Film Matters - Volume 13, Issue 1, 2022

Spike Jonze’s Her is a dystopian fiction that envisages a world wherein machine sentience has achieved the capacity to replace human experiences thereby leading to an ontological crisis of emotions and the inability to ground one’s thoughts in objective reality. While on the surface, the cinema displays the characteristic traits of a melancholic romantic drama with subtle futuristic elements, this article, however, explores the darker side of Jonze’s screenplay and the dominant political and philosophical ideas that come with it, thereby deciphering the nuances of what Jonze strives to put forward: a forewarning of the times that are approaching. This article also attempts at characterizing the world of Her by identifying the trajectory of late capitalism, alienation, and the realm of the simulation, all of which are critical themes that must be taken into account so as to make sense of the ethical dilemmas that technologically developed societies will have to face in the future. This research has been carried out through the analysis of articles, journals, interviews, reviews, and other secondary data sources available.

This article considers the construction and reimaging of the banlieue space in Olivier Babinet’s 2016 film, Swagger. It is informed by Homi Bhabha’s concept of Third Space, and explores the ways in which the film challenges reductive representations of the banlieue and its inhabitants, the violent rhetoric of French Universalism, and the myth of national identity. Swagger employs reflexive strategies that challenge dominant notions about the banlieue space and population that are rooted in colonialism and White supremacy. In doing so, it reveals the connections between cinematic representation, systemic violence, and spatial transformation.

9/11 became the cursor in converting millions of Muslims into one homogeneous society – what Edward Said describes as the “Christian picture of Islam.” This ongoing process scrutinized mainstream Muslims irrespective of their context/origins. Practicing Muslim women who adorned a headscarf, popularly known as hijab, came to be interpreted as being oppressed, irrespective of their social-economic or ethnic status since it went against the notions of western feminism, which extensively preached the idea of being liberal and free in all senses. This article attempts to discuss the obsession with the “unveiling of the veil” through the movie Hala (Baig, 2019) and explores how the degradation of Islam produces smeared representations, thereby justifying and glorifying western ideals and civilization as whole.

This article aims to explore the films of Adam Elliot to assist in defining an aesthetic of claymation filmmaking using an experimental rubric. This study identified patterns among Elliot’s filmmaking that are influenced by claymation and could be repeated in other films. The rubric can now be applied to a claymation film produced by another director to conduct a comparative analysis, identifying the patterns that define the aesthetic of claymation.

This article explores the symbolic connotations of cigarettes in Orson Welles’s The Lady from Shanghai (1947). Although a common theme in film noir, the act of smoking can become a dynamic component of cinematic narrative. My work argues that Elsa Bannister’s use of cigarettes in the film reinvents the object’s role within the genre, as cigarettes move from being a “thing” to embodying Elsa’s power. The article demonstrates this by examining valuable scenes through shot-by-shot analysis and thus challenging the characters’ agency in relation to Elsa.

This article reveals how the Paradise Theater culturally and socially impacted the lives of the surrounding Black population in Detroit between 1941 and 1951. Firstly, this article examines the programming of the Paradise Theater—especially its live performers/exhibitionists—and specifically highlights the significance of the Paradise Theater’s all-Black stage show policy. Secondly, this article demonstrates how factors such as the Detroit Uprising of 1943 caused the Paradise Theater to transition from a mixed-race house to a primarily Black space. Finally, this article discusses the many philanthropic efforts of the Paradise Theater, which impacted not only Black Detroit, but the entire nation.

Japanese New Wave filmmaker Nagisa Ōshima repeatedly tackled Japan’s cultural and systemic discrimination toward Koreans in his films. The “Korean problem” is a complex issue that stems from a storied history between the two countries. However, Ōshima was undaunted at the task of confronting his Japanese audience with challenges to their potential biases. Ōshima incorporated essay film techniques in his films Forgotten Soldiers (1963), Diary of Yunbogi (1965), Death by Hanging (1968), and Three Resurrected Drunkards (1968) to disrupt the illusion of film and encourage self-reflection among the audience.

Oliva Wilde’s 2019 film garnered attention through the subversive conversation it placed on-screen effortlessly through the art of comedy. However, scholars Kathleen Battles and Wendy Hilton-Morrow write, “homosexuality can only be represented through heterosexist categories and language, while at the same time it is marked as a deviation from the norm,” this rocky navigation of queerness in heteronormative territories produces the heavy question of if comedy is progressive enough to contribute to the movement of the discourse on queerness. This article answers that question by performing a deep focus on the cinematography, character actions, behaviors, relationships as well as examining their environments that offer the pleasures of comedic and educational glimpses of queer theory on-screen.

The article explores the role played by moral categories in the assessment of an artwork’s overall aesthetic value. By means of close analysis of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 2007There Will Be Blood, the work maintains an immoralist approach, where an artwork’s unethical attitude may yield cognitive gain to its receiver—or perhaps unsettle their moral compass in an unusual, pleasant way. There Will Be Blood is considered a cinematic masterwork; yet, the viewing experience is complicated by the film’s greedy and self-obsessed protagonist, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis). The article scrutinizes the film’s most notable sequence—the explosion of the oil derrick—to formulate an aesthetic evaluation that manages to assess, simultaneously, formal and moral aspects.

The manuscript is an analysis of homosociality among the male Avengers in the first film depicting the unification of the superhero team. It argues that The Avengers replicates and valorizes hierarchical homosociality as the preferred method of communication and unifying force among the male Avengers, thereby maintaining hegemonic masculinity and the gender hegemony in the superhero franchise. This article’s focus on homosociality takes on a different approach to analyzing gender in superhero films as it takes an in-depth look at same-sex interactions in a group setting, as opposed to the individual gender identities of the characters.

This article provides an overview of the trajectory of Alfred Hitchcock’s use of film sound as it relates to Soviet sound theory. I begin with his first use of sound in Blackmail (1929), tracing a line through his middle period with Strangers on a Train (1951), and end with a film from his late period, The Birds (1963). My analysis of Hitchcock’s use of sound in these films shows the influence of Soviet sound theory and its affects on his films and his own cinematic style.

This article will plot and examine the spiritual progression of protagonist Sebastiao Rodrigues from “blind faith” to a fuller awareness of his spiritual self. Endo’s narratives will be seen to eschew allegorical readings in favor of presenting the importance of the spiritual journey for the individual. In the face of extreme violence, Rodrigues will be seen to develop from a position of aspiration toward honorable martyrdom to one of disillusion and disconnection from institutions that obfuscate the clarity of his personal relationship with Christ. The conclusion Endo will be seen to arrive at is that this is the true potential of a spiritual life, that the individual might find affirmation of their own belief in spite of persecution and judicial torture.

This article assesses the spiritual journey of a Christian priest in seventeenth-century Japan in Masahiro Shinoda’s 1971 film, Silence. With a specific focus on cinematic elements like soundscapes and themes, it evaluates how the director utilizes filmic features to establish and heighten prevalent motif’s such as religious boundaries and apostasy. Furthermore, it strives to understand how the film reflects its contemporary sociopolitical climate and aims to explore any authorial influences.

Martin Scorsese’s Silence depicts the relationship between man and God. In the atmosphere of seventeenth-century Japan, where Christians were persecuted as a consequence of their attempt to spread Catholic Christianity, the film follows the journey of Jesuit priest Father Rodrigues, who is sent to the country in search of his vanished mentor. Throughout, Rodrigues’s journey turns out to be external and physical as much as it is internal and, predominantly, spiritual. Found in a country and culture to which he doesn’t belong, and which are hostile to him, Rodrigues’s faith slowly undergoes a transformation. This article focuses on the way his relationship to God changes, and on how this delicate, yet powerful process is presented through the film.

A personal response to the social constructs of time and language as addressed in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival.

“How Capitalism Ends Humanity” compares two texts, Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) and Alice W. Fuller’s “A Wife Manufactured to Order” (1895), and foregrounds their arguments about how capitalism and humanity cannot coexist. In Metropolis, the inhumane practices of capitalist rulers and enforced mechanical behavior of the factory workers demonstrate this tension. In “A Wife Manufactured to Order,” the commercialization of robot women does so. This analysis concludes that, ultimately, all participants in capitalism (i.e. laborers, owners, and consumers) will reject capitalism for real humanity. The “capitalism vs. humanity” lens can be used to project future backlash to advancements in artificial intelligence.

“Getting Tested for Monsterdom: Frankenstein and Ex Machina” advances our understanding of what it means to be a monster. We might conceive of monsters as beings that look grotesque and/or that act maliciously with intent. However, there is a vast gray area as to why one should or should not be labeled a monster. This article will discuss the unjust physical expectations leveled toward “monsters” and give a new line of application to the nature vs. nurture theory.