Popular Film Research Articles

Interrogating “Marginality” in Bombay Cinema: An Exhaustive Historiography

Interrogating “Marginality” in Bombay Cinema: An Exhaustive Historiography

The phallocentrism of the media representation of gender dysphoria

The aim of the present study is to analyse the media representation of gender dysphoria in trans* people in two popular films – The Danish Girl and Girl. Specifically, we focus on the role of genitalia in media representation of the trans* experience through the lens of phallocentrism. In the case of Lili and Lara, the trans* female protagonists of the chosen films, their trans* experience is, as we argue, reduced to their relationship towards their genitalia. Consequently, such a portrayal fully corresponds to the prevailing paradigm of transnormativity in media representation of trans* people.

Law, film, and trans identity in Hong Kong

Abstract This article examines the construction of trans identity in Hong Kong law and cinema. By juxtaposing the key Hong Kong court cases on trans rights and some recent feature films on trans experience, it argues that film can reproduce and reinforce the understanding of identity in the court cases, and that they can unwittingly perpetuate the dynamic of exclusion enacted in those cases. Law and popular film may seem to be distinct discursive domains, but their constructions of trans identity are in fact intertwined. The article contends that to break out of these limiting identity formulations, we need to move beyond the dominant imaginaries of law and popular culture. It offers one way of doing so by turning to independent queer filmmaking as a forum for articulating and recognizing alternative trans subjectivities.

Review: Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay, by Samhita Sunya

Book Review| June 01 2023 Review: Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay, by Samhita Sunya Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay, by Samhita Sunya Swapna Gopinath Swapna Gopinath SWAPNA GOPINATH is an associate professor of film and cultural studies at Symbiosis Institute of Media and Communication, Pune. She is a Fulbright fellow and is a coeditor of Historicizing Myths in Contemporary India (Routledge), a book on popular Hindi cinema. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar BOOK DATA Samhita Sunya, Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2022. $34.95 paper. 270 pages. Film Quarterly (2023) 76 (4): 106–107. https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2023.76.4.106 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Swapna Gopinath; Review: Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay, by Samhita Sunya. Film Quarterly 1 June 2023; 76 (4): 106–107. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/fq.2023.76.4.106 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentFilm Quarterly Search BOOK DATA Samhita Sunya, Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2022. $34.95 paper. 270 pages. In her new book Sirens of Modernity: World Cinema via Bombay, Samhita Sunya examines “public debates over gender, excess, cinephilia and the world via Bombay … over a ‘long’ 1960s period” (4). A fitting addition to the Cinema Cultures in Contact series, Sunya’s book considers the role of popular Hindi cinema in the nation’s embrace of modernity, but moves away from national allegorical approaches to explore the transnational visibility and circulation of popular Hindi films of the 1960s. More provocatively, Sunya’s case studies are not purely Bombay productions; rather, they are transnational coproductions or remakes of Madras productions, thereby enabling the reader to see beyond the hegemonic patterns of production and reception of Bombay cinema. This well-researched work lies at the intersections of film studies and... You do not currently have access to this content.

Poetic Justice in Cilappatikaran-Reinforces Ethical and Moral Principles

According to the Cambridge dictionary poetic justice is defined as an occasion when something bad happens to a person who seems to deserve it usually because of bad things that person has done or it can be understood as a punishment or a reward that you feel is just. In literature, poetic justice refers to an outcome in which evil characters are punished and virtuous characters are rewarded. The term was coined by the English literary critic Thomas Rhymer in the 17th century, who was a literary critic and who introduced principles of French neoclassicism. He introduced this term when it was believed that a work of literature should uphold moral principles only and instruct the reader for correct moral behaviour. Twists of fate usually provide the episode of poetic justice towards the end of the story. The device of poetic justice has been replaced not only in modern literature and writings but also in contemporary digital presentations like popular Cinema too. The contemporary writers' times are offering in their presentation more an ironic twist of fate related and resulted from the character's own actions. The main idea behind the use of poetic justice is to celebrate morality, to correct people and check the way the Society should behave. Therefore this idea was coined in 1677-78, but was already popular in much older times, whose reflection we get from Plato’s Republic.

Transnational Cinema, ‘It’s the Vibe’: An Interview with Santo Cilauro

ABSTRACT The film The Castle (1997) is part of Australia’s cultural and national identity. Australians love how much we love the film, and we see ourselves in the working-class Kerrigan family at the centre of the story. Yet one of the co-writers of the film, Santo Cilauro, suggests that The Castle is as much an Italian film as an Australian one. The interview with Cilauro explores the transnational nature of this ‘national’ film and offers a case study of a popular film to inform critical approaches to transnational cinema.

Film and History

Abstract The long, rich history of Francophone cinematic culture has been largely absent from the pages of French Historical Studies. The current issue offers a corrective by initiating dialogue between historians and film studies specialists, and this introduction lays a groundwork by briefly sketching intellectual and cultural contexts for the articles that follow. Brett Bowles, Christian Delage, and Thibault Guichard examine films that recover voices silenced by abuses of state power or antistate terror, adding to existing work on how visual media preserves evidence of violence and so broadening our understanding of how history is constituted. Vanessa Brutsche engages a rich literature on how cinematic fictions represent the past with an article that explains how two popular films of the 1970s married historical “truths” with contemporary cultural referents to reappraise the French past and challenge illusions of progress. Kamel Ben Ouanès and Patricia Caillé’s overview of Tunisian cinema explores its complex relationship to state, civil society, and an international “Third Cinema” while reminding us how much Francophone cinema has become transnational in contexts of production and subject matter alike.

Class Struggle: Money, Power, Oppression, and Resistance

The paper contributes to the lifelong dialogs about the capital-labor conflict between the upper-class (bourgeoisie) and the working-class (proletariat). It unpacks the ideological underpinnings driving the insatiable quest of the capitalist class for profit, power, interminable exploitation of the working class across ages. The paper underscores the knack of the upper-classes to exert limitless authority over the working classes given their control of the means of production in ways that include dictating the working conditions, wages, hours of work, and engaging the apparatuses of the state – laws, judiciary, police, and army – as detailed by Althusser, to enforce their compliance with capitalist ideals (80). It ascribes the continued failure of the working-class to successfully resist and overthrow the brutal capitalist machinery to encumbering False Consciousness; described as a mental trap that propels the class to accept and naively participate in their own economic oppression. The predilection of the members towards individualized forms of resistance as against forming formidable alliances across interest groups to pursue collective action is equally found culpable. Alongside forming alliances, the author suggests outright rejection of bourgeois ideologies which permeate the major spheres of the society and their replacement with the workers’ own ideological alternatives as imperative. Consistent with Marx’s submission, workers’ ownership of the means of production to produce their own necessities rather than continually selling their labor for a living wage is considered expedient in their struggle to disable the capitalist machinery system (571). This is coupled with textual analysis of media and popular culture, for example, newspapers, television, advertising, games, and films, by the audience; mostly comprising the working class, to unearth and disavow the entrenched capitalist ethos. The paper examines two films that exemplify how the capitalist class systematically exploits their subjects with feeble resistance.

The Changing Stereotypes in Popular Films STEM Themed: On Breaking the Traditional Rigid Values and the Popularisation of Science

The Changing Stereotypes in Popular Films STEM Themed: On Breaking the Traditional Rigid Values and the Popularisation of Science

POPULAR CINEMA AS NOSTALGIA INDUSTRY: REUNIONS, REMAKES, AND REQUELS

This article seeks to address 2021’s cathartic reunions on digital and in cinema in order to broaden a new perspective on popular cinema’s one of the offers, the nostalgic experience. This study approaches remakes, reboots, requels, sequels, prequels, spin-offs, and adaptations as reproduced works. The discussion is grounded on the idea that popular cinema’s commercial way of reproducing certain experiences and canonical narratives is dependent on proposing nostalgia. Among the commercially successful sequels in the early-2020s, reunions are observed with several functions. As a newly launched subscription video-on-demand platform, HBO Max aired three major reunions in a single year. In this context, Friends: The Reunion (2021), The Matrix Resurrections (2021), and Harry Potter 20th Anniversary: Return to Hogwarts (2022) stage cathartic and nostalgic reunions. The moviegoers witnessed the ensemble of three Spider-Men from three different decades and franchises in a cathartic sequence of the worldwide highest-grossing movie of 2021, Spider-Man: No Way Home. The purpose of the study is to reveal the uptrend of nostalgia-oriented reunions to offer new discussions in cinema’s relation to nostalgia and debates on reproduction practices through a wide range of literature review collection. Therefore, these four productions are included in the scope to discuss nostalgia’s function in popular cinema, even on digital streaming platforms. While the study scans these reproduced works and their contemporary counterparts, the theoretical background is centered on memory studies to combine related discussions and ways of approaching them. Thus, this article proposes a contribution to the field by investigating the functions of reunions among sequels, requels, remakes, reboots, spin-offs, and adaptations in terms of their nostalgic qualities and commercial potential.

Taking the "Psycho" out of "Psycho-Killer"

“Psycho”, “maniac”, and “madman” are all words that are found to be synonymous with serial killers and criminal activity. For decades, the media has perpetuated an extremely harmful image that those suffering from mental illness are violent and dangerous. These portrayals can be found across mediums from fictional books and movies to docuseries and podcasts. In the realm of fiction, specifically, some of the most harmful depictions can be found in horror films. These films tend to paint their villains to be caricatures of various psychiatric disorders including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, dissociative identity disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder), and narcissistic personality disorder. These misrepresentations are not only grossly exaggerated but also highly inaccurate. In this piece, I will explore and expose the negative distortions of mental illness in various horror films. The scope will focus on two of the most influential psychological thrillers in the industry: Psycho and The Shining. These films each depict an antagonist who displays exaggerated traits indicative of mental illness. By deconstructing and comparing these traits with modern research on the mental illnesses they are meant to represent, I will expose the inaccuracies of these portrayals. Furthermore, I will outline the lasting impacts of these inaccuracies on both the public perceptions of mental illness, as well as help-seeking among individuals suffering from psychological disorders. Even if the characters in these popular films are fictional, the stigma they direct toward mental illness is very real and must be addressed.

Spectral Imaging of UV-Blocking Carbon Dot-Based Coatings for Food Packaging Applications

Nowadays, there is an increased demand to develop alternative non-plastic packaging to be used in the food industry. The most popular biodegradable films are cellulose and poly(lactic acid) (PLA); however, there is still the need to increase their UV absorption to protect the packaging content. In this work, we have covered those biodegradable films with thin coatings based on carbon dots (CDs) dispersed in polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) deposited by spin- or spray-coating techniques. We report a strong increase in the UV light-absorbing properties, together with a detailed morphological characterization; moreover, we show the results of a new microscopy and spectral imaging technique applied to the coated samples. The scientific and technological novelty of this approach is the possibility of characterizing large areas of the material surface by the simultaneous detection of PL spectra in all the pixels of a highly spatially-resolved two-dimensional (2D) map of the surface. We report UV-excited PL maps whose detailed information allows us to clearly identify regions with different spectral behaviors and to compare their characteristic signals for different CDs:PVA deposition techniques.

Smooth Criminals

With the ever-growing popularity of the true crime and crime fiction genres, identifying, recognizing, and ultimately changing the harmful narratives that often lie within them is imperative. The cultural significance of these stories cannot be overstated, and leaving them without critique only creates more space for discriminatory and criminalizing portrayals. The lack of intersectionality in both crime fiction and true crime is a paradoxical issue, which can only be solved through accountability and intervention. While many authors have made strides to recognize and diversify tropes in the genre, it still remains largely catered to and biased toward the dominant population (whether it be class, race, gender, etc.). That is why our hope with this journal is to help readers explore and examine the tropes and inequities in crime media and literature as well as within real-life socio-economic contexts. Each essay provides a different perspective on various complex issues within the genre, offering a critical understanding of popular crime literature, film, and media. Throughout the journal, we encourage our readers to take an introspective approach to their own interactions with crime media and the significance of their personal consumption of it.

“Just like everyone else:” queer representation in postmillennial Bollywood

ABSTRACT On 6 September 2018, after decades of queer activism, the Supreme Court of India declared unconstitutional the centuries-old law against sodomy, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Shelly Chopra Dhar’s Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga (How I felt when I saw that Girl, 2019) and Hitesh Kewalya’s Shubh Mangal Zyaada Saavdhan (Be Extra Wary of Marriage, 2020) were the first two popular Hindi-language films, on same-sex love and desire, to be released after the scrapping of 377. We note the significance of Ek Ladki and Shubh Mangal to destigmatizing non-normative sexualities as well as the identitarian impulse of these films to name, illuminate, and mainstream queer love. We examine these films as they intervene in the broader field of representation and make complex maneuvers to normalize same-sex love and coax the consent of mainstream audiences. They do so by incorporating queer identity and same-sex love in ways that render it non-threatening to the heteronormative status quo. The intertextual allusions to popular Hindi cinema, however, carry queer transgressive potential as they allow for a claiming of a genealogy of queer desire in Hindi cinema.

The Family as Black Nationalism: Cosmopolitan Archetypes in Black Popular Township Television Films

The apartheid regime conspired to advance black ethnic divisions to facilitate the homelands and diminish the threat of black people to South Africa. From 1994, the democratic dispensation has engaged in various nation-building attempts to solidify a united South Africa that is multicultural and multilingual in conjunction with a progressive Constitution. Popular township films by Ekasi: Our Stories and Lokshin Bioskop have ventured into this arena which was the forte of the South African Broadcasting Corporation, to engage in storylines that encourage nation-building. In this article, I argue that popular films have emerged to represent cosmopolitan tropes that galvanise Black Nationalism. Also, the films engage negative black tribal stereotypes that, if not attended to, could result in black disunity. It can also be argued that the latter has been a stimulant for African conflicts, occasionally causing genocides. This article explores the role popular films play in conveying a nation-building narrative that sustains Black Nationalism and reconciliation in post-apartheid South Africa.

Violence, women, blood(line): Hong Kong films of severe mental illness

ABSTRACT Hong Kong has commendably progressive mental health care for local people with a severe mental illness. Social stigma towards these people, however, remains unyieldingly intense and widespread. This occurs despite Hong Kong’s well-regarded community psychoeducation regime. This study analyses how popular local films contribute to an apparent paradox, whereby a society with innovative mental health care and community psychoeducation retains conspicuously high levels of stigma towards people with a severe mental illness. The study employs a well-tested narrative-cum-discourse analytic approach to reveal how four contemporary local films construct and make sense of the illness, and why they do so in the ways that they do. The analysis finds that, regardless of a film’s social intent or commercial status, it casts local men with severe mental illness as dangerous and macabrely violent. Women are assigned blame for this. The films further justify the removal of people with the illness from everyday society, in line with longstanding Chinese cultural scripts. As a result, the filmic portrayals discursively align with local newspaper reporting on severe mental illness, disregarding the humane principles espoused and embraced by local mental health care and community psychoeducation.

ЗАХОДИ ПОПУЛЯРИЗАЦІЇ АСТРОНОМІЇ

Astronomy is a natural-mathematical science that opens unknown pages of both our Solar system and Universe. However, most people have the impression that astronomy is only about the stars, romance and astrological. Popular scientific events can accelerate this opinion, namely: scientific exhibitions, locations, popular scientific magazines, films and video clips, excursions to observatories, scientific and educational institutions. The actual problem of natural and mathematical training of students contributed to the growing popularity of entertaining and popular science events. It able be organize interactive lectures, where a trained scientist will tell interesting information in a language accessible to the audience, and answer their questions. If you add demonstrations of objects of the universe to the performance, you can create the illusion of full involvement of the listeners in scientific discoveries and observations. Another way of actively perceiving information is the organization of interactive astronomical locations, such as quests, quizzes, mazes, intelligence tasks, rebuses. It will be appropriate to involve modern digital technologies. Astronomical models and instruments add more visuality to the locations. Students of higher education institutions take part in such events with great pleasure, prepare models, information brochures, draw posters, and create planetary systems. Posters or brochures can be made in the form of applications or developed own electronic makets. This scientific and educational material is used and demonstrated at various events and interests not only students but also their parents. In addition to communication and inspection of models at mass popular science events, visitors can be offered to independently make their own template (for example, a gnomon or a sundial), draw certain constellations, assemble models of the solar system or star constellations, adjust astronomical instrument (for example a telescope for observing distant terrestrial objects or the Sun), and learn to tell time using a self-made watch. Popularization of astronomy as a science is not only interesting, but also contributes to increasing education among the younger generation, students and adults. Properly selected equipment and good material will be able to interest the listener and increase interest in astronomy, as an important component of natural and mathematical science.

Japan’s memory of war and imperialism in kayō eiga: Shochiku’s Under the Stars of Singapore and Asianism1

In 1967, Shochiku, a Japanese film production company, released the kayō eiga (‘popular song film’) Shingapōru no yo ha fukete (Under the Stars of Singapore), starring Hashi Yukio and set in the newly independent country of Singapore. Through an analysis of the film, which highlights the experience of the Asia-Pacific War and the Japanese occupation of Singapore, this article discusses the memory of war and imperialism in Japan in the late 1960s. Previous studies have argued that works of Japanese popular culture around 1960 reveal Asianist desires. However, in focusing on kayō eiga of the late 1960s, seen as marking the end of the ‘transwar era’ in Japan, I find that Asianist desires are minimal and that the stories more strongly echo themes of Cold War-era Japanese pacifism. This reflects the changing narratives of war in the context of generational shifts and Japan’s rapid economic growth, as well as the contemporary transformation of Japan’s involvement in South East Asia.

Bollywood self-fashioning: Indian popular culture and representations of girlhood in 1970s Indian cinema

This article investigates how Bollywood cinema represented girlhood experiences in India in the early 1970s. It argues that the films during this time focused on representing girls who displayed a variety of new fashion styles and attitudes, some of which were borrowed from western cultures. This was a sign that there was a new way of representing girls which broke with the submissive, dull and melancholic sari-wearing Indian female stereotype entrapped within domestic settings. The immediate result of this was the emergence of new style leaders and popular icons in Indian popular cinema. This study uses Stephen Greenblatt’s concept of self-fashioning and Guy Mankowski’s idea of self-design to examine how Indian girlhood was renegotiated in the 1970s as an individual-centric idea with more agency and power. Here, self-fashioning refers to the way girls adopt new elements of fashion, styles and attitudes to distinguish their identity from earlier archetypal modes of representation in film and culture. It specifically analyses the emergence of Jaya Bhaduri in Guddi (1971) and Dimple Kapadia in Bobby (1973) as case studies to understand the transformation of girlhood representations in early 1970s Bollywood that opened a new space for girls to redefine their selfhood through the assimilation of consumerism, western culture and fashion styles.

No Face, No Race? Racial Politics of Voice Actor Casting in Popular Animated Films1

Racial politics in animated films has long been an important topic for scholars, but racial diversity in the casting of voice actors for animated films has been understudied. This article examines patterns in voice actor casting among 850 characters from 170 animated films released from 1989 to 2019. Because characters in animated films are not bound by voice actors' physical attributes, especially given that many animated characters are not even human, we consider the concepts of color‐blind and color‐conscious casting to understand the racial politics of voice actor casting. Our findings show that racial inequality and white dominance are a categorical reality in the animated film industry and that culturally specific film settings provide opportunities for voice actors of color. However, we also find that both color‐blind and color‐conscious casting can limit the realization of diverse and inclusive casting in animated films that feature fantastical, imaginative characters.