Film Genre

No One Is Safe from the Parodist (Part 3) by Barbara Ardinger

by Feminism and Religion

Originally published on the Feminism and Religion project

Vader has lost the helmet and is now old and fat and speaks in a tenor voice. He’s obviously the smartest guy in the... more Vader has lost the helmet and is now old and fat and speaks in a tenor voice. He’s obviously the smartest guy in the room.

I am not the first to mess with Shakespeare. In 1680, a hack named Nahum Tate rewrote King Lear to give it a happy ending (Cordelia marries Edgar and they assume the throne), and in 1699, Colley Cibber “adapted” Richard III. In the 19th and 20th centuries, Shakespeare’s plays were operacized, balletized, and Broadwayized (The Boys from Syracuse, West Side Story) In 1868, French operatic composer Ambroise Thomas wrote a Hamlet in which Ophelia sings a long aria and dies. After wild applause, she gets up and sings some more. I’ve seen this opera.

Four Books on Film Noir (pdf) - Film Quarterly

by Martin Fradley

in Film Quarterly (Summer 2012): 70-73.

CFP: International Film and Media Studies Journal: Acta Universitatis Sapientiae

by Ágnes Pethő

The International, peer-reviewed, open access journal of the Sapientia University (Cluj-Napoca, Romania) invites the submission of original, previously unpublished articles written in English. Articles in all areas of film and media studies are welcome. Deadline for the next issue: June 15, 2012. Previous issue available online here: http://www.acta.sapientia.ro/acta-film/, and here: http://issuu.com/actauniversitatissapientiae/docs/film4_2011

Shooting cinematic outlaws: Ned Kelly and Jesse James as viewed through film

by Daniel Eisenberg

The frontier outlaws of Australia and America have a long and storied relationship with cinema. Two of the most recent... more The frontier outlaws of Australia and America have a long and storied relationship with cinema. Two of the most recent cinematic adaptations of these legends, Ned Kelly and The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, act as excellent entry points into an exploration of this subject. By comparing the narrative structures of the two films in relation to the concept of `the Outlaw Legend' and by highlighting the two films' respective positionings of the spectator - as filtered by concepts of national identity - an insight into the interwoven elements of man, myth and movie becomes apparent.

CFP: (Re)Locating the Frontier: International Western Films

by Cynthia Miller

Beyond the Case Method: A Master Class for Enterprise Development

by Peter Mellalieu

Mellalieu, P. J. (1998). Beyond the Case Method: A Master Class for Enterprise Development. Proceedings of the Annual Educators Conference of the New Zealand Strategic Management Society, 6th Annual Conference. The University of Auckland N.Z.: New Zealand Strategic Management Society.

See also related:
Mellalieu, P. J. (1998). Weaving the threads of innovation, creativity, and entrepreneurial learning through a university-located reality-TV and master class: Enterprise MasterWorks (EMW)™. International Conference on Higher Education and Small/Medium Enterprise (SMEs). Presented at the International Conference on Higher Education and Small/Medium Enterprise (SMEs), Rennes, France: Centre Études et Recherche EURO PME, Rennes International School of Business. Retrieved from http://tinyurl.com/emw1998

Examines the strengths and limitations of the case method as a teaching tool for developing the professional... more Examines the strengths and limitations of the case method as a teaching tool for developing the professional competence of personnel engaged in strategic management and enterprise development projects. Reports on progress towards introducing a new pedagogical genre for educators, trainers and consultants informed by the notion of a ‘master class for entrepreneurs’. The approach, Enterprise MasterWorks (EMW), extends on the traditional case study method of teaching by offering multi-media material that is timely, lively, relevant to the context of small enterprise and new venture development, and augmented with written material comparable to the traditional case format.

Illustrates the EMW approach in detail for one prototype package based on the foundation and growth of the New Zealand ‘born global’ company Pacific Lithium Limited, and its founding entrepreneur, Robin Johannink. Outlines results from trials of the pedagogical ‘package’ in several situations and presents future development intentions. for the production and dissemination of the EMW courseware packages. Argues that the EMW approach provides a cost-effective approach for surfacing the tacit knowledge of a high-performing (‘masterful’) enterprise developer, and passing on that knowledge to selected learning partners.

Annie Girardot, une enquêtrice aux prises avec le cinéma policier/criminel français des années 70-80

by Le Gras Gwénaëlle

in Policiers et criminels, un genre populaire européen sur grands et petits écrans, sous la direction de Raphaëlle Moine, Brigitte Rollet et Geneviève Sellier, L’Harmattan, avril 2009, pp. 157-166.

“Coupable altérité” : Stroheim dans les films criminels français des années 30

by Le Gras Gwénaëlle

in revue Double jeu (revue du Centre de Recherche et de Documentation des Arts du Spectacle, Université de Caen), n° 5, « Les Représentations de l’Autre au théâtre et au cinéma (XIXème, XXème siècle), sous la direction de Chantal Meyer-Plantureux et Geneviève Sellier, Presses Universitaires de Caen, mai 2009, pp. 81-96.

Annie Girardot de la Comédie-Française au film policier des années 50, ou le brouillage des stéréotypes du genre

by Le Gras Gwénaëlle

in Studies in French Cinema, numéro spécial dixième anniversaire de la revue, vol 10, n°3, pp.235-250.

Edwige Feuillère, escroc mondaine entre deux genres

by Le Gras Gwénaëlle

in Genres et acteurs du cinéma français 1930-1960, Gwénaëlle Le Gras et Delphine Chedaleux (dir.), Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2012.

A Genre Approach to Goals and their Implementation Applied to a TV programme for the Virginia Farming Community

by Barry Pennock-Speck

In this article we have analysed a television programme, Down Home Virginia, addressed to farmers and the general... more In this article we have analysed a television programme, Down Home Virginia, addressed to farmers and the general public in the state of Virginia, USA from a genre studies perspective. Down Home Virginia constitutes a mixed or hybrid genre (Bhatia 2002) which combines news, entertainment and the promotion of agricultural products. We have centred on the diverse goals pursued in the programme and how they are implemented. We have divided the concept of goal into several separate but related notions: overt/covert and strategic/tactical. We have focused our analysis on the implementation of the goals of the programme on the use of music and images, voices and accents, stereotypical images, and popularized specialist discourse (Calsamiglia & van Dijk 2004; Myers 2003, inter alia). Through our analysis we hope to have contributed to genre studies, especially to discovering some of the differences between specialized and popularized genres.

‘“There’s something very familiar about all this”: generic play and performance in the Back to the Future trilogy (Robert Zemeckis, 1985, 1989, 1990)’ in Ni Fhlainn, Sorcha (ed.), The Worlds of Back to the Future (Jefferson: McFarland, 2010), 73-90.

by Lucy Donaldson

The Back to the Future Trilogy incorporates several different generic elements, including aspects of the fifties teen... more The Back to the Future Trilogy incorporates several different generic elements, including aspects of the fifties teen movie, science fiction, comedy and the western. These different modes playfully intertwine with each other creating a complex world of repetitions, echoes and modulations. This essay seeks to interrogate the construction of generic elements and the play between them through a close analysis of a repeated performance.
Genre is signalled through various strategies employed within the construction of mise-en-scène, a significant portion of this, as I would like to argue, is transmitted through performance. The material detail of a performance – incorporating gesture, movement, voice, and even surrounding elements such as costume – as well as the way it its presented within a film is key to the establishment, invocation and coherence of genre. Furthermore, attention to the complexity of performance details, particularly in the manner in which they reverberate across texts, demonstrates the intricacy of genre and its inherent mutability.
  The Back to the Future trilogy represents a specific interest in the flexibility of genre. Within each film, and especially across all three, aspects of various genres are interlaced through both visual and narrative detail, thus constructing a dense layer of references both within and without the texts. To explore this patterning in more detail I will interrogate the contribution of performance to generic play through close analysis of Thomas F. Wilson’s performance of Biff/Griff/Burford Tannen and his central encounter with Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox) in each film. These moments take place in a fifties diner, a 1980s retro diner and a saloon respectively, each space contributing the similarities and differences in each repetition. Close attention to Wilson’s performance of each related character, which contains both modulations and repetitions used specifically to place each film’s central generic theme, demonstrates how embedded the play between genres and their flexibility is within the trilogy.

‘“The suffering black male body and the threatened white female body”: Ambiguous Bodies in Candyman’, The Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies, 9, 2011.

by Lucy Donaldson

‘“Normality is Threatened by the Monster”: Robin Wood, Romero and Zombies’, CineAction, 84, 2011, 24-31.

by Lucy Donaldson

Bromances, Buddy Films, and Chick Flicks

by John Alberti

Dark Knights, Pilgrims, Ass Kickers, and hit Girls

by John Alberti

Love That Just Can't Define Its Name Original

by John Alberti

Super-Heroine: Women as Martial Artists in Early Twenty-First Century Cinema

by Catherine Driscoll

Driscoll, C. (2007) "Super-Heroine: Women as Martial Artists in Early Twenty-First Century Cinema ". In Frederick, W. and Andris, S. (eds), Women Willing To Fight. Cambridge Scholars Press.

The Terror of Tiny Town: a dwarfsploitation movie with emancipatory value?

by etienne boumans

Submission to Popular Culture Association of Canada Annual Conference 2012. Accepted.

One year prior to the release of the all-time classic “The Wizard of Oz”, featuring the acclaimed Munchkins, Sam... more One year prior to the release of the all-time classic “The Wizard of Oz”, featuring the acclaimed Munchkins, Sam Newfield directed “The Terror of Tiny Town”, advertised as the first 'comedy western with an all-midget cast', starring “Jed Buell’s Midgets”. In this pastiche, conceived as a ‘weapon of mass distraction’ and categorized as a ‘pure exploitation movie’, diminutive actors are riding Shetland ponies and walking under the swinging doors of a local saloon. The “Terror of Tiny Town” is regularly cited among the Worst Movies of All Time. Various works of popular culture contributed to the movie acquiring cult status by recycling its title, re-interpreting its footage or through references in other movies; the film is ubiquitous on the internet and in social networks and blogs. The purpose of my paper is to demonstrate that the movie adapted American western genre stereotypes to a hitherto excluded category of actors and, by analogy to ‘blaxploitation’ movies, may have been instrumental in emancipating the short statured community. Although a black ‘midget’ featured in the film, it discriminated against ‘dwarfs’. It is likely that the absence of a ‘mirror audience’ prevented the movie to giving birth to a genre or even a sequel.

Vis-à-vis the Glaneuse

by Sylwia Chrostowska

published in Angelaki