Study of a Single Film: Todd Haynes' [SAFE] (1995)

Video Essay on Todd Haynes's [SAFE] (1995) by Amber Jacobs and Catherine Grant. You can read more about this work in 'Un[Contained]? On Todd Haynes's [SAFE]', Filmanalytical, June 17, 2013

Today, Film Studies For Free brings you one of its regular 'studies of a single film' entries. This one is dedicated to gathering direct links to freely accessible, high-quality studies of Todd Haynes's remarkable film [SAFE] (1995).

The resources are headed (above) by a new video by FSFF's author which was completely inspired by Amber Jacobs's magnificent commentary. This audiovisual essay foregrounds the film's treatment of mothering.

FSFF is also truly delighted and grateful to offer free access (below) to a wonderful, related excerpt from Rob White's recently published book on the cinema of Todd Haynes.

Below the embedded excerpt, readers can find FSFF's customary listing of open access resources on the featured film, and, below that, further offline, bibliographies related to this film.

Rob White on Todd Haynes' SAFE

Embedded excerpts from Rob White, ' The Misery the World Is Made Of: The Cinema of Todd Haynes', TODD HAYNES (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013). © 2013 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. Reproduced here at Film Studies For Free by kind permission of the author and University of Illinois Press. FSFF's thanks go to the author and publisher, and also to Steven Fast.

Notes on Contributors:

• Amber Jacobs works on feminist  theories and philosophies, film and visual culture, ancient Greek myth, tragedy and philosophy and post-Lacanian psychoanalytic theories. Her Book On Matricide: Myth, Psychoanalysis and the Law of the Mother came out in 2008 with Columbia University Press. She currently works as a lecturer in the department of psychosocial studies, Birkbeck, University of London.
• Rob White spent ten years as commissioning editor of BFI Publishing (and series editor of the Classics volumes) before becoming, in 2006, editor of Film Quarterly (until 2013). He has been a columnist for Sight and Sound and is author of The Third Man (BFI Film Classics, 2003) and Freud’s Memory: Psychoanalysis, Mourning and the Foreign Body (Palgrave, 2008). His book on Todd Haynes has been published in the University of Illinois Press series, Contemporary Film Directors.

Open Access Resources on [SAFE]

• Andrew Burke, '"Do You Smell Fumes?": Health, Hygiene, and Suburban Life', ESC: English Studies in Canada, 32.4, December 2006
• Rachel Carroll, 'Toxic shock: Gendered environments and embodied knowledge in Don DeLillo’s White Noise and Todd Haynes’s [Safe]', Transformations, Issue 14, March 2007 
• Çakirlar, Cüneyt, 'Cinephilic Bodies: Todd Haynes’ Cinema of Queer Pastiche', Kult 1.1 (2011): 162–200
• Anthony Enns], '"A Name in Search of a Disease": Illness and Identity in Todd Haynes' Safe', Reconstruction, 7.3, 2007
• John Gill, excerpt from Far From Heaven (London: Palgrave/BFI Film Classics: 2011)
• Ruth Goldberg, 'Every Breath You Take: Re-Evaluating Time, Place and Cultural Metaphor in Safe', Screen Memories of the Mad Monstrous '80s: Trauma and Political Allegory in Horror Films that Look Back at the Reagan Years, PhD Thesis, Union Institute and University Cincinatti, Ohio, October 2010 
• Catherine Grant, 'Un[Contained]? On Todd Haynes's [SAFE]', Filmanalytical, June 17, 2013
• Julie Grossman, 'The Trouble with Carol: The Costs of Feeling', Other Voices 2.3 January 2005
• Amber Jacobs and Rob White, 'Todd Haynes' Mildred Pierce: A Discussion', Film Quarterly, Feburary 2012
• Alexandra Juhasz, 'From the Scenes of Queens: Genre, AIDS and Queer Love,' originally published in The Cinema of Todd Haynes, ed. James Morrison (London:Wallflower Press, 2007) 
• Jeremy Justus, "What you are seeing outside is a reflection of what you are feeling within" space, ideology and biopolitics in Safe', AmericanPopularCulture.com, October 2007
• Rose Ellen Lessy, 'Feminist Treatment: Illness and Impasse in Todd Haynes’s Safe', Studies in Gender and Sexuality, 7(4):291–308, 2006 
• Jed Mayer, 'Raised in Fear: The Self-Help Horror of Todd Haynes’ SAFE', PressPlay, Indiewire, April 16, 2013 
• Joan Faber McAlister, 'Unsafe Houses: The Narrative Inversion of Suburban Morality in Popular Film', Liminalities, 4.1, 2008
• Alison McLean, 'Todd Haynes', BOMB 52/Summer 1995
• Martha Elisabeth Polk, 'What is Wrong With Carol? Narrative, Genre, Feminism, and Language in Todd Haynes’ Safe', MA dissertation, Emory University, 2013
• Susan Potter, 'Dangerous Spaces: SAFE', Camera Obscura, 57 (Volume 19, Number 3), 2004, pp. 124-154
• Anat Pick, '"No Callous Shell": The Fate of Selfhood from Walt Whitman to Todd Haynes', in James Morrison (ed.), The Cinema of Todd Haynes (London: Wallflower Press, 2007)
• Jason Qualls, 'Genuine Artifice, Serious Camp: The Women's Films of Todd Haynes', The McNair Scholarly Review, 2008 (scroll to p. 119)
• Steven Shaviro, 'Stranded in the Jungle [on SAFE], Interzones, October 1995
• Chuck Stephens, 'Gentlemen Prefer Haynes', Film Comment, Vol. 31, No. 4, July/August 1995 
• Nick Stevenson, 'What is Safe? Cultural Citizenship, Visual Culture and Risk', Sociological Research Online, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2005
• Amy Taubin, 'Nowhere to Hide', Sight and Sound 6:5 (May 1996) p. 32-34
• Keith Uhlich, 'Todd Haynes', Senses of Cinema, July 2002 
• Rob White, 'Todd Haynes’s Poison Reconsidered', Film Quarterly Fall 2011, Vol. 65, No. 1

Film Studies For Free entries on Todd Haynes

• On Todd Haynes: Happy Independence Day! July 4, 2010
• New Todd Haynes' Masterclass November 27, 2011
• Longtime Companion? HIV/AIDS in thirty years of cinema, media and culture December 1, 2011
• All That Film Pastiche Allows: Fifty+ Online Studies April 15, 2012

Other Resources Mentioned in the Video Essay Bibliography

• Danielle Bouchard and Jigna Desai, '"There's Nothing More Debilitating than Travel“: Locating US Empire in Todd Haynes' Safe', Quarterly Review of Film and Video 22(4), 2005: 359–370
• Laura Christian, 'Of Housewives and Saints: Abjection, Transgression, and Impossible Mourning in Poison and Safe', Camera Obscura (2004) 19(3 57): 93-123
• Glyn Davis], 'Health and Safety in the Home: Todd Haynes's clinical white world', in David Alderson and Linda R. Anderson (eds), Territories of Desire: Refiguring Contemporary Boundaries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000)
• Mary Ann Doane, 'Pathos and Pathology: The Cinema of Todd Haynes', Camera Obscura (2004) 19(3 57): 1-21
• Roy Grundmann, 'How Clean Was My Valley? Todd Haynes' Safe', Cineaste 21:4, 1995: 22-5
• Lisa Lynch, 'The Epidemiology of "Regrettable Kinship": Gender, Epidemic, and Community in Todd Haynes' [Safe] and Richard Powers' Gain', Journal of Medical Humanities vol. 23, nos. 3-4 (Winter, 2002): 203-19
• José Esteban Muñoz, 'Notes on the Whiteness of New Queer Cinema: Safe', GLQ (1998) 4:1: 126-37
• Gaye Naismith, 'Tales from the Crypt: Contamination and Quarantine in Todd Haynes's [Safe],' In P. Treichler, L. Cartwright, & C. Penley (eds), The Visible Woman: Imagine Technologies, Gender and Science (New York: New York University Press, 1998)
• Roddey Reid, 'Un[Safe] at Any Distance: Todd Haynes's Visual Culture of Health and Risk', Film Quarterly (Spring, 1998): 32-44
• John David Rhodes, 'Allegory, mise-en-scène, AIDS: interpreting Safe', in James Morrison (ed.), The Cinema of Todd Haynes (London: Wallflower Press, 2007)
• Rob White, Todd Haynes (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2013) online excerpt

Further Offline Resources

• Andrew Burke, '"Do you smell fumes?": Health, Hygiene, and Suburban Life', English Studies in Canada, Winter 2006, Vol. 32 Issue 4, pp. 147-168
• Matthew Gandy, 'Allergy and Allegory in Todd Haynes' [Safe]', In: Screening the city edited by Mark Shiel and Tony Fitzmaurice (London and New York: Verso, 2003)
• Todd Haynes, Julianne Moore and Christine Vachon, '"...and all is well in our world" - making Safe', In: Film-makers on film-making edited by John Boorman and Walter Donohue (London: Faber and Faber, 1996)
• Susan Kollin, 'Toxic Subjectivity: Gender and the Ecologies of Whiteness in Todd Haynes's Safe', Isle: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 121-39, Winter 2002
• Christopher McQuain, 'Safe Man: Are Todd Haynes' Films Gay Enough?', Film Journal, vol. 1, no. 3, 2002
• Arij Ouweneel, 'Carol's Predicament" The Body in [Safe] (1995) and Jennifer's Body (2009)', Freudian Fadeout: The Failings of Psychoanalysis in Film Criticism (London: McFarland, 2012)
• Dorian Stuber, 'Patient Zero? Illness and Vulnerability in Todd Haynes's [Safe]." Parallax Volume 11, Number 2 / April-June 2005  

  

Front cover of Rob White, Todd Haynes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2013).

 

10th Anniversary Issue of PARTICIPATIONS on Fan Studies, and Audience Interaction and Participation

Screenshot extract from 'Ten years old - and ready to try new things, an editorial by Martin Barker and Sue Turnbull in the the tenth anniversary issue of Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception  Studies

Film Studies For Free today wishes a very happy 10th year in online existence to the remarkable open access venture that is Participations. What a great achievement! The journal is stronger and more impressive than ever, as the below, very high quality (and enormous), latest issue -- on fan studies, and audience interaction and participation -- testifies

FSFF somewhat cheekily embeds the above screenshot from the opening part of this issue's editorial, for its readers, as in it joint editors Martin Barker and Sue Turnbull raise some important matters concerning the long term viability and success of a journal like this. The editors are choosing to respond to these by 'recasting the journal' in a number of interesting ways - you can read about these at greater length here.

If you are working in this area, now would be a really good time to consider what you would want from Participations in the years ahead. Feel free to post comments here, or contact the editors here.

Here's to the next ten years, Participations! And thank you.


Participations, Volume 10, Issue 1, (May 2013)

• Editorial by Martin Barker and Sue Turnbull (Joint Editors): 'Ten years old - and ready to try new things

Articles

• Bradby, Barbara: 'Our affair with Mila Kunis: A group ethnography of cinema-going and the 'male gaze'’ Haslop, Craig: '"I certainly wouldn't want to be portrayed as a boring straight person": Torchwood, meaning-making and the performance of gender and sexual identities'

Special Section: The Fan Studies Network - new connections, new research

• Bennett, Lucy & Tom Phillips: 'An introduction: The Fan Studies Network - new connections, new research'
• Booth, Paul & Peter Kelly: 'The changing faces of Doctor Who fandom: New fans, new technologies, old practices?'
• Busse, Kristina: 'Geek hierarchies, boundary policing, and the gendering of the good fan'
• Chin, Bertha & Lori Hitchcock Morimoto: 'Towards a theory of transcultural fandom'
• Ellison, Hannah: 'Submissives, Nekos and Futanaris: a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the Glee Kink Meme'
• Hills, Matt: 'Fiske's 'textual productivity' and digital fandom: Web 2.0 democratization versus fan distinction?'
• Lamerichs, Nicolle: 'The cultural dynamic of doujinshi and cosplay: Local anime fandom in Japan, USA and Europe'
• Pett, Emma: '"Hey! Hey! I've seen this one, I've seen this one. It's a classic!": Nostalgia, repeat viewing and cult performance in Back to the Future'
• Proctor, William: '"Holy crap, more Star Wars! More Star Wars? What if they're crap?": Disney, Lucasfilm and Star Wars online fandom in the 21st century'
• Sandvoss, Cornel: 'Toward an understanding of political enthusiasm as media fandom: Blogging, fan productivity and affect in American politics'
• Whiteman, Natasha, Joanne Metivier: 'From post-object to "Zombie" fandoms: The "deaths" of online fan communities and what they say about us'

FSN Forum Discussion

• Bury, Rhiannon, Ruth Deller, Adam Greenwood & Bethan Jones: 'From Usenet to Tumblr: The changing role of social media'
• McCulloch, Richard, Virginia Crisp, Jon Hickman & Stephanie Janes: 'Of proprietors and poachers: Fandom as negotiated brand ownership'
• Freund, Katharina & Dianna Fielding: 'Research ethics in fan studies'
• Jones, Bethan & Lucy Bennett: 'Blurring boundaries, crossing divides: An interview with Will Brooker'
• Lozano Delmar, Javier, Victor Hernández-Santaolalla & Marina Ramos: 'Fandom generated content: An approach to the concept of 'fanadvertising''
• Sturm, Damion & Andrew McKinney: 'Affective hyper-consumption and immaterial labors of love: Theorizing sport fandom in the age of new media'

Special Section: COST - audience interaction & participation

• Damásio, Manuel José, Mélanie Bourdaa, Bozena I. Mierzejewska, Ana Milojević, José Manuel Noguera, Birgit Stark, Lucia Vesnić-Alujević & Igor Vobič: 'Editors' introduction: Stakeholder essays on audience interaction and participation'
• Stark, Birgit & Andy Kaltenbrunner: 'There is no such thing as a 'convergence continuum' aiming towards the perfect solution'
• Stark, Birgit & Ina von Holly: 'Social media is not a threat but a reward for companies!'
• Haas, Josefa: 'New tools and scenes for the media play'
• Nyirő, Nóra & Agnes Urban: 'Effects of audience participation in CSO communication'
• Marmino, Michele, Mario Petitto & Andrea Pinchera: 'CSOs' communication strategies and audience participation'
• Joye, Stijn & Philippe Henon: 'Activating the audience in times of compassion fatigue'
• Vozab, Dina, Eugen Jakovčić & Saša Šegrt: 'Croatian civil society and media from the perspective of two civil society organisations'
• Harrison, Teresa: 'The "audience" as participative, idea generating, decision making citizens: will they transform government?'
• Dahlgren, Peter: 'From public to civic intellectuals via online cultures'
• Harrington, Stephen, Tim Highfield & Axel Bruns: 'More than a backchannel: Twitter and television'
• García de Torres, Elvira: 'Audience territory'
• Scolari, Carlos: 'Lost in the borderlines between user-generated content and the cultural industry'
• Zamora, Rocío & Wayne Wanta: 'The influence of a mediating source – my friend – is now spreading the influence to others who may not have seen the news reports'
• Vobič, Igor: 'Rethinking social life of radio news: Slovenian public radio journalists' perceptions of audience interactivity'
• Krstić, Aleksandra: 'When the audience changes a journalist'
• Torres da Silva, Marisa: 'Professional views' on letters-to-the-editor as a means of audience participation'
• Vesnić-Alujević, Lucia: 'Online strategies of members of the European parliament'
• Hänska-Ahy, Maximillian, Claire Wardle & Malachy Browne: 'Social media & journalism: Reporting the world through user generated content'
• Milojević, Ana, Jelena Kleut & James Ball: 'Conversational style of journalism'
• Milojević, Ana & Steve Herrmannl: 'Journalism taking up a curatorial role'
• Maretić, Meri & Ante Babić: 'New political communication'
• Buchanan, Margot & Fiona Hyslop: 'Transforming audiences, transforming audience expectations?'
• Gallego, Manuel Javier Callejo & Convadonga Fernández: 'Producing information, producing and monitoring communication'

Reviews

• Benwell, Bethan, James Procter and Gemma Robinson (eds.): 'Postcolonial Audiences: Readers, Viewers and Reception’ (Reviewed by Pinar Sadar)
• Jacobs, Katrien: 'People's Pornography: Sex and Surveillance on the Chinese Internet’ (Reviewed by Giovanna Maina)
• Lang, Anouk (ed.): 'From Codex to Hypertext: Reading at the turn of the twenty-first century’ (Reviewed by Julian McDougall)
• Rudolph, Jennifer Domino: 'Embodying Latino Masculinities: Producing Masculatinidad’ (Reviewed by Victoria Kearley)

CINEPHILE 8.1 on the Voice-Over in Cinema

Frame grab from Borom Sarret/The Wagoner (Ousmane Sembène,1963). Read Alexander Fisher's article on Sembène's use of voice-over in this film in the latest issue of Cinephile

While it is true that film has been historically considered an image-centred medium, the fact that hearing plays as much a role in perceiving the motion picture as seeing does, transcends it beyond a mere visual art. Furthermore, as noted sound theorist Michel Chion asserts in The Voice in Cinema, “the presence of a human voice structures the sonic space that contains it.” Therefore, studying parts of the cinema in which the voice gains particular significance is not only justified, but necessary. This issue of Cinephile revolves around diverse applications and functions of the voices in fiction films, whose sources are absent from the image frame.

Theoretical approaches to the filmic voice were only developed in the 1980s, and as the works cited in the articles here indicate, at least in the case of off-screen voices and voice-over, they have not been properly updated. One goal of this collection has been to explore various demonstrations of voice-over both in a more contemporary scope and on a more international scale. The main concern of each of the following five articles is the voice-over, showing how concentrating on this under-appreciated technique can lead to bigger conclusions about films and filmmakers. [Editorial Introduction, Cinephile, 8.1, 2013]

Today, Film Studies For Free hails the online publication (earlier this year) of volume 8.1 of Cinephile, the University of British Columbia's on and offline film journal. The special topic on this occasion is the cinematic voice-over and there are marvellous essays on it by Sarah Kozloff (author of the classic studies of VOs and film sound Invisible Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film [1988] and Overhearing Film Dialogue [2000]), Stephen Teo, Carl Laamanen, Laura Beadling and Alexander Fisher.

You can download a large PDF of this beautifully illustrated issue from this webpage. The featured contents are as follows

• 'About a Clueless Boy and Girl: Voice-Over in Romantic Comedy Today' by Sarah Kozloff
• 'What Does God Hear? Terrence Malick, Voice-Over, and The Tree of Life' by Carl Laamanen
• 'Native American Filmmakers Reclaiming Voices: Innovative Voice-Overs in Chris Eyre’s Skins' by Laura Beadling
• 'The Voice-Over as an Integrating Tool of Word and Image' by Stephen Teo
• 'Voice-Over, Narrative Agency, and Oral Culture: Ousmane Sembène’s Borom Sarret' by Alexander Fisher

The Cine-Files' special issue on mise-en-scene: Laura Mulvey, Kristin Thompson, V.F. Perkins, Lesley Stern, Adrian Martin, Christian Keathley, Jean Ma, Girish Shambu, John Gibbs and Jesse Green

Scene from the Iranian film Zir-e poost-e shahr/Under the Skin of the City (Rakhshan Bani-E'temad, 2001). Read a study of this film by Laura Mulvey in the new issue of The Cine-Files. Professor Mulvey has recently launched the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image (BIMI) which organises London-based film studies events, many of them with free entry and recorded for global online access. Upcoming BIMI events include some excellent ones on 3D. 

Film Studies For Free was thrilled to learn of the publication of Issue 4 of The Cine-Files. It, in turn, is delighted to feature ten guest scholars (ranging from the top notch to the legendary!) who offer either analysis of a cinematic “moment” or responses to questions about mise-en-scène and the significance of “close reading.” There are two further excellent articles in the issue by Warwick Mules and Mark Balderston. Thank you to The Cine-Files!

Guest contributions: 

• John Gibbs: “Close Reading: The Cry of the Owl” and Interview
• Jesse Green: “Putting Film in its Place”
• Christian Keathley: “The Man in the Back Seat”
• Jean Ma: “Close Reading: The Mise-en-scène of Song Performance”
• Adrian Martin: “Hands Across the Table”
• Laura Mulvey: “Between Melodrama and Realism: Under the Skin of the City (2001)”
• V.F. Perkins: “Acting on Objects”
• Girish Shambu: Interview
• Lesley Stern: “Writing/Images”
• Kristin Thompson: Interview

Features:

• 'Mise-en-scène and the Figural: A Reading of Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life' by Warwick Mules
• “You’ll Get Your Big Trip”: Acousmatic Music, The Voice, and the Mirror Stage in Enter the Void by Mark Balderston

NECSUS #3 The GREEN Issue

Frame grab from Shrek 2 (Andrew Adamson, Kelly Asbury and Conrad Vernon, 2004). Read Brady Hammond's article in the new issue of NECSUS, which explores 'green skin' in contemporary Hollywood cinema

Things have been a little busy in Film Studies For Free's offline universe and so rather quiet in its online one. But it's back with an ecologically sound bang, in the form of some updates about excellent, recent, open access journal issues.

First up is Issue 3 of NECSUS, the European Journal of Media Studies. Its last issue touched on 'Tangibility’. This time round its focus is on ‘"Greenness" in a broader pallet of media-related issues, from sustainable media production to the use of the colour green in a variety of films.'


NECSUS #3_Spring 2013_’Green’

• Editorial Necsus

Articles:

• Anecdotal evidence by Sean Cubitt
• Still TV: On the resilience on an old medium by Alexander Dhoest and Nele Simons
• Nenette: Film theory, animals, and boredom by Barbara Creed
• Advertisarial relations and aesthetics of survival: Advertising –> advertisign by Jonathan Beller

Special Section: Green

• Greening media studies: An interview with Richard Maxwell and Toby Miller by Jaap Kooijman
• ‘Global warming is not a crisis!’: Studying climate change skepticism on the web by Sabine Niederer
• Painting the town green: From urban teleology to urban ecology in New York cinema, 1960-present by Brady Fletcher and Cortland Rankin
• A filmic exploration by means of botanical imagery: Notes on Rose Lowder by Enrico Camporesi
• Dialectical modes of nature in Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line by Tyson Wils
• Her green materials: Mourning, Melancholia, and not-so-vital materialisms by Catherine Lord
• Disharmonious designs: Colour contrast and curiosity in Jane Campion’s In the Cut by Liz Watkins
• Greenface: Exploring green skin in contemporary Hollywood cinema by Brady Hammond
• Scalar entanglement in digital media ecologies by Sy Taffel

Book Reviews:

edited by the NECS Publication Committee

• Subjectivity and ostrannenie: Key debates in European film studies review by Pietro Bianchi
• Screen dynamics: Mapping the borders of cinema review by Lavinia Brydon
• Branding television review by Alison Payne

Festival Reviews:

edited by Marijke de Valck and Skadi Loist of the Film Festival Research Network

• Go east by southeast: 13th Festival of Central and Eastern European Film Wiesbaden review by Greg de Cuir, Jr
• From Chernobyl to Fukushima: The Uranium Film Festival review by Courtney Sheehan
• Indigenous film festival as eco-testimonial encounter: The 2011 Native Film + Video Festival review by Salma Monani

Exhibition + Website + Conference Reviews:

• Discovering repetition review by Francesco Pitassio
• Playing with digital byproduct data: An indictive example review by David Beer
• Screen industries in East-Central Europe: Cultural policies and political culture review by Olof Hedling