Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Representing Religion In Film, Joseph P. Laycock

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Tenzan Eaghll and Rebekka King, eds., Representing Religion in Film (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022).

The T&T Clark Handbook Of Jesus And Film, Joel Mayward

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a book review of Richard Walsh, ed. The T&T Clark Handbook of Jesus and Film (London: T&T Clark, 2021).

Secularism And Silent Films, Elijah Siegler

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a review of two books: Phillip Maciak, The Disappearing Christ: Secularism in the Silent Era (Columbia University Press, 2019), and Terry Lindvall, Souls for Sale: Rupert Hughes and the Novel Hollywood Religion (Cascade Books, 2021)

From Patriarchal Stereotypes To Matriarchal Pleasures Of Hybridity: Representation Of A Muslim Family In Berlin, Rahime Özgün Kehya Dr

Journal of Religion & Film

Sinan Çetin’s blockbuster Berlin in Berlin (1993) is a Turkish-German co-production. In contrast to certain representational tendencies with German orientalism or Turkish occidentalism, it deconstructs the intersectional structures of migration, religion, and gender. The portrayal of religion in films about Turkish-German labour migration is a kind of cultural narcissism often projected into national cinema by denigrating the faith of the other and glorifying one’s own religion. However, perspectives at such intersections are critical and require sensitivity in filmmaking, as films can create prejudice or help build peaceful relationships around these sensitive issues. The paper employs discourse analysis in linking Derrida’s …

Herrens Veje: A Catalyst To Reflect Upon Military Chaplaincy And Ecclesial Issues In A Nordic Context, Jan Grimell, Mariecke Van Den Berg

Journal of Religion & Film

This article is based on an analysis of the first season of the Danish series Herrens Veje (The Way of the Lord; Price 2017). The series portrays the young, idealistic pastor and military chaplain August, who is deployed to a conflict zone with a military unit. He accompanies the unit on a patrol to win the trust of the soldiers. During the patrol, they engage in combat and August kills an innocent civilian woman. Upon return, the transition from military to civilian life proves to be increasingly challenging and troublesome. As the series proceeds, August’s mental health deteriorates and his …

Reframing Space: Religion, History, And Memory In The Early Documentary Film Of The Yugoslav Space, Milja Radovic

Journal of Religion & Film

This paper examines cinematic representations of religion and religious communities in the early cinema of the Yugoslav space. This paper introduces the readers to the rich heritage of the cinema of the Yugoslav space by providing 1) the first study of the representations of religion and the concepts of faith in the early film, and 2) novel approaches in reading religion and history through film. Film is used as a primary rather than supplementary source in historical research on diverse religious and ethnic communities in this part of the Balkan Peninsula. This is the first study that investigates the importance, …

Viewing Terrence Malick’S A Hidden Life As Political Theology: Toward Theocinematics, Joel Mayward

Journal of Religion & Film

In this article, I bring Terrence Malick’s 2019 film, A Hidden Life, into conversation with two of philosopher Paul Ricoeur’s concepts: (1) the “social imaginary” as the interplay of ideals, images, ideologies and utopias, and (2) Ricoeur’s description of the genre of “parable” as a narrative-metaphor which provokes a “re-orientation by disorientation” within an audience’s imagination. Drawing from Ricoeur’s thought, I apply a theological film criticism I call “theocinematics” to A Hidden Life in order to call attention to the ways in which the cinematic form itself engenders sociopolitical and theological thought. Through emphasizing film aesthetics in my analysis, …

Peele’S Black, Extraterrestrial, Naturalistic Critique Of Religion, Jonathan D. Lyonhart

Journal of Religion & Film

While Jordan Peele’s films have always held their mysteries close to the chest, they eventually granted their viewers some climactic clarity. Get Out (2017) used an 1980s style orientation video to clear up its neuroscientific twist, while Us (2019) had Lupita Nyongo’s underworld twin narratively spell out the details of the plot. Yet Nope (2022) refuses to show its hand even after the game is over, never illuminating the connection between its opening scene and the broader film, nor a myriad of other questions. As such, critics complained that it stitched together two seemingly incongruent plots without explanation; one where …

Nyeshangpa: The Next Generation’S Search For Identity In Nyeshang, Emerson Brott

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Originally intended to be a report on the Nyeshang Valley and the cultural values that its people hold, Nyeshangpa quickly evolved into something different. Many thanks are given to the village elders who provided valuable insight into Nyeshangpa culture, but the most significant plaudits must go to the film’s main character, Karma Wangyal Gurung, my dear friend and invaluable co-researcher. Though a substantial portion of the film is dedicated to culture talk and general discussion on fading traditions, the spotlight is given to Karma and his fellow Nyeshangpa youth. A story of maintaining traditions is compelling enough, but a story …

Oscars Vs. Ozone: The Motion Picture Industry’S Impact On Climate Change And What They Are Doing About It, Alexis J. Simpson

Senior Theses

This thesis focuses on demonstrating that the motion picture industry, which includes film and television production (and thus will also be called ‘the film and television industry’), has notably contributed to the global effects of climate change. Such contributions can stem from the industry’s emissions and waste, with examples including travel for cast and crew, energy use for production equipment (some of which run on diesel), and disposable physical sets and costumes. The intention here is to give an accurate picture of current production practices and share examples of progress in the industry that are combating the negative impacts of …

11 Days In August And The “Ghosts In The Machine”, Mae U. Caralde

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

This essay will put forward a case of political mimesis in the film, 11 Days in August (1983), which contributed to the buildup of social movements in the Philippines that ended the Marcos dictatorship in 1986. By describing the processes ‘imaging back’ and ‘bodying back’ Gaines (1999), the documentary film experience is freed from the rigidity and confinement with the visible, opening it up to affective faculties to acquire meanings into our lived realities. Explored in these two aspects of the mimetic faculty is the notion of orchestrating the film’s body and that of the spectator into the filmmaker’s filmic …

Adarna: Remediating Philippine Source Texts Through Video Games, Philip Adrian L. Gungab

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

This paper will explore the possibilities of using video games as a means of remediating Philippine source texts. This begins by defining Philippine Source texts based on Dr. Joyce Arriola’s book Pelikulang Komiks: Toward a Theory of Filipino Film Adaptation (2019) and understanding how remediation changes perception of the material through concepts defined in Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin’s book, Remediation (2000). Video games will later be explored as a form of new media in the 21st century, and how media convergence and globalization has brought it to its current state. This paper will then analyze Adarna (2015), a video …

Framing Roles Of Protagonists And Antagonists In Visual Media, Jonas Braden Larson

Masters Theses

Many characters and stories have been interpreted over the past few thousand years. Humans are innate storytellers and make connections through various communication methods. Heroes and villains have affected many lives and given people a lens through which to view the world. The perception of stories and their characters in the visual media may not be as subjective as many people think. The framing communication theory was used to study the perception of audience member’s view of protagonists and antagonists in a visual story. Two short films were produced and screened to an audience that filled out surveys on their …

The Library Wants To Kill You: Places Of Information As Battleground And Sanctum In Halo, Mackenzie Streissguth

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Video games are often a widespread access point for studying information-seeking behaviors, as a large portion of the population (and its youth) play them. Understanding how real-world analogues, like libraries, are portrayed in games can give us insights into how they mirror conflicts of reality. By examining the depictions of information systems and accompanying curators in Halo: Combat Evolved (2001), we can begin to investigate the perceptions of libraries and their antagonism in ludonarratives. Resulting analysis reveals multiple layers of archival hostility that are ultimately upended in later iterations in the game series, changing the nature of the library itself. …

Data Lost, Forbidden Or Controlled?: The Archivists Of Horizon Forbidden West, Ashley Lanni

Proceedings from the Document Academy

This paper discusses the archival and information usage practices of characters within the 2022 video game Horizon Forbidden West. It considers how science fiction settings, particularly those based in post-apocalyptic futures with different technology and information practices, can help us reflect on how contemporary society interacts with information and determines its use. Furthermore, the paper explores the social responsibility informational professionals have toward the world around them through contrasting various groups and characters within the game, positing that the main group's actions are the most morally lauded within the game's narrative.

"I’M Mixing Comic Book Canon And Mcu Canon To Suit My Own Needs": Information Sharing As Community Building In A Fandom In Flux, Alison Harding

Proceedings from the Document Academy

Utilizing the rapidly changing landscape of the Marvel fandom on fanfiction archive Archive of Our Own (AO3) as a research site, this paper presents the findings of a combined autoethnography and digital ethnography of the Falcon and the Winter Soldier community. The work explores the ways in which a fandom community builds itself through information sharing. While the study garnered many findings, this paper primarily focuses on how tags are vital to crafting community identity, while also creating barriers to entry within the Falcon and the Winter Soldier fandom.

The results show that while the broader Marvel fandom can be …

Nostalgia's Complicated Role In Contemporary Pop Culture, Ethan Clawsie

Pop Culture Intersections

Over the past several decades, there has been a growing trend of nostalgia in popular culture, with the number of remakes, reboots, and revivals of classic films, television shows, and music at an all-time high. Dozens of old TV shows have also been rebooted in the past few years, old movies are being remade, much of the music that’s been released lately has been engineered to sound like it came from the past, and a subset of recent video games either build upon old games (like Pokémon GO), or are made to look and feel like old games (like Flappy …

Barbie: For Better Or Worse, Renee Ho

Pop Culture Intersections

This article covers a history of Barbie, as well as an analysis of the live action Barbie movie. Barbie lovers and haters alike often debate whether the iconized doll is a feminist figure. Those who critique her argue that the messages she sends are superficial, or that Barbie perpetuates an unrealistic beauty standard and causes harm to the mental well being of her audience, especially because most of her target audience is made up of younger, impressionable girls. However, there is no doubt that Barbie can also be a role model for her audience. She was the first doll to …

Misrepresentation Of Women Of Color In Western Media, Nicole C. Schutte

sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies

This paper delves into the misrepresentation of women of color in western media. From the perspective of bell hooks (1992), the commodification of the Other serves sinister societal “needs” in order to uphold the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Patricia Hill Collins (2000) and Judith Williamson (1986) interpret this as keeping the western racial hierarchy, gender dichotomy, and capitalist markets intact. A vast majority of people believe that any form of representation in the media is a sense of inclusion when in fact misrepresentation is counterproductive and problematic. Catherine A. Lutz and Jane L. Collins (1993) would agree that inaccurate portrayals …

Exploiting Non-Western Women In Media Representations, Gabrielle Miller

sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies

Media representations and advertisements serve as visual mediums through which cultural values are projected and reinforced. Western capitalism relies on Eurocentric media representations that exploit perceived differences of non-white and non-western cultures to sell western products. This paper analyzes recent advertisements from Kellogg’s and Suit Supply as examples of media representations that employ Eurocentric perspectives of non-western cultures to uphold white masculinist and colonial power structures. Therefore, I suggest that the non- western cultures in the Kellogg’s and Suit Supply advertisements exist within a western capitalist vacuum. This way of consuming and representing serves to reinforce western ways of knowing …

Self-Listening & Envisioning Audience Exercise & Assignment, Jacob Kose

Open Educational Resources

This assignment and exercise encourages students to pick a formative story, artifact, individual, or moment in their acquisition of language and/or literacy. Students record themselves telling this story, then type that recording, and make choices about how to edit that text.Instructors may invite students to read these aloud, and/or peer edit. Students may also submit reflections and comment on each others' reflection.

Photography And 21st-Century Migration, Sarah Bassnett, Blessy Augustine

Visual Arts Publications

No abstract provided.

Family, Diaspora, And The Politics Of Care In Griselda San Martin’S The Wall , 2015-16, Sarah Bassnett

Visual Arts Publications

This article examines a series of photographs by Griselda San Martin, a Spanish journalist and documentary photographer based in New York City and Mexico City. The series focuses on the experiences of people at Friendship Park, a bi-national park located in the border region of San Diego, United States, and Tijuana, Mexico. Working in Tijuana, San Martin engaged with families as they attempted to connect with loved ones across the border in San Diego. Many of the people she met at Friendship Park had become separated from family members after living as undocumented migrants in the US and then being …

(Un)Orthodox Jewish Women In Latin American Visual Representation, Mirna Vohnsen, Daniela Goldfine

Articles

The 2000s was a breaking point for female Jewish representation in Latin American cinema. Previously represented in stereotypical roles, Jewish women morphed into more rounded characters in the first decade of the 21st century, showing that they had become part and parcel of the social fabric in Latin America. Films such as the Brazilian Olga (Jaime Monjardim, 2004), the Chilean-Mexican El brindis (Shai Agosin, 2007) and the Argentine La cámara oscura/Camera Obscura (María Victoria Menis, 2008), which explore Jewish Latin American culture and identity, testify to the normalization of female Jewish characters. In these films, Jewish Latin American women would …

Narratives In, On, And Around Contemporary Queer Film: A Study Of Adam And Its Paratexts, Jeremy Stoller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Film’s ability to present and inspire desire, and to realize alternate worlds, render it a uniquely potent medium for expressing queerness. Because of this potency, and because films are among the most prominent ways that LGBTQ+ people are represented in society, queer film can feel both deeply personal and highly political for LGBTQ+ identifying audiences. But movies do not merely offer statements about political systems, they are also made within and reflective of those systems.

Scholars have thoroughly investigated films and our relationships to them for productive ways of seeing gender, sexuality, desire, and oppression. But the conversations about how …

Icons In Lyari: Resonance, Visibility, And Global Blackness In An Indian Ocean Port Town, Zehra Husain

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This doctoral dissertation studies the resonances of boxing, football, and rap music in Lyari Town, a working-class neighborhood located in Pakistan’s commercial port city Karachi. Based on 12 months of in-person and remote ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation traces the circulation of iconographies of Blackness and global sports as they sediment in a port town on the Indian Ocean. Lyari has long been in the news for gang violence and urban strife, but is also noted for its talented boxers, footballers and more recently rap musicians, some of whom are of Afro-Baluch descent. These “two faces” of Lyari Town informs its …

Shared Cinematic Experience And Emerging Technologies: Integrating Mixed-Reality Components For The Future Of Cinema, James Hutson

Faculty Scholarship

The enduring appeal of traditional cinema viewing in the face of alternative experiences, including streaming services and emerging technologies, such as extended reality, is rooted in its esthetic, cultural, and social significance. While the psychological appeal of shared cinematic experiences has gained attention in scholarship, there is a need to further explore the potential enhancement of these experiences through the integration of immersive technologies. The communal nature of cinema fosters social connection, especially in a post-pandemic context marked by widespread social isolation. This study highlights the psychological benefits of shared cinematic experiences and emphasizes the next phase of cinematic evolution, …

Evaluating Universities Twitter Web Pages Responding To The Black Lives Matter Movement, Hind Albadi, Thomas Kenny

Communications: Faculty Publications

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in May 2020, many colleges and universities responded by making statements on their website and social media channels condemning racism. Higher education institutions began initiatives for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) for faculty, staff, administrators, and students on campus. Three years later, this study investigates whether universities are still offering and promoting workshops, classes, events, and activities related to DEI to campus communities. To do so, the researchers conducted a content analysis on Twitter categorizing tweets over a one-month period, then they classified the Tweets using the top 10 colleges …

Closing, Izze Gunn

.RAW Journal of Art and Design

No abstract provided.

Contributors, Miranda Kowalski

.RAW Journal of Art and Design

No abstract provided.