Disaster Movies Research Articles

Visualising human life in volumetric cities: City digital twins and other disasters

City digital twins (CDTs) are attracting considerable attention as a tool for the management of cities facing many kinds of crises. CDTs are three-dimensional, animated digital models of cities that display the big data generated by urban sensors in near-real-time. Most of the academic literature on CDTs consists of technical discussions of their design or implementation. This paper instead proposes a different context for understanding CDTs. It adopts an intersectional feminist and techno-cultural analysis of the visual form of power enacted by CDTs, as exemplary of a much wider turn in contemporary visual culture towards visualising the world digitally in three dimensions. Many critical accounts of this visual and volumetric regime are attentive to the forms of corporealised human life that emerge in relation to the picturing of various volumes. This paper examines how CDTs visibly co-constitute a number of digitally-mediated forms of human life, including its user and its human inhabitants. The paper argues that, while both the technological affordances and the cultural imaginary of CDTs perform the kind of powerful white masculinity that sees space as transparent and actionable, discussions of CDTs also persistently generate an excessive form of human life that is understood as untwinnable. The paper argues that masculinist anxieties around this excess erupt in another form of digitally-animated volumetric city facing disaster: the disaster movie. The paper thus makes an argument about the specific form of white masculinity co-constituted with CDTs and insists on the necessity of critical techno-cultural analyses of urban management technologies.

Cultural Identity and Realistic Reflection: Commonalities and Differences in Chinese and Korean Disaster Movies

Disaster movies, as a classic film genre, aim to present the essence of disasters and the brilliance of humanity through stunning audio-visual effects and a tragic aesthetic core. The commonality between Chinese and Korean disaster movies lies in their focus on "little people" within disasters, emphasizing "soft expression" of emotions and adopting parallel narratives and causal loops in their storytelling strategies. However, due to differences in the film industry systems and ideologies of the two countries, Chinese and Korean disaster movies diverge in thematic expression. Chinese disaster films often feature a strong national main theme and sentiments of patriotism and family, whereas Korean disaster films focus more on exposing human nature and reflecting on society. This paper will explore the commonalities and differences between Chinese and Korean disaster movies in terms of character development, narrative perspective, emotional presentation, and social values.

Cultural Transmission in Korean Genre Films: Examining the Disaster Movie “Train to Busan” as an Example

In recent years, Korean films have become increasingly prosperous. In addition to borrowing from the classic Hollywood model, their genres have also widely incorporated local culture and values, revealing human nature. The combination of these two elements has broadened its dissemination worldwide and widely promoted Korean culture, providing some inspiration for the development of Chinese genre films. Taking the Korean disaster film “Train to Busan” as an example, this paper analyzes the general framework of cultural communication employed in South Korean films. By studying the film’s content and communication style, it becomes evident that Korean filmmakers blend local values into their narratives while referring to the Western film model. This nuanced approach not only captivates audiences but also carries cultural messages that resonate universally. At the same time, it is also compared with China’s films, which provides strategic reference for the international spread of Chinese films. By recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of both cinematic traditions, China's film industry can refine its strategies, enhancing its global reach while preserving its unique cultural identity. In essence, the success of Korean films offers valuable lessons and inspiration for the continued growth and influence of Chinese genre films in the global cinematic landscape.

A Study on the Impact of the Internet+ Era on Korean Film Consumer Culture

Abstract In the late 1990s, the landscape of the Korean film industry underwent a major change as Korean films emerged strongly and swept through Asia and the world with their consumer culture. With the advent of the Internet+ era in the new century, the consumer culture of Korean cinema has changed dramatically. In order to study the impact of the Internet+ era on Korean film consumption culture clearly, this paper analyzes the change in Korean film genres with the Internet trend and the distribution of the Korean film industry in the Internet+ era through Internet information dissemination model and personalized recommendation algorithm. From 2012 to 2021, the main genres of Korean movies changed from romance, drama, and war movies to crime, action, and disaster movies. Among them, the average share of war films reached 11.20%. The average share of disaster films reached 11.11%. The average share of action films is 10.88%. The average share of drama films was 10.97%. In terms of the film industry, the market share of local Korean films has always been able to keep from being surpassed by imported films after surpassing them. 2013 saw the largest gap between imported and local films, with a difference of 19.4 percentage points. In the Internet+ era, audience psychology, consumer demand, and business models have had a profound impact on the consumer culture of Korean films, not only changing the traditional layout of the Korean film market but also allowing film creators to consciously or unconsciously introduce new consumer culture themes in line with the Internet public.

Always Be Prepared

Always Be Prepared

Global contents but nationalistic themes: Bong Joon-ho’s “Snowpiercer”

Bong Joon-ho’s film, Snowpiercer (2013) is based on a French graphic novel which deals with the people who got on a train that ran continuously around the world in the coming ice ages. At first, the passengers of the train were restricted to the upper classes, but some lower class people happened to get on the train abruptly. It seems to be inevitable to start to struggle between the two classes. In this regards, the theme of this film is focused on the environmental disaster and social stratification. The ruling classes on this train emphasize the order and control. They justify their domination and oppression over the lower classes, assuming that the cause of the disaster lies in the discrepancy which comes from the uncontrolled populations and productions. They use ‘the Spell of Plato’ to prove their logic. According to their logic, the hierarchy must be divided into two (the ruler and the oppressed) or three (guardians, warriors and workers). Every citizen must be satisfied with his social position. Their logics are further reinforced by the gradual ‘piecemeal social engineering’ proposed by Karl Popper. They also emphasize the justification of strong control supported by the Malthusian ‘principle of population’, where the population grows exponentially, but production increases arithmetically. This theory is repeated itself at the commercial movie like Avengers: Infinity War (2018) and Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017). These movies became the dominant trends which could be named ‘(Post) Apocalyptic Film’. It seems that Bong Joon-ho is willing to follow the trends and conventions of the genre movie as known as Apocalyptic Film. However, by casting Korean actors as third groups of the movie intentionally, he makes it possible to imagine a new world that is different from this frustrating dichotomy (higher’s domination/lower’s oppression). Namgung Minsu and Yona who are acted by two Korean actors are represented as very active and interesting characters who are anticipated to solve the main social problems in the movie; environmental disasters and class conflicts. They show us the possibilities of the new world which can be imagined after the frozen and totally destroyed world is ended. Korean spectators can feel proud of the fact that the heroic and fantastic character of this movie is restricted to two Korean actors. Bong seemed to aim the target of spectators only to Korean. Anyway, he could make a little bit different movie from the conventions of blockbuster a.k.a. disaster movie or apocalyptic movie.

할리우드 재난영화와 미국적 이데올로기 그리고 〈클로버필드〉의 장르 전복

This essay has twin foci. First, it reviews some of the 2000’s disaster movies—particularly, Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men (2006) and Francis Lawrence’s I am Legend (2007) along with a 1988’s hit movie Die Hard—from the perspective of American cultural archetype moulded and developed by Ralph Waldo Emerson and later R.W.B. Lewis. Then it argues that all the Hollywood disaster movies are likely to reinforce American ideologies such as American dream and American exceptionalism by repeating and recreating American founding myth. Such a reading would possibly provide a new perspective through which we can read Hollywood disaster films prevailing these days after the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. Second, this essay demonstrates how Matt Reeves’s 2008 film Cloverfield revises the codes and conventions of those Hollywood disaster movies through a strategic use of subjective camera. Its peculiar use of first-person camera not only effectively debunks the metaphysical center of the film hallucinatorily created by third-person omniscient viewpoint; it also strips white male heroes—especially, father figures as saviors of the world from disasters—of American cultural authority. Furthermore, the film’s telling representation of unlimited and relentless violence that exceeds the subjective camera angle makes it difficult to imagine what the post-disaster America would be like. In this sense, Cloverfield expands the ideological and political possibility of the disaster genre, although we could hardly say that the film is an outright avant-garde film that provides a new vision about disasters and America.

Don’t Look Down

Don’t Look Down

Red in tooth and claw: A review of animal antagonistic roles in movies

Abstract Although cinema narrative represents a fundamental communication tool in framing public opinion, whether a negative representation of certain species in the context of animal‐horror movies might increase the attitudinal hostilities towards them remains an aspect of wildlife perception that is poorly studied. Here, we reviewed online sources from the last 70 years to describe the negative representation of animal roles in horror and disaster movies. Specifically, we described species diversity, how the animal was depicted, the cause for its aggressive behaviour and how it came in contact with the human characters. By means of principal coordinate analysis (PCoA), we also highlighted three main typologies of animal‐horror movies. The dataset consisted of 263 titles produced world‐wide from 1950 to 2019. The results showed that animal representation is transversal yet uneven, with five species groups out of 18 appearing in more than half of the movies. There were significant associations between species, their representation and the different kinds of movies they appeared in, with some species groups appearing more commonly in certain types of film plots rather than others. Together, the results suggested that both the themes and topics of animal‐horror movies were often the result of a combination of factors, including fashion‐driven audience interests, societal and political concerns, and technological availability at the time of production. Whether this repeated and variegated representation can increase attitudinal hostility remains however unclear. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.

Does Perceived Stress of University Students Affected by Preferences for Movie Genres? an Exploratory Cross-Sectional Study in China.

This study aims to explore whether different preferences for movie genres were related to different perceived stress of college students. An online questionnaire was designed and it was filled out by 1,549 students voluntarily. The 10-item perceived stress scale (PSS-10) and multinomial logistic regression were used to access the perceived stress and the association between the movie preference genres. Over 90% of participants had mild to serious levels of stress. Differences were found between participants with different stress perception states in terms of smoking history, active exercise, and sleep duration (p < 0.05). The participants who showed a preference for suspense movies more probably had lower stress [relative risk ratio (RRR)1 = 0.34, RRR2 = 0.26, p < 0.05], while students who showed preferences for crime film and disaster film more probably had higher stress (RRR = 2.03, p < 0.05, RRR = 3.15, p < 0.05). And the significant gender gap in different film genre preferences was observed in this study (p < 0.05). The males who showed preference for horror movies were more probably to have moderate stress (OR = 3.68, p < 0.05), and females who showed a preference for disaster movies were more probably to have high stress (OR = 3.27, p < 0.05). The perceived stress of Chinese university students is high after 1.5 years of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. The personal preferences for certain film genres were significantly associated with perceived stress. As different film genre preferences, such as the preference for disaster, crime, and horror, are associated with high perceived stress, it may turn out to be useful to pay more attention to an individual’s film viewing. The teachers need to be concerned with the media usage history and preferences of their students and may advise students with high-level stress to avoid potentially harmful media content.

Impact of Environmental Disaster Movies on Corporate Environmental and Financial Performance

Using a unique United States box office data set, we investigate the impact of environmental sentiment on corporate environmental and financial performance of the United States listed firms. The influence of mass media on public and investor sentiments is well documented in the existing literature. However, little is known about the effect of movies, although they may influence the public more than other mass media because people, regardless of age and gender, enjoy watching movies. Using the event study methodology and multivariable regression analysis, we show that the release of anthropogenic environmental disaster movie(s) creates environmental sentiment and influences corporate behaviors. Specifically, firms significantly increase their environmental performance in the subsequent year of strong environmental sentiment after the release of environmental movies. More importantly, the positive effect of corporate environmental performance on financial performance is stronger when the environmental sentiment is stronger.

재난 영화에 드러난 홍수 설화의 서사 전략 연구

재난 영화에 드러난 홍수 설화의 서사 전략 연구

Disaster Narratives by Design: Is Japan Different?

Disaster movies remain a relatively under-studied “genre” of narrative, particularly in relation to which conventions are used within such narratives. One of the key works is by Yacowar (2012) and not only categorized disaster narratives into eight types, but also highlighted 16 conventions that exist in these movies. However, that study was done in 1976. Furthermore, Yacowar's study was primarily on English-language narratives. Just as Mileti (1999) has suggested that disasters are “designed” by a range of cultural and social influences, are disaster narratives similarly constructed through inherent cultural and social influences? This article not only looks at the conventions in 38 disaster narratives covering the 40-year period from 1978 to 2018, but it also analyzes 22 Japanese-language narratives in order to assess the degree to which conventions may be universal. Japanese disaster narratives were chosen due to Japan being linguistically and culturally different from the countries where English-language narratives were made, and that Japan has a developed film industry and one that has produced many disaster movies over the years. The article finds that many of the conventions suggested by Yacowar no longer apply, but that there are 17 conventions that can be placed into one of three groups; those found in English and Japanese narratives, those found only in the former and those found in the latter. That there are three separate groups reveals that there are clear differences between what constitutes a disaster narrative in different areas. These differences, ultimately, are likely to not only influence the degree to which a narrative will be successful in its own country, but also the degree to which it could be exported to other countries.

Thoughts on Connections Between COVID-19 Pandemic And Climate Crisis

Thoughts on Connections Between COVID-19 Pandemic And Climate Crisis

Looking beyond the coronavirus: lessons and principles.

Looking beyond the coronavirus: lessons and principles.

한국 재난을 소재로 한 영화연구

장르영화연구와 개별사건연구의 방법을 응용하여 한국 재난을 소재로 한 영화를 탐구하고, 한국이 재 난을 소재로 한 영화를 발전시키는 과정에서 할리우드 재난영화의 모델을 벤치마킹한 것을 발견한다. 또 한 한국 토종문화가 녹아 있어 독특한 소재화 수단과 뚜렷한 현지색을 형성하고 있다. 한국 정부는 영화 에 많은 창작 공간을 정책적으로 주었고 한국 재난 장르 영화들이 재난 서사를 통해 사회 현실을 반영할 수 있다는 점에서 비판적이다. 재난을 소재로 한 영화는 예술적 표현이자 삶의 실제 사진이며 그것은 실 제 세계의 예술적 표현이다. 재난에 임하는 인간의 공포심에 대한 예술적 묘사이며 재난이 닥쳐오는 순 간의 인간성에 대한 영화예술인의 해부다. 한국 재난을 소재로 한 영화는 사람과 사회 자연의 갈등과 갈 등을 잘 보여준다. 이 글은 한국 재난 영화의 호황에 대해 깊이 있게 탐구하였다. 구체적인 사례 분석을 통해 한국 재난 장르 영화 연구의 몇 가지 틀에 박힌 이론을 요약하고 한국 재난 소재 영화의 형성과 발 전을 체계적으로 정리했다. 서사 내용과 예술 수용, 표현 수단의 세 가지 관점에서 한국 재난 영화의 심 미적 가치를 분석하는 데 중점을 두고 있다.

The imagination of eco-disaster: Post-disaster rebuilding in Asian cinema

Commercial films today often reduce representations of natural catastrophes to commodified spectacles that de-contextualize the subject matter. To contemporary film viewers, the ‘psychic numbing’ effect is apparent, and it does not apply merely to our perception of numbers, statistics, the big data. It can also be seen when we are bombarded with similar kinds of images over and over again; in this case, the large-scale tsunami, the hurricanes, the earthquake and all the exaggerated destruction scenes in recent disaster movies have become clichés no matter how realistic and intense the shots are made. By focusing on a range of eco-disaster films, this article highlights the importance of cultural sensitivity in the study of eco-disaster films, by exploring several questions: how are eco-disasters culturally shaped and defined, via cinematic means? How are human responses to disasters, as reflected in cinematic representations, shaped by specific sociopolitical, cultural or economic conditions? How does cinema as a media form represent ecological concepts that are shared globally or universally, while at the same time reflecting specific cultural characteristics? Juxtaposing examples from China, Thailand and the Phillippines, particularly with three films: Wonderful Town (Thailand, 2007), Aftershock (China, 2010) and Taklub (Phillippines, 2015), this article demonstrates how Asian eco-disaster films in the Anthropocene epoch reflect specific cultural imaginations of nation and identity rebuilding, which in turn provide a ground to reposition, redefine and reinvent the changing cultural identities in contemporary Asia. Eventually, it argues that eco-disaster narratives in Asia reflect the identity crisis of Asian nations in a global capitalist world, just as much as they are about ecological crises.

한국 재난영화의 탄생과 국가적 트라우마의 반복 : 위기영화로서의 〈해운대〉의 판타지 분석

한국 재난영화의 탄생을 알린 영화 〈해운대〉(2009)는 2004년 인도네시아 쓰나미에서 영감을 얻어 제작되고 2008년 글로벌 금융위기 직후에 개봉되었다. 그 때문에 〈해운대〉는 1997년 외환위기에 의한 국가적 트라우마를 반복함으로써 외환위기 및 뒤이은 신자유주의화 과정에서 한국인들이 겪은 고통과 좌절, 불안을 의미화하고 통어하려는 판타지로 읽힐 수 있는 의미론적 공간을 연다. 이런 견지에서 볼 때 〈해운대〉는 1970년대 할리우드 재난영화 사이클처럼 위기 영화로 간주될 수 있다. 〈해운대〉가 묘사하는 재난 쓰나미는 라캉 정신분석학의 의미에서 불가능한 향유에 몸체를 부여하는 매혹적인 이미지로서 실재계를 상상적으로 객관화하는 숭고한 형상이다. 〈해운대〉에서 이 쓰나미는 부권적 초자아의 작인으로서 기능하며 한국남성 주체들에게 부권을 회복하고 성관계를 완성하라는 아버지-향유의 명령을 물질화한다. 그럼에도 불구하고 〈해운대〉의 판타지와 그것이 함축하는 정치사회학은 아버지의 법과 권위를 복구하고 주체들의 공적 세계를 구축하는 데 성공하지 못하는 듯 보인다.

Disaster Movies in the Classroom: Pedagogical Value and Teaching Approaches

Film as a pedagogical technique has been increasingly utilized by instructors in the classroom setting. As previous research highlights the benefits of this method, the question remains as to how this strategy can be effectively applied in the study of hazards, disasters, and emergency management. This paper describes an undergraduate course that uses cinematic portrayals of disaster to present and highlight a number of significant themes from the disaster science literature. We have found the examination of disaster films to be a valuable strategy for teaching topics which can range from disaster myths or erroneous science or, by contrast, relatively accurate portrayals of human behavior in disaster. This article surveys some of the existing literature on film in teaching; highlights how we have used films in courses; and offers suggestions on how some noteworthy films can be used to demonstrate and rein force challenging theories from the literature.

Traducir y adaptar el terror 15 años después: dos ejemplos de la ficción sobre el 11/S en la literatura infantil y juvenil estadounidense

La literatura destinada a un público infantil y juvenil tras los atentados del 11-S fue muy numerosa y diversa. Tanto los más pequeños, a través del álbum ilustrado, como los adolescentes de la primera década del siglo XXI, tuvieron acceso directo a multitud de textos que plasmaban uno de los acontecimientos que marcaría un antes y un después y señalaría el comienzo de un nuevo orden mundial. Quince años más tarde, nos encontramos ante una generación que no fue testigo directo de la caída de las torres y todo lo que con ellas desapareció, e incluso se cuestiona la realidad del suceso debido a la distancia temporal y puede llegar a asimilarlo a una de esas grandes producciones cinematográficas sobre catástrofes. Los propios autores se preguntan si aquellos recuerdos que un día fueron tan vívidos no estarán perdiendo nitidez en sus mentes. Es el propósito de este artículo mostrar cómo la literatura trata de traducir y adaptar el terror de una mañana de septiembre a los jóvenes que no presenciaron el abrupto final del siglo XX.