Review: Whose Lives Are They Anyway? The Biopic as Contemporary Film Genre by Dennis Bingham

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 79-80
Keyword(s):  
Film Genre ◽  
Contemporary Film

scholarly journals Exploring film genre preferences through taste cultures: A survey on contemporary film consumption amongst youth in Flanders (Belgium)

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 240-251
Author(s):  
Aleit Veenstra ◽  
Philippe Meers ◽  
Daniël Biltereyst
Keyword(s):  
Educational Level ◽  
Individual Choice ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Media Audiences ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Convergence Culture ◽  
Contemporary Media ◽  
Contemporary Film ◽  
Genre Preferences ◽  
Media Preferences

AbstractThis article explores contemporary film genre preferences through an in-depth sociological analysis of taste cultures in film preferences amongst youth aged 16–18 in Flanders (the northern Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). Building on a representative sample of 1015 respondents we statistically analyze the assumption that contemporary media audiences demonstrate mobility and that they are eager to shape their media consumption in accordance with their personal preferences. This article examines whether societal structures that have been found to reflect media preferences remain in place, or whether these structures have eroded with the (supposed) increase in individual choice – an argument often voiced in the context of convergence culture. An analysis of the variables gender, educational level and ethnicity illustrates that societal structures are still reflected through film genre preferences amongst Flemish youth.

Harry Potter and the Hidden Heritage Films: Genre Hybridity and the Power of the Past in the Harry Potter Film Cycle

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 430-449
Author(s):  
Shelley Anne Galpin
Keyword(s):  
Visual Display ◽  
Harry Potter ◽  
The Political ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
The Past ◽  
Visual Style ◽  
Commercial Form ◽  
Contemporary Film ◽  
Film Making

The heritage film is generally considered to be a less commercial form of film-making, one which eschews populism for ‘quality’. This article seeks to question the distinctions drawn between the heritage film and more commercial film franchises by examining the links between the conventions of heritage cinema and the Harry Potter films. Bringing together scholarship on the heritage film, the Harry Potter series and film genre, the article considers these productions in the light of their themes, with the political or class-centred aspects of the narrative examined in relation both to the visual display and to Andrew Higson's early critique of the heritage film. The article argues for different associations of heritage iconography in contemporary film-making from the initial criticisms of heritage cinema made by Higson. Details of the visual style of the Harry Potter films are also considered in relation to the allegedly typical characteristics of the heritage film. Ultimately, the article argues for the success of this film cycle being due to the incorporation of genre characteristics from both the heritage film and the fantasy genre and suggests that because of the increased prevalence of generic hybridity it is time that we began to reconceptualise the heritage film and its associated audiences.

scholarly journals Długi żywot filmu nostalgicznego: o funkcjonalności kategorii Fredrica Jamesona w badaniach nad kinem

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 461-472
Author(s):  
Karolina Kostyra
Keyword(s):  
Film Studies ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Late Capitalism ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Post Modernism ◽  
Contemporary Film ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Way

The article analyses the way in which Fredric Jameson’s notion of “nostalgia film” was developed in contemporary film studies. In the text I argue that although Jameson’s critique of post-modernism and its nostalgic orientation is provocative and inspiring, his category of “nostalgia film” turns out to be of little use for film studies, when it’s disconnected from the whole Jameson’s project of critique of late capitalism ideology. The definition of nostalgia film, which Jameson pro-posed and theoreticians of film developed after him, is too wide and sketchy, therefore its applicabil-ity remains problematic. This turns out to be evident in the uses of “nostalgia film” in film studies over the last thirty years. In my article I demonstrate some limitations not only in Jameson’s own movie examples, but also in film studies reflection on “nostalgia film”. Drawing mainly on fem-inistsʼ critiques of Jameson’s work, I argue that they suffer a lack of strict criteria, by which film theorists could convincingly differentiate “nostalgia film” as a separate film genre. That’s why in my opinion future research on cinematic nostalgia should re-double its efforts to re-think Jameson’s term or try to find a more promising conceptualisation, going beyond “nostalgia film”.

Differential effects of film genre on viewers’ absorption, identification, and enjoyment.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline M. Thompson ◽  
Ben Teasdale ◽  
Sophie Duncan ◽  
Evert van Emde Boas ◽  
Felix Budelmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Differential Effects ◽  
Film Genre

Devotional Transformation

2005 ◽  
Vol 1 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 237-257
Author(s):  
Ravi Vasudevan
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Narrative Structures ◽  
The Status ◽  
Film Spectatorship ◽  
The Relationship

This article focuses on the specific Indian cinematic form of the Hindu devotional film genre to explore the relationship between cinema and religion. Using three important early films from the devotional oeuvre—Gopal Krishna, Sant Dnyaneshwar, and Sant Tukaram—as the primary referent, it tries to understand certain characteristic patterns in the narrative structures of these films, and the cultures of visuality and address, miraculous manifestation, and witnessing and self-transformation that they generate. These three films produced by Prabhat Studios between the years 1936 and 1940 and all directed by Vishnupant Damle and Syed Fattelal, drew upon the powerful anti-hierarchical traditions of Bhakti, devotional worship that circumvented Brahmanical forms. This article will argue that the devotional film crucially undertakes a work of transformation in the perspectives on property, and that in this engagement it particularly reviews the status of the household in its bid to generate a utopian model of unbounded community. The article will also consider the status of technologies of the miraculous that are among the central attractions of the genre, and afford a reflection on the relation between cinema technology, popular religious belief and desire, and film spectatorship.

Groped and Gutted

Screen Bodies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-55
Author(s):  
Samantha Eddy
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Power Relations ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Slasher Film ◽  
Sexually Violent ◽  
Creative Space ◽  
Feminist Identification

The realm of horror provides a creative space in which the breakdown of social order can either expose power relations or further cement them by having them persist after the collapse. Carol Clover proposed that the 1970s slasher film genre—known for its sex and gore fanfare—provided feminist identification through its “final girl” indie invention. Over three decades later, with the genre now commercialized, this research exposes the reality of sexual and horrific imagery within the Hollywood mainstay. Using a mixed-methods approach, I develop four categories of depiction across cisgender representation in these films: violent, sexual, sexually violent, and postmortem. I explore the ways in which a white, heterosexist imagination has appropriated this once productive genre through the violent treatment of bodies. This exposes the means by which hegemonic, oppressive structures assimilate and sanitize counter-media. This article provides an important discussion on how counterculture is transformed in capital systems and then used to uphold the very structures it seeks to confront. The result of such assimilation is the violent treatment and stereotyping of marginalized identities in which creative efforts now pursue new means of brutalization and dehumanization.

Intuition, Evidence, and Carroll's Theory of Narrative

Projections ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-57
Author(s):  
Jonathan Frome
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Narrative Structure ◽  
Audience Engagement ◽  
Film Genre

AbstractOver the last thirty years, Noël Carroll has elaborated his theory of erotetic narration, which holds that most films have a narrative structure in which early scenes raise questions and later scenes answer them. Carroll's prolific publishing about this theory and his expansion of the theory to issues such as audience engagement, narrative closure, and film genre have bolstered its profile, but, despite its high visibility in the field, virtually no other scholars have either criticized or built upon the theory. This article uses Carroll's own criteria for evaluating film theories—evidentiary support, falsifiability, and explanatory power—to argue that erotetic theory's strange position in the field is due to its intuitive examples and equivocal descriptions, which make the theory appear highly plausible even though it is ultimately indefensible.

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