scholarly journals Postmodern messiahs: the changing saviours of contemporary popular culture

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 196-212
Author(s):  
Sofia Sjö
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Religion And Spirituality ◽  
Feminist Film Theory ◽  
The Past ◽  
Contemporary Science ◽  
Feminist Film

The messiah myth is alive and well in the modern world. Contemporary science fiction film has taken the myth to heart and given us an endless stream of larger than life heroes. The heroes of the present are, however, not exactly the same as the heroes of the past. A changing world demands new things of its saviours. Using a textual and narrative analysis based on insights gained from feminist film theory and cultural studies, this article looks closely at the messiah theme in science fiction films and TV series from the last three decades. The study explores the changes that have occurred in relation to images of the body, the attitudes and personalities of modern heroes, gender, questions of power and ideas of the transcendent. The article then discusses what these changes both between newer and older heroes and between contemporary heroes and the traditional messiah story might say about religion and spirituality in the modern world. Finally the article explores the question of why the messiah myth still finds an audience today.

scholarly journals Superheroines and Sexism: Female Representation in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Folukemi Olufidipe ◽  
Yunex Echezabal
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Film Industry ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
Costume Design ◽  
Female Representation ◽  
Mixed Methods Design ◽  
Feminist Film Theory ◽  
Feminist Film ◽  
Marvel Cinematic Universe ◽  
Feminist Movements

     The Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) is the highest-grossing film franchise of all time and since the premiere of Iron Man in 2008, it has risen to fame as a source of science-fiction entertainment. Sexism in the film industry often goes brushed aside but the widespread success of Marvel Studios calls attention to their treatment of gender roles. This paper explores the progression of six female superheroes in the MCU and what effect feminist movements have had on their roles as well as upcoming productions in the franchise. This paper used an interdisciplinary, mixed-methods design that studied movie scripts and screen time graphs. 14 MCU movies were analyzed through a feminist film theory lens and whenever a female character of interest was chosen, notes were taken on aspects including, but not limited to, dialogue, costume design, and character relationships. My findings showed that females in the MCU are heavily sexualized by directors, costume designers, and even their male co-stars. As powerful as some of these women were found to be, it was concluded that Marvel lacks in female inclusivity. Marvel’s upcoming productions, many of which are female-focused, still marginalize the roles of their superheroines which is a concern for the future of the film industry. Marvel is just one franchise but this study shows how their treatment of female characters uphold patriarchal structures and perpetuate harmful stereotypes that need to be corrected in the film industry as a whole. 

Bodies, Gestus, Becoming: Cinema as a Technology of Gender and (Post)memory

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 555-571
Author(s):  
Belén Ciancio
Keyword(s):  
Queer Theory ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Film Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Feminist Film Theory ◽  
Political Cinema ◽  
Feminist Film ◽  
The One ◽  
The Third World

The first issue this essay examines is the articulation of the cinema of the body, the feminine gestus, and the ‘political cinema’, which begins with the philosophical shout, ‘Give me a body, then!’ and ends with the ‘Third World Cinema’ as a cinema of memory. How is this Deleuzian concept in tension with the one proposed here of ‘missing body’? The second issue concerns the importance of the body for theory and practice within feminist film theory and queer theory. The question of the body is introduced in-between these two lines in the context of a series of Latin American documentaries. The final problem is then how to see and show a body that is missing, like an outside of the body image, and of a certain regime of the visible and the audible that tends to be fixed in topics by the production of technologies of (post)memory.

scholarly journals Surveillance and the Body in the Millennium Trilogy

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 158-169
Author(s):  
Jeff W. Marker
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
The Body ◽  
Central Character ◽  
Surveillance Studies ◽  
Feminist Film Theory ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Feminist Film ◽  
Race Ethnicity

A growing discourse in surveillance studies is leading the field away from socially neutral theories and introducing methodologies that account for factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexual orientation. However, scholarship on surveillance in the arts, among which voyeurism and panopticism remain dominant, has been slower to adopt models that address these sociological dimensions of surveillance. This interdisciplinary article argues for expanding the theoretical and sociological scope of scholarship on surveillance in the arts, using Stieg Larsson’s Millennium novels and the Swedish films adapted from them as a case study. This series of narratives features three scopic regimes: the state’s surveillance apparatus, the protagonist’s own surveillant gaze, and the male gaze, each of which operates on and through the body of the central character, Lisbeth Salander. These representations, as so many others, demand that we break away from the panoptic model and employ a theoretically intersectional approach. The author integrates theories from surveillance studies, feminist film theory, and the social sciences to develop such an approach.

Feminist Film Theory and Cléo de 5 à 7 by Hilary Neroni

2017 ◽  
Vol 90 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-242
Author(s):  
Mariah Devereux Herbeck
Keyword(s):  
Film Theory ◽  
Feminist Film Theory ◽  
Feminist Film
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