From Villain to Hero: Masculinity and Political Aesthetics in the Films of Bangladeshi Action Star Joshim

In this article, I trace the growth of the action film genre in Bangladesh in the 1970s and 1980s, at a time when new technologies such as video cassette recorder (VCR) were emerging in the market and national politics was wrestling with the competing notions of masculinity, leadership and heroism. I look at the emergence of the Bangladeshi action star Joshim within the context of South Asian trans-regional cinema and its changing tropes of masculinity. I argue that anxiety over new technologies, changes within Bangladesh’s political regime and its leadership, including state censorship, and shifts in the representation of heroic masculinity within national imagery—from a socialist model associated with Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to the modern, energetic and globally inflected masculinity of Ziaur Rahman—were intertwined. These changes, I contend, are reflected in the transition in Joshim’s roles from the primarily villainous characters of his early films to an action hero from the 1980s onwards. The article examines Joshim’s role in the film Muhammad Ali (Motaleb Hossain, 1986b), as an example of a glocalised action film. Its sources include articles and letters printed in Purbani and Chitrali, the most widely read Bangladeshi film magazines of the 1970s and 1980s.

The Story of Sony v. Universal Studios: Mary Poppins Meets the Boston Strangler (2006)

This paper, published in 2006 as a chapter in Intellectual Property Stories, tells the story surrounding the Betamax case, in which the Supreme Court ruled that using a video cassette recorder to record broadcast television programs was fair use rather than copyright infringement. The chapter focuses on the Justices' deliberations as revealed by the papers of Justices Blackmun, Marshall, and Brennan, available in the Library of Congress Manuscript Reading Room.

Lobster trap video: in situ video surveillance of the behaviour of Homarus americanus in and around traps

A lobster-trap video (LTV) system was developed to determine how lobster traps fish for Homarus americanus and how behavioural interactions in and around traps influence catch. LTV consists of a low-light camera and time-lapse video cassette recorder (VCR) mounted to a standard trap with optional red LED arrays for night observations. This self-contained system is deployed like a standard lobster trap and can collect continuous video recordings for >24 h. Data are presented for 13 daytime deployments of LTV (114 h of observation) and 4 day and night deployments (89 h of observation) in a sandy habitat off the coast of New Hampshire, USA. Analyses of videotapes revealed that traps caught only 6% of the lobsters that entered while allowing 94% to escape. Of those that escaped, 72% left through the entrance and 28% through the escape vent. Lobsters entered the trap at similar rates during the day and night and in sandy and rocky habitats. Lobsters generally began to approach the trap very shortly after deployment, and many appeared to approach several times before entering. These data confirm the results of previous laboratory-based studies in demonstrating that behavioural interactions in and around traps strongly influence the ultimate catch.