Introduction

The Introduction examines why “movement” is often invoked as a term in film criticism and film theory but is rarely analyzed as an aspect of film form. The reason for this is twofold. First, because film theory has largely examined movement only as a defining property of the cinematic medium, movement is rarely singled out in film criticism. Second, because film theory has inherited the philosophical intuition that form is primarily spatial rather than temporal, formal analysis in film studies tends to break up the temporal flow of film into static units, such as in shot breakdowns and frame analyses. In film studies, then, “form” and “movement” are conceptually incompatible. As a means of thinking motion and form together, the Introduction proposes the concept of “motion forms,” generic structures, patterns, or shapes of motion. The Introduction then explores the philosophical roots of the motion form in phenomenology and Gestalt psychology, and explains how such a way of thinking about cinematic motion differs from other phenomenological approaches in film studies. Finally, the introduction outlines the six chapters of the book, each of which investigates a particular motion form that emerges throughout the history of cinema.

Challenging Narrative Hierarchies: Embedded Narrative Structure in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves

<p>Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas both feature highly complex structures of narrative embedding. This thesis examines the use of narrative levels in these two novels, considering how the purposes and effects of embedding change and how attention to the structure of this literary device transforms readings of these texts. Cloud Atlas features six distinct and seemingly stand-alone embedded narratives. The relationship between them is complicated both by competing structural models and by clashes of continuity between fact and fiction. Mitchell's novel draws attention to the role of storytelling in the creation of history and human identity. House of Leaves embeds an invented film within a novel masquerading as film criticism, with edits and commentary provided by a further narrator. The disparate parts, narratorial unreliability, and multiple acts of remediation serve to undermine the elaborate narrative hierarchy Danielewski creates. This instability foregrounds the subjectivity of the relationship between reader and text and the embedding narrator functions as a model for the active reader who both interprets and recreates. In both novels the differently styled narratives and structures of embedding facilitate an exploration of the permutations of fact and fiction and, by transgressing the norms of this literary device, they bring into focus the assumptions that exist around it.</p>

Challenging Narrative Hierarchies: Embedded Narrative Structure in David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas and Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves

<p>Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves and David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas both feature highly complex structures of narrative embedding. This thesis examines the use of narrative levels in these two novels, considering how the purposes and effects of embedding change and how attention to the structure of this literary device transforms readings of these texts. Cloud Atlas features six distinct and seemingly stand-alone embedded narratives. The relationship between them is complicated both by competing structural models and by clashes of continuity between fact and fiction. Mitchell's novel draws attention to the role of storytelling in the creation of history and human identity. House of Leaves embeds an invented film within a novel masquerading as film criticism, with edits and commentary provided by a further narrator. The disparate parts, narratorial unreliability, and multiple acts of remediation serve to undermine the elaborate narrative hierarchy Danielewski creates. This instability foregrounds the subjectivity of the relationship between reader and text and the embedding narrator functions as a model for the active reader who both interprets and recreates. In both novels the differently styled narratives and structures of embedding facilitate an exploration of the permutations of fact and fiction and, by transgressing the norms of this literary device, they bring into focus the assumptions that exist around it.</p>

Looking Through the Rearview Mirror

Probing the continuities and discontinuities of queer representation and expression in the vast, multiform corpus of French cinema up to 1945, this chapter celebrates moments of queer visual and auditory intimacy and pleasure in both celebrated and little-known or neglected films. It aims to prove that early French cinema, despite its all-too-evident heterosexist matrices and repressive tendencies (notably the negative and often highly crude, fetishizing stereotypes of the “homosexual,” “lesbian,” and “cross-dresser”), also discloses unpredictable and non-normative aesthetic spaces or “interzones”—of filiation, desire, and sensation—that resist easy categorization (social, cultural political), elude the gender fixities of the period, and are rich in radical ambiguity and queer suggestion, even subversion. A new, materialist, queer aesthetics and historiography is proposed that ties early French film production and spectatorship to abiding aspects of the French cinematic tradition such as cinephilia and film criticism.

James Baldwin and Film Beyond the American Century

This article provides an introduction to this special section of James Baldwin Review 7 devoted to Baldwin and film. Jackson considers Baldwin’s distinct approach to film criticism by pairing him with James Agee, another writer who wrote fiction as well as nonfiction in several genres, and who produced a large body of film criticism, especially during the 1940s. While Agee, a white southerner born almost a generation before Baldwin, might seem an unlikely figure to place alongside Baldwin, the two shared a great deal in terms of temperament and vision, and their film writings reveal a great deal of consensus in their diagnoses of American pathologies. Another important context for Baldwin’s complex relationship to film is television, which became a dominant media form during the 1950s and exerted a great influence upon both the mainstream reception of the civil rights movement and Baldwin’s reception as a public intellectual from the early 1960s to the end of his life. Finally, the introduction briefly discusses the articles that constitute this special section.

Robert Wise’s The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) and Interplanetary Emissary Klaatu Are Not Anti-Atomic: A Reassessment of the Filmic Evidence

Inspired by a 1940s short story by Harry Bates, scripted by Edmund H. North, and directed by Robert Wise, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) is a science fiction cult classic. Of all its diverse interpretations, a commonly adopted reading influenced by the dawning of the Atomic Age parades it as an anti-nuclear exemplar starring alien emissary Klaatu visiting Earth with his robot companion Gort to (supposedly) suppress humanity’s atomic progress. However, upon a close forensic inspection of the film and commentator comments, this anti-atomic claim is resoundingly rejected. Utilizing humanist film criticism as the guiding analytical lens (i.e., looking inside not outside the frame), plus a selective review of the critical literature, it was demonstrated that: (a) there is a dearth of atomic iconography and dialogue, (b) there is no mention of banning atomic energy or weapons, (c) Earth’s atomics are nascent and not serious threats to the Federation, and (d) Klaatu is not anti-atomic but proudly pro-atomic. Overall, this SF film is strongly pro-nuclear in intention, word, and deed, which was frequently misinterpreted due to faulty film criticism, invented facts, and jumping to conclusions, and thus in need of academic correction. Further research into alien first-contact scenarios, robotic artificial intelligence, and the moral make-up of the SF universe is warranted and long overdue.

The allure of prizes: how contests trap us in competitive relationships

Contests and prizes along with the compulsion to make winners and losers are ubiquitous features of contemporary capitalism in the USA. Combining the anthropological literature on traps and trapping, Simmel’s work on competitive relationships, film criticism, and a rereading of management consulting logic, we develop a theory of prizes as organizers and enforcers of competitive relationships. We argue that contests are traps, funnelling both the wary and unsuspecting into competitive relationships through the lure of material and symbolic rewards. Empirically, our argument proceeds through paired case studies. The first case examines how a straightforward (if technically daunting) educational project designed to teach newcomers the basics of laboratory techniques is transformed into a competitive project when a potential prize is introduced. The second case examines how people spontaneously organize and compete with each other around the promise of an amorphous and fictitious prize during the development of high-speed trading.