American Film Research Articles

Thoughts on the H-Bomb Decision, Oppenheimer’s Loyalty/Security Hearing, and Vacating of the AEC Decision

This summer’s release of Oppenheimer, the major Hollywood movie by Christopher Nolan, has brought renewed attention to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s thoughts, concerns, and intentions regarding the U.S. pursuit of thermonuclear weapons. This paper provides context surrounding the 1949 recommendation of the Atomic Energy Commission’s General Advisory Committee, chaired by Oppenheimer, against a crash program for hydrogen bombs, a recommendation that would be used against him in the 1954 decision to revoke his security clearance. An appendix reproduces the April 5, 2022, letter from Los Alamos National Laboratory directors to the secretary of energy. In December 2022, Secretary of Energy Granholm vacated the original security review board decision.

Atmospheric Moon River

These two long poems address both embodied and encultured experiences of climate change in the Kelowna region of the Okanagan Valley and the Salmon Arm region of the Shuswap in the British Columbia southern interior. Both poems grapple with the fear of future-oriented thinking in a time of climate catastrophe while registering the long historical dimensions that inform that present fear.
 “Atmospheric Moon River” examines desire and beauty in the context of torrential rain and flooding that resulted in the deaths of several humans and many hundreds of farm animals. The poem updates old questions about the ethics of aesthetics when it comes to suffering in the present environmental context. The poem also draws a line from the first erotic love poem in English to the work of cultural theorists such as Michel Foucault and Judith Butler and “classic” Hollywood cinema. 
 “Sweet Air” links a story of personal illness and the loss of reproductive potential to the drama and climate anxiety of dramatically unseasonable weather. In “Sweet Air” the interlocutor of the poem has portions of her fallopian tubes removed to protect her from future illness resulting in the loss of an imagined future. That loss plays out against the backdrop of climate uncertainty and the resulting troubling of broader imagined futures. 

Fascism and the Trans Villain: Historically Recurring Transphobia in Far-Right Politics


 
 
 
 This article builds a base of historical and theoretical context to understand the resurgence of transphobic propaganda and violence led by the American far-right through an examination of the connections between trans politics and global political economies of capitalism. Through a synthesis of established theories of fascism, a historical analysis of fascism, and a case study of propagandistic transphobia in two American films from the height of the Cold War, I argue that the proliferation of contemporary anti-trans sentiment reflects the state of crisis that the American empire is experiencing as domestic and international resistance threatens its global hegemony. Further I argue that a historical and theoretical examination of fascism and trans issues show the capacity for fascistic anti-trans violence not as a departure from the norm of liberal democratic nation-state systems that developed through the processes of capital, but rather as a constitutive part of that norm. Trans historians must mobilize historical knowledge and practice to disseminate public facing works that furnish a wide base of readers with the tools to understand and contextualize contemporary trans panic as it metastasizes.
 
 
 

Rise of the Anti-Hero

Films have often defined the lines between heroes and villains by creating a clear distinction between right and wrong. There has been an increase in research that focuses on the moral grey areas seen in popular entertainment fiction. The grey areas of morality point to characters having a more ambiguous nature, commonly called anti-heroes. There is little research to date on the increased prevalence of the anti-hero archetype. The main goal of this content analysis was to discern how the morality of the hero-type character has evolved. A small longitudinal sample of American action movies (n=30) from the past 50 years was analyzed; discerned by total gross and popularity ratings. Morality-As-Cooperation Theory proposed by Curry et al. (2019) was used to determine the levels of the morality of the hero-type character in the coding schema. After each movie was coded, a percentage was computed for moral and immoral actions. The data was then interpreted to gauge whether the characters acted consistently good, showing a prototypical hero; or ambiguously, which would be consistent with an anti-hero archetype. Results of the study revealed that there was a strong positive correlation between the immoral actions of hero-type characters throughout the last fifty years. The findings should help to fill in the gap in the literature on the prevalence of anti-hero-type characters in movies.

Linguistic Means of Constructing ‘Enemy Number One’ in the US Cold War Cinema

The study examines how the US Cold War cinema employed linguistic means to construct images of the USSR and American communists. The research relevance is determined by: the need to study the techniques of creating the enemy image as one of the crucial issues in international relations; and the importance of the topic amidst the aggravation of Russia- US relations. The study aims at analysing the usage of linguistic means in such practices of constructing/deconstructing the images of ‘enemy number one’ as dehumanisation of the enemy, its normalisation, domestication, and rehumanisation. The research novelty lies in the fact that, for the first time, the language as a resource for constructing enemy images in the Cold War films is analysed. The material for the study makes American films of the 1940s-1960s, in which contaminated speech for depicting Soviet characters is extensively used. Particular attention is paid to the means of creating speech portraits of Soviet characters. The research methods used are descriptive, linguistic, and sociolinguistic methods, and discourse analysis. The authors conclude that linguistic means (primarily linguistic competences and accent) were instrumental for creating enemy images in the cinematic Cold War. Linguistic otherness served as a means of emphasising second-rate culture, which in turn was intended to mark political foreignness. Linguistic means helped fulfil functions of the enemy image: showing its otherness; depriving it of the linguistic abilities as an essential attribute of humanity, helping dehumanise it; emphasizing its civilisational inferiority; and making the enemy comical. Finally, attention is drawn to the fact that the cinematic image of ‘enemy number one’ contributed to the hierarchisation of languages; everything Russian was associated with communism and therefore perceived as inferior and hostile.

DYNAMIC PECULIAITIES OF MARITIME COMMANDS IN THE ENGLISH SHIPPING DISCOURSE AND FEATURE FILM DISCOURSE

The article is dedicated to the study of the dynamic features of the prosodic organization of English maritime commands used in two types of discourse: authentic shipping discourse and feature film discourse. The research material included audio and video recordings of 120 maritime commands with a total duration of 72 minutes. Audio and video recordings of 60 implementations of English maritime commands were used to investigate commands in the authentic shipping discourse, while video and soundtracks from 10 English-language films containing 60 commands were used to investigate maritime commands spoken by the characters in English-language feature films. The work uses two types of analysis, namely: perceptual analysis of speech segments and instrumental analysis using the PRAAT 6.1.05 software package. The results of a comparative analysis of the prosodic features of authentic maritime commands with maritime commands extracted from British and American films indicate that they differ significantly in a number of dynamic parameters, including different loudness and intensity range; localization of intensity maxima within the syntagm; the coincidence of the maxima of the fundamental frequency and the intensity within the syntagm. A common feature of maritime commands in the two studied types of discourse is the most frequent use of high and volume moderate during their utterance. The study proves that maritime commands in English-language films are characterized by a wider intensity range compared to authentic maritime commands; the maximum of intensity in the syntagm is most frequently localized on the nuclear syllable, and the percentage of the localization on the scale is the lowest; the highest coincidence of the maximum of the fundamental frequency and the intensity also falls on the nuclear syllable of the syntagm.

Politeness Levels of Thanking and Apologizing: A Corpus Linguistic Investigation Across Generations in the Movies

The levels of politeness in expressing thanking and apologizing connect to the concept of language attitude within sociolinguistics. Language attitude in sociolinguistics refers to an individual’s mental disposition or feelings towards a particular language. It implies that a person's language attitude can range from being favorable, and indifferent, to unfavorable influenced by the environment. Based on the corpus linguistics, this study aimed to investigate politeness levels of thanking and apologizing in American movies across generations, from Baby Boom to Alpha Generation using a corpus software, AntConc, as a tool to process the necessary data. The result of this study showed that the levels of politeness thanking, and apologizing had different choices of words in the movies of each generation. In addition, this was due to factors such as environment and knowledge of the rules of expressions such as Thanks or Thank you, and Sorry or Pardon. Thus, speakers of every generation tend or rarely use those expressions because they want or unwanted to use the word, and they choose to use it. For future study, perhaps it is recommended to explore American cartoons as the object, psycholinguistics approach, and language educational concentration.

Pious protagonists: Using the screen to expand images of Muslim faith beyond the dichotomy of “good” and “bad”

This article analyses how movies have been reproducing pejorative and stereotypical storytelling regarding Muslims and Arabs for more than a century, mainly along a narrow-minded dichotomy between “bad” fanatic religious extremists or “good” non-religious secularized Muslims. The article explores alternative storytelling combined with using a model to discuss emotional engagement among moviegoers. The conclusion is that mainstream movie culture is still indebted to stereotypical images of Islam/Muslims. However, things are changing. More nuanced storytelling has been taking place lately, giving room for a broader spectrum of Muslim religious identity positions, including examples of religious wisdom and spiritual integrity, offering the audience imagery beyond the stereotypical “good” and “bad” dichotomy. Looking outside Hollywood and European mainstream films, new voices are being heard, making way for a wider spectrum of views.

Magic and Spells in <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em> (1997-2003)

Magic and Spells in <em>Buffy the Vampire Slayer</em> (1997-2003)

Just an Illusion?

Just an Illusion?

On continuity in comic book film adaptations and beyond

In 2019 Anthony and Joe Russo’s Avengers: Endgame became the highest grossing film of all time, solidifying the status of superhero comic book films as Hollywood’s leading genre. This article attributes part of the blockbuster’s success to its status as an adaptation. It discusses the economic gains of the transmedia storytelling format employed by superhero comic book filmmakers and the importance of continuity, cinematic universes, multiverses and corporate synergy in this genre of movies and beyond. Although these concepts all precede the inception of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, their current popularity could be attributed to that endeavour. The view that transmedia storytelling and adaptation are at odds is challenged. It is argued that the organization of superhero comic book storytelling into universes has become an adaptation norm and that a similar trend could be observed over the past few years in Hollywood cinema.

Intermedial Cross-dressing Performance as Cultural Intervention

As a theatrical phenomenon, cross-dressing performance has passed down through many centuries and manifested itself in different parts of the world. In the era of film and television, it was adapted to and has appeared on screen, as a popular means of entertaining the audience, and so plays an important role in influencing public opinions on certain social and cultural issues, such as the politics of gender and interculturalism. In light of theories of gender performativity and cultural agency, the intermediality of cross-dressing performance is approached in this article, mainly based on a careful analysis of Li Yugang’s solo shows on TV, the Chinese film Farewell My Concubine, and the American film M. Butterfly. By having the intermedial intersected with gender and interculturalism, this article argues that intermedial cross-dressing performance, on the one hand, has transformative power over gender politics, as it contributes to the gradual acceptance of differences in gender as well as other social categories. On the other hand, in some cross-dressing performances on screen, the subversive and the reiterative are blended together in cross-dressing performance, which undermines the legitimization of sexual orientations outside of the heterosexual norms. In addition, the entanglement of intermediality and interculturalism in cross-dressing performance in such a film as M. Butterfly contributes to critical reflections on cultural and categorical boundaries, which has profound implications for cross-cultural communications.

From Suspicion to Sincerity in Composition Pedagogy

Abstract Recent advocates of postcritique urge scholars not to read texts suspiciously but instead to regard texts as capable of saying what they mean and, accordingly, to take those meanings seriously. While a suspicious disposition underlies much of introductory composition pedagogy, especially the teaching of argument, postcritique has made little entry into discourses of undergraduate instruction. Attending to the New Sincerity movement in American literature, film, and music after 1980, this essay examines how teaching texts that emphasize their own sincerity (and the difficulty of achieving sincere expression) can encourage students to regard argument and interpretation not as suspicious practices but as means for a generous mode of description that does not sacrifice the complexity of a given text.

Suzanne Ciani: The diva of the diode

The world of synthesizers and synthesists is historically male-dominated. Women in synthesis tend to be obscured by males, and their contribution suffers from erasure. This article considers Suzanne Ciani within the contexts of art, technology, science and culture and her work in composition, performance and media. In particular, her National Endowment for the Arts report of 1976 is a groundbreaking document detailing her composition and performance process using synthesizers. Her composition approach has parallels with techniques drawn from serialism, performed and improvised live using machines. Her performances utilize quadraphonic techniques for spatialized performance as part of the composition and performance. She was the first woman to score a major Hollywood film in 1981. Her work in media and technology highlights a space that women have always worked in but have frequently not been acknowledged as doing so. Ciani’s story reveals tenacity in the face of bias and rejection. It is a tale of someone who always has to claim her credentials, always legitimate her mode of expression, and always counter the assumption that somewhere in her work, there is a man.

'Hello Darkness, My Old Friend ': The Company of Music in a Cinema of (Shared) Loneliness

How have cinema's representations of loneliness changed over time, in keeping with the changing technological mediation of loneliness? What can these representations tell us about how the experience of loneliness is made sense of in everyday life? And, crucially, how has cinema's own technicity remediated loneliness in the process of representing it? In order to unpack some of these complexities, this article narrows its focus to a mere two minutes of screen time: the opening of The Graduate (1967), with its iconic representation of a lone character traversing Los Angeles International Airport to the tune of Simon and Garfunkel's 'The Sound of Silence'. The Graduate opens an important window into a particular sociohistorical moment when technologies, techniques, industry concerns and social conditions placed the audio-visual aesthetics of loneliness at the core of American cinema. I interpret this moment as the symbolic beginning of what Robert Kolker has termed 'a cinema of loneliness', a body of films that frequently featured solo drifters at plot level and that were made by directors working in isolation due to the collapse of the old Hollywood studio system. Notably, The Graduate forces us to deal with a fundamental aspect of the 'cinema of loneliness' that Kolker intentionally sidesteps: the use of preexisting popular music to offer a glimpse into a character's state of mind. Moving beyond the confines of film and narrative theory, and situating the film in broader histories of listening, cinema-going and audio technologies, I argue that the soundtrack of The Graduate reflected new ways of listening 'alone together' that were developing both within and without the cinema theatre. I show that the film employs music in a manner consistent with how transistor radios were being used and discussed in 1960s America, and I explore how – in the very process of placing loneliness at the centre of its audio-visual aesthetics – it enabled heavily mediated experiences of shared loneliness. More specifically, I propose that 'The Sound of Silence' is central not only to how The Graduate conveys loneliness but also to how the film provides a provisional and non-political way out of it.

Grassroots leadership and negotiation style: The quest for justice in the movie Erin Brockovich

The power gaps nested in the political ecology of socioenvironmental conflicts often impose critical impasses on the attainment of justice. Therefore, negotiation is accepted as an alternate tool for environmental justice, especially to avoid the prolonged sufferings linked to uneven power relations between conflicting parties, unpredictable outcomes, mounting expenses and the time taken to get a decision through formal judicial trials or arbitrations. Against this backdrop, the American movie Erin Brockovich is selected to highlight the importance of negotiation as a tool to mitigate environmental conflicts. The movie presents how an ordinary woman, who has many blemishes and liabilities, transcends personal limitations to accomplish appreciable socioenvironmental justice through grassroots mobilization and negotiation. Using close study interpretive methods, the movie Erin Brockovich is analysed as a case study in environmental leadership, distributive negotiation and procedural justice.

Creating Community

Leilani Nishime interviews Vanessa Au and Ellison Sheih, the former and current codirectors of the Seattle Asian American Film Festival. Au and Sheih discuss the mission of the film festival, the process of selecting films, the ideological investments of the festival organizers, and the labor involved in running a festival. Of central importance to the conversation is the relationship between film festivals and the surrounding communities.

ADOBE AFTER EFFECTS SOFTWARE VIDEO EDITING DAN MOTION GRAPHICS YANG POPULER

Adobe After Effects is a popular software for video editing and motion graphics that was developed by Adobe Inc and was first released in 1993 by CoSA. After Adobe Systems acquired CoSA in 1994, Adobe After Effects became a multi-platform software and has continued to evolve over the years with more advanced features. This software is widely used in Hollywood films and by many companies in the production of promotional videos, advertisements, and other videos. Adobe After Effects is used to create special effects in videos such as animation, compositing, and color grading. It offers up to 50 different standard effects to modify and animate objects, and can even use Expressions to produce more dynamic movement. The software has several functions in the field of multimedia, including creating animations and motion graphics, adding special effects, compositing, color grading, and integration with other software. The main purpose of Adobe After Effects is to help users create high-quality videos with complex and detailed special effects. It allows users to explore their creativity by using various tools and features available in the software. Adobe After Effects is very important in video production because it can produce very complex and detailed visual effects such as explosion effects, fire effects, and special effects in Hollywood films.

Portrayal of Pakistani Culture in Hollywood Movies: Pre and Post 9/11

Portrayal of Pakistani Culture in Hollywood Movies: Pre and Post 9/11

Quakerisme Dalam Film Dan Teater Amerika: The Triumphs Of Love (1795), The Quack Quakers (1916), Dan High Noon (1952)

Considering that Quakers have been used as important characters in American performance culture, this essay provides numerous examples of Quakers as represented in American theater and film: John Murdock’s play The Triumphs of Love (1795), Harry F. Millarde’s lost silent film The Quack Quakers (1916), and the Academy Award winning film High Noon (1952). In a paradoxical manner, in each of these productions ranging from farce to serious drama, Friends are shown as either claiming or as striving for unattainable moral and religious human ideals, but also as an exemplary community of individuals against which other Americans might and should be measured.