Western Movies Research Articles

Reception and Imitation of Western Movies in the Late-1950s Korea

Reception and Imitation of Western Movies in the Late-1950s Korea

James J. Gallagher

In classic Western movies, the good guy could be frequently identified by his trademark white Stetson hat, whereas the bad guy always wore black. James J. Gallagher wore many hats during his career that spanned over six decades; he too would be known as the “man in the white hat,”—trusted to do the right thing. From 1967 to 1970, chiefly during the Nixon Administration, Gallagher wore the hat of public servant in Washington, D.C. He served as the first chief of the Bureau for the Education of the Handicapped (BEH) and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Planning, Research, and Evaluation—Both the positions were within the United States Office of Education (USOE) and under the larger umbrella of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. This article outlines his federal contributions and their enduring impact on the fields of both special education and gifted education.

Cowboy Stuntman: From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen DeanSmith with MikeCox. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2013.

Cowboy Stuntman: From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen Dean Smith with Mike Cox. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2013.There is an intriguing group of books co-authored by Hollywood stuntmen about the business of making movies. Purporting to dispel myths about the industry by disclosing the inner workings of the Dream Factory, auto/biographies Buster Wiles's My Days with Errol Flynn (1989), Gary Kent's Shadows & Light: Journeys with Outlaw in Revolutionary Hollywood (2009), Hal Needham's Stuntman! (2011), and Vic Armstrong's The True Adventures of the World's Greatest Stuntman (2011) offer entertaining and enlightening insights into the production and massmarketing of American popular culture. Released in 2013 by Texas Tech University Press, Cowboy Stuntman: From Olympic Gold to the Silver Screen is an important addition to this corpus. Co-authored by Dean Smith and Mike Cox, Cowboy Stuntman relates the fast-paced and unlikely life of Smith, a Texan farm boy turned Olympic Gold Medalist, who became one of Hollywood's leading stuntmen, appearing in ten John Wayne movies and doubling for a long list of actors as diverse as Robert Culp, Michael Landon, Steve Martin, Strother Martin, Robert Redford, and Roy Rogers.As James Garner points out in Cowboy Stuntman's Foreword, Smith's incredible life story reads like a Mark Twain novel (xiii): born and raised in a small town in Texas, Smith lives the American Dream: becoming, in turn, a college track star, a world class athlete winning Olympic gold, a youngster playing professional football, and a talented newcomer breaking into the business of movie making. Containing fourteen chapters which arrange the events of Smith's life in chronological order, Cowboy Stuntman is quintessential^ a Horatio Alger story. Its first four chapters chart Smith's impoverished ranching roots in Texas and his natural athletic abilities that lead him to a gold medal at the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki. The next four chapters chronicle the problems that plague many toplevel athletes after their careers on the track have ended. However, Smith, a superior athlete with good looks and engaging self-confidence, proves to be the stuff that Hollywood stuntmen who specialize in making Western movies are made of-an old friend, James Garner introduces him to the industry, and the rest, as they say, is history.The remaining chapters chronicle Smith's successful years in Hollywood and at home in Texas. Containing insider's memories of the professional lives of stars, stunt people, and extras in Hollywood backlots and television studios, these chapters hold intriguing material for movie buffs and scholars interested in the business of American film and television. …

Souvenirs, materialities and animal encounters: Following Texas cowboy boots

Rather than take the tourist or the tourist place as the starting point of analysis, in this article, I begin with a seemingly superficial souvenir object, the Texan cowboy boot, in order to trace a more complex picture of the material cultures of tourism. I describe the Texan boot at the intersection of three threads: historical legacies, materialities of animal encounters and a political economy of ‘things’ (including their composite materials). The iconic Texas cowboy boot is a mythological but very material object of mobility – made by hand, with wild cowboy flair, by (mostly) Mexican artisans who use slowly accrued haptic skills with a variety of leathers to assemble neocolonial, hyper-masculine artefacts of fashion, fable and travel. Drawing on archival work and interviews in bootmaking workshops, I unravel a historical cultural economy of material production and consumption that entangles animal skins, migrant workers, Western movie stars and tourists.

Staging Zen Buddhism: Image Creation in Contemporary Films

In this paper, I analyse the image creation of Zen Buddhism as emerges from films produced in Europe and North America. In particular, I explore Marc Rosenbush's Zen Noir (2004), Zen & Zero by Michael Ginthör (2006), and Erleuchtung Garantiert (1999) by Doris Dörrie. Comparatively, I examine a recent Japanese production on the life and teachings of the Sōtō Zen master Dōgen titled Zen and directed by Takahashi Banmei (2009). The aim of this analysis is to explore if and how depictions of Zen in western movies mirror representations of this religious tradition made ad hoc for the ‘West’ and, conversely, what is the image of Zen Buddhism as appears in Japanese productions. This will be considered in a comparative perspective in order to identify differences, possible common patterns and mutual influences which may have shaped the cinematic perception of this form of Japanese Buddhism in Europe and North America.

New Women and Modern Girls: consuming foreign goods in colonial Seoul

Purpose– During the 1920s and 1930s in the colonial city of Seoul, a group of women called the New Women and the Modern Girls expressed their modern identities by wearing different clothing, hairstyles and make-up; visiting cafés; viewing Western movies; and consuming other foreign merchandise. While these women were admired by many women as being pioneers of modernity, they were severely criticized by others under the pretext that they indulged their vanity without considering the economy of their families and their colonized nation. These criticisms continue in twenty-first century Korea. Based on the striking similarity between the two eras, an understanding of the consumption and the criticisms of the Modern Girls could provide a historical context for understanding women's experiences in the consumer culture of twenty-first century Korea. The paper aims to discuss these issues.Design/methodology/approach– As secondary sources, literature published in both English and Korean was included. Primary data were obtained from articles in Korean newspapers, magazines and print advertisements from the 1920s and 1930s.Findings– The New Women and Modern Girls expressed their modern identities by consuming various fashion goods, including Western-style clothes, make-up and various accessories, adopting Western hairstyles and frequenting modern cafés, theaters and department stores. However, their behaviors escaped the boundaries of the “wise mother, good wife” ideology, and they were severely criticized by those adhering to the neo-Confucianism and Korean nationalist ideology that was deeply rooted in Korean society. Thus, the reputations of the Modern Girls were tainted and the individuals were stigmatized.Originality/value– This research illuminates the negative aspects of self-expressive consumption, showing how individualistic, identity-driven consumption can be stigmatized in the collectivistic culture of Korea that is rooted in neo-Confucian nationalism.

The SP records and western movies in modern Korea

The SP records and western movies in modern Korea

Wild West Innovation

see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who You dig. Clint Eastwood, The Good, the Bad and the UglyThe Western movie has been a part of American culture for over a century, almost since the invention of the movie projector. Such an established form of entertainment would seem to be outside the need for business innovation. But it is precisely because the genre is so well trodden that innovation has always been an essential ingredient, producing new plots and new leading that keep the genre fresh.The plot and hero of the western movie have been in constant evolution, with a number of very clear disruptors that shifted the entire genre, punctuating decades of incremental change. Just as the hero of many a Western film rode into town and overturned the established power brokers, new actors regularly rode into Hollywood and changed the established hierarchy of the Western movie business. These changes on the screen and on the back lot are characteristic of the disruption that inno vation cowboys like Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg have had on established markets. And today's innovators can take some important lessons from these silver screen disruptors.Western InnovationWorld famous innovator Thomas Edison is widely known as the creator of many of the technologies that led to the motion picture projector, but few know that he also owned the Edison Manufacturing Company, which produced and distributed movies to create commercial demand for the projector. His company created 1,200 films, beginning with short clips and moving on to full-length movies. Some of its earliest hit titles were The Life of an American Cowboy (1902) and The Great Train Robbery (1903), two of the first Western movies ever made ( Matthews 1984 ). In the years that followed, producers and actors created various images of the cowboy hero to appeal to the general public, making cultural icons of men like Bronco Billy Anderson, the star of the The Great Train Robbery, who appeared in 466 short films between 1902 and 1922, and Bill Hart, who brought a range-rough image that included shooting up the bad guys and hard drinking to 74 films from 1907 to 1925. Both of these stars were created from the rough clay of their own personalities and their own ideas about what a cowboy was and did. With more than 500 movies carrying their images to the American public, they created the Hollywood version of this American hero.But this image has never been set in stone, secure against change. Rather, the cowboy image has been open to regular re-creation, innovation, and disruption. New actors brought new styles to the screen, unseating reigning stars and redefining the Western. Hart's rough-clothed cowboy just offthe range was unseated by the newcomer Tom Mix, a clean-shaven, fancy-dressed cowboy who preferred to rope the bad guys rather than shoot them dead. Mix created the dandy cowboy, a wellgroomed, clean-living hero who looked good on the screen but was a far reach from Hart's range cowboy.Mix ' s career was in its latter years when a notable extra appeared on the set of The Great K&A Train Robbery (1926)-a football player from the University of Southern California who looked and acted the part of a strong onscreen cowboy. John Ford, the director of the film, invited Marion Morrison, or Duke, as he was known to friends, to appear in several movies and eventually cast him as the lead in The Big Trail (1930) under his new Hollywood name, John Wayne. Wayne did not wear fancy rhinestone suits, polished silver, or spotless chaps. His image was reminiscent of Bill Hart's rough range cowboy but without the violent vices. This update of the roughand-ready cowboy became the face of the Western for the next 30 years.But there was room for more than one type of cowboy on the silver screen. The 1940s saw the introduction of an innovative new idea in Western entertainment: the singing cowboy. …

A Critical Discourse Analysis of the Images of Iranians in Western Movies: The Case of Iranium

The significant role of the media, in general, and the movies, in particular, in disseminating information and creating images of the real life by use of the language as a powerful social tool is totally irrefutable. Although critical analysis of the movie discourse is a fashionable trend among the critical discourse analysts, there is a paucity of research on movie discourse in Iran. Besides, the increasing number of the anti-Iranian movies produced in the last decade and the growing tendency among the English students to watch American movies, have established the need for conducting a research to investigate the images of Iranians represented in the Western movies. Thus, in this article an anti-Iranian movie called Iranium , allegedly labeled as documentary, has been critically analyzed using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). For this purpose, Van Dijk’s framework (2004) has been utilized to uncover the ideological manipulations and misrepresentations of this movie. The analysis revealed that the dichotomy of in-group favoritism vs. out-group derogation is a very effective discursive strategy at the disposal of the movie makers who have used language as a weapon to attack Iran by representing a distorted and unrealistic image of the Iranians’ history, culture and ideologies. The findings of the present study imply that adopting a critical discourse analysis perspective in the EFL classes is a necessity which needs the development of the required materials, by the curriculum developers, that raise the students’ critical awareness as well as their language skills and proficiency.

Globalisation Of Popular Culture: From Hollywood To Bollywood

This article examines significant evidence of recent Bollywood influence on the Western movie industry, particularly Hollywood, and explores the implications of such developments in the context of globalisation. Within the ongoing globalisation of entertainment, a process that does not automatically lead to cultural Westernisation and uniformisation, Bollywood has by now become both a symbol of Indian cinema’s circulation all over the world and the embodiment of non-monolithic globalisation. Bollywood is evidently not a homogenising influence that forces non-Indian cultures to embrace its cinematographic or musical norms and practices. Rather, it creates new hybrids. The article offers a framework for explaining the growing cultural and economic changes and movements of such non-hegemonic spreading of popular culture and identifies future agenda for research.

East Asian cinema and cultural heritage: from China, Hong Kong, Taiwan to Japan and South Korea

Reclaiming a Legacy, Reinventing the Nation: The Epic Martial Arts Drama D.Desser Forging a Global Soundscape: Inventing a 'Chinese' Heritage or Succumbing to Mainstream Sonic Culture of Western Movies? S.Yu Contested Heritage: Cinema, Collective Memory, and the Politics of Local Heritage in Hong Kong V.P.Y.Lee Traditional Chinese Aesthetics and Contemporary Chinese Films: Applying the Idea of qiyun to Understand the Temporal Structure of Selected Films of Hou Hsiao-hsien and Wong Kar-wai W.Lo Reading the Glove Puppetry in Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Puppetmaster W.Lin A 'Horrible' Legacy: Noh and J-horror K.Yau The Loyal 47 R o nin Never Die: Influence of Ch u shingura on Japanese War Films K.Yau Bringing the Tradition to the Modern S.Kim Constructing East Asian Cinema through Cultural Geopolitics: King Hu's Come Drink with Me (1966) and the Evolution of Korean Martial Arts Films and Literatures in the 1960s S.Lee

Hacking on the hoof

'Grey hat' apps are a new phenomenon in software that enable street hackers to delve into our smartphone and access our data, and more besides. Wireless analysis applications are plentiful across Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. Netstumbler, PRTG Network Monitor, and Wireshark all do the same sort of job. However, lugging around a laptop is not as easy as toting a slimline smartphone. Now the open nature of Google's Android, coupled with the immense portability of smartphones, has created a new genre of wireless apps that do everything the laptop applications do, but on a wider scale. Since the end of 2011, after the release of version 4.x and 5.x of the feature-rich Apple portable operating system known as iOS, a number of wireless analysis apps have started appearing on the iPhone and iPad platforms. Conspiracy theorists have attributed the arrival of interrogative Wi-Fi network apps for the Apple portable operating system platform to the passing of former CEO Steve Jobs; but it seems that the powerful upgrade of iOS 5.x in October 2011 has given programmers the ability to dive deep into the iPhone and iPad's innermost workings to launch a species of so-called Prosumer Interrogative Network (PIN) apps. Three of these new apps SharkforRoot (Android), SubNetlnsight (iOS) and Fing (Android and iOS) also differ from their desktop peers in covering several network analysis bases on an all-in-one basis. To use a Western movie analogy, these apps can be used for 'white hat' hacking and network analysis, as well as 'black hat' hacking and cyber criminality a development that marks a new cause for concern among the mobile security sector.

A Century of Czech Tramping

The article describes the history and major characteristics of an independent Czech youth movement called “tramping.” The movement originated in the 1910s-1920s as an unorganized offshoot of boy scouting and E. T. Seton’s Woodcraft and quickly became popular among urban teens and young adults. It was simply a way of spending time outdoors with friends at first, heavily influenced by early western movies and Wild West aesthetics in general, but became a distinctive subculture and cultural phenomenon during the following decades. Some of its unique aspects include specific music, slang, art and dress code. Czech tramping is also an interesting example of an early youth subculture, which is comparable to post-WW2 subcultures and which survived into the present day although its participants were often persecuted, especially under the communist regime. Another topic discussed is the fact that the movement kept its independence even under political pressure, rejected all attempts to organize it hierarchically and while it sometimes had a dimension of a protest culture in the 20th century, it can be considered to be apolitical in general.

The Bollywood in Indian and American Perceptions

This analysis compares Indian and US perceptions of Bollywood. It is the first to provide such a comparison. Overall, the authors found that both Indian and US perceptions of Bollywood are positive and negative. On some dimensions, Indian and US perceptions differ sharply from each other; on other dimensions, a few similarities become apparent. Overall, Indian perceptions of Bollywood are both negative and positive. While their concept of Bollywood is perceived as demeaning, stereotyping of the Muslim culture, and alienating economically and culturally marginalised audiences, it is also recognised as treasuring India’s national identity, portrayal of women in some circles (e.g., alcoholics attempting to become accepted into the chic and alluring society), Hindi traditional lifestyles, and lighthearted humor. While the Bollywood phenomenon has permeated many cultures worldwide, these cultures still differ in the way they perceive this rising Indian movie industry. Not only does this analysis serve to demonstrate many lessons in cross-cultural understanding; it also corroborates the fact that Bollywood embodies an emerging socio-economic current of globalisation. It is one of the largest movie industries in the world, producing about 1,000 movies a year, and it has heavily influenced Hollywood and other Western movie markets.

일본만화의 이야기구조와 미디어적 속성 -＜심야식당＞을 중심으로-

Comic book has a different story structure from western movies, i.e. New Character->reaction->food->master mediation->effect of food->disappearance ->conclusion. Comic book is full of media traits. The master is like a shaman, who console people with food of memory. Food also is a media, which carries message of memory instead of savor itself. Restaurant is a media, in which many events occur and rhetoric of rumor pervade. Foods of memory massage our feeling sense, like a media. In conclusion, comic book has a analogous role to that of Marshal Mcluhan`s Media theory.

The boundary conditions for Bohr’s law: when is reacting faster than acting?

In gunfights in Western movies, the hero typically wins, even though the villain draws first. Niels Bohr (Gamow, The great physicists from Galileo to Einstein. Chapter: The law of quantum, 1988) suggested that this reflected a psychophysical law, rather than a dramatic conceit. He hypothesized that reacting is faster than acting. Welchman, Stanley, Schomers, Miall, and Bülthoff (Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 277, 1667-1674, 2010) provided empirical evidence supporting "Bohr's law," showing that the time to complete simple manual actions was shorter when reacting than when initiating an action. Here we probe the limits of this effect. In three experiments, participants performed a simple manual action, which could either be self-initiated or executed following an external visual trigger. Inter-button time was reliably faster when the action was externally triggered. However, the effect disappeared for the second step in a two-step action. Furthermore, the effect reversed when a choice between two actions had to be made. Reacting is faster than acting, but only for simple, ballistic actions.

Badmen, bandits, and folk heroes: the ambivalence of Mexican American identity in literature and film

Badmen, Bandits, and Folk Heroes is a comparative study of the literary and cinematic representation of Mexican American masculine identity from early twentieth-century adventure stories and movie Westerns through contemporary self-representations by Chicano/a writers and filmmakers. In this deeply compelling book, Juan J. Alonzo proposes a reconsideration of the early stereotypical depictions of Mexicans in fiction and film: rather than viewing stereotypes as unrelentingly negative, Alonzo presents them as part of a complex apparatus of identification and disavowal. Furthermore, Alonzo reassesses Chicano/a self-representation in literature and film, and argues that the Chicano/a expression of identity is characterized less by essentialism than by an acknowldgement of the contingent status of present-day identity formations. Alonzo opens his provocative study with a fresh look at the adventure stories of Stephen Crane and the silent Western movies of D. W. Griffith. He also investigates the conflation of the greaser, the bandit, and the Mexican revolutionary into one villainous figure in early Western movies and, more broadly, traces the development of the badman in Westerns. He newly interrogates the writings of Americo Paredes regarding the makeup of Mexican masculinity, and productively trains his analytic eye on the recent films of Jim Mendiola and the contemporary poetry of Evangelina Vigil. Throughout Badmen, Bandits, and Folk Heroes, Alonzo convincingly demonstrates how fiction and films that formerly appeared one-dimensional in their treatment of Mexicans and Mexican Americans actually offer surprisingly multifarious and ambivalent representations. At the same time, his valuation of indeterminacy, contingency, and hybridity in contemporary cultural production creates new possibilities for understanding identity formation.

Out of Crisis: Reflections of an Iraqi and an American on Advocacy for Andragogy

The post-9/11 global sensitivity to fear that from unreasoned radicals will come stalking in the dark of night has made finding a reasonable person who is unafraid of strangers hard to find. The elevated uses of language, rhetoric, and argument with very high vocabulary fog index, confronts any serious student of the literature, be it Christian-Muslim, capitalist-communist, or populist-elitist. The fear of terrorism penetrates much of political jawing. This type of rhetoric have produced cognitive debates that are shocking, if not terrifying, as average people try to find non-paranoid views of a decent and honorable life in a mostly safe world. As co-authors of the following conversation, we make transparent our belief in honoring the scholarship of adult educators who take a macro-political view of terrorism, and who consider the human dimensions of living day to day in an unsafe environment. Many adult education scholars are aware of the range of topics on the minds of adults who bring their hopes, fears, and experiences to graduate adult education study programs. American scholarship on adult education is replete with advocates who encourage, foster, and nurture learning climates that engage discussion, explore life's options, and an understanding of human desire to establish policies that promote and assure justice. But in the Arab Middle East, one is challenged to find such literature. We should know, since we are an Iraqi and an American engaged in dialogue about the significance of andragogy as a tool for rebuilding war-torn Iraq. We are Ghada and Larry. Ghada is an Iraqi doctoral candidate in adult and higher education and Larry is her doctoral advisor. We have been involved in intensive dialogue about how we see our cultures, how we perceive the conflict in the Middle East, and how andragogical theory offers hope for changing learning and teaching approaches that can influence political and social philosophies of leadership. Ghada believes that as a woman, wife and a mother of two boys from Baghdad, Iraq, and who experienced the bombings and terror, she has insights to bring to a mentoring relationship. Larry, as a senior professor in adult education, has made a lifetime study of Asia, but has found a certain value in learning and teaching with Ghada. Both have shared their perceptions of their cultures, including their concerns about potential conflicts from issues of oil, religion, governments, and families. This conversation is a reflection of our advocacy for andragogy as a tool for change and peace. We have written in a way that allow both of our voices to be heard; Ghada--from her experience as an Iraqi and as a U.S. doctoral student, and Larry--as a senior professor in adult education and educational administration. We talk about how an inclusive education can bridge two cultures, American and Arab together in meaningful ways. Following our conversations, our combined voices contemplate the following questions. What does Andragogy have to offer to people in cultures facing distress, conflict, and war? We poignantly ask ourselves, what is the relevance? And more importantly, why should we in the field of adult education care? An Iraqi Seeks Meaning in Adult Education Study Ghada: After struggling for two years to get the opportunity to go to the United States for doctoral studies, I did not know what to expect of American professors at the University of South Dakota. Would they be prejudiced toward my heritage? Would they be open to knowing me? Or, would they be dominating, self-important, or careless about morality as often portrayed in Western movies? Would I find new meaning in my studies? Would anyone care about me as a person? What I found was shocking. My professor turned out to be extraordinary. He was real, caring, and a good listener. He offered more than I expected, his ideas, empathy, and a willingness to share with me a deep concern for trying to make peace and meaning in the world. …

Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller: Reframing the American West

Robert Altman has made a dozen films that can be called great in one way or another, but one of them is perfect, and that one is & Mrs. Miller. - Roger Ebert in The Great Movies. When he died in 2006, director Robert Altman left a rich legacy of films, from MASH, his breakthrough black comedy, through masterpieces like Nashville, Short Cuts, and Gosford Park. But many would agree that his crowning achievement was & Mrs. Miller, a daring down-beat film about a gambler and a prostitute. Robert Self now provides an illuminating new look at this long neglected classic. A snowbound version of High Noon, Altman's film has been described as a revisionist western, an antiwestern, and even a hippie western. Featuring cinematic icons Warren Beatty and Julie Christie at the zenith of their careers and a haunting soundtrack from legendary troubadour Leonard Cohen, it provided a new way of looking at the western and the West. Placing the film within the contexts of Altman's career, its critical and popular reception, and the history of American cinema, Self shows how Altman's idiosyncratic interplay between story and style reframed the American West for a new generation. Viewing McCabe as a kind of precursor to the New Western History, he argues that it both embraces and revises the conventions associated with the Western movie genre, especially with its antiheroic protagonist. He also highlights the film's portrayal of the contemporary counter-culture, pitting the loner against corporate power and mainstream religion and granting women a newfound voice. In addition, Self sheds light on the film's production, showing how its rare sequential filming reflected the seamless collaborative efforts of director, actors, cinematographer, and set designer. Here, too, are Altman's trademark overlapping dialogue, painterly visuals, signature pan and zoom shots, crowded and communal mise-en-scenes, and a musical soundtrack mirroring the narrative - all in the service of Altman's inimitable storytelling and indelible gallery of fascinating characters. Self's beautifully written, admiring, and insightful study of this great film should significantly enhance its reputation and reinforce Altman's place in the pantheon of American filmmakers.

Showing Compassion and Suggesting Peace in Karunamayudu, an Indian Jesus Film

��� At the heart of this essay is a discussion of Karunamayudu (Telugu for ‘Man of Compassion’; 1978), one of India’s best-known Jesus films. The central claim being made here is that in addition to representing the story of Jesus’ life, this movie portrayed Jesus’ compassion as a solution to conflict that was widely accessible to many viewers and particularly pertinent during one of India’s most turbulent decades. My argument is based on two complementary observations. First, the cries for peace expressed in the film’s narrative resonate with the events and conditions contemporary to its production and release. Second, by showing Jesus’ responses to situations that could be understood as allusions to contemporary conflicts, the film demonstrated a way of peace that would have resonated with the ideals of most religious communities in South India. By emphasizing Jesus’ compassion in the course of retelling his story, Karunamayudu suggested a path to peace in troubled times. 1 SYNOPSIS AND PRODUCTION HISTORY 2 Like most of the better-known Western movies of Jesus’ life, Karunamayudu (1978) is a fairly standard collation of the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life. It is woven together by his encounters with five other main characters: Barabbas (Thagyaraju), Judas, Mary Magdalene, the disciple John and a blind man named Malachi (Chandra Mohan). In one way or another, and at various stages in the narrative, each is won over by the compassion of Jesus, played by Vijay Chander. Barabbas, Judas and their band of zealots are waging guerilla warfare on Rome and meet with Jesus to forge a strategic alliance. Their impressions of him, however, lead them in different directions. Mary Magdalene finds forgiveness for her life of impropriety and John’s hope for a messiah is fulfilled. His blind friend,