Monday, May 7 2012
International Beats: The Desire for the Foreign in Kerouac’s ‘On the Road’
With the film adaptation of On the Road just a month away, it's important to once again define what characterized the Beat movement: an infatuation with the foreign.
Tuesday, March 20 2012
Deriding Desire: Dorothy Dandridge and the Raced and Gendered ‘50s
In 1957, Academy Award-nominated actress Dorothy Dandridge found herself at the center of a smear campaign that betrayed the patriarchal and racial politics of Hollywood and the US at large. The '50s were far from calm.
Tuesday, January 24 2012
The Not-So-Global Globes: International Tensions in the Film Industry
Now that The Artist gave the Golden Globes a distinctly French flavor, and Meryl Streep fueled the controversy in the British camp, a simultaneous rapprochement and tension defines the relationship between the European and American film industry.
Monday, December 12 2011
Hollywood’s Steep Hills: Gender Inequality and ‘Miss Representation’
Gender inequality in Hollywood reigns supreme, but as Miss Representation shows, the male/female binary is so insidious that it even makes its way into productions that aim to counter it.
Thursday, October 27 2011
The Celestial Railroad: Shifting Debates on the Immigrant Experience in ‘Sin Nombre’
Illegal immigration is a hotly contested topic in American society and politics. Sin Nombre opens up important questions about migration that documentaries often ignore: there is no such monolithic category as "the immigrant", and migration is not solely an economic decision.
Wednesday, September 14 2011
Tainted Pasts: Pornography in ‘Meet Monica Velour’ and ‘The Girl Next Door’
Meet Monica Velour and The Girl Next Door demonstrate that mainstream representations of pornography, even in a society in which sex proliferates, are still surprisingly one-sided and inconsistent with counter-narratives offered by industry insiders themselves.
Monday, July 25 2011
Frustrated Fantasies: Misperceptions of Fandom and ‘Gone With the Wind’
The value of fandom is often underestimated. Rather than the stereotyped burnt-out housewives or socially inept teenagers that obsessively and indiscriminately consume popular culture, fans are active agents.
Tuesday, May 31 2011
Trouble in Wonderland, or The Crisis of the Fairytale in Film
Live-action fairytale adaptations are more popular than ever, with Red Riding Hood just out and four others -- including two Snow Whites in the works. But film and the source texts do not effortlessly go together, and children emerge as the losers.
Monday, April 25 2011
Why Do So Many Aliens Look Like Tony Blair?
The unfamiliar will only find acceptance if it is expressed in familiar terms; thus, aliens "...may have bulbous heads and triangular eyes, speak in a chillingly robotic monotone or emit a strong stench of sulphur, but otherwise they look much like Tony Blair."
