Moving Peoples and Motion Pictures: Migration in Film and Other Media

Nearly from the start, cinema has registered, dramatized, and produced images of migration and its attendant anxieties. Indeed, movies have been fuelled by the movements of peoples thanks to the striking stories and images these always engender. After glancing at two distinct efforts in the 1960s in which cinema aimed to capture a mass phenomenon for a mass audience (one from Classic Hollywood, the other from the periphery of India), I will interrogate 21st-century strategies to come to terms with what the art form’s limitations may be. Can cinema get its arms around something so complex, multidimensional, and contested as migration? Jia Zhangke’s success in bringing internal Chinese migration to light may not be easily replicated by filmmakers in other nations faced with migration issues that cluster at their borders. Perhaps other art forms are naturally more capable in this regard. To isolate what cinema has done best, however, I will draw attention to films set on the edges of Europe.

An Impossible Task? Reconciling Europeanism and National Popular Culture in Caliban (1947–51)

A kind of hybrid between high-profile political and literary periodicals and successful popular book digests targeted at a mass audience, the French magazine Caliban (1947–51) both tried to adjust to a fast-changing global marketplace and to defend a form of cultural legitimacy based on national claims against globalist domination. This article traces the evolution of the magazine’s editorial venture in relation to questions connected to the issues of modernity and mobility. In particular, it aims at examining Caliban’s implacable ‘anti-digest’ stance.

Introduction

This chapter prepares the comparative media crucible – an intensive synthesis of approaches to understand the media, in relation to capital, infrastructure, film form, narration, sovereign voice and geography. The book takes shape inside this analytical dwelling at the intersection of various grids – the recruitment of the province, capital and narrative voice, and the ideological containment of the masses – preparing the grounds for reading the coalitional tendencies before reassembling the role of media within the social order. It also assesses the provincial imperative acting upon ‘Bollywood’, and the attendant translations and purifications of the processes investigated in the book. The book thus grapples with a constellation which, this chapter argues, addresses an overflow of tendencies tethered to an unknowable ‘mass audience’. This search for an abstract mass, which breaches the embankments of region, class, language and culture, forces us to prepare the crucible with robust comparative analytics.

Hauntological cinema: Resisting epistemic erasure and temporal slippage with Sorry to Bother You

Through a hauntological analysis of Boots Riley’s Afrosurrealist comedy, Sorry to Bother You (2018), we explore how fiction can empower sociologists to think beyond the limits of empiricism to better encounter experiences of erasure and senses of temporal disjuncture that characterise capitalist realism. The panoramic power of cinematic world-building enables representations of the ontologically reified but empirically elusive atmosphere of capitalist realism. Sorry to Bother You, we argue, rearticulates through Afrosurrealism the absurdity of capitalist realism’s whitewashing of its innately racialising violence. Drawing upon the thought of Mark Fisher (1968–2017) we examine the film’s central allegorical spectres: the code-switching comedy of the insidious White Voice, the body horror of the Equisapien human–horse hybrids, and the reality warping influence of shadowy megacorporation Worry Free. By resisting the empirical trappings of capitalist realism, hauntology is able to critique the wavering repression of the no longer and the not yet – the ignored legacies of unresolved traumas and a nostalgia for a future we were promised but never arrived. In response, Sorry to Bother You re-presents to a mass audience the spectre of a positive abolitionism and brings into focus an acid communist horizon using hauntological techniques that visualise experiences denied a presence under capitalist realism. This article aims to highlight the ontological and political potentialities of such works of art and their analysis.

Loop Structures in Film (and Literature): Experiments with Time Between the Poles of Classical and Complex Narration

Among the many innovations complex or “puzzle” films have brought about in the last three decades, experiments with narrative time feature prominently. And within the category of nonlinear plots, the loop structure – exemplified by films such as Repeaters (Canada 2010), Source Code (USA/France 2011), Looper (USA/China 2012) or the TV-Series Day Break (USA 2006) – has established itself as an interesting variant defying certain norms of storytelling while at the same time conforming in most cases to the needs of genre and mass audience comprehension. In the first part of my paper, I will map out different kinds of repeated action plots, paying special attention to constraints and potentialities pertaining to this particular form. In the second part, I will address the issue of narrative complexity, showing that loop films cover a wide range from “excessively obvious” mainstream (e.g. Groundhog Day, USA 1992; 12:01, USA 1993; Edge of Tomorrow, USA/Canada 2014) to disturbing narrative experiments such as Los Cronocrimenes (Spain 2007) or Triangle (Great Britain/Australia 2009). Finally, a look at two early examples (Repeat Performance, USA 1947 and Twilight Zone: Judgement Day, USA 1959) will raise the question how singular the recent wave of loop films are from a historical perspective.

Communicative Strategies of an Interviewer Yury Dud: A Linguist’s View of the Media Phenomenon in Mass Culture

Purpose. The article examines the methods of building dialogue in interviews conducted by the popular video blogger and journalist Yury Dud, who is named the main hero of Russian cultural life in 2020 by Forbes Life. To determine his individual style, the author analyzes strategies of communicative behavior. The following parameters are the most significant for the description of interviewing strategies: thematic repertoire and thematic dominants of the conversation; methods of requesting/extracting information; methods of interpreting and evaluating what the interlocutor said; the choice of language code. The empirical basis of the study contains interviews by Yu. Dud with various interlocutors – journalists, TV presenters, cultural and show business figures, politicians, and other public figures, uploaded on the YouTube video hosting service in the period of 2017–2020. The analysis of more than 40 programs allows observing a wide range of techniques of a journalist, depending on the “addressee factor”.Results. The key topics that are regularly discussed in interviews are identified, including those that violate ethical taboos (about sex, bad behavior, and bad habits, judgments and hot takes on colleagues and senior officials, etc.). The thematic repertoire is considered as a deliberate communicative choice of a journalist, conditioned by the dramaturgy of public dialogue addressed to a mass audience and the tasks of portrayal.The author reveals the distinctive methods of requesting information and eliciting facts, which is inherent to the journalistic style of Yu. Dud: illocutionary forcing reasoning (“why-questions”), clarifying questions, reformulating, role modeling of relations with a guest, where the journalist often pretends being dilettante. Interpretation and evaluation of the interlocutor's statements are based on the clearest identification of their position for the mass addressee by an explication of ideas expressed by the guest implicitly, “delegation of opinion”, and the effects of “insight”.The choice of the language code indicates the “discursive adaptation” of the journalist to his interlocutor and allows the journalist to reveal to the mass audience their personality, including their speech characteristics. The dynamism of the dialogue is due to the setting to dramatize the conversation scenario: this is manifested not only in the choice of somewhat unexpected topics of conversation, but also in the expression of one's attitude to the statements of the interlocutor, explicit/implicit assessments, and the choice of the speech code.Conclusion. It is concluded that Dud’s interviews are a vivid example of the trends of modern Internet journalism, and the communicative strategies he implements allow us to see the prospects for the development of the genre. Given the popularity of the genre in traditional and new media, the author notices that the interview not only reflects the features of social communications of the 21st century but is also a powerful factor of shaping modern mass culture.

From Bonn to Yekaterinburg: chronotope of the modern museum

The article is devoted to the comparative analysis of innovative trends in domestic and foreign museums. The analysis is interdisciplinary and methodological in nature. The main purpose of the article is to show examples of fundamental changes and the communicative nature of museum forms, dictated by the massization of museums, which changed the quantitative and qualitative composition of the public. According to the author, the museum includes directing and design necessary for communication with the mass audience. In this aspect, the article analyzes the exposition principles of two museums located in different countries. The philosophical foundations of one of the most authoritative museum centers in Europe: the "House of German History" in Bonn are presented in the most detailed way. Noting the integrity of the exhibition in the "House of German History", the author identifies several key principles of the museum exhibition: including:"museum drama", "path", "local space" (chronotope). These staging techniques are comparable to the "Yeltsin Center": the path through 7 rooms is the basis of the exhibition. "Problem Rooms" and the chronotope "Paths" form a common dramatic concept. The scientific novelty of the article also lies in the substantiation of the connection between the museum's drama and mass character. The flow of visitors could not but influence the choice of techniques that are easily read by the mass audience.

The dramaturgy of gambang semarang art company (GSAC) a strategy towards tourism art

This research answers how the dramaturgical innovation of the Gambang Semarang Art Company (GSAC) performance is to go to tourism. The main objective is to explain GSAC's strategy in dealing with the tourism industry through dramaturgical innovation. This study uses a qualitative interpretive research method. Data were obtained through interviews and performance observations. The results showed that the Dadung Kepuntir story GSAC performance-inspired innovation and brought out new creativity. In addition, it gave rise to a form of presentation to enrich the repertoire of Gambang Semarang performances. The GSAC community is fully aware of the need for the arts for tourism. This can be seen from the approach to the show, which uses an aesthetic approach to commercialism. The aesthetics of commercialism is stated as the principles of managing the art forms of Gambang Semarang performed by the Gambang Semarang Art Company based on the attractiveness, fascination, and provocation of the attention of the mass audience of Gambang Semarang

Modern Interpretation and Translation of the Song “Tong-Tong”: K-Pop of the Koryo Epoch

According to the record, the Korean song “Tong-tong” was classified as a song as “Tong-tong-sa” and a play as “Tong-tong-jihee”. The title of “Tong-tong” is derived from the chorus phrase “Aeoo Tong-tong Bridge” that repeats every verse. The purpose of this paper is to make it easier for modern people to understand by clarifying the meaning contained in “Tong-tong” by referring to the literature related to “Tong-tong” and the opinions of various scholars. The contents of this paper are interpreted in modern Korean through the content structure, pseudonym, vocabulary analysis, major vocabulary interpretation, and translation into modern language, and then translated into Russian. Song culture can be viewed as a part of public and intercultural communication, because songwriters strive to adapt the language and theme of the song to the standards of a mass audience, the requirements of the time, actual problems of life and general issues of being. Through this thesis, it is meaningful to make “Tong-tong”, a popular k-pop song in the Koryo Dynasty, understandable not only to modern Koreans but also to Russian-speaking readers.

Tall Tales for a Mass Audience

In this article we compare Dutch penny prints with Spanish Aleluyas, focusing on three specific functions of this premodern mass medium: popularising and adapting theatre plays; standardising (folk/fairy) tales; adapting and popularising literary classics. Via these functions we address the discrepancies between the two countries considering the materiality of the penny prints, the growth of the production, but also the transition from a predominantly religious, towards a more profane content. Striking was the lack of educative and edifying initiatives in Spain in contrast to the Dutch ideological strategies. We observed some interesting similarities as well. Although in both countries penny prints often conformed to current ideologies and institutions, there were instances in which penny prints and aleluyas were used as instruments of social satire or resistance. A few similar strange twists in the adaptations of literary classics, seem to suggest some form of transnational exchange or at least imitation.