Cinema and the Ethnic Divide: Millennial Representations of Mexico and Mexicans in Hollywood Films

The Big Lebowski (1998) is a classic of American cinema, in large part because of its iconic protagonist, the Dude, whose religio-philosophical allegiances have been popularly framed by Buddhism and Daoism. While such readings are not unfounded, they tend to assume a direct line of influence from those traditions to the Dude. I argue instead that the Dude is best understood through the mediation of Beat Buddhism, particularly as articulated in Jack Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums. After situating the Dude within the existing scholarship of Buddhist and Daoist imaginaries in American popular culture, I examine Beat Buddhism as a distinctive mode of American Buddhist modernism. I then argue that the Dude represents a post-beat figure whose Beat Buddhist sensibilities are detached from their original literary contexts. Reading the Dude as a dharma bum thus illuminates how Beat Buddhism continues to circulate within popular culture as a style of being rather than a path of practice.

ABSTRACT In response to James Wood’s sharp critique of Paul Auster’s supposedly “shallow” style, this article seeks to move beyond traditional modes of deep reading and reexamine Auster’s work within the intermedia history of the novel and cinema. Drawing on theoretical frameworks such as surface reading and activist formalism, this study takes The Book of Illusions as a case study to show that Auster does not simply appropriate cinematic elements. Rather, through the novelistic form, he consciously enacts a miniature history of American cinema: from an homage to the pure form of the silent film, to borrowing and playfully subverting the narrative conventions of classic Hollywood, and ultimately achieving a breakthrough in his literary imagination of the auteur theory. The distinctive cinematic esthetic Auster constructs in his novel demonstrates a media reflexivity, as he refuses to kill clichés, instead experimenting with intermedia forms to address the perceived exhaustion of literature. This approach also opens new possibilities for understanding the evolving trajectory of the novel in an era dominated by visual culture.

This study examines the dynamics of philosophical and cultural influences on technological development from a global perspective. Disembodied artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced since the development of information technology in Western countries. In contrast, Asian countries have frequently adopted embodied AI technology since its early stages of AI technology. Cultural differences often influence distinctive AI technologies in various parts of the world. This paper examines the cultural, philosophical, and sociological aspects of technological development and the historical evolution of AI technology using critical theories, including post-humanism, post-structuralism, new materialism, and psychoanalysis. In particular, the issues of AI hallucinations will be elucidated to compare philosophical, cultural, and psychological perspectives on artificial intelligence in the global sphere. A comparative analysis of humanoid AI portrayed in East Asian media and Hollywood films will be illustrated to highlight cultural and philosophical influences on imaginaries of embodied AI technology and distinctive views on AI hallucinations in different societies.

Hollywood cinema often portrays individuals with High Abilities/Giftedness with a focus on logical-mathematical intelligence. This representation is rooted in the historical context of industrialization and technological advancements in the United States, where such ability is widely valued. This article explores how highly talented individuals are represented in popular American cinema, presenting relationships between culture and economic interests, but also indicating intrapersonal problems faced by these individuals, highlighted in literature and depicted in films. In conclusion, it reflects on the film industry's significant role in shaping popular opinions and values, however, it is important to emphasize that such representations, no matter how realistic they may seem, are social and cultural constructions that can simplify or stereotype the complexity of the human experience.

In today’s world, frequent cultural exchanges among nations have made film a vital vehicle for cultural communication. Consequently, the importance of film subtitle translation has become increasingly prominent. The American film Flipped, with its fresh and warm style, tells an innocent and budding love story between the protagonists, conveying simple, pure, and heartwarming values and insights into personal growth. Based on Newmark’s theories of semantic and communicative translation, this paper finds that the film’s Chinese subtitles flexibly employ methods such as literal translation, free translation, addition, and conversion of parts of speech. These strategies not only effectively convey the original text’s meaning and emotions but also help broaden the film’s reach.

This essay examines the American Petroleum Institute (API) Photo and Film Collection to show how institutional image archives can reshape the history of technology. Reading the collection longitudinally rather than focusing on a single image, the essay traces shifts from early spectacles of industrial scale to midcentury abstractions of refinery monumentality and, by the 1970s, to people-centered depictions of safety, environmental care, and scientific expertise. Focusing on seismic testing imagery produced in the wake of environmental crisis and regulatory change, the essay argues that contradiction within the archive is historically revealing. The API's photographs simultaneously celebrate technological expansion and attempt to rehabilitate oil's public image. By treating inconsistency as evidence rather than error, this essay demonstrates how historians can use visual collections to uncover institutional anxiety, shifting political pressures, and the contested meanings of technological progress.

Since the 1990s, seriality has become the dominant narrative mode, if not a signifier of Hollywood cinema. It is, however, also present in American independent cinema. The latter, while discursively constructing itself in opposition to Hollywood, recurrently adopts seriality, particularly through the trilogical form that unfolds according to thematic, stylistic, temporal, or receptive modalities, thereby favoring an auteurist interpretation. This article focuses on a fifth type of trilogy, namely the so-called “accidental” trilogy. I take Sofia Coppola’s Young Girls Trilogy as a case study to understand its role in establishing and solidifying an auteurist identity within independent cinema. By questioning the “accidental” nature of this trilogy, I suggest that the Young Girls Trilogy is not simply a “fortuitous” succession of films, but rather constitutes a subsequent discursive and paratextual framework, enabling the formation of a distinct auteur brand. This article thus highlights the commodification and marketing logics at work in the construction the author figure in contemporary independent cinema and distribution.

ABSTRACT Between 1950 and 1962 Hollywood film companies moved many of their productions to European studios, including Cinecittà in Rome. Doing so was more economically profitable and allowed them to capitalise on location shooting. Among the films that Hollywood realised in Italy, several were romantic comedies featuring US tourists visiting the country as protagonists. Focusing on the holiday experience, these comedies reflected the growing and relevant presence of American tourists in 1950s Italy. Working from a film history perspective and integrating movie analysis with information from archival documents and printed sources, this article makes three primary arguments. First, the afore mentioned Hollywood romances were a means of promoting Italy to the American public, as part of a broad media network supported by the tourism industry. Second, depicting postcard-like Italian scenarios and stereotypical portraits of local people, they cast an external gaze on the country, superimposing the mediatic image of Italy as a destination onto the complexity of Italy as a nation, i.e. a historic, political, and social construction. Finally, they metaphorised the political and diplomatic relationship between the two countries in the post-war period, when Italy steadily entered the US sphere of influence.

The birth of Tilly Norwood in 2025 as a synthetic or AI-generated actress marks a provocative moment: a flashpoint at which Hollywood's workers, writers, producers, directors, artists, musicians, and institutions are being asked to reevaluate what it means to be a performer . This commentary contends that Tilly Norwood both crystallizes and accelerates structural shifts in the entertainment industry. Her existence exposes tensions around hegemony, cost, authorship, culture, and emotional resonance that synthetic talent may shift human agency away from human performers. To understand this new development in the media and entertainment industry, we used the meaningful work conceptual framework. This framework hypothesizes that when people consider their work as meaningful, it leads to a positive outcome in their general life. In addition, we discussed potential concerns in the Hollywood industry related to regulation and co-optation to this emerging phenomenon. We concluded by proposing a new line of research in the media and entertainment industry that examines the growing tension between AI and human creativity.

Since the establishment of the Hollywood film industry system, character portrayal has always been a core issue in narrative creation. From the rebellious Scarlett in Gone with the Wind, to Andy who adheres to hope in The Shawshank Redemption, and then to Arthur who succumbs to madness and despair in Joker, American films have constructed emotional connections across cultural barriers through a series of vivid character images. Traditional character analysis mostly focuses on characters' behavioral performances and personality labels, but ignores the logic of character formation constructed by screenwriters behind the scenes. This paper proposes a three-dimensional analytical framework of "Concealment-Conflict-Value", aiming to uncover the methodological black box of character portrayal in American films: Concealment represents the dynamic growth trajectory of characters' personalities, highlighting the iterative realization of roles; Conflict, as a touchstone for personality traits, reveals the essence of characters through the analysis of three dimensions: self, others, and environment; Value is the soul of characters' personalities, determining the direction and realm of roles. The results indicate that applying this framework to analyze classic characters in American films can not only extract replicable creative experiences, but also offer a glimpse into the understanding of human nature and spiritual demands within the context of American culture.

Abstract Educational videos have become central to learning environments, particularly following the COVID-19 pandemic, underscoring the need for optimized design to enhance learning outcomes. Concurrently, research on film cognition has provided valuable insights into how viewers process dynamic visual narratives in Hollywood cinema. This paper explores the parallels between Hollywood cinema and educational videos to determine how film cognition research can inform educational video design. We analyze how cinematic techniques align with educational principles (i.e. signaling, spatial and temporal contiguity) proposed by Cognitive Theory of Multimedia Learning. Additionally, we examine social cognition aspects, drawing connections to the learning principles (i.e., embodiment and image principles) in educational contexts. We propose that educational videos can enhance learner engagement by adopting attention-guiding methods and social cues used in film. We also suggest that compiling a shared collection of example videos and reusable materials could help teachers and researchers reuse and adapt resources more easily.

Several intellectuals and activists have been consistently warning about the harmful effects of contamination of air, water and land. The climate change and biodiversity deterioration that we face today is largely the result of our own behavior. Efficient waste management strategies are required to minimize the impact on environment. Several waste management technologies have evolved in the recent years. The integration of technology and robotics to handle the ‘dirty’ task can significantly lower the risk of harm to workers involved in this dangerous profession. The present study is based on 2008 American animated romantic science fiction film WALL-E directed by Andrew Stanton. The film discusses several themes including human environmental impact and concern, consumerism, corporate control, technology, hope, renewal, love, emotional connection and waste management. The story is set on a deserted Earth in 2805 where a solitary robot named WALL-E is left to clean up the garbage. He falls in love with another robot EVE, sent from the starship Axiom to detect life. The study examines the way by which love and care function as catalyst for ecological restoration. The paper aims to analyze the representation of environmental degradation and the possibility of renewal in a technologically mediated future in WALL-E.

ABSTRACT This study examines the transmedial trajectory of Menschen im Hotel, the 1929 bestselling novel by Austrian writer Vicki Baum, with particular attention to its Hollywood adaptation Grand Hotel, directed by Edmund Goulding and released in 1932. After outlining the various adaptation processes that took place between the novel’s publication in Berlin and its transformation into a Hollywood film, the paper situates the setting of the Grand Hotel as a modern transmedial and transatlantic topos. The subsequent analysis focuses on specific transatlantic encounters depicted in Baum’s novel and on their negotiated adaptation in Hollywood. These dynamics highlight, on the one hand, the reception of American culture in the Weimar Republic, and on the other, the complex transcultural negotiations that shaped Baum’s work across media and national contexts.

The trope of the “captive woman” in domestic spaces has been a recurring motif in American and British horror films, evolving alongside women’s changing social status and economic independence. This essay examines how this trope has transformed over time, from the emotionally captive woman confined by societal norms that restrict her autonomy to the physically trapped woman whose emotional confinement manifests as literal imprisonment, even as she gains apparent independence from male figures. By analyzing films across decades, such as Rebecca (1940), Silent House (2011), and Men (2022), this article explores how women’s confinement reflects broader societal dynamics and their relationships with men. Early depictions often tied women’s entrapment to economic reliance and societal expectations, portraying domestic spaces as both refuge and prison. Contemporary narratives, however, frequently depict independent women trapped by trauma or residual patriarchal control, illustrating how progress does not equate to full liberation. The article concludes with an analysis of Never Let Go (2024), which represents a shift where conservative ideologies and societal pressures push women back into traditional domestic roles. This new form of captivity reflects the complex interplay of autonomy, societal expectations, and resurgent patriarchal structures, underscoring the evolving dynamics of gender in horror cinema.

Situated within contemporary feminist explorations of materiality and visual culture, the concept of “body-territory” offers a compelling framework for reimagining the interconnectedness of bodies, land, territory, and capital. Emerging from communitarian feminisms and further developed within Latin American movements, body-territory underscores and rethinks the profound ties between gender violence, and the accumulation of capital. The article examines the relationship between the concept of body-territory and visual representations of nature, technology, and extractivism, exploring how Latin American feminist theory and film use these images to elaborate on the material effects of colonization, capitalism, and ecological destruction—and to envision alternatives. It considers what it means to “see” the body-territory and analyzes its visual representation in Claudia Llosa’s Distancia de rescate. The first section addresses the relationship between body-territory and visual culture in two main aspects: how the concept broadens “our way of seeing,” as Verónica Gago writes, and the extent to which the film brings this idea to life visually. It shows how the film enables a critique of the nostalgic longing for a return to an unalienated past, often masked by the idea of “nature.” The second section explores the critical questions surrounding the materiality of body-territory raised by the film and proposes a dialogue between body-territory’s critique of extractivism in contemporary capitalism and cyborg ontology’s rejection of the mystification of nature. Finally, the article underscores the importance of understanding how films, cultural objects, and artworks engage with the complex dynamics among nature, technology, and capital accumulation amid ecological crises.

Center-periphery perspectives have been challenged recently by transnational studies that provided more nuanced perspectives beyond Hollywood’s predominance in the international market. Shifting the focus to the transnational interactions within other regions opens up a multipolar and decentralized story of Latin American cinema, a region that was distant from the WWII scenario, with its internal dynamics and exchanges, and where the Cold War’s impact was delayed. This article looks into one of these cases by examining the commercial and industrial ties between Argentina and Chile in the 1940s and 1950s, focusing on the relations between their leading studios, Argentina Sono Film and Chile Films. It examines the commercial and industrial links between Chilean and Argentine cinemas, not just economically but as a space where modernization and nationalism ideologies conditioned the emergence and sustainability of their film industries. The article shows how film production in Latin America’s Southern Cone generated its center-periphery dynamics, beyond Hollywood’s undisputed dominance, challenging standardized periodizations and calling for a multiperspective that acknowledges global asynchronicities.

In this article, based on the evidence brought by TRAFFIC - Tracing American and Foreign Funds in Italian Cinema (1945-1962), a research project we were involved in the last few years and focused on the Italian case, we advance a set of methodological and operational hypotheses for the study of international relations in post-war cinema, developed in dialogue with the contributions collected in this issue. Our central claim is that a multipolar model of productive, distributive, and cultural relations was in place, in the years surrounding the Second World War, with timelines and durations that varied across geographical contexts and in relation to the specific challenges faced by different film industries. This model places under strain a fixed conception of centre-periphery relations, already questioned in transnational approaches to European cinema, as well as a monolithic understanding of the cultural and industrial dominance of American cinema, which nevertheless remained the key reference point in the global system.After having summarized the scientific discussion on transnational cinemas to determine which elements can be retained and what new tools are needed to outline and study what we consider a multipolar system, in the following section we delve into the Italian case, focusing particularly on the trade association ANICA. During the post-war period, ANICA was structured as an interface between different systems, managing current practices such as export and co-production instructions and film credit guarantees, as well as strategic actions such as defining agreements and conducting periodic revisions. Two specific examples relating to the definition of exchange and co-production agreements with the film industries of Mexico and Yugoslavia illustrate ANICA’s concrete functioning in relation to other national and foreign entities, including public and private stakeholders. Finally, we reflect on the concept of borders as a key element in the relationship between film systems and infrastructures.

The distribution of Soviet films in the United States began in 1926 with the screening of Eisenstein’s Potemkin, managed by Amkino, a company registered in the U.S. but closely aligned with the Soviet government’s Sovexportfilm agency. Amkino facilitated the circulation of Soviet films, documentaries, and newsreels, targeting Russian-speaking audiences and American communist sympathisers. This initiative was part of the USSR’s broader strategy to spread communist ideology globally by directly engaging with the masses.Renamed Artkino in 1940, the company sought to penetrate the American film market, which was largely dominated by Hollywood studios until 1948. This essay examines the history of Amkino/Artkino and its role in distributing Soviet films in the U.S. from its origins through the early Cold War, a process that remained on the fringes of the industry. The study also explores the company’s decline following the 1958 U.S.-Soviet cultural exchange agreement and the death of its president in 1960. By then, Soviet efforts had shifted towards engaging with the Motion Picture Association of America, having lost faith in Artkino’s abilities to access major Hollywood theatres.Drawing on archival materials from the Artkino collection at the Berkeley Film Archive, the Russian State Archive for Literature and Art (RGALI) and other sources, this research highlights Soviet attempts to challenge Hollywood’s dominance and gain access to mainstream American cinema.

Leadership studies in recent decades have increasingly shifted away from transactional command-and-control models toward transformative and socially situated leadership frameworks that emphasize empowerment, inclusion, ethics, and systemic equity. However, the intersection of transformative, critical, and intersectional frameworks within an integrated analytical framework is missing; although it is significant in the context of politically fragmented and historically unequal societies. Films, as cultural texts, provide a powerful medium for exploring how leadership is constructed and interpreted in real-world sociopolitical contexts. Moreover, biographical political films serve as the mass media through which historical leaders become mythologized, humanized, or reinterpreted for later generations. Against this background, this study interrogates the portrayal of Nelson Mandela, the first Black president of South Africa, as a transformational leader in the 2009 film Invictus. Using text-interpretive and multimodal analyses, this study concludes that the transformative leadership of Mandela in Invictus does not preclude critical and intersectional issues; rather it should be viewed as an overarching strategy that steadily opens the doors to mitigate the complex issues of uneven power, systemic inequality, and multilayered exploitations in the long run and in a harmonious way.