Victim-Warriors and Restorers—Heroines in the Post-Apocalyptic World of Mad Max: Fury Road

The article discusses the evolving image of female characters in the Mad Max saga directed by George Miller, focusing on Furiosa’s rebellion in the last film—Mad Max: Fury Road. Interestingly, studying Miller’s post-apocalyptic action films, we can observe the evolution of this post-apocalyptic vision from the male-dominated world with civilization collapsing into chaotic violence visualized in the previous series to a more hopeful future created by women in the last part of the saga: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). We observe female heroes: the vengeful Furiosa, the protector of oppressed girls and sex slaves, the women of the separatist clan, and the wives of the warlord, who bring down the tyranny and create a new “green place.” It is worth emphasizing that the plot casts female solidarity in the central heroic role. In fact, the Mad Max saga emerges as a piece of socially engaged cinema preoccupied with the cultural context of gender discourse. Noticeably, media commentators, scholars and activists have suggested that Fury Road is a feminist film.

Otherwise

This chapter shows that if seen from the film distribution-exhibition end, film history in India appears remarkably different from the iconic ‘family films’ which played in the premier theatres. It analyses the fringe exhibition sector, in which action, horror, sleaze genres flourished via dubbing, remakes, informal rehashing and insertion of pornographic ‘bits’. Situating the eruption of Bhojpuri cinema vis-a-vis these genres and their working-class patrons, the chapter establishes its continuity with the informal media economy of pirated disks, microSD data transfers and illegal settlements, all of which constitute the suboptimal transactions of Bhojpuri songs, music videos, films but also Hindi/Tamil/Telugu action films. Arguing that these transactions constitute the ‘meanwhile’ temporality of transitory urban settlements perpetually negotiating their legality with urban planners and administrators, the chapter situates a meanwhile subjectivity of the provincial migrants which remains sandwiched between the superhighways of global modernity and the crumbling infrastructures of provincial life.

Differential tracking of linguistic vs. mental state content in naturalistic stimuli by language and Theory of Mind (ToM) brain networks

Language and social cognition, especially the ability to reason about mental states, known as Theory of Mind (ToM), are deeply related in development and everyday use. However, whether these cognitive faculties rely on distinct, overlapping, or the same mechanisms remains debated. Some evidence suggests that, by adulthood, language and ToM draw on largely distinct—though plausibly interacting—cortical networks. However, the broad topography of these networks is similar, and some have emphasized the importance of social content / communicative intent in the linguistic signal for eliciting responses in the language areas. Here, we combine the power of individual-subjects functional localization with the naturalistic-cognition inter-subject correlation approach to illuminate the language-ToM relationship. Using fMRI, we recorded neural activity as participants (n=43) listened to stories and dialogs with mental state content (+linguistic, +ToM), viewed silent animations and live action films with mental state content but no language (-linguistic, +ToM), or listened to an expository text (+linguistic, -ToM). The ToM network robustly tracked stimuli rich in mental state information regardless of whether mental states were conveyed linguistically or non-linguistically, while tracking a +linguistic/-ToM stimulus only weakly. In contrast, the language network tracked linguistic stimuli more strongly than a) non-linguistic stimuli, and than b) the ToM network, and showed reliable tracking even for the linguistic condition devoid of mental state content. These findings suggest that in spite of their indisputably close links, language and ToM dissociate robustly in their neural substrates, and thus plausibly cognitive mechanisms, including during the processing of rich naturalistic materials.

Hollywood and the Myth of Criminal Convergence. The Case of Sicario: Day of the Soldado

Narratives of drug cartels progressively assuming control of migration routes by smuggling and trafficking migrants and Islamic terrorists across borders is not only common in academic accounts and international organizations’ reports. It is also emerging in popular culture. This article sheds light on how the myth of criminal convergence can be created and conveyed to the public through crime-action films. I look at one of the most important places for mythmaking of any kind: Hollywood. Based on a visual social semiotic analysis of the film Sicario: Day of the Soldado, this article will show how the myth of convergence is conveyed throughout it, and what its implications are. It will argue that the rhetoric of criminal convergence fuels a simplistic account of the existence of a battle between good (law enforcement) and evil (criminals working on all sorts of interconnected cross-border crimes), thereby legitimizing every action in the fight against crime.

Making enemies: A theoretical approach to antagonism and emotion in the contemporary American action film

Conflict and adversity form an essential component of many American action films. Not only are these spectacular blockbuster films often grafted on forms of contemporary geopolitical warfare, moreover, the violent deaths of the film’s villains arguably form one of the genre’s key pleasures. Utilizing Laclau and Mouffe’s concept of antagonism, this article deconstructs how within the action film, discursive articulations of enemyhood attempt to structure heroic violence as just and the lives of villains as ungrievable. The action films Lone Survivor (2015) and London Has Fallen (2017) will operate as case studies in elucidating how antagonistic frontiers between the hero self and the enemy other are cinematically drawn and strengthened.

COMPOSITION AS A PARAMETER OF THE DESCRIPTIVE MODEL OF THE SPEECH GENRE OF CINEMA ANNOUNCEMENT (BASED ON THE ANNOUNCEMENTS FOR INDIAN FILMS)

Введение. Рассматриваются структурные элементы речевого жанра киноанонса, функционирующего в интернете. Сопоставляется структура киноанонсов разных типов, на основе полученных данных выявляется специфика композиции киноанонсов к индийским фильмам. Цель – описать композицию речевого жанра киноанонса, функционирующего в интернете. Материал и методы. Использован метод лингвостилистического анализа, включающий приемы наблюдения, сравнения, интерпретации, дискурсивного анализа. Материалом выступили 250 анонсов к индийским фильмам, написанных на русском языке и размещенных на сайте Indiankino.net. Объем текстов – 6–8 предложений (примерно 60–100 слов). Это киноанонсы к фильмам разных жанров: мелодрамам, драмам, триллерам, комедиям, боевикам и т. д. Результаты и обсуждение. Исследуемые тексты обладают схожей тематикой, относительно устойчивой композицией и повторяющимся набором средств языкового воплощения, что позволяет рассматривать киноанонс как отдельный речевой жанр. Для анализа речевого жанра киноанонса предлагается описательная модель, в основу которой положена анкета речевого жанра, разработанная Т. В. Шмелёвой: коммуникативная цель, образ автора, образ адресата, образ прошлого, образ будущего, тип диктумного содержания, особенности языкового воплощения, композиция и невербальные средства. Композиция киноанонса – один из важнейших жанрообразующих признаков. Определено, что композиция жанра киноанонсов к индийским фильмам, функционирующего в интернет-среде, включает в себя такие элементы, как заголовок, изображение (в основном постеры), дополнительная информация о фильме (имя героев и режиссера, год выхода, жанр, оригинальное название, язык, на котором доступен фильм), интернет-инструменты (рейтинг фильма, кнопки социальных сетей для обмена информацией о фильме с другими людьми), описание фильма: завязка, основная часть, концовка. Заключение. Композиционная структура разных типов киноанонсов (например, печатных киноанонсов, киноанонсов, написанных на других языках) отличается друг от друга, что зависит от времени их написания, сферы функционирования, авторского стиля. Каждый структурный элемент речевого жанра киноанонса обладает прагматическим потенциалом, служит выполнению главных функций исследуемого речевого жанра – предоставление информации о фильме и воздействие на адресата, привлечение его внимания к картине. Introduction. The paper analyzes the characteristics of the compositional structure of the speech genre of cinema announcement functioning on the Internet. The structure of movie announcements of different types is compared; the specificity of the composition of movie announcements for Indian films is revealed based on the data obtained. Aim and objectives. Description of the composition of the speech genre of the cinema announcement, functioning on the Internet. Material and methods. The study is based on the linguistic-stylistic analysis method, which includes observation, comparison, interpretation, discursive analysis. The material taken for research is 250 cinema-announcements for Indian films written in Russian and posted on the website Indiankino.net. The volume of the studied texts is 6–8 sentences (from 60–100 words). These are movie announcements for films of different genres: melodramas, dramas, thrillers, comedies, action films, etc. Results and discussion. The studied texts have a similar theme, a relatively stable composition and a repeating set of means of linguistic embodiment, which allows us to consider the movie announcement as a separate speech genre. To describe it, a model has been developed that includes the following parameters: communicative goal, image of the author, image of the addressee, image of the past, image of the future, type of dictum content, features of the language embodiment, composition, verbal and non-verbal means. The composition of the movie announcement is one of the most important genre-forming features. It was determined that the composition of cinema announcements for Indian films operating in the Internet environment includes such elements as the title, image (mostly posters), additional information about the film (the name of the characters and directors of the film, year of release of the film, film genres, original name of the film, language in which the film is available), Internet tools (film rating, social media buttons for exchanging film information with other people), description of the film: exposition, main part, ending. Conclusion. The compositional structure and elements of different types of movie announcements (for example, printed movie announcements, movie announcements written in other languages, movie announcements of films from other countries) differ from each other, which depends on the time of their writing, the scope of functioning, and the author’s style. Each of the structural elements of the speech genre of cinema announcement has pragmatic potential and serves to fulfill the main functions of the studied speech genre – to provide information about the film and to influence the addressee and draw his attention to the film.

Colorblindness and Masculinity: "Lethal Weapon" and the Construction of a Postracial Reality

Hollywood buddy cop action films reached great popularity among American audiences of the 1980s. The genre offered something more than entertainment: it offered a vision of a country where race was no longer a meaningful concept – a vision of a post-racial society. In the wake of the biggest protests against racial injustice in decades, which in 2020 swept the United States and spread to parts of Europe, it is worth revisiting the genre which significantly contributed to the development of popular imagination about race. This article provides a closer look at a staple of the buddy cop genre, the 1987’s "Lethal Weapon". While ostensibly a progressive production, a deeper analysis shows the film to not only call upon traditionally racist portrayals of black people, but to justify a color blind approach to policing. Thus, the article shows how Hollywood worked to disavow the racialized reality of the 1980s. This disavowal is very much a current in society today.