representations of capitalist childhood. The films it examines—three adaptations of the Oliver Twist story, Slumdog Millionnaire and a lesser-known Korean film, Treeless Mountain—have much in common: they feature abandoned or orphaned child characters who negotiate precarious existences in a rapacious crisis-ridden capitalist world. But the filmmakers’ evolving imaginings of childhood—from the Victorian vulnerable child to more postmodern understandings of children as agents in their own right—invite distinct political responses. While the Dickensian mode of critique rests problematically on an abstract idealized notion of childhood, attempts to update the image of childhood …

Camera Arriving At The Station: Cinematic Memory As Cultural Memory, Russell J A Kilbourn

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

This paper explores the modern metropolis as an ironically concrete metaphor for the collective memory and the mourning of cinema’s passing, as it—the “city”—is digitally constructed in two recent, auteur-directed, special effects-driven blockbuster films, Inception and Hugo. The modern city, and mass media, such as the cinema, as well as modes of mass transport, especially the train, all originate in the 19th century, but come into their own in the early 20th century in their address to a subject as the mobilised citizen-consumer who, as Anne Friedberg makes clear, is also always a viewer. Additionally, as Barbara Mennel has recently …

The Asian Renovation Of Biracial Buddy Action: Negotiating Globalization In The Millennial Hollywood Cop Action Film, Philippa Gates

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Markus Zisselsberger, Ed. The Undiscover’D Country: W. G. Sebald And The Poetics Of Travel. Rochester: Camden House, 2010. 390 Pp., Russell J A Kilbourn

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Pressing The Public: Nineteenth-Century Feminist Periodicals And “The Press”, Maria Dicenzo

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Pulling Up Roots: Border-Crossing And Migrancy On Southern Alberta’S Irrigation Frontier, Jenny Kerber

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.