Longtime Companion? HIV/AIDS in thirty years of cinema, media and culture

Images from two 'AIDS film dramas': above, Longtime Companion (Norman René, 1989), a film which, as Emmanuel Levy puts it, carried "the burden of being the first [widely distributed] theatrical movie to deal directly with AIDS"; below, a frame grab from Yesterday (Darrell Roodt, 2004), about a Zulu woman living with AIDS. Read Jean Stuart's and Olaia Cores Calvo's articles on this film.

It was [30] years ago, in the summer of 1981, when society as a whole[, including] the scientific community[,] was faced with an unknown disease that came later to be known as Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Several films [...] reflected the initial fears and uncertainty, the responses of the different social groups, the fight against ignorance, the [demand for] access to treatment and the suffering of the infected individuals and their families [...] due to this disease. Taking into account that these movies were filmed when these epidemics took place they can actually be considered as [...] historical documents that deserve [to be] analysed by the generations to come. Films such as And The Band Played On; Longtime Companion; Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt; Les Nuits Fauves; Angels in America; Yesterday and My Brother... Nikhil have marked [30] years of AIDS history that should not be forgotten by the world. [Adapted from António Pais de Lacerda, 'Cinema as an Historical Document: AIDS in 25 years of Cinema', Journal of Medicine and Movies, 2 (2006): 102-113; hyperlinks added by FSFF]

Film Studies For Free today commemorates the twenty-third World AIDS Day in the thirtieth year since the identification of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, or AIDS. The Human immunodeficiency virus [HIV], the lentivirus which causes the syndrome, was identified two years later, in 1983.

FSFF marks this anniversary year with the below entry of links to scholarly resources on the figuration of AIDS/HIV in cinema and culture.

Today's posting was also inspired by a series of film screenings and discussions on 'AIDS and its Melodramas' that have been taking place at the University of Sussex, UK, organised by Michael Lawrence and John David Rhodes. These academic events will continue next term with screenings of Fatal Love (1991), And the Band Played On (1993), Philadelphia (1993) and, one of FSFF's favourites,  Boys on the Side (1995). Please email FSFF if you'd like more details.

• ACT UP NY Webcasts
• Elana D. Anderson, 'Yesterday, Today, And Tomorrow: Socio-Cultural Evolution In African Literature and Film', Mosaic African Studies, 2010 
• Carole Blair and Neil Michel, 'The AIDS Memorial Quilt and the Contemporary Culture of Public Commemoration', Rhetoric and Public Affairs Vol. 10, No. 4, 2007, pp. 595–626
• Martin P. Botha, 'Post-Apartheid Cinema: A Thematic and Aesthetic Explorations of Selected Short and Feature Films', Ilha do Desterro, Florianópolis, nº 61 p. 225- 267 jul/dez 2011
• Cüneyt Çakirlar, 'Cinephilic Bodies: Todd Haynes's Cinema of Queer Pastiche', KÜLT: A Journal of Cultural Studies 1:1, April 2011
• Jean Carlomusto and Jane Rosett, 'AIDS: A LIVING ARCHIVE™', SandF Online, 2.1, Summer 2003
• Olaia Cores Calvo, 'Yesterday (2004)', Journal of Medicine and Movies, 5.4 (2009):125-130
• David Campbell, The Visual Economy of HIV/AIDS: A report for the AIDS, Security and Conflict Initiative, May 2008 
• Brendan Curran, Singin’ in the Scourge: Two AIDS Musicals, Two Political and Cultural Contexts, MA Thesis, Concordia University, April 2011
• Juan Luis Cuesta Jiménez, 'The Constant Gardener or the development of new Therapies', Journal of Medicine and Movies, 2.3 (2006): 96-101 
• Ann Cvetkovich, 'AIDS Activism and the Oral History Archive', SandF Online, Summer 2.1, Summer 2003
• Anthony Enns, '"A Name in Search of a Disease": Illness and Identity in Todd Haynes' Safe', Reconstruction,7.3, 2007
• Kyle Frackman, 'Out of Time: "Allotemporality" in Pierre Sanoussi-Bliss’ Zurück auf los', queere (t)ex(t)perimente. Eds. Franziska Bergmann, Jennifer Moos, and Claudia Münzing. Freiburg: fwpf-Verlag, 2008
• J.E. García Sánchez, E. García Sánchez and M.L. Merino Marcos, 'Antiviral, antifungal and antiprotozoal agents in the cinema', Revista Española de Quimioterapia, Marzo 2007; Vol. 20 (No 1): 106-111
• Silvia Grassi, 'Like a Carsic River: Gay Independent Cinema from Underground Films to New Queer Cinema and Beyond', Altre modernità/ Otras modernidades/ Autres modernités/ Other Modernities, N. 2 – 10/2009
• Oliver Gruner, Public Politics/Personal Authenticity: A Tale of Two Sixties in Hollywood Cinema, 1986-1994, PhD Thesis, University of East Anglia, August, 2010
• Roger Hallas, 'The Witness in the Archive', SandF Online, 2.1, Summer 2003
• Lucas Hilderbrand, 'Retroactivism', glq, 12.2, 2006
• Jim Hubbard, 'A Report on the Archiving of Film and Video Work by Makers with AIDS', DIVA TV, [date unknown]
• Alexandra Juhasz, 'AIDS Video: To Dream and Dance with the Censor', Jump Cut, No. 52, summer 2010
• Alexandra Juhasz in exchange with Antoinette Burton, 'Feminist history making and Video Remains', Jump Cut, No. 48, winter 2006
• Alexandra Juhasz, 'Alternative AIDS Videos', Cineaste, vol.XXI, nos. 1-2, 1994/5
• Alexandra Juhasz, 'Interview with Jim Hubbard and Sarah Schulman: ACT UP Oral History Project', CORPUS, Spring 2006
• 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)
• Dion Kagan, '[Review of] Roger Hallas, Reframing Bodies: AIDS, Bearing Witness, and the Queer Moving Image. Duke University Press, 2009', Screening the Past, 28, 2010
• Tim Lawrence, ‘AIDS, the Problem of Representation, and Plurality in Derek Jarman's Blue’ Social Text, 52/53 (Autumn - Winter 1997): 241-264
• Timothy F. Murphy, 'Part One: The Meaning of AIDS', Ethics in an Epidemic: AIDS, Morality, and Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994)
• Christo Oberholzer, An Investigation Into Nationalism and National Allegory within South African Post-Apartheid Film, MA Thesis, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2006
• António Pais de Lacerda, 'Cinema as an Historical Document: AIDS in 25 years of Cinema', Journal of Medicine and Movies, 2 (2006): 102-113
• Georgios Pappas, Savvas Seitaridis, Nikolaos Akritidis, and Epaminondas Tsianos, 'Infectious Diseases in Cinema: Virus Hunters and Killer Microbes', Clinical Infectious Diseases,
• Volume 37, Issue 7, 2003: 939-942
• Monica B. Pearl, 'The City of Brotherly Love: Sex, Race and AIDS in Philadelphia', EnterText 2.3, Summer 2003
• Monica B. Pearl, 'American Grief: The AIDS Quilt and Texts of Witness', Gramma, 08
• Lucia Pérez Ochoa López, 'Philadelphia (1993): View of AIDS when it began to be a treatable disease', Journal of Medicine and Movies, 2 (2006): 21-28
• Jean Stuart, 'Yesterday, today … and tomorrow: The future of girlhood in the age of AIDS', AGENDA 79 2009
• Marita Sturken, 'The Politics of Video Memory: Electronic Erasures and Inscriptions', in Contemporary Video Practices, ed. Michael Renov, 1996
• Nicoletta Vallorani, 'Path(o)s of Mourning. Memory, Death and the Invisible Body in Derek Jarman’s Blue', Altre modernità/ Otras modernidades/ Autres modernités/ Other Modernities, N. 4 – 10/2010

Free Sample Chapters from 50+ New Palgrave Macmillan/BFI Film and TV Books

Professor Jon Lewis of Oregon State University on his BFI Film Classics book on The Godfather (Francis Ford Coppola, 1972). See the 41 page sample from this book linked to below.

Once again, Film Studies For Free celebrates the fabulous, free, Film and Television Studies book samples available for perusal and download at the Palgrave Macmillan website. 

These are not properly Open Access works, but this blog chooses not to be purist when there are some amazingly generous PDF excerpts -- from soon-to-be as well as recently published works -- available online by scholars of the renown of those listed below. Thanks to the British Film Institute and Palgrave Macmillan! For an earlier list of great, free Palgrave Macmillan/BFI excerpts linked to at FSFF, click here.

• Mark Aldridge, The Birth of British Television: A History and 27 sample pages
• Shakuntala Banaji, Reading 'Bollywood': The Young Audience and Hindi Films and 30 sample pages
• Craig Batty, Movies That Move Us: Screenwriting and the Power of the Protagonist's Journey and 27 sample pages
• Lucy Bolton, Film and Female Consciousness: Irigaray, Cinema and Thinking Women and 16 sample pages
• Matthew Boswell, Holocaust Impiety in Literature, Popular Music and Film and 41 sample pages
• Mark Thornton Burnett and Adrian Streete (eds), Filming and Performing Renaissance History and 29 sample pages
• Havi Carel and Greg Tuck (eds), New Takes in Film-Philosophy and 12 sample pages
• Bryony Dixon, 100 Silent Films and 71 sample pages
• Christine Etherington-Wright and Ruth Doughty, Understanding Film Theory and 32 sample pages 
• Paul Frosh and Amit Pinchevski (eds), Media Witnessing: Testimony in the Age of Mass Communication and 44 sample pages
• Vincent M. Gaine, Existentialism and Social Engagement in the Films of Michael Mann and 19 sample pages
• Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Empire and Film and 32 sample pages  
• Lee Grieveson and Colin MacCabe (eds), Film and the End of Empire and 25 sample pages
• Asbjørn Grønstad, Screening the Unwatchable: Spaces of Negation in Post-Millennial Art Cinema and 25 sample pages
• Michael Hammond and Michael Williams (eds), British Silent Cinema and the Great War and 24 sample pages
• John Hill, Ken Loach: The Politics of Film and Television and 30 sample pages  
• Jim Hillier and Doug Pye, 100 Film Musicals and 34 sample pages
• Matthew Kerry, The Holiday and British Film and 26 sample pages 
• Elspeth Kydd, The Critical Practice of Film: An Introduction and 31 sample pages
• Neal King, The Passion of the Christ (Controversies series) and 30 sample pages
• Peter Krämer, A Clockwork Orange (Controversies series) and 34 sample pages
• Vivian P.Y. Lee (ed.), East Asian Cinemas: Regional Flows and Global Transformations and 19 sample pages
• Song Hwee Lim and Julian Ward (eds), The Chinese Cinema Book and 21 sample pages
• Fran Mason, Hollywood Detectives: Crime Series in the 1930s and 1940s from the Whodunnit to Hard-boiled Noir and 36 sample pages
• Ernest Mathijs and Xavier Mendik, 100 Cult Films and 37 sample pages
• Ewa Mazierska, European Cinema and Intertextuality: History, Memory and Politics and 34 sample pages
• Kristi McKim, Love in the Time of Cinema and 37 sample pages
• Steven Peacock, Hollywood and Intimacy and 28 sample pages
• Laura Rascaroli and John David Rhodes (eds), Antonioni: Centenary Essays and 27 sample pages
• Sue Short, Cyborg Cinema and 24 sample pages 
• Stevie Simkin, Straw Dogs (Controversies series) and 58 sample pages
• Beverley Skeggs and Helen Wood (eds),  Reality Television and Class and 37 sample pages
• J.E. Smyth (ed.), Hollywood and the American Historical Film and 19 sample pages

BFI Film Classics: 

• Michael Berry, Jia Zhangke's 'Hometown Trilogy': Xiao Wu, Platform, Unknown Pleasures and 12 sample pages
• Will Brooker, Star Wars and 12 sample pages
• John Coldstream, Victim and 12 sample pages 
• John Gill, Far From Heaven and 17 sample pages
• Barry Keith Grant, Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and 8 sample pages
• Amelie Hastie, The Bigamist and 6 sample pages 
• Noah Isenberg, Detour and 14 sample pages
• Julian Jackson, La Grande Illusion and 7 sample pages
• Sarah Kozloff, The Best Years of Our Lives and 18 sample pages
• Peter Krämer, 2001: A Space Odyssey and 6 sample pages
• Jon Lewis, The Godfather and 41 sample pages
• James Naremore, Sweet Smell of Success and 11 sample pages
• John David Rhodes, Meshes of the Afternoon and 5 sample pages
• Amy Sargeant, The Servant and 10 sample pages
• Andrew Shail and Robin Stoate, Back to the Future and 18 sample pages 
• Melvyn Stokes, Gilda and 10 sample pages
• Matthew Tinkcom, Grey Gardens and 22 sample pages
• Catherine Wheatley, Caché (Hidden) and 22 sample pages

"Pity we aren't madder": Ken Russell links in his magnificent memory

"I think we've all gone mad" [Jennie Linden as Ursula Brangwen]

"Pity we aren't madder" [Alan Bates as Rupert Birkin] 

 Scene from Women in Love (Ken Russell, 1969)

An extract from one of Ken Russell's very first films, Amelia and the Angel (1958) 

Film Studies For Free was saddened to hear of the death yesterday of the magnificent filmmaker Ken Russell. A monumental passing. But what a cinematic life he lived!

Russell's weirdly, viscerally, brilliant Altered States (1980) was one of the first films genuinely to whet FSFF's author's off-beat cinematic appetite, and his adaptation of Women in Love (excerpted above) and his portraits of Elgar (1962), Delius (1968) and Mahler (1974) are several of her favourite British films.

Below, FSFF has gathered some links to online scholarly studies of Russell's work, and to related  resources. Readers should also check out David Hudson's essential collection of tributes to, and other material about, the British filmmaker for the Mubi Notebook here.

• Ken Russell at the British Film Institute's Screenonline
• Savage Messiah – a Ken Russell site by Iain Fisher 

• Complete Filmography and bibliography: Tarek Krohn and Hans J. Wulff (eds), Medienwissenschaft / Hamburg: Berichte und Papiere 110 / 2010: Ken Russell (Hamburg: Hamburg University, 2010
  

• German language book on music in Ken Russell's films: Kieler Beiträge zur Filmmusikforschung, 7, 2011: Musik bei Ken Russell // 3- edited by Frédéric Döhl, Albrecht Riethmüller and Hans Jürgen Wulff

• Michael Adams, 'Ken Russell: Musical Mythmaker', Notes, 66 (September 2009): 143-163
• E. Anna Claydon, 'Masculinity and deviance in British cinema of the 1970s: Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n'Roll in The Wicker Man, Tommy and The Rocky Horror Picture Show', in Newland, P. (ed) Don't Look Now? British Cinema in the 1970s, (Intellect Ltd 2010) pp. 131-142
• Adrian Garvey, 'The Boy Friend', The 1970s Project Conference, 2008
• Sergio Lopez Figueroa, 'The anachronism in film music: a brief introduction on the music for “The Devils” (1971)', 1995
• Barry Keith Grant, 'A British Picture: Portrait of an Enfant Terrible, UK, 1989: Ken Russell', in Grant and Jim Hillier, 100 Documentary Films (London: BFI/Palgrave, 2009) 
• Chris Martin, 'Music in British Films in the 1970s: New Directions', The 1970s Project Conference, 2008 
• John Kenneth Muir, 'On Ken Russell, and Re-Viewing England’s Last Mannerist', JKM, October 10, 2009 
• Donald Phelps, 'Ken Russell's Portraits of Elgar, Delius and Mahler', Rouge, 8, 2006
• David Pomeroy, 'Films: Experiencing Tommy', Theology Today, Vol. 32, No. 3, 1975
• John A. Riley, '[Review of] Kevin M. Flanagan (ed.), Ken Russell: Re-Viewing England's Last Mannerist (London, Toronto and Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, 2009)', Journal of British Cinema and Television, Vol. 7, April 2010
• Donato Totaro and Peter Rist, 'An Interview With Ken Russell and Lisi Tribble~ Rock n' Roller at Heart', Offscreen Journal, April 30, 2011
• Linda Ruth Williams, 'Ken Russell: Sweet Swell Of Excess', Sight and Sound, July 2007
  

Barry Keith Grant, 'The Body Politic: Ken Russell in the 1980s', in Lester D. Friedman (ed.) Fires were started: British cinema and Thatcherism (London: Wallflower Press, 2006)

Kevin M. Flanagan (ed.), Ken Russell: Re-Viewing England's last mannerist (London: Scarecrow Press, 2009)

New Todd Haynes' Masterclass

Todd Haynes' masterclass given on November 12, 2011, on the occasion of a retrospective of his films at the XIIth Queer Film Festival MEZIPATRA in Prague. Coproduced by MEZIPATRA, MIDPOINT and FAMU. Todd Haynes speaks about all his films with the Variety critic Boyd Van Hoeij.

Film Studies For Free heard about the above, enjoyable and hugely insightful video thanks to San Francisco based film critic Michael Guillén.

FSFF has a longstanding soft spot for Haynes, a great filmmaker whose work has a compelling relationship with film theory, as well as with Film Studies as a discipline, as the above video indicates time and again.

Interested readers can find earlier FSFF entries on Haynes (with links to lots of online studies of his works) here and here, and also on queer film theory here.

Film and Television Studies Theses from the University of East Anglia

Image from Dirty Dancing (Emile Ardolino, 1987). You can read about this film in '“There are a lot of things about me that aren’t what you thought”: Dirty Dancing and Women’s Liberation', Chapter Two in Oliver Gruner's 2010 PhD thesis: Public politics/personal authenticity: a tale of two sixties in Hollywood cinema, 1986-1994

A quickie entry from Film Studies For Free today: a list of links to eight, excellent quality, PhD theses in film and television studies (plus a related journal article) from the University of East Anglia Digital Repository.

These links have been added to FSFF's permanent listing of links to openly accessible, English-language, online film and moving studies PhD and MPhil from repositories all over the world. The list now exceeds 200 items.

PhD Theses:

• Fitzgerald, Louise, Negotiating lone motherhood : gender, politics and family values in contemporary popular cinema, PhD Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2009
• Ganjaei, Sara, Representations of Iran in British documentary, 1920s–2006, PhD Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2010
• Godfrey, Sarah, Nowhere Men: Representations of Masculinity in Nineties British Cinema, PhD Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2010
• Gruner, Oliver, Public politics/personal authenticity: a tale of two sixties in Hollywood cinema, 1986-1994, PhD Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2010
• Horvath, Gyongyver, From Sequence to Scenario : The Historiography and Theory of Visual Narration, PhD Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2010
• Johnston, Derek, Genre, taste and the BBC : the origins of British television science fiction, PhD Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2009
• Moses, Antoinette, Constructing the real: an examination of authorship and ownership in contemporary verbatim theatre, PhD Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2009
• Warner, Helen, ‘Perfect Fit’: Industrial Strategies, Textual Negotiations and Celebrity Culture in Fashion Television, PhD Thesis, University of East Anglia, 2010

Other items:

• Snelson, Tim (2009) 'From grade B thrillers to deluxe chillers': prestige horror, female audiences, and allegories of spectatorship in The Spiral Staircase (1946). New Review of Film and Television Studies, 7

International cinema, comedy, and online film and media practices: audience research at PARTICIPATIONS

Frame grab from A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971). You can read about audience responses to this film in Peter Krämer's excellent article '‘Movies that make people sick’: Audience Responses to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in 1971/72'

Film Studies For Free takes to the blogwaves today to shout out about a truly excellent issue of the Open Access, and openly refereed, international audience research journal Participations.

It's a bumper issue with 27 articles - an advantage of an online journal format over its offline, paper-bound relatives, as editor Martin Barker outlines in his interesting introduction to this issue.

FSFF particularly appreciated the section on international film audiences, and also especially enjoyed Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore's study 'Reviewing Romcom: (100) IMDb Users and (500) Days of Summer' and also Anne Collins Smith and Owen M. Smith's article on 'Pragmatism and Meaning: Assessing the Message of Star Trek: The Original Series'.

Special Edition Contents

Editorial

• Martin Barker (Joint Editor): 'Editorial Introduction: A Small Diatribe, and a Serious Challenge to Other Journals'

Articles

• Adrian Athique: 'Diasporic Audiences and Non-Resident Media: The Cast of Indian Films' 
• Pietari Kääpä and Guan Wenbo: 'Santa Claus in China and Wu xia in Finland: Translocal reception of transnational cinema in Finnish and Chinese film cultures' 
• Tonny Krijnen: 'Engaging the Moral Imagination by Watching Television: Different Modes of Moral Reflection' 
• Kim Trager Bohley: '“Browsing Madness” and Global Sponsors of Literacy: The Politics and Discourse of Deterritorialized Reading Practices and Space in Singapore' 
• Anne Collins Smith and Owen M. Smith: 'Pragmatism and Meaning: Assessing the Message of Star Trek: The Original Series' :

Special Section: Comedy Audiences

• Sam Friedman, Brett Mills and Tom Phillips (Guest Editors - Special Section): 'Editorial Introduction' 
• Lesley Harbidge: 'Audienceship and (Non)Laughter in the Stand-up Comedy of Steve Martin' 
• Inger-Lise Kalviknes Bore: 'Reviewing Romcom: (100) IMDb Users and (500) Days of Summer' 
• Sharon Lockyer and Lynn Myers: '‘It’s About Expecting the Unexpected’: Live Stand-up Comedy from the Audiences’ Perspective' 
• Richard McCulloch: '‘Most People Bring Their Own Spoons’: The Room’s participatory audiences as comedy mediators' 
• Sophie Quirk: 'Containing the Audience: The ‘Room’ in Stand-Up Comedy' 
• Eve Smith: 'Selling Terry Pratchett's Discworld: Merchandising and the Cultural Economy of Fandom' 
• Simon Weaver: 'Definitions of the humorous in Chris Rock and Russell Peters fan blogs: A discussion of the problem of incongruity' 
• Nathan A. Wilson: 'Divisive Comedy: A Critical Examination of Audience Power'

Special Section: International Film Audiences Conference

• Ailsa Hollinshead (Guest Editor - Special Section): 'Editorial Introduction' 
• Karina Aveyard: 'The Place of Cinema and Film in Contemporary Rural Australia' 
• Jacqui Cochrane: '16 Years of Alcohol: An Allegory of a Nation ' 
• Elizabeth Jane Evans: 'Superman vs Shrödinger’s Cat: Taste, Etiquette and Independent Cinema Audiences as Indirect Communities' 
• Roberta Gregoli: 'Transnational Reception of City of God and Elite Squad' 
• Amy Hardie:  'Symbolic Cinema and Audience Engagement' 
• Ailsa Hollinshead: '“And I felt quite posh!” Art-house cinema and the absent audience – the exclusions of choice' 
• Peter Krämer: '‘Movies that make people sick’: Audience Responses to Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange in 1971/72' 
• Claire Monk: 'Heritage Film Audiences 2.0: period film audiences and online film cultures' 
• Tom Phillips: 'When Film Fans Become Fan Family: Kevin Smith Fandom and Communal Experience' 
• Pavel Skopal: '"It is not enough we have lost the war – now we have to watch it!" Cinemagoers' attitudes in the Soviet occupation zone of Germany (a case study from Leipzig)'

Special Section: Approaching the Online Audience: New Practices, New Thinking

• Craig Hight, Ann Hardy, Carolyn Michelle and Adrian Athique (Guest Editors - Special Section):'Editorial Introduction' 
• Charles H. Davis and Carolyn Michelle: 'Q methodology in audience research: bridging the qualitative/quantitative ‘divide’?' 
• Luke Goode, Alexis McCullough and Gelise O'Hare: 'Unruly publics and the fourth estate on YouTube' 
• Ann Hardy, Craig Hight and Carolyn Michelle: 'Reservoir Hill and audiences for online interactive drama' 
• Bevin Yeatman: 'Still seeking the audience' 
• Ruth Zanker: 'Child audiences becoming interactive ‘viewsers’: New Zealand children’s responses to websites attached to local children’s television programmes'

Reviews

• Samantha Holland:Pole Dancing, Empowerment and Embodiment (Elke Weismann) 
• Michael V. Tueth: Laughter in the Living Room: Television Comedy and the American Home Audience (Tom Phillips) 
• Graeme Turner:  Ordinary People and the Media: The Demotic Turn (Simon Cross) 
• Richard O. Young: How Audiences Decide: a Cognitive Approach to Business Communication (Martin Barker)

On the myth of the frontier in cinema and culture

'A whole new world that is nothing but frontier...': Richard Langley in the narration to his excellent short film, embedded above, American Un-Frontiers: Universality and Apocalypse Blockbusters

This film concerns recent apocalyptic Hollywood blockbusters, which have utilised notions of the ‘frontier’ to develop ideas of American hegemony in the uni-polar era, even as they postulate a universal erasure of national boundaries. Largely, the non-human agents of apocalypse in such films are responsible for erasing boundaries, but in so doing they simultaneously establish the conditions of American renewal. Indeed, the frontier must be continually renewed; it is drawn in order to be effaced, redrawn and effaced again.

      However, at the moment of effacement, when the boundaries between nations are broken down and a sense of universality seems triumphant, the dawning of a new world re-inscribes the frontier - the new world that is constructed is still American led; the mooted universality is both particular and parochial. Such films, which appear to posit un-American (or at least post-national) frontiers, actually achieve the inverse; the universal equality offered by apocalypse offers an American un-frontier, a site seemingly without boundaries, but which is simultaneously nothing but frontier, a re-dramatisation of America’s founding mythology.

The inspiration for today's Film Studies For Free entry -- on the (transnational) myth of the frontier in cinema and related culture -- was Richard Langley's excellent, highly persuasive, short documentary embedded above. That video also has a vivid, post hoc connection to this blog's popular list of "Links of Doom and Disaster! Apocalyptic Film and Moving Image Studies" posted but a few short weeks ago.

Like cinematic apocalypses, filmic frontier mythology turned out to be an incredibly rich vein of web scholarship. So, many thanks to Richard and all the below named scholars for making sure their very valuable work was openly accessible online.

Open Access is, after all, the real 'final [e-]frontier'.

And hopefully it won't turn out to be a myth...

• Catherine Lynn Adams, 'Africanizing the Territory: The History, Memory and Contemporary Imagination of Black Frontier Settlements in the Oklahoma Territory', PhD Thesis, University of Massachusetts Amherst, September 2010
• Tyler Lorey Adams, 'The Geography of Frontier', Reconstruction, 7.3, 2007
  
• Jon Baldwin, 'Other Bother: The Alien in Science Fiction Cinema; Sardar and Cubitt's Aliens R Us' , Film-Philosophy, Vol. 7 No. 20, August 2003
• Ann Barrow, 'The Cutting Garden: Qualitative and Quantitative Analysis and ReceptionTheories of Audiences or Fans', Cultural Studies Conference Proceedings, 2004
• Deborah Bird Rose and Richard Davis (eds), Dislocating the Frontier: essaying the mystique of the outback (ANU E-Press, 2006)
• Maria Beatrice Bittarello, 'Another Time, Another Space: Virtual Worlds, Myths and Imagination', Journal of Virtual Worlds Research, Vol. 1. No. 1, July 2008
• Henrik Bødker, 'The Mercy Seat as Inescapable Heat - The Proposition and Ideas of Justice in the Australian Outback', P.O.V. No.24 - The Western, December 2007
• Barbara Buchenau, 'Comparativist Interpretations of the Frontier in Early American Fiction and Literary Historiography', CLCWeb Volume 3, Issue 2, June 2001 
• Angus Cameron, 'The Metaverse Frontier', PSA 2008
• Cynthia-Lou Coleman, 'Framing Cinematic Indians within the Social Construction of Place', American Studies, 46:3/4 (Fall-Winter 2005): 275-293 Indigenous Studies Today, 1 (Fall 2005/Spring 2006)
• Felicity Collins, 'History, Myth and Allegory in Australian Cinema', Trames, 2008, 12(62/57), 3, 276–286
• Chris Cowan, 'Reflections on The Blair Witch Project', 49th Parallel, Issue 11, Autumn 2003
• Melissa Daniels, '"History Is a Funny Thing": African Americans in the West, American Studies, and the Screen', Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900-present), Fall 2010, Volume 9, Issue 2, Fall 2010
• Greg Dickinson, Brian L. Ott, and Eric Aoki, 'Memory and Myth at the Buffalo Bill Museum', Western Journal of Communication Vol. 69, No. 2, April 2005, pp. 85–108
• Klaus Dodds, 'Hollywood and the Popular Geopolitics of the War on Terror', Third World Quarterly 2008
• Dan Edwards, 'Australian Western: Fear on the frontier [on The Proposition]', RealTime Arts Magazine, 70, December-January 2005
• Rainer Eisfeld, 'Myths and Realities of Frontier Violence: A Look at the Gunfighter Saga', Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 3(5) (1995) 106-122
• Thomas Elsaesser, Noel King, Alexander Horwath (eds), The Last Great American Picture Show: New Hollywood Cinema in the 1970s (Amsterdam University Press, 2004)
• Thomas S. Engeman, 'Why The American "Frontier" Will Always Be Populated By Democratic, Christian Knights', The Claremont Institute, September 2002
• Theo Finigan, '"To the Stables, Robin!": Regenerating the Frontier in Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns', Image Text, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2010 
• Austin Fisher, 'A Marxist's Gotta Do What a Marxist's Gotta Do: Political Violence on the Italian Frontier', Scope, 'Cultural Borrowings: Appropriation, Reworking, Transformation' e-book, 2009
• Austin Fisher, 'Out West, down south: Gazing at America in reverse shot through Damiano Damiani’s "Quien sabe?"', The Italianist, 30:2, 2010
• Peter Flynn, 'The Silent Western as Mythmaker', Images Journal, Issue 6, February 2004 
• Jennifer Forrest and Leonard R. Koos,' Reviewing Remakes: An Introduction', in Dead Ringers: The Remake in Theory and Practice (SUNY, 2001)
• Martin Fradley, '“Why Doesn’t Your Compass Work?”: Pirates of the Caribbean, Fantasy Blockbusters and Contemporary Queer Theory', originally published in Karen Ross (ed.), "The Handbook of Gender, Sex and Media" (Blackwell, 2011), pp.294-312
• Martin Fradley, '[Review of] Gary Needham, "Brokeback Mountain" (Edinburgh University Press, 2010)', Canadian Journal of Film Studies, 19:2 (Fall 2010), pp.143-146 
• Christiane Gerblinger, ‘"Fiery the Angels Fell": America, Regeneration and Ridley Scott's Blade Runner', Australasian Journal of American Studies, 21.1, July 2002
• Barry Keith Grant, 'Genre Films and Cultural Myth', Film International, April 20, 2011 
• Barry Keith Grant, 'Introduction: Spokes in the Wheels', John Ford's Stagecoach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)
• Michael Grimshaw, 'Preacher, or the Death of God in Pictures', JCRT 3.2
• David Gunkel and Ann Hetzel Gunkel, 'Terra Nova 2.0—The New Worlds of MMORPGs', Critical Studies in Media Communication 26(2), June 2009, pp. 104-127 
• Alia Haddad, 'An American Take on Mythic Mexico and its Revolution in The Wild Bunch', Volume VII, Number 2, Fall 2011
• Rowena Harper, 'Frontier Mythology in the American Teen Film', PhD Thesis, University of Adelaide December 2008
• Christina Judith Hein, 'Battleground Masculinity: Gendertroublers and Gatekeepers in Oliver Stone's Platoon (1986)', COPAS, Issue 8, 2007
• Kurt Hemmer, 'Political Outlaws: Beat Cowboys', American Studies Journal, No. 50, 2007
• David Ingram, ‘"Go to the forest and move": 1960s American Rock Music as Electronic Pastoral', 49th Parallel, Vol. 20, Winter 2006-2007
• Nicholas Jelley, The Potential for Rewriting Myth: Finding 'Kindness' on the Frontier, MA Thesis, University of Florida, 2005
• Kathleen Kennedy, 'Bodily Pain and Nation Making: Catholics and Indians in the Protestant Historical Imagination', Queen: A Journal of Rhetoric and Power, September 2003
• Geoff King, 'Spectacular Narratives: Twister, Independence Day, and frontier mythology in contemporary Hollywood', originally published in SPECTACULAR NARRATIVESHollywood in the Age of the Blockbuster (London: IB Tauris, 2000)
• Katherine Kinney, 'Cold Wars: Black Soldiers in Liberal Hollywood', WLA Spring/Summer 2000
• Stephen Koetzing, 'The Trespassing Cyborg: Technology, Nature, and the Nation in Wild Wild West', AS Peers 4, 2011
• Marie Claire Kolbenschlag, 'Film and the American experience', from Jump Cut, no. 6, 1975, pp. 16-21 
• Sam Kula, 'National Image, National Dream',  Cinema Canada, February 1976
• Emma Lambert, '[De]Constructing John F. Kennedy?: Herschensohn's Years of Lightning, Days of Drums', 49th Parallel, Issue 4, Winter 2000
• Richard Langley, 'American Un-Frontiers: Universality and Apocalypse Blockbusters',Vimeo, November 17, 2011 (originally screened at the American Frontiers conference, University of Birmingham, 12 November 2011)
• Helen Laville, 'What kind of Man are you? - Masculinity in Oliver Stone JFK', 49th Parallel, Issue 5, Spring 2000
• Christopher Le Coney and Zoe Trodd, 'John Wayne and the Queer Frontier: Deconstructions of the Classic Cowboy Narrative during the Vietnam War, Americana: The Journal of American Popular Culture (1900-present), Volume 5, Issue 1, Spring 2005 
• Julia Leyda, 'Black-Audience Westerns and the Politics of Cultural Identification In the 1930s', Cinema Journal, 42, No. 1, Fall 2002
• Julia Leyda, 'Home on the Range: Space, Nation, and Mobility In John Ford's The Searchers', The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 13, 2002 [click on PDF]
• Stephen McVeigh, '[Review of] The Wild West: The Mythical Cowboy and Social Theory, By Will Wright (London: Sage Publications, 2001)', Scope, November 2003
• Mark Mordue, 'Dead Men Walking', Frieze Magazine, Issue 114, April 2008
• Gabrielle Murray, 'Fact and Fiction: The Iraq War Film in Absence', Screening the Past, 29, 2010
  
• Robin Murray and Joe Heumann, 'Oil drilling and the search for the “golden shrimp”: the myth of interdependence in oil drilling film', Jump Cut, No. 53, summer 2011
• Dianne Newell and Victoria Lamont, 'Daughter of Earth: Judith Merril and the Intersections of Gender, Science Fiction, and Frontier Mythology', Science Fiction Studies, 107, Volume 36, Part 1, March 2009
• Gregory H. Nobles, 'Beyond Myth and Master Narrative: Toward a New History of the American Frontier', Quaderno, 6, 2004
• Allison Perlman, 'The Brief Ride of the Biker Movie', International Journal of Motorcycle Studies, March 2007
• Lauren Rabinovitz, 'More Than Meets the Eye: Movies in American Studies', MAASA Presidential Symposium 2005
• Rod Romesburg, 'Regeneration through Vampirism: Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s New Frontier', Slayage 5.3 [19], February 2006
• Christina Rowley, ‘The Disappearance and Re-emergence of the Western in Vietnam War Films’, PSA 2010 
• Christian Seidl, '"Regeneration through Creativity" – The Frontier in Paul Auster's Moon Palace', PhiN 31, 2005
• Ron Smith, 'Mistaken Images in Serge: Cecil B. DeMille’s Northwest Mounted Police (1940)', 49th Parallel, Vol. 24, 2010
• Saralyn Smith, '"Come see a fat old man sometime!" Masculinity and Aging in True Grit (1969) and Unforgiven', MA Thesis, Claremont Graduate University, December 2010 
• Barry Stephenson, 'Swaggering Savagery and the New Frontier', Journal of Religion and Popula Culture, Vol. 16, Summer 2007
• John Streamas, '"Patriotic Drunk": To be Yellow, Brave, and Disappeared in Bad Day at Black Rock',  New Voices Conference, American Studies, 44:1-2 (Spring/Summer 2003): 99-119
• András Tarnóc, 'Narratives of Confinement: Revisiting the Founding Myths of American Culture', Americana, Volume VII, Number 1, Spring 2011
• Nann Verhoeff, The West in Early Cinema: After the Beginning (Amsterdam University Press, 2006 [on the emergence of the  Western]) 
• Edvin Vestergaard Kau, 'The Western Experience: Reflections on the Phenomenology of the Western', P.O.V. No. 24, December 2007
• Geoffrey Walker, 'Deconstructing an American Myth: Hollywood and The Last of the Mohicans', 10th Cooper Seminar, James Fenimore Cooper: His Country and His Art at the State University of New York College at Oneonta, July, 1995
• Jerry White, 'POSSUM, film noir, and the past/future of New Zealand', P:O.V. No.7, March 1999
• Gioia Woods, 'Cowboys, Indians, and Iraq: Jessica Lynch, Lori Piestewa, and the Great American Makeover', Studies in Popular Culture, 29.1 October 2006
• Ray Bourgeois Zimmerman, 'Gruntspeak: Masculinity, Monstrosity and Discourse in Hasford's The Short-Timers', American Studies, 40:1 (Spring 1999): 65-93