JOURNAL OF POPULAR FILM AND TELEVISION最新文献

{"title":"Geriaction Cinema: Introduction","authors":"Laura Crossley, Austin Fisher","doi":"10.1080/01956051.2021.1957332","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2021.1957332","url":null,"abstract":"TO SAY that Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee, 2020) is self-conscious in its engagement with cinematic precedents would be an understatement. The Vietnam veterans at the heart of the narrative directly criticize Rambo: First Blood Part II (George P. Cosmatos, 1985) and Missing in Action (Joseph Zito, 1984) as manifestations of Hollywood “trying to go back and win the Vietnam War,” even as they themselves return to Ho Chi Minh City decades after the conflict on a quest to address unfinished business. The riverboat trip that takes them back into the jungle where they will confront their demons is accompanied by Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” adding Apocalypse Now (Francis Ford Coppola, 1979) to a long list of overt film references. Even amongst such programmatically knowing intertextuality, one element of Da 5 Bloods stands out as jarringly nonnaturalistic. The numerous flashbacks to the war focus on the four main characters and their fallen comrade, Stormin’ Norman. For the purposes of narrative verisimilitude, all five men should be in their late teens or twenties, yet Paul, David, Otis, and Eddie remain in their sixties, still played by the actors who portray them in their present-day manifestations. No attempt is made to de-age these actors, either through makeup or digital manipulation, resulting in an incongruous spectacle that unavoidably draws our attention to the artifice of the filmmaking process. We might argue that the effect is to place the audience on a cognitive level with the four main characters, whose flashbacks we are witnessing as they look back on their youth through the prism of age and bitter experience. This reading is supported by the film’s official press Geriaction Cinema:","PeriodicalId":44169,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF POPULAR FILM AND TELEVISION","volume":"16 1","pages":"130 - 135"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75738700","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":"Reflections on Mortality: The Imagery of Mirrors in Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino","authors":"Christa van Raalte","doi":"10.1080/01956051.2021.1957335","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2021.1957335","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Like much of Clint Eastwood’s late work, Gran Torino is a film that directly addresses themes and images of old age. It is also a film about mortality. This article discusses the imagery of mirrors and reflections in the film and way they are used symbolically and structurally to highlight and explore issues of aging, entropy, and death. Drawing on Kathleen Woodward’s notion of a mirror stage of old age, it argues that Walt moves from rejection of the aging self to a form of acceptance, albeit one that uses the heroic persona to effectively bypass natural mortality.","PeriodicalId":44169,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF POPULAR FILM AND TELEVISION","volume":"129 1","pages":"144 - 154"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77974011","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":"TOO OLD FOR THIS SH*T: Aged Action Heroes, Affect, and “the Economy of Exertion”","authors":"L. Soberon","doi":"10.1080/01956051.2021.1957336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2021.1957336","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article discusses how old age aligns with ideals of hegemonic masculinity and generic conventions of the action film through the performance of strenuous heroics. Whereas it is commonly assumed that action films omit many characteristics which reference the geriaction hero’s age in order to safeguard his masculine status, aspects of age and aging are in many contexts instead emphasized. The ailments and efforts that come with old age provide a potent source of melodramatic scenarios that set up the action hero as a morally right victim in pursuit of heroic restoration. Using the films The Last Stand, 3 Days to Kill, and Taken 3, an illustration is offered of how action films engage their heroes in an economy of exertive situations to draw power from this victimization and frame the violent actions of the characters as pleasurable.","PeriodicalId":44169,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF POPULAR FILM AND TELEVISION","volume":"28 1","pages":"155 - 167"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-07-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77996115","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":"James Cameron’s Avatar and the Filmic Legacy of the White Hunter","authors":"Hosein Jalilvand","doi":"10.1080/01956051.2020.1870427","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2020.1870427","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT: This article explores the representation of the White Hunter as an archetypal figure across different periods and genres in Hollywood, mapping the legacy of this colonial icon in James Cameron’s Avatar (2009). In its redefinition of the safari film genre, Avatar embeds colonial tropes of wild Africa in an alien fantasy world of simulations, where the “eco-romantic” postcolonial production codes regarding African wildlife cease to apply, allowing Jake Sully, the protagonist, to reenact a colonial big-game safari and rehabilitate his white hunting masculinity in an artificial Africa. In doing so, the film rebrands and propagates the acceptance of a number of colonial heroes and themes of yore in today’s popular culture.","PeriodicalId":44169,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF POPULAR FILM AND TELEVISION","volume":"55 1","pages":"92 - 108"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75461646","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":"HOLLYWOOD AT THE RACES: FILM’S LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE TURF. By Alan Shuback. UP of Kentucky, 2019. 278pp. $34.36 softcover.","authors":"Sue Matheson","doi":"10.1080/01956051.2021.1923297","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2021.1923297","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44169,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF POPULAR FILM AND TELEVISION","volume":"10 1","pages":"122 - 123"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78131129","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":"Noir and Exilic Cinema: Fritz Lang’s Fury, Trauma, and the German Critique","authors":"A. Young","doi":"10.1080/01956051.2020.1832436","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2020.1832436","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: The influx of European émigré filmmakers into the US film industry during the mid-1930s led to an exilic critique in Hollywood films. This study analyzes Fritz Lang’s Fury (1936) to explore the relationships between exile and trauma, engaging with issues of displacement, memory, the victim/perpetrator duality, and the loss of “home.”","PeriodicalId":44169,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF POPULAR FILM AND TELEVISION","volume":"7 1","pages":"70 - 80"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88285014","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":"THE STRUGGLE BEHIND THE SOUNDTRACK: INSIDE THE DISCORDANT NEW WORLD OF FILM SCORING By Stephan Eicke. McFarland, 2019. 227 pp. $45.00 paper.","authors":"Deniz Özyurt","doi":"10.1080/01956051.2021.1923325","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2021.1923325","url":null,"abstract":"old lady wed to a ne’er-do-well. All three are portrayed as “responsible for their own impoverishment” (133), i.e., as “undeserving” poor. They appear rarely, for to bring them on screen too much might suggest the comfortable middle-class life enjoyed by the Ricardos and Mertzes was not within everyone’s grasp (as indeed it was not: in 1950, nearly one in three US citizens endured poverty). Furthermore, the show implies that racism is no “barrier to obtaining middle-class status” (134) and makes light of gender inequality, though in real life both contributed heavily to poverty. Decades later, updated but equally false stereotypes of the “undeserving poor” plague the small screen, as Jessica H. Zbeida shows in her analysis of The First 48. In this reality-based crime show, the nice, hard-working, well-educated, middleclass investigators—whose perspective we share through the camera—“use a suspect’s biography and identity to establish his or her delinquency even when a suspect has no criminal record” (254). Viewers are silently prompted to judge suspects based on their physical appearance, which can include hiphop style attire and/or tattoos, and “street” vocabulary. Victims, too, are sometimes linked to ethnic and racial stereotypes which may dim viewers’ sympathy, suggesting the victims’ deaths are more “a consequence of their identity” than “a result of social problems” (253). Zbeida adds, however, that hiphop artists have critiqued First 48 and police departments in three major cities cut their ties with it, suggesting change is in the air. CBS’s hasty dropping of The Briefcase, a reality show that pushed struggling people to judge their own versus others’ “worthiness,” is likewise encouraging. Precisely how Briefcase failed on both narrative and ethical grounds is the topic of Owen Cantrell’s essay. Finally, in his study of urban education in The Wire, season four, Chad William Timm shows how Mr. P learns to honor his students’ “cultural capital” and incorporates it into newly meaningful lessons. This book could serve as a good supplementary text in upper-level US history, sociology, and humanities classes, and its theme is timely enough that one hopes many civicminded adults will read it, too. Highlights not cited above include Lyrica Taylor’s study of inspirations (religious, artistic, and personal) behind Henry Ossawa Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson and The Thankful Poor, and Erin Wuebker’s analysis of New Deal–era posters urging syphilis patients to get treatment—or else fall by the wayside. The book’s flaws are few, though I find it odd that Lenz gives a free pass to photojournalist Jakob Riis, who certainly did much to perpetuate ethnic stereotypes in his 1888 work How the Other Half Lives. I would have welcomed an essay on depictions of poverty in animated cartoons, ranging from Depression-era classics Christmas Comes but Once a Year and Little Match Girl to 1958’s Robin Hood Daffy (“I’ll rob him of his gold and give it to some poor unworthy","PeriodicalId":44169,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF POPULAR FILM AND TELEVISION","volume":"23 1","pages":"127 - 128"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"90518127","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":"POVERTY IN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE. Ed. Wylie Lenz. McFarland, 2020. 274 pp. including index. $55.00 paper.","authors":"V. H. Pennanen","doi":"10.1080/01956051.2021.1923324","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2021.1923324","url":null,"abstract":"Throughout a trim volume at 178 pages, Greven presents ample and useful chapter notes which include both extensive sourcing and compelling supplemental annotations, which will appeal to scholars in various disciplines including history, American studies, and media/communication, queer, and feminist studies. Early in the text, Greven notes that a central goal in this study is to take an apparently “lowbrow” popular text and treat it seriously in an attempt to reveal the multivalent meanings embedded in the series (9). In that effort, this book consistently fulfills its ambition. Michael McKenna Farmingdale State College Fordham University Michael McKenna teaches history at Farmingdale State College and Fordham University. His primary research interests are urban history, particularly New York City, and American popular culture, primarily television programming. He is the author of two books on the history of television: The ABC Movie of the Week: Big Movies for the Small Screen (2013) and Real People and the Rise of Reality Television (2015).","PeriodicalId":44169,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF POPULAR FILM AND TELEVISION","volume":"1 1","pages":"126 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80576740","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":"Algorithmic Intimacy, Prosthetic Memory, and Gamification in Black Mirror","authors":"Jin Kim","doi":"10.1080/01956051.2021.1871584","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2021.1871584","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract: Black Mirror (2011–current), an anthology science-fiction television series, portrays how digital technologies reflect and shape our dreams and nightmares about the current media environment. The ways in which Black Mirror depicts the world where digital devices are strongly tied to human consciousness and bodies can be elaborated by focusing on three keywords: algorithmic intimacy, prosthetic memory, and gamification. There are two major arguments presented. First, Black Mirror provides critical perspectives on quantified relationships, artificial memory, and social ratings. Second, at the same time, the ways in which this science fiction text portrays current media environments renders these critical representations of digital technologies ironically normalized.","PeriodicalId":44169,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF POPULAR FILM AND TELEVISION","volume":"152 1","pages":"109 - 118"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"85392621","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":"EXPLORING STAR TREK: VOYAGER: CRITICAL ESSAYS Ed. Robert L. Lively. McFarland, 2020. 278 pp. $39.95 paper.","authors":"A. Sanna","doi":"10.1080/01956051.2021.1923296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/01956051.2021.1923296","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44169,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF POPULAR FILM AND TELEVISION","volume":"123 1","pages":"121 - 122"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"79601136","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}