On the Path to Becoming

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-97
Author(s):  
Niloo E. Sarabi
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Gender Socialization ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Film Festivals ◽  
Visual Aesthetics ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
The Veil ◽  
Social Message ◽  
Film Language

Abstract In this article, I undertake a critical analysis of Marzieh Meshkini’s 2000 directorial debut, The Day I Became a Woman, which won multiple awards at the Toronto and Venice Film Festivals, and I investigate the manner in which Meshkini’s visual aesthetics enable her to enrich vital debates about the veil, gender socialization and social mobility as well as female pleasure and jouissance in contemporary Iranian society and abroad. Through a close reading of the figurative film language and innovative cinematography in Meshkini’s film, including its novel play with different temporalities and its artistic approach to mise-en-scène and framing of various shots, I examine the extent to which Meshkini succeeds in conveying her compelling social message in terms of Iranian women’s experiences, more than two decades after the Islamic revolution.

scholarly journals "Social horror": A critical analysis of ideological and poetic function of the motive of victim in the contemporary Serbian film

Temida ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-329
Author(s):  
Ivana Kronja
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
State System ◽  
Feminist Perspective ◽  
Narrative Strategies ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
Visual Aesthetics ◽  
Poetic Function ◽  
Value Crisis ◽  
Film Aesthetics

This paper analyses achievements of Serbian cinematography after 2000, which narrative strategies and visual aesthetics are focused on the issues of violence and victims in the context of social despair, post-communist transition and ongoing global value crisis. Films made by Mladen Djordjevic Life and Death of a Porn Gang (2009), Srdjan Spasojevic A Serbian Movie (2010), and Marko Novakovic Menagerie (2012) integrate these complex characteristics of disintegration of Serbian community and dysfunctional state system into their cinematic poetics. These films present examples of radical film aesthetics, which, through strategies of making things unusual, and the influence of underground, pornography and horror on the realistic drama, speak about permanently traumatised Serbian society. They directly connect collective political state and the domain of personal, family, intimate and sexual, controversially relying on the images and narratives of gender misogyny and the violence it produces and its victims. The paper critically approaches these issues from the gender- feminist perspective.

scholarly journals Alone together: Cinematic (re)presentations of masculinity, friendship, and grief

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Costas Thrasyvoulou
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Emotional Intimacy ◽  
Male Friend

<p>This project examines the links between masculinity, friendship, and grief in a combination of creative work and critical analysis. The creative component consists of a thirteen-minute short dramatic film entitled 'Brothers' (2014). This film explores the different ways in which three young men react to the death of a close male friend. The film contains no dialogue and emphasises the importance of gestures, actions, and other forms of behaviour.  The thesis is comprised of three main sections. The first situates masculine experiences of grief and friendship in a critical context by drawing on discourses from sociology and psychology. I argue that the feelings of individual men in relation to traumatic events such as bereavement are often hidden or repressed because of the need to present a stoic exterior, even during grieving rituals such as funerals. This kind of behaviour preserves the invulnerability often associated with dominant or idealised versions of masculinity. However, this tendency arguably inhibits male emotional intimacy and friendship, particularly during times of crisis.  The second part of the thesis considers how these interrelated issues are represented cinematically through a close reading of the John Cassavetes film 'Husbands' (1970). 'Husbands' is concerned with the dissolute behaviour of three male friends in the aftermath of the death of a friend. Although the men are garrulous, they struggle to articulate their feelings. I employ research on performance in cinema, as well as criticism of Cassavetes’ work to interpret the slips in their masculine bravado.  The final section engages in an exegesis of 'Brothers'. I reflect on the influence of Husbands on my project. I also discuss the ways in which 'Brothers' can be understood in terms of the critical frameworks established in the previous chapters.  A Note About 'Brothers': The creative component of this project, the film 'Brothers', is included alongside this thesis on a DVD. The film can also be accessed online at https://vimeo.com/99519967 using the password 'masterscut'. A copy of the final shooting script is also included in the thesis as an appendix.</p>

Cinematic Spaces of ‘the Arab Street’ : Mohamed Diab’s Inverted Road Movie Clash (2016)

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alena Strohmaier
Keyword(s):  
Middle East ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Cinematic Space

This chapter examines how cinema challenges and inverts traditional spaces of social upheavals, such as streets and squares, in their capacity to be spaces of knowledge and solidarity, in conceptualizing them as enhanced media-sensible spaces. Through a close reading of Mohamed Diab’s feature film Clash (2016), I foreground the idea of the truck as a cinematic space predicated on its ability to accommodate movement, both in a literal and a metaphorical sense. This allows for a discussion of cinematic spaces of the so-called ‘Arab street’, created by both mise en scène and cinematography that go against the more prevalent images of street fights and mass demonstrations as seen in documentaries about the popular upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa region since 2009.

scholarly journals Magical Realism as Feminist Discourse in Raja Alem’s Fatma: A Novel of Arabia

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laila Al-Sharqi
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Magical Realism ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
Female Character ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
The Real ◽  
Feminist Discourse

<p>This article investigates Raja Alem’s <em>Fatma: A Novel of Arabia</em> (2002) as a narrative that appropriates magical realist techniques in the service of the feminist project of critiquing patriarchal notions and practices in contemporary Saudi society. Although Alem is credited by Arab and international critics as a major Saudi writer of the fantastical, it is <em>Fatma </em>that largely establishes her specific reputation as a magical realist. This article provides a close reading and critical analysis substantiating Alem’s extensive use of magical realist techniques. The fabulous and the real converge to create a mysterious universe wherein various times and spaces are merged together to question contemporary society’s assumptions around gender, gender ideology, and feminist issues—a central theme in contemporary Saudi fiction—thereby giving voice to the marginalized female character depicted in <em>Fatma.</em></p>

Connecting Work To Workers’ Social Past: A Dispositional Analysis of Police Work

2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-142
Author(s):  
David Pichonnaz
Keyword(s):  
Social Mobility ◽  
Police Officers ◽  
Gender Socialization ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Police Work ◽  
Police Culture ◽  
New Approach ◽  
And Gender ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This article explores the impact of experiences police officers went through before they joined the Force on how they see and perform their job. I propose a new approach to police culture and practices based on a Bourdieu-inspired model of analysis, which includes its subsequent development by Lahire’s ‘dispositional analysis’. The model looks at how dispositions interiorized—particularly through the experience of social mobility and gender socialization—have a great impact on how police officers see and perform their job. The results suggest that divisions within police culture, long acknowledged by criminologists and sociologists, can be explained by the prior socialization of police officers.

scholarly journals Aristophanes in Comic Books: Adaptation as Metabase

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 553-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dimitris Asimakoulas
Keyword(s):  
Comic Book ◽  
Translation Studies ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Adaptation Studies ◽  
Visual Rhythm ◽  
Mise En Scene ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Book Format ◽  
Formal Properties ◽  
Shed Light

Translation studies researchers have for a long time critically engaged with the idea of translation being a mode of creative rewriting across media and cultural or temporal divides. Adaptation studies experts use a similar premise to study products, processes and reception of adaptations for specific locales. This article combines such perspectives in order to shed light on an under-researched area of comic adaptation: this is the metabase, or transfer, of Aristophanic comedies to the comic book format in Greek and their subsequent translation into English for an e-book edition (Metaichmio Publications 2012). The paper suggests a model for the close reading of creative transfer based on Lefèvre’s (2011; 2012) typology of formal properties of comics and Attardo’s (2002) General Theory of Verbal Humour. As is shown, visual rhythm and text-image relations create a rich environment for anachronism, parody, comic characterisation and ideological comments, all of which serve a condensed plot. The English translation rewrites cultural/ideological references, amplifies obscenity and emphasizes narrator visibility, always taking into consideration the mise en scène.

scholarly journals On the Notion of 'Failure' in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest: A Consideration of Joelle van Dyne's Character and the Figure of St. Teresa of Avila

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-151
Author(s):  
Matthew Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Infinite Jest ◽  
Teresa Of Avila ◽  
Political Clout ◽  
Historical Figure ◽  
20Th Anniversary ◽  
Magnum Opus ◽  
The Veil

David Foster Wallace's magnum opus, Infinite Jest, celebrated its 20th anniversary of publication in 2016. Yet in spite of two decades of critical analysis little attention is given to the female characters within. Delfino (2008) cites 'one or two strong [female] characters that cannot help but influence the male protagonists in the novel', without expanding upon this, whilst Freudenthal (2010) speaks of Wallace's female characters as having a 'political clout [that] goes no further than their domestic spheres'. Such failure on the part of critics leads to an incomplete consideration of Wallace's text. This paper sets about redressing the balance through a reading of Joelle van Dyne's character and Wallace's use of the veil, and the link that this has with an historical figure known for her donning of the veil: St. Teresa of Avila. Clare Hayes-Brady's recent work (2016) on 'failures' in Wallace's work will be used as a tool with which to analyse Joelle's/St. Teresa's inclusion in the text, and it will be argued that the issue of veiling, a practice that Hirschmann (1998) views as 'Other to most Westerners', helps to reveal the extent to which Wallace's female characters have indeed been overlooked by critics. In doing so, a new consideration of Wallace's texts may emerge.

scholarly journals Alone together: Cinematic (re)presentations of masculinity, friendship, and grief

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Costas Thrasyvoulou
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Emotional Intimacy ◽  
Male Friend

<p>This project examines the links between masculinity, friendship, and grief in a combination of creative work and critical analysis. The creative component consists of a thirteen-minute short dramatic film entitled 'Brothers' (2014). This film explores the different ways in which three young men react to the death of a close male friend. The film contains no dialogue and emphasises the importance of gestures, actions, and other forms of behaviour.  The thesis is comprised of three main sections. The first situates masculine experiences of grief and friendship in a critical context by drawing on discourses from sociology and psychology. I argue that the feelings of individual men in relation to traumatic events such as bereavement are often hidden or repressed because of the need to present a stoic exterior, even during grieving rituals such as funerals. This kind of behaviour preserves the invulnerability often associated with dominant or idealised versions of masculinity. However, this tendency arguably inhibits male emotional intimacy and friendship, particularly during times of crisis.  The second part of the thesis considers how these interrelated issues are represented cinematically through a close reading of the John Cassavetes film 'Husbands' (1970). 'Husbands' is concerned with the dissolute behaviour of three male friends in the aftermath of the death of a friend. Although the men are garrulous, they struggle to articulate their feelings. I employ research on performance in cinema, as well as criticism of Cassavetes’ work to interpret the slips in their masculine bravado.  The final section engages in an exegesis of 'Brothers'. I reflect on the influence of Husbands on my project. I also discuss the ways in which 'Brothers' can be understood in terms of the critical frameworks established in the previous chapters.  A Note About 'Brothers': The creative component of this project, the film 'Brothers', is included alongside this thesis on a DVD. The film can also be accessed online at https://vimeo.com/99519967 using the password 'masterscut'. A copy of the final shooting script is also included in the thesis as an appendix.</p>

scholarly journals TECHNOLOGIZING METAPHOR, DEMYSTIFYING TRAUMA: ALLEGORY IN THE FILM 27 STEPS OF MAY

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-248
Author(s):  
Rifki Zamzam Mustaffa ◽  
Aquarini Priyatna ◽  
Ari J. Adipurwawidjana
Keyword(s):  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Narrative Texts ◽  
National Trauma ◽  
Marginalized Groups ◽  
Mise En Scene

This article aims at elaborating the issues of trauma, violence against women and their agencies depicted in Indonesianfilm entitled 27 Steps of May. By situating the issues within the theoretical framework combining theories on allegoryand metaphor as elaborated by Jameson (2006), and Jakobson (1956), as well as theoretical premises pertaining to filmtechnology by Turner (2002), this study shows how film as a form of narrative texts can visualize those issues throughavailable technological features (camera techniques and mise-en-scene). Our close reading finds that the film presentsmetaphors of rape, women agency, amnesia and trauma through the presentation of the characters (May, Bapak, Pesulapand Kurir), also the mise-en-scene in its scenes. We argue that this film visualizes an allegory of national trauma inrelation to Indonesian May 1998 riots, specifically the violence towards marginalized groups (Chinese and women),which also represents the Indonesian collective expectation in acknowledging the national trauma jointly.

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