{"title":"Violence against Women and Girls: Female Filmmakers Critique the Menace","authors":"Joyce Osei Owusu","doi":"10.5406/19346018.74.1.2.07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19346018.74.1.2.07","url":null,"abstract":"the global fight against gender inequality and social injustice has grown steadily, and after many years of dedication, it has become indisputably a priority for global and national development that is reshaping policies and decision-making. The integration of the agenda for gender equality and women’s and girls’ empowerment with Ghana’s national development efforts has yielded some modest progress.1 For example, the enactment of various laws and policies has increased girls’ access to education. As a result, there are now more girls than boys in primary schools (Florence Muhanguzi 6), and there is growth in the number of women engaged in the workforce as entrepreneurs (Entsie). Regardless of these gains, new and complex forms of genderbased violence are emerging in the current technology-mediated digital environment. Examples of these are various forms of cyberviolence and cyberbullying. Besides, some age-old forms of violence against women and girls (VAWG), such as sexual assault, sexual exploitation, rape, domestic violence, female genital mutilation (FGM),2 witchcraft accusations against women, ritual servitude known as Trokosi,3 and child marriages, have persisted for centuries. Ghana’s government enshrined its commitment to women’s rights in its 1992 constitution—specifically covering protection of fundamental human rights and freedom, right to life, personal liberty, respect for human dignity, protection from slavery and forced labor, protection from discrimination, and protection of the rights of women and children. Ghana also ratified several international human rights instruments, including the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), the 1995 Beijing Platform for Action, the 2000 Millennium Development Goals, the 2003 Maputo Protocol, the 2004 African Union Solemn Declaration on Gender Equality in Africa, and the 2015 Sustainable Development Agenda, to defend the principles of gender equality and social justice for women and girls. These international and regional agreements have informed the formulation of national policies such as the National Gender Policy and Justice for Children Policy to provide comprehensive frameworks to respond to entrenched social injustices that undermine equity for women and girls. They also led to the institutionalization of, for example, the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs in 2001, now called the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection, tasked to drive policy change and contribute to national growth by achieving equality and equity for all. Certainly, commitments to addressing gender inequality and various forms of genderbased violence are evident, even though more Violence against Women and Girls: Female Filmmakers Critique the Menace","PeriodicalId":43116,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43240439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Stranger Things, Nostalgia, and Aesthetics","authors":"Zachary Griffith","doi":"10.5406/19346018.74.1.2.01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/19346018.74.1.2.01","url":null,"abstract":"for making costumes using Eggo boxes. Eggo also bought billboards across the country in cities named Hawkins, the fictional town in which the series is set. These billboards featured the Eggo logo with blood dripping from the E—a nod to Eleven’s frequent nosebleeds. This marketing effort culminated in two larger releases. In June, Eggo claimed to have unearthed a series of unreleased advertisements from 1985 featuring hidden teasers related to the show, which they subsequently posted across social media platforms. Following this, the company also created limitededition boxes replicating the look of the ones they sold in the 1980s—identical save for the “Limited Edition 1985 Graphics” label at the top. These retro Eggos initially were available only online through Amazon but saw a larger release in select stores across the United States following the series’ July 4 debut. The latter two examples, the ads and the box, provide an acute illustration of the hyperaestheticized nostalgia for which Stranger Things is the archetype. The ads, for instance, hinge on a nostalgia for consumer products and advertising that is entirely mediated and thus based on the recreation of an aesthetic object; the nostalgic allure of the ads, in other words, derives from their replication of the style of 1980s ads. Grainy visuals and tape distortions blanket one video showing a “typical” middle-class suburban breakfast table featuring milk, orange juice, and of course, Eggos before cutting to a screen that reads “One Eggo Can Change Everything.” These visual imperfections exist even though in the summer of 2019, the Netflix series Stranger Things (2016–present) partnered with Eggo for a marketing campaign in the build-up to the release of its highly anticipated third season. The show, which follows a group of teens and adults in small-town 1980s Indiana as they struggle to keep at bay a succession of supernatural forces unleashed following the opening of a portal to an alternate dimension, was a surprise hit following its 2016 premiere, and it quickly became the streaming service’s most recognizable original production. Eggo waffles—a favorite of Eleven, one of the show’s teen protagonists—had seen a surge in sales following the show’s premiere and gained iconic status within its fandom, so a partnership capitalizing on the hype represented a logical next step. The two franchises had previously collaborated on a trailer for the series’ second season, which premiered during Super Bowl LI, in which a vintage “L’eggo my Eggo” commercial was progressively interrupted and eventually overtaken by scenes from show’s upcoming season. The much more elaborate 2019 campaign featured a variety of tie-ins, including an Eggobranded Stranger Things spoiler blocker for fans’ internet browsers, recipes tied to each of the upcoming nine episodes, and instructions","PeriodicalId":43116,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO","volume":"74 1","pages":"18 - 3"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47011709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Max Tohline, Sun Yi, Anthony L. Silvestri, Daniel Maddock
{"title":"Why Is Reverse Motion Funny? Happy End and the Comic Potential of the Cinematographic Mechanism","authors":"Max Tohline, Sun Yi, Anthony L. Silvestri, Daniel Maddock","doi":"10.5406/jfilmvideo.73.4.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/jfilmvideo.73.4.0003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43116,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO","volume":"73 1","pages":"14 - 15 - 28 - 29 - 3 - 43 - 44 - 58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45433822","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What Is Cinematography in the Age of Virtual Film Production? Posing a New Definition for the Practice of Cinematography","authors":"Daniel Maddock","doi":"10.5406/jfilmvideo.73.4.0044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/jfilmvideo.73.4.0044","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43116,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO","volume":"73 1","pages":"44 - 58"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41829882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Generic Involution and Artistic Concession in Contemporary Hong Kong Cinema: Overheard Trilogy and Beyond","authors":"Sun Yi","doi":"10.5406/jfilmvideo.73.4.0015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/jfilmvideo.73.4.0015","url":null,"abstract":"genres and the cultural myths they embodied “exhaust[ed] themselves” (578). Cawelti’s theory was developed (e.g., Collins) and widely contested. Major criticisms, exemplified by the work of Janet Staiger, Rick Altman, and Steve Neale, questioned the concept of genre blending by rejecting the hypothesis of genre purity underpinning Cawelti’s claim; the authors contributed to the growing consensus that films are more or less instances of genre blending, which is a standard practice in a system like Hollywood. Such criticisms have not denied altogether the phenomenon of genre blending in practical terms—genre is a practical concept after all—and the fact that genre blending has become a particularly salient feature in certain films at specific historical moments provides a potentially fruitful site for understanding film history and the sociocultural milieu in which it occurs. The criticisms have mounted ontological and epistemological challenges, such as the theoretical futility of seeking purity in genres and the implausibility of neatly demarcating (hybrid) genres. Most criticisms, however, have invariably underemphasized an axiological aspect of Cawelti’s theory. At the very end of his seminal essay, Cawelti made a value judgment—namely, that transformations within a traditional genre tend to produce “the highest artistic accomplishment” (579), without expounding why genre blending necessarily leads to achievement or progress in artistic terms. The conclusion was likely drawn more from the revolutionary films he chose as case studies than from a deduction of the generic john cawelti’s influential essay “Chinatown and Generic Transformation in Recent American Films,” published in 1979, ignited considerable scholarly attention and debate on the issue of genre blending in cinema. Significantly, there emerged an enduring dichotomy between genre blending as exhaustion and genre blending as evolution in understanding the practice, which I will explicate in the first pages. In my research on a series of posthandover Hong Kong films, however, I find neither the creative exhaustion nor the artistic evolution model adequate to depict and explain the phenomenon of genre blending. A focused analysis of a group of hybrid films from Hong Kong, especially of the characterization of protagonists, illustrates that they exhibit a tendency that can rather be described and comprehended using the anthropological concept of “involution.” A sociohistorical and psychocultural account of involution, in particular, provides a penetrating insight for understanding the occurrence of what I call “generic involution” in the context of Hong Kong cinema over the past two decades. Through an analysis of Chinatown (1974) and a few other titles, Cawelti in his essay suggested a pronounced tendency toward genre transformation in 1970s Hollywood films, which was marked by the blending of traditional genres with external elements. For him, genre blending resulted because the traditi","PeriodicalId":43116,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO","volume":"73 1","pages":"15 - 28"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44945915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Kenneth Anger and the Filmed-Archive Reenactment","authors":"Anthony L. Silvestri","doi":"10.5406/jfilmvideo.73.4.0029","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5406/jfilmvideo.73.4.0029","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":43116,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF FILM AND VIDEO","volume":"73 1","pages":"29 - 43"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47708295","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}