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This introduction to the Film Studies special issue on Sex and the Cinema considers the special place of sex as an object of inquiry in film studies. Providing an overview of three major topic approaches and methodologies – (1) representation, spectatorship and identity politics; (2) the increasing scrutiny of pornography; and (3) new cinema history/media industries studies – this piece argues that the parameters of and changes to the research of sex, broadly defined, in film studies reflect the development of the field and discipline since the 1970s, including the increased focus on putatively ‘low’ cultural forms, on areas of film culture beyond representation and on methods beyond textual/formal analysis.
Baeza), recent years have witnessed a ‘new generation’ of cinéastes who, while not speaking directly of memory – arguably they wish to move on from the past – nevertheless engages with identity politics in post-dictatorship Chile. An edition of the journal Cinémas d’Amérique Latine delineates two generations of filmmakers, those who trained in the 1960s, reaching their peak in the
here to be vital in more ways than one. This chapter will look at the work of Guillaume Dustan and Erik Rémès in the context of the increased cultural presence of sexually explicit writing, and will explore in particular the existential stakes and writing strategies involved in their respective approaches to the identity politics of being a seropositive gay man in Paris at the turn of the twenty-first century. The work of both
through the community’s ‘stratigraphic landscape’, that ‘conceives historical understanding as an after-life of that which is understood, whose pulse can still be felt in the present’. 4 Through these acts of retrieval, Sayles’ film can be seen as in dialogue with the ‘culture wars’ debates of the 1980s–90s in which issues of identity politics, multiculturalism and the
issues of gender and sexuality, and configurations of masculinity in particular, which can be exploited by unscrupulous and sensationalist journalism. CAMPBELL PRINT.indd 115 21/09/2010 11:24 116 Childhood, sexuality and The Smiths The complex relationship between music, sexuality and gender remains and continues to taunt and provoke controversy due, largely, to its association with identity politics, society and the self. Most recently, the sleeve of Morrissey’s 2009 album Years Of Refusal (which features the singer holding a baby), has prompted the question, ‘Is
In this collection of new essays, issues emerge that open up numerous innovative approaches to Costa-Gavras’s career, among them: contemporary theories of adaptation, identity politics, reception, and affect, as well as his assessment of twentieth- and twenty-first-century political disorder. Costa-Gavras recontextualizes political history as individual human dramas and thereby involves his audience in past and contemporary traumas, from the horrors of the Second World War through mid-century international totalitarianism to the current problems of immigration and the global financial crisis. In order to capture the feeling of a political era, Costa-Gavras employs cinematic techniques from La Nouvelle Vague for his early films, documentary-like re-enactments for crucial moments of political tension of his renowned thrillers, and state-of-the-art aesthetics and technology for his latest ventures. The first half of this collection focuses upon the first twenty years of Costa-Gavras’s career, especially his development of the political thriller, the second half of this collection explores the past thirty years of his very productive filmic, thematic, and genre experiments. Costa-Gavras remains one of film’s enduring storytellers, theorists, and political commentators.
This book explores the development of Robert Lepage’s distinctive approach to stage direction in the early (1984–94) and middle (1995–2008) stages of his career, arguing that globalisation had a defining effect in shaping his aesthetic and professional trajectory. It combines examination of Lepage’s theatremaking techniques with discussion of his work’s effects on audiences, calling on Lepage’s own statements as well as existing scholarship and critical response. In addition to globalisation theory, the book draws on cinema studies, queer theory, and theories of affect and reception. As such, it offers an unprecedented conceptual framework, drawing together what has previously been a scattered field of research. Each of six chapters treats a particular aspect of globalisation, using this as a means to explore one or more of Lepage’s productions. These aspects include the relationship of the local (in Lepage’s case, his background in Québec) to the global; the place of individual experience within global late modernity; the effects of screen media on human perception; the particular affect of ‘feeling global’; the place of branding in contemporary creative systems; and the relationship of creative industries to neoliberal economies. Making theatre global: Robert Lepage’s original stage productions will be of interest to scholars of contemporary theatre, advanced-level undergraduates with an interest in the application of theoretical approaches to theatrical creation and reception, and arts lovers keen for new perspectives on one of the most talked-about theatre artists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.
transformative and infectious nature of identity politics. Specific segment analyses of episodes entitled ‘Pete’, ‘Sexual Harassment’, ‘Fitness Freak’ and ‘Motherhood’ thus form the basis of this chapter. Chapter 5 explores the spectacular drama series State of Play. An important aspect of this chapter is the exploration of the darker side of public life, particularly in relation to the interconnections between the political, the private and the public – often made visible via the press. Johnson_PaulAbbott.indd 3 05/08/2013 12:28 4 Paul Abbott In order to explore this, the
politics’. I do not quite know what to make of this except to say that to fully confront it would require me to write a different book altogether. But I do, at the very least, want to suggest that what I will affirm as ‘love’ throughout this book, and what I will affirm as a conception of human subjectivity as two rather than one, is at odds with anything that might be called ‘identity politics’. 2 If Sellier positioned her book Masculine Singular as a response to arguments on subjective isolation in the 1950s and 1960
camera as she explores her ‘disappeared’ parents’ identity and her past. Gleghorn suggests that these films illustrate an autobiographical impulse, which has at its centre the director as the historical subject of the film. Additionally, the two films interrogate genealogy as a constructing force in identity politics, highlighting the relationship between the concerns of the family and those of the nation. Furthermore, the