Comic Film Research Articles

“How is these kids meant to make it out the ghetto now?” Community cohesion and communities of laughter in British multicultural comedy

This article uses readings of Mark Mylod’s Ali G Indahouse, Joe Cornish’s Attack the Block, and Chris Morris’s Four Lions to argue against a political trend for laying the blame for the purported failure of British multiculturalism at the hands of individual communities. Through my readings of these comic films, I suggest that popular constructions of “community” based on assumptions about cultural and religious homogeneity are rightly challenged, and new communities are created through shared laughter. Comedy’s structural engagement with taboo means that stereotypes which have gained currency through media and political discourse that seeks to demonize particular groups of young men (Muslims and gang members, for example) are foregrounded. By being brought to the forefront and exposed, these stereotypes can be engaged with and challenged through ridicule and demonstrations of incongruity. Furthermore, I suggest that power relations are made explicit through joking structures that work to include or exclude, meaning that the comedies can draw and redraw communities of laughter in a manner that effectively challenges notions of communities as discrete, homogeneous, and closely connected to cultural heritage. The article works against constructions of British Muslims as the problem community par excellence by using multicultural discourse to contextualize the representation of British Muslims and demonstrate how the discourse has repressed the role of political, social, and economic structures in a focus on “self-segregating” communities.

Fabulating animals–human affinity: Towards an ethics of care in Monster Hunt and Mermaid

ABSTRACTWhile independent filmmakers have shown their concerns with ecological crises in light of China's accelerated industrialization, urbanization and economic development through alternative poetics and politics of filmmaking, commercial blockbusters also begin to speak to this emerging topic. Monster Hunt (2015) and Mermaid (2016) are not only fictitious tales of imaginary creatures but allegories of animal rights and environmentalist movements in China. Beyond the cute images of the radish-like creature Wuba and the cruel extermination of mythical mermaids, these two comic films address to eco-critical issues such as animal welfare, the dilemma of meat-eating, conservation of nature and endangered species, urbanization and the destruction of natural environment as well as the critique of speciesism and anthropocentrism. By studying the inter-species affective sphere mediated by kitschy visual narratives, this paper argues that the themes of domestication and abandonment, environmental destruction and preservation and the portrayals of sentient nonhuman animals have been expressed and contested in the cinematic rendition of an ethics of care through the cute and the cruel to attract public awareness of animal rights and environmental protection. Behind the façade of profit-making entertainment, how does popular cinema critically reflect on the precarious conditions of nonhuman animals and their agency in the ever-developing China? To what extent do popular representations challenge or sustain an anthropocentric vision of bioethical issues? What is the limit of care amidst the inter-species entanglement?

The Nursery as Circus: Dancing the Childlike to Fauré's Dolly Suite, 1913

ABSTRACTIn 1913, at the Théâtre des Arts in Paris, a controversial but highly successful ballet choreographed a circus-style pantomime to the music of Fauré's Dolly Suite. With its apparently incongruent relation of dance to music, the ballet displayed, as one reviewer put it, ‘criticisms in action’. This article investigates how we might conceive the production as an act of musical and cultural criticism, by examining its close relation with contexts such as early comic film, music-hall entertainment, the children's literature market, medical and anthropological theories, and surrealist thought. The ballet implicitly challenged conventional interpretations of Fauré's music as reflecting a particular perception of childhood – one which was rather too close to the sentimental attitudes vehemently dismissed in contemporaneous literature. The production was an important manifestation of an emergent understanding of the ‘childlike’ in early twentieth-century French culture – as a condition enlightened by irrationality, with important physiological traits.

Re-imagining the Literary Brand

This paper argues that the industrial contexts of re-imagining, or transforming, literary icons deploy the promotional strategies that are associated with what are usually seen as lesser, or purely commercial, genres. Promotional paratexts reveal transformations of content that position audiences to receive them as creative innovations, superior in many senses to their literary precursors due to the distinctive expertise of creative professionals. Analysing Spielberg's film, The Adventures of Tintin (2011), and Andrew Motion's fictional continuation of Stevenson's Treasure Island, it argues that literary fiction and cinematic texts associated with celebrated authors or auteurist producer-directors share branding discourses characteristic of contemporary consumer culture.

Усвоение студентами исторической лексики на материале фильма „Иван Васильевич меняет профессию”

This paper focuses on the use of films, in particular the film Ivan Vasilievich Is Changing His Profession (which is known in the USA under the title Ivan the Terrible: Back to the Future), in Russian classes with students. This comic film, which was created based on Mikhail Bulgakov’s play, is rich in historical facts and lexis as well as in realia related to the epoch of Ivan the Terrible. This film, the topic of which arouses students’ interest, promotes their professional and personal development as well as their creative self-fulfillment and it also expands their vocabulary. The author presents her own solutions regarding the use of the film before, during and after its showing.

Historiography and Shifting Interpretations of the Death of Sultan Mahmud Syah II

The sultan of Johor, Mahmud Syah II, was murdered in 1699. This was a key event in Malay history, and the story has been recounted in a variety of texts, ranging from traditional hikayat to comic books and films. In each instance, new elements and explanations were added to the tale. These details, and the perspectives they represent, allow for an examination of how literature and history—while ostensibly describing events as they happened—rarely do so solely for the sake of erudition. History is written to explain the present and inscribe the future, even when it concerns a murder that took place more than 300 years ago.

French Comedy on Screen: A Cinematic History by Rémi Fournier Lanzoni

Reviews 201 Lanzoni, Rémi Fournier. French Comedy on Screen: A Cinematic History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. ISBN 978-0-230-33842-5. Pp. 265. $95. Do French comedies come with an asterisk? This might well be the implicit question answered in this book. As the author reminds us, comedies have often been left by the wayside.“Serious”cinema is an academic subject,has been studied,analyzed, and taught, while laughter is relegated to popular enjoyment. In 2009 for instance, Bienvenue chez les Ch’tis attracted some 20.5 million cinemagoers, breaking all boxoffice records in France, but was largely ignored by the 34th César Awards Ceremony. Lanzoni seeks to rectify this oversight and invites a broad audience of readers in film studies, Francophone culture, curious students, and Francophiles to dwell on French cinema’s poor relation. By reading and analyzing French comedies of the past eightyfive years (beginning with the talkies), the author offers a vast historical and social panorama of the genre and, in more ways than one, reaffirms its place and function in the academe. This useful volume traces the evolution and facets of French comedies by exploring an impressive number of titles, organized by period (early, postwar, modern and contemporary comedies), and helpfully subdivided into styles (social satire, ethnic comedies, etc.). Not only does Lanzoni frame the movies he selected with discussions of their genesis, actors and directors, as well as the censorship and reception of these films, but he also engages with the cinema industry at different stages of its evolution. He manages to astutely lead the reader in his intellectual escapades (“Can comedy exist without satire?”) in order to ultimately establish comic films as social, historical and commercial testaments of the French psyche (70). The enterprise proves as entertaining as it is instructive, and the in-depth discussions of particular titles (such as Pagnol’s trilogy or Tenue de soirée) that punctuate the broader generic analysis are certainly insightful.However these discussions,or rather the decision to analyze certain movies in lieu of others, do create a slight sense of imbalance. The book does not claim to be an encyclopedia, but a more nuanced account of his criteria for selecting his corpus would have been welcome. One could legitimately ask why Les kairas (1.2 million spectators) prevailed over Neuilly sa mère (2.5 million spectators), or Gazon maudit (3.8 million) over Pédale douce (4 million). Likewise, one could regret that the fourth and final chapter, with promising sections about “communitarian humor”and cinéma de banlieue, did not benefit from a more detailed cinematographic analysis to complement the refreshing examination of the films’ social significance. As an introduction to French comedy, Lanzoni’s work succeeds in its scope and aims; he creates a space where history, popular acclaim, and social issues intersect to enhance our understanding of the medium and its import. Boise State University (ID) Benoît Leclercq ...

Social and Cultural Interests between Comic and Animation Films

Social and Cultural Interests between Comic and Animation Films

Land of Many Nationalisms

If the events of this January were omens, 2013 should be an eventful year for the People's Republic of China (PRC). It began with crowds of protesters gathering in front of the headquarters of Southern Weekend, a newspaper based in Guangdong province that has earned a reputation for covering controversial stories. The protesters, mostly youths, carried posters calling for freedom of the press and in some cases wore Guy Fawkes masks of the kind sported by an opponent of dictatorship in the V for Vendetta comic books and film. They took to the streets to show their support for the newspaper in its most recent struggle against offi cial censors who, in this case, had deleted the publication's New Year editorial calling for political reform and put in its place an anodyne commentary backing the government.

CINEMATIC ART, MARUJA MALLO AND MODERN VISUAL CULTURE

On 15 May 1930, when the interview “CINEMA Y ARTE NUEVO: Originalidad de Maruja Mallo” appeared in Barcelona's Popular Film, the Spanish vanguardist artist openly acknowledged to Luis Gomez Mesa: “...

The effects of using cartoon in teaching social sciences on attitudes of students against to social science course

In Turkey, since 2004, transition to a constructivist approach at curriculum has also led to deep-rooted changes in social sciences classes as with all courses. Change in the Social Studies Course Program made it necessary to use different types of materials in lessons by teachers. One of the materials used to make more effective and efficient of social sciences lessons is comic film that have a big place in the world of children. In this study, have been studied the effect of using comic films in teaching social sciences at the primary fifth class on attitudes of students against to social science course. The research, at the second term of 2009-2010 academic year, were made over Elementary first-grade 5 grade students. In this research, experiment and experimental design with control group were used. In the result of research, attitude of experimental group's, who are used comic films in the process of teaching procedure, towards the lesson is significantly higher than experimental group, who are not used comic films in the education process.

Sketching Under the Influence? Winsor McCay and the Question of Aesthetic Convergence Between Comic Strips and Film

The formal similarities between comic strips and film have often sparked a contentious debate about aesthetic intersections between the two mediums as well as discussions of influence. Comic historian David Kunzle, drawing from the work of Francis Lacassin, has described how characteristics of film form can be traced back to comic strips of the mid to late 1800s. Film historian Donald Crafton, on the other hand, posits that comic strips had little, if any, influence over the evolution of film language. Analyzing both Winsor McCay’s comic strips and animated adaptations, this article hopes to utilize historically informed textual analysis to complicate the question of aesthetic influence.

Shakespeare and Chinese Performance at the Folger Shakespeare Library

Shakespeare and Chinese Performance at the Folger Shakespeare Library Erika T. Lin Shakespeare and Chinese Performance at the Folger Shakespeare Library The Folger Shakespeare Library’s recent exhibition, “Imagining China: The View from Europe, 1550–1700” (September 18, 2009—January 9, 2010), offered a fascinating glimpse into the history of intercultural exchanges. Curated by Timothy Billings with an interactive touchscreen video installation by Alexander C. Y. Huang, the exhibition usefully underscored the profound distance between sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury views of China and those most prevalent today. Viewers learned, for instance, that China was known in Shakespeare’s day not for porcelain but for musk deer, and that Europeans made an effort to learn the Chinese language, rather than the reverse. By portraying early modern Europe as foreign and unfamiliar, the exhibition destabilized modern racist assumptions that posit the centrality of the West and the naturalness of its cultural beliefs. The exhibition also successfully undermined the popular notion that globalization is a recent phenomenon. A chronological table incorporated into the video kiosk taught viewers that the first documented performance of Shakespeare in Asia took place in 1619, when employees of the Dutch East Indies Company staged a version of Hamlet in Indonesia. Another display case featured rare editions of The Orphan of China, Voltaire’s 1755 adaptation of a Chinese play that was later revived in English for David Garrick at Drury Lane. Most relevant for readers of Shakespeare Bulletin, however, are the exhibition’s contributions to understandings of modern performance. The video installation of excerpts from recent Sinophone stage and film productions of Shakespeare’s plays offered a number of useful interventions in common narratives about cultural difference. (Those who missed the exhibition can view some of these amazing performances at Shakespeare Performance in Asia, http://web.mit.edu/shakespeare/asia/ , co-edited by Alexander C. Y. Huang and Peter Donaldson.) By carefully juxtaposing particular selections, Huang’s contributions to the Folger exhibition challenged essentialist ideas about Chinese and Western modes of dramatic [End Page 188] representation and gently drew attention to spectators’ potential complicity in these discourses. Because the political and aesthetic implications of these performances can be seen most clearly in the clips from the comic film Chicken Rice War (2000), I will begin by discussing these excerpts in more detail, before moving on to show how similar concerns informed the other video selections. Chicken Rice War revolves around a conflict between two Singapore- Chinese diaspora families whose teenage children land the title roles in an English-language production of Romeo and Juliet. When both sets of relatives attend the culminating performance, the ensuing scene evokes visions of Francis Beaumont’s The Knight of the Burning Pestle: hostilities between audience members, expressed loudly in Chinese during the show, finally come to a head when the star-crossed lovers kiss on stage. Mistaking fiction for reality, one family accuses the other of trying to steal their recipe for chicken rice by having daughter “Juliet” seduce son “Romeo.” The resulting fight brings the play to a standstill and is only resolved when the young male lead chastises his parents for their breach of decorum. That his speech takes place in English is significant. Literacy in the conventions of representational theatre is here imagined as essentially Western. The parents, unable to appreciate this dramatic mode, continually interrupt the performance event and eventually destroy the suspension of disbelief required for it to work. Instead of acquiescing to such Eurocentric performance paradigms, however, other selections from Chicken Rice War undermined both their centrality and their validity. The film opens with the Chorus, here part of a frame narrative, holding a reporter’s microphone and speaking a witty revision of the Prologue to Shakespeare’s play. He is interrupted by an outraged woman, apparently his supervisor, who accuses him of being incomprehensible: “What are you saying?” she cries in Singaporean colloquial English. “Do you think Mr. Tan in Ang Mo Kio can understand you? When I told you not to speak in Singlish, I didn’t ask you to sound like Shakespeare! Do it again! Do it again!” Immediately thereafter, the film cuts to a woman in modern dress giving more of the back...

The Amazing Transforming Superhero!: Essays on the Revision of Characters in Comic Books, Film and Television

The Amazing Transforming Superhero!: Essays on the Revision of Characters in Comic Books, Film and Television

The Politics of the Walter Benjamin Industry

One of the most peculiar phenomena of the recent culture industry is the appearance of Walter Benjamin, for decades a forgotten thinker, as the object of iconization and mass consumption. Over the last 20 years, this eccentric critic has not only stood at the centre of intense academic scrutiny but has also become the protagonist of comic books, popular novels, films, monuments and musical projects, in a cascade of images that shows no sign of exhaustion. This article explores the symbolic meanings invested in Benjamin's image, and the semantic tactics that are used to grant it its mythic aura. It seeks to shed light on the multi-layered function of Benjamin as a signifier, and points to hidden political elements and traditions that characterize the Benjamin industry.

Politics of laughter: An introduction to the 1990s’ Malayalam popular comic film

This article attempts to consolidate the genre of Malayalam popular comic film of the 1990s. It argues that the comic film cannot be theorized by using categories like ‘star’ and ‘fan club’. It also argues that a true and complete symbolization/representation of the (existing) social field is absent in the Malayalam comic film. It attributes this absence to the comedian‐hero's telling economic and cultural disability. It explores briefly the historical reasons behind the ‘representational shortcomings’ of such heroes in Kerala, and relates those reasons to the emergence of melodrama and comedy/laughter. It claims that in the comic film melodrama results from the failure of representation and, given that the existing socio‐symbolic order is a bourgeois one, it considers this failure positive. It also claims that the inadequate representation allows for the viewer a radical experience of the failure of the existing social field to symbolize the subaltern classes/castes.

입체적인 쇼트를 통한 코믹연출연구

When making a comic film, the comic presentation that uses stress and exaggeration is the important subject among other things. In this study we tried to investigate the comic effect using the movement of three-dimensional shot. To conduct this study, we extracted the shot manufactured through the Flow Motion of a 3D Production Program Virtual Camera and a High Speed Motion Picture Camera. The shot manufactured applying this manufacturing skill and using three-dimensional production method for the video contents efficiently made was classified into several scenes. The focus of this study is to search for the factor that makes the atmosphere of a story comic through three-dimensional production shot. According to the shot analysis, three-dimensional production method plays a role in developing more stories on space and time by visualizing stories in three dimensions, which makes the most use of the movement of camera, lens and the utilization of focus. In addition, in the presentation where many comic and exaggerated factors are provided, we used the technology that stresses a scene using the size of a shot and the lasting time and presented the method that exaggerates space using a 3D Production Program Virtual Camera and a High Speed Motion Picture Camera. By reviewing the qualitative improvement and the efficient method on making comic films through the possibility that the atmosphere of this three-dimensional shot can apply to the effect for comic presentation, we tried to approach the comic presentation.

Functional Anatomy of Humor: Positive Affect and Chronic Mental Illness

Functional Anatomy of Humor: Positive Affect and Chronic Mental Illness

“Have You Tried Not Being a Mutant?”

“Have You Tried Not Being a Mutant?”

Adriënne Solser, Koningin der kluchten

In the minor film producing country of the Netherlands Adriënne Solser (1873-1943) was a relatively prolific actress producer and director of silent feature films in the 1920s. She was one of only two female film directors of Dutch silent films and her films were considerably successful. Nonetheless her thematic and aesthetic choices deviated from the aspirations held by most of her colleagues: instead of gloomy dramas and artistically ambitious films Adriënne Solser produced cinematically unpretentious and emphatically local farces which moreover were always intended to be shown with a live performance by Solser herself. Solser's success as well as her consistent choice for the popular and the lowbrow prompted interdisciplinary and intertextual research into popular stage genres and traditions that were much more related to her work than to most Dutch film productions of the era. The research considers most notably the popular stage genre of <em>Jordaan</em> plays as well as the traditions of mixing live performances with film screenings. Both are explored in their multiple and successive historic manifestations. It becomes clear that Solser not only drew her ideas from a specific and rather unknown variant of the <em>Jordaan</em> genre but that she then created her own variant of it for cinema. In addition she can be said to have continued a comic film tradition that originated from the revues of the 1910s and that embedded film in the comic performance. Adriënne Solser transferred and adapted this hybrid tradition to the cinema of the 1920s and in doing so became an exponent of Dutch comic film of the era.