New Issue of Scope! Gollum/LOTR, Egyptian cinema, Fight Club, Snuff-Fiction

Read Mike Miley's review of Glyn Davis's study of  Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story (Todd Haynes, 1987). Read Film Studies For Free's related entry dedicated to Todd Haynes and its entry on the Sirkian melodrama. 

As usual, Film Studies For Free is delighted to bring you news of the latest issue of Scope; an Online Journal of Film and TV Studies. The full table of contents is given below. 

In addition to an excellent selection of main articles, there is an astonishing array of book and film reviews and conference reports, the latter sections in particular flagging up the enormous, but highly worthwhile, collective editorial effort that goes into producing a very good quality Open Access journal.

Thank you, Scope!

Scope, Issue 19, February 2011

Articles

• Playing with Gollum: Uncovering the Cultural Life and Transnational Travels of a Complex Character - Part One Martin Barker

• Playing with Gollum: Uncovering the Cultural Life and Transnational Travels of a Complex Character - Part Two Martin Barker

• Dying to be Seen: Snuff-Fiction's Problematic Fantasies of "Reality" Steve Jones

• Screening Egypt: Reconciling Egyptian Film's Place in "World Cinema" Omar Kholeif

• A Copy, of a Copy, of a Copy? Exploring Masculinity Under Transformation in Fight Club Simon Lindgren

• [ALL ARTICLES ON ONE PAGE]

Book Reviews

• Carmen on Film: A Cultural History by Phil Powrie, Bruce Babington, Ann Davies and Chris Perriam  100 Hundred Years of Spanish Cinema By Tatjana Pavlovi, Inmaculada Alvarez, Rosana Blanco-Cano, Anitra Grisales, Alejandra Osorio and Alejandra Sánchez Cinema and Fascism: Italian Film and Society, 1922-1943 By Steven Ricci Reviewer: Noelia Saenz

• Screen Education: From Film Appreciation to Media Studies by Terry Bolas  Beginning Film Studies By Andrew Dix Reviewer: Juli Pitzer

• Isuma: Inuit Video Art by Michael Robert Evans Outside Looking In: Viewing First Nations Peoples in Canadian Dramatic Television Series By Mary Jane Miller  Reviewer: Heather Macdougall

• The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks by Peter Graham and Ginette Vincendeau (eds.)  Stardom in Postwar France Edited by John Gaffney and Diana Holmes Reviewer: John Berra

• Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era by Jonathan Gray, Jeffrey P. Jones, and Ethan Thompson (eds.) Reviewer: Evan Elkins

• Gilles Deleuze: Cinema and Philosophy by Paola Marrati. Translated by Alisa Hartz  Cinematic Mythmaking: Philosophy in Film By Irving Singer Reviewer: Alexander Thimons

• Puzzle Films: Complex Storytelling in Contemporary Cinema by Warren Buckland (ed.) Reviewer: Chris Pallant

• Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story by Glyn Davis Reviewer: Mike Miley

• The Hitchcock Annual Anthology: Selected Essays from Volumes 10-15 by Sidney Gottlieb and Richard Allen (eds.) Reviewer: Christina M. Parker

• Film and Memory in East Germany by Anke Pinkert  Nation and Identity in the New German Cinema By Inga Scharf Reviewer: David Embree

• Dismantling the Dream Factory: Gender, German Cinema and the Postwar Quest for a New Film Language by Hester Baer Reviewer: Paul Cooke

• Understanding Indian Cinema: Culture, Cognition and Cinematic Imagination by Patrick Colm Hogan  Mourning The Nation: Indian Cinema in the Wake of Partition By Bhaskar Sarkar Reviewer: Scott Jordan Harris

• Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Movies by Dave Saunders Reviewer: Joseph Arton

• Jean-Pierre Jeunet by Elizabeth Ezra  The Tactile Eye: Touch and the Cinematic Experience By Jennifer M. Barker Reviewer: Alison Frank

• Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel by Nick Dawson  The Films of Hal Ashby By Christopher Beach Reviewer: Aaron Hunter

• Steven Spielberg and Philosophy: We're Gonna Need a Bigger Book by Dean A. Kowalski (ed.)  Scenes of Love and Murder: Renoir, Film and Philosophy By Colin Davis Reviewer: Chelsea Wessels

• The Cinema of Naruse Mikio: Women and Japanese Modernity  by Catherine Russell   Forest of Pressure: Ogawa Shinsuke and Postwar Japanese Documentary By Abé Mark Nornes  Reviewer: Stephen Potter

• Anatomy of Film. Sixth Edition by Bernhard F. Dick Reviewer: Monika Raesch

• Playing with Memories: Essays on Guy Maddin by David Church (ed.)  The Young, the Restless, and the Dead: Interviews with Canadian Filmmakers, Volume 1. Edited by George Melnyk Reviewer: Rachel Walls

• TV China by Ying Zhu and Chris Berry (eds.)  Transnational Television in Europe: Reconfiguring Global Communications Networks By Jean K. Chalaby Reviewer: Bärbel Göbel

• [ALL BOOK REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Film Reviews

• The Godfather Reviewer: Mark Chapman

• Red Hill Reviewer: Kate Harper

• The Eclipse Reviewer: Andrea Grunert

• Life on Mars Reviewer: Mary Irwin

• Kaminey Reviewer: Sagnik Banerjee

• [ALL FILM REVIEWS ON ONE PAGE]

Conference Reports

• British Film 2000-2010: Crossing Borders, Transferring Cultures, Germersheim School of Translation, Interpreting, Linguistics and Cultural Studies, University of Mainz, 18 – 21 February 2010 Reporter: Ron Walker

• NERFS (North-East Regional Film Seminar), Northumbria University, Newcastle, 15 July 2010 Reporter: Louise Anderson and Erin Hill-Parks

• Investigating Torchwood: Text, Context, Audiences, Cardiff School of Creative Arts, University of Glamorgan, 18 June 2010 Reporter: Ross P. Garner

• NECS 2010 Annual Conference, Communication Faculty, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, 24 – 27 June 2010 Reporter: Ozgur Cicek

• MeCCSA-PGN 2010: Media, Communications and Cultural Studies Association Postgraduate Network Conference, University of Glasgow, 31 June – 1 July 2010 Reporter: Douglas McNaughton

• Screen Studies Conference: Screen Performance, University of Glasgow, 2 – 4 July 2010 Reporter: Melanie Hoyes

• [ALL CONFERENCE REPORTS ON ONE PAGE]

The Working-Class Hero in International Cinema: in Memory of Pete Postlethwaite

Pete Postlethwaite, as Danny, delivers his Albert Hall speech in Brassed Off (Mark Herman, 1996)

The bottom line for Danny [Pete Postlethwaite] is [his son] Phil’s emblematic loss of ‘the will to live’. He addresses the Albert Hall audience for all the world as if he were the holy ghost of Scargill and the militant miners of 1984, telling the punters, the press and us that, ‘I thought that music mattered. But does it bollocks; not compared to what people matter’. Charging the government with destroying an industry, a community and its people, he refuses the prize, calculating, as the flash bulbs pop, that ‘then it becomes news. And I won’t be talking just to myself, will I?’ In this scene the shot-reverse-shots of father and son, Danny and media, band and Grimley fans, and band and approving urban audience (its cosmopolitanism symbolised by two black faces) works as much as Danny’s polemic to argue that the old-fashioned working-class values, the local, British loyalties of community, family and labour -contrasted satirically by Danny to the fashionable liberal campaigns to save ‘seals or whales’ - can cut through Tory brutalism and reconstruct progressive priorities - to be the bearer of new national hopes. [Cora Kaplan, 'The Death of the Working-Class Hero', New Formations, 52 (Summer, 2004)]

Film Studies For Free was shocked and saddened to hear of the death yesterday of much loved British actor Pete Postlethwaite. David Hudson's set of links to tributes to Postlethwaite may be found here. 

Postlethwaite was a highly versatile actor, far from limited either in his life by his English working-class background, or in his career by his talent for the working-class dramatic roles in which he was so often cast. But it is the case that some of his most memorable roles were, like that of Danny in Brassed Off, ones that set themselves in the kind of tightly-knit, but, under political attack, all too easily undone, northern English communities he came from.

FSFF's tribute, below, focuses on this aspect of Postlethwaite's work: his class act, that was not just an act. It's a rich and hopefully rewarding set of links to online and openly accessible scholarly discussions of the (usually, but not exclusively, male) "working-class hero" film character - quite a transnational cinematic trope, as it turns out.

• Dave Allen, 'MIDDLE-CLASS MODS and WORKING-CLASS SODS: Quadrophenia and the Construction of Popular Histories', The 1970s Project, 2008

• Christopher Beach, excerpt from ‘A Troubled Paradise: Utopia and Transgression in Comedies of the Early 1930s’, Class, Language and American Film Comedy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)

• BFI Screenoline 'Working Class Heroes'

• Cathy Brigden, 'Representations of labour: Images of work and workers in film', in P. Stanton and S. Young (eds) Proceedings of the 22nd Conference of the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand, Melbourne, 2008

• Ron Briley, 'The Legend of Sacco and Vanzetti: Keeping the Story Alive in Literature, Song, and Film' , Studies in Popular Culture, 31.2, Spring 2009

• Lee Carruthers, 'Biding Our Time: Rethinking the Familiar in Steven Soderbergh's The Limey', Film Studies, Vol. 9, Winter 2006

• E. Anna Claydon, 'New Perspectives on British Cinema: Going Beyond the "Crisis" in Masculinity', Paper at the Exploring Masculinities and Film at the Centre for Research into Film and Media, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, July 2-4, 2001

• Chantal Cornut-Gentille D'Arcy, "Everything you always hated about Thatcher's Britain: A cultural analysis of Mike Leigh's High Hopes (1988)," Miscelanea, 2004, vol.28, 145-160

• John Curzon, 'Whatever Happened to the North of England? The Spaces of Post-Industrial Northern England in Contemporary Television and Film Drama', PhD thesis, University of Warwick, 2009

• Alexander Dhoest, 'How queer is L'Air de Paris? -- Marcel Carné and Queer Authorship', Scope, May 2003

• Jay Dolmage and William DeGenaro, '"I Cannot Be Like This Frankie": Disability, Social Class, and Gender in Million Dollar Baby', Disability Studies Quarterly, Spring 2005, Volume 25, No. 2

• Thomas Elsaesser, 'Antigone Agnistes: Urban Guerrilla or Guerrilla Urbanism? The Red Army Fraction, Germany in Autumn and Death Game', Rouge, 4, 2004

• David Frank, 'Short Takes: The Canadian Worker on Film', Labour/Le Travail, 46 (Fall 2000), 417-37

• Michelle Gadpaille, 'Look Back in Anger and Popular Culture', Maribor International Review Vol. 1, no. 1 (2008)

• Sarah Godfrey, 'Villainous Victims: The Paradox of the ‘Damaged’: Man in Naked and Nil By Mouth', eSharp, Issue 9, Spring 2007

• Susan Hayward, 'Simone Signoret 1921-1985: the star as sign-the sign as scar', Modern Languages Publications Archive, 1995

• Heather J. Hicks, 'Postindustrial Striptease: The Full Monty and the Feminization of Work', Colby Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 1, 2000

• Justin Hindmarsh, 'British Cinema - style and context: an examination of British "New Wave" Films', Discussion Papers in Mass Communications, January 1997

• Jeffrey K. Jack, Irish Representations in the Films of Jim Sheridan and Neil Jordan, Masters thesis, Marshall University, 2005

• Martin Johnes and Gavin Mellor. 'The 1953 FA Cup Final: Modernity and Tradition in British Culture', Contemporary British History, Vol. 20, No. 2, June 2006

• Cora Kaplan, 'The Death of the Working-Class Hero', New Formations, 52 (Summer, 2004)

• John Kirk, 'Changing the Subject:Cultural Studies and the Demise of Class', Cultural Logic, 2002

• Chuck Kleinhans, 'Contemporary working class film heroes in Evel Knieval and The Last American Hero', from Jump Cut, no. 2, 1974

• Gérard Kraus, 'Other faces: Andy Bausch's Le Club des chômeurs (The Unemployment Club, 2002)', Kinoeye, 4.3, 2004

• J. Meryl Krieger, 'Imagining politics, popular music and remixing: YouTube, remediation and protest songs', Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting October 26, 2007

• Ernest Larsen, 'F.I.S.T. Where are you, Jimmy?', from Jump Cut, no. 19, December 1978

• Jim Leach, 'Introduction', British Film (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) 

• Leonard J. Leff, 'White Line Fever: Promise and frustration', from Jump Cut, no. 14, 1977

• Anne Leonard, 'Review of Hodges, Graham Russell Gao, Taxi! A Social History of the New York City Cabdriver', H-Urban, H-Net Reviews, April, 2008

• Julia Lesage, 'Blue collar filmography', from Jump Cut, no. 2, 1974

• Thomas Lindenberger, 'On the Road to the New Beginning: History and Utopia in Frank Beyer’s Karbid und Sauerampfer (Carbide and Sorrel)', Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film StudiesVolume 18, numéro 1, automne 2007

• Brenda Longfellow, 'Hyperbolic Masculinity and the Ironic Gaze in project Grizzly', Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Vo. 8, No. 1, Spring 1999

• Alan Lovell, 'The British Cinema: The Known Cinema?', The British Cinema Book, ed. Robert Murphy (London: Palgrave, 2009, 3e)

• Carl Philip Wahlberg Lund, The portrayal of Working-Class speech in British film: a study of accent in British films from the 1960s and the 2000s, Masters thesis, University of Bergen, 2009

• Kenneth MacKinnon, 'The Trouble with The Trouble with Men', Film-Philosophy, vol. 9 no. 21, April 2005

• Robert Alan Marcink, The Depiction of the Working Class in American Films of the Counterculture Era, PhD thesis, Indiana University of Pennysylvania, 2009

• Lisa Milner, 'Kenny: the evolution of the battler figure in Howard's Australia', (post-print) Journal of Australian Studies, vol. 33, no. 2, 2009

• Enric Monforte, 'Homosociality, Sexism and Homophobia: An Analysis of Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Thee Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant and Fox and His Friends', BELLS, Vol. 9, No. 1, (year unknown)

• Claire Monk, ‘Hey you, standing there, what you got to stare at?’ The post-punk female in British film: Breaking Glass (Brian Gibson, UK, 1980)', Paper at 1970s British Culture conference, University of Portsmouth, July 1-3, 2008

• Jon Scott Oberacker, The people and me: Michael Moore and the politics of political documentary, PhD thesis, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2009

• Michael Pierse, 'Introduction', Writing Ireland's Working Class: Dublin After O'Casey (London: Palgrave, 2010)

• Nicola Rehling, All or Nothing: White Heterosexual Masculinity in Contemporary Popular Cinema, PhD Thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2005

• George Rodosthenous, 'Billy Elliot The Musical: visual representations of working-class masculinity and the all-singing, all-dancing bo[d]y', Studies in Musical Theatre, 1 (3), 2007

• Rasha Salti, 'Critical Nationals: The Paradoxes of Syrian Cinema', Kosmorama 237(Danish Film Institute, Copenhagen) 2006

• Robert Carl Schehr, 'Martial Arts Films and the Action-Cop Genre: Ideology, Violence and Spectatorship', Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 7(3), 2000

• Mark Schreiber, 'Re-negotiating Concepts of Masculinity in Contemporary British Film', Gender Forum, Issue 17, 2007 

• Fabian Schuppert, 'Andrzej Wajda's A Generation and Man of Marble from a Political Perspective', Kinema, Spring 2006

• Ira Shor, 'Rocky: Two faces of the American dream', from Jump Cut, no. 14, 1977 

• Andrew Spicer, 'Masculinities in British Cinema', Kwartalnik Filmowy (Film Quarterly) Poland Academy of Science (2006) in Polish. English translation

• Tetsuya Taguchi, 'The Working Class Audience of Rock Music, Liverpool in the 1960s', Doshisha Studies in Language and Culture 1-2 : pp. 293 – 313. 1998

• Olesya Venger, 'Transformation of Ukrainian and Serbian Media Identities During the Velvet Revolutions: The Impact of the Global Media', Global Media Journal, 6.10, 2007

• Ginette Vincendeau, 'The Mise-en-scene of Suffering: French chanteuses realistes', New Formations, No. 3, Winter 1987 

• Jamie Marie Wagner, 'Quai des brumes: An American Appeal', Film Matters, 2010

PhD Theses on Hal Hartley, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, and Spanish cinema studies

Javier Bardem as Raúl and Penélope Cruz as Silvia in Jamón Jamón (Bigas Luna, 1992) as discussed in Rebecca Naughten's work Spain Made Flesh: Reflections and projections of the national in contemporary Spanish stardom, 1992-2007

Film Studies For Free was delighted when Spanish cinema scholar Rebecca Naughten responded to its request for information about online PhD theses. Not only did Rebecca let FSFF know that her own really excellent thesis has recently been made available online, but she also did the hard work of trawling through the online repository at the University of Newcastle, where her work is stored, to find four other very good theses archived there. ¡Muchísimas gracias, Rebecca!

These works have just been added to FSFF's permanent list of Online Film and Moving Image Studies PhD Theses (see the link in the table of contents in the right-hand sidebar for future reference) which now makes more than 130 theses accessible to you at the click of your mouse.

Do please let FSFF know if your online PhD thesis, or others you know of, is not yet in this list.

• Deer, Lesley, The repetition of difference: Marginality and the films of Hal Hartley, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 2000
• Durham, Christopher Louis, Masculinity in the post-war western: John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 2005
• Hamilton, Jayne, Gender representation and textual strategies in the films of Pilar Miró, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 1997
• Mendez-Fiddian, Maria del Carmen, The representation of the family in Spanish cinema from 1950 to the present day, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 1989
• Naughten, Rebecca Claire, Spain Made Flesh: Reflections and projections of the national in contemporary Spanish stardom, 1992-2007, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 2010

Immaturity Abides! On Teen, "Gross Out" and Dumbass Comedy

Jonah Hill and Michael Cera in Superbad (Greg Mottola, 2007)

Film Studies For Free is two years old today. You go, blog!

In honour of its tentative entry into digital post-toddlerdom (and hopefully not the terrible twos), it wanted to celebrate online and openly accessible studies of what FSFF likes to think of (in its über-scholarly way) as those liminal film genres and cycles of comic immaturity, awkwardness, stupidity, and tastelessness -- that is to say, all varieties of the teen (or arrested development) comedy (including the "teen sex comedy", the "gross-out" comedy, comic "dude flicks" and "bromances"), as well as studies of related issues.

Today's scattershot links list is partly an offshoot of FSFF's recent entry on the romantic comedy, and partly its first experiment in "crowdsourcing" via its blossoming Facebook page. Thanks so much to those who suggested items there.

If anyone else has any bright ideas for further additions, do please 'fess up. FSFF earnestly promises that you won't be ritually humiliated, or mercilessly laughed at, at all  :o)

• Joseph Aisenberg, 'Here Come the Bromides: Living in the Era of the Bromantic Comedy', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 65, August 2009

• Peter Alilunas, 'Male Masculinity as the Celebration of Failure: the Frat Pack, Women, and the Trauma of "Victimization" in the "Dude Flick"', Mediascape,  Spring 2008/Fall 2009

• Steven W. Bender, 'Knocked Down Again: An East L.A. Story on the Geography of Color and Colors', Harvard Latino Law Review, Vol. 12, 2009

• Nick Burns, 'Heathers: Scent of dominance', from Jump Cut, no. 36, May 1991, pp. 32-36

• Zachary Campbell, ‘"Sorry About All the Gravity!" Anna Faris, Serious Respect for the Unserious', Rouge, 13, 2009

• Isabel Sterling Clark, 'The Challenge of Being Yourself: Adaptation, Adolescence, and Disguise in Teenage Romantic Comedy Films of the Late 1990s and Early 2000s', Senior Thesis, Haverford College, 2009

• Evan Elkins, 'Great Job?: Tim and Eric’s Comedy of Failure', FlowTV, August 8, 2008

• Caroline Haggod, 'Bruno and Bromances: Modern Masculinity Goes to the Movies', The Huffington Post, March 10, 2010

• Peter Hutchings , 'Welcome to Royston Vasey: Grotesque bodies and the horror of comedy in The League of Gentlemen', Intensities 4, December 2007

• Carmen Induráin Eraso, 'Riding on divergent but similar roads: Airbag or the Spanish experience of the American Road Movie', Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 2005, vol. 13, 107-121

• Ewan Kirkland, 'Romantic Comedy and the Construction of Heterosexuality', Scope, Portals Special Issue, Issue 13, 2008

• Barbara Klinger, 'Say It Again, Sam: Movie Quotation, Performance and Masculinity', Particip@tions Volume 5, Issue 2 (November 2008)

• Zachary Lamm, 'The Cinematic Shrews of Teen Comedy: Gendering Shakespeare in Twentieth-Century Film', Genders On-Line, Issue 49, 2009

• Christina Lee, Beyond the Pink: (Post) Youth Iconography in Cinema, PhD Thesis, Murdoch University, 2005

• Christian Lorentzen, 'Dicking Around', N1FR Issue 1, August 2010

• James MacDowell, 'Notes on Quirky', MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism, 1.1, 2010

• James MacDowell, 'Knocked Up', Alternate Takes, November 14, 2007

• Gabrielle Moss, ' From the Valley to the Hellmouth: “Buffy”’s Transition from Film to Television', Slayage: A journal of Buffy Studies, 1.2 [2], 2001 

• Joshua Louis Moss, 'Historiography of the World Part 1: The Jewish Body, Historical Crisis and The Comedic Farce', Mediascape,  Spring 2008/Fall 2009

• Scott Murray, '“Cameron Fry, this one’s for you.” Or: Why the Sausage King of Chicago Doesn’t Turn Up for Lunch at Chez Quis', Senses of Cinema, Issue 51, 2009

• Diane Negra, "Where The Boys Are: Postfeminism and the New Single Man", FlowTV April 14, 2006

• Jakob Isak Nielsen, 'There's something about comedy theory', P.O.V. No.26, 2008

• Sharyn Pearce, 'Sex and the cinema: What American pie teaches the young', Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning 6 (4) 2006: pp. 367-376

• Sina Rahmani, 'Hollywood and Diversity: Subversion, Apologetic, or Both? Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Dir. Danny Leiner. New Line Cinema, 2004', Colloquy, 9, 2005

• Michael Joshua Rowin, 'I Love You, Man and the Apatow Comedy Factory', Reverse Shot, Issue 24, 2009

• Philip Scepanski, 'Out of the Mouths of Babes: Animated Sitcoms and Political Incorrectness', Mediascape, Fall 2008

• Ethan de Seife, 'Gremlins in the Mix', 16:9, 6.25, 2008

• Carter Soles, Falling Out of the Closet: Kevin Smith, Queerness, and Contemporary Independent Film. PhD Thesis, University of Oregon, September 2008

• Carter Soles, 'A Stalker's Odyssey: Arrested Development, Gay Desire, and Queer Comedy in Chuck and Buck', Jump Cut 49, Spring 2007

• Lesley Speed, 'A World Ruled by Hilarity: Gender and Low Comedy in the Films of Amy Heckerling', Senses of Cinema, Vol. 22, 2002

• Scott F. Stoddart, 'Love and Death on Long Island (Dir. Richard Kwietniowski, 1998)', Scope, Portals Special Issue, Issue 13, 2008

• Donato Totaro, 'Screwballs: Teen Comedy Canadian Style', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 8, 2009

• Lisa Trahair, 'Comedy and Beyond: Geoff King's Film Comedy', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 8, No. 15, 2004
  

• Eric King Watts and Mark P. Orbe , 'The Spectacular Consumption of “True” African American Culture: “Whassup” with the Budweiser Guys?', Critical Studies in Media Communication Vol. 19, No. 1, March 2002, pp. 1–20

• Cynthia Weber, '"Oi, Dancing Boy!" Masculinity, Sexuality, and Youth in Billy Elliot', Gender 37, 2003

• Jessica Winter, 'Knocked Up', Cinemascope, 31, 2008

Video Essay on The Big Lebowski, Kevin. B. Lee with Karina Longworth, March 2010

Lots of Film Studies PhD Theses Online

Masculine 'musculinity' (almost) all grown up -  Sylvester Stallone, in The Expendables ( Stallone, 2010). (See Yvonne Tasker's PhD on masculinity and action movies)

It was time for one of Film Studies For Free's regular visits to a research repository search-engine to see which PhD theses have been made openly accessible online since this blog last took a look.

A few of the below PDF files have been linked to before by FSFF but the vast majority have not come up in earlier searches. And there are some fabulous items here: such as Yvonne Tasker's paradigm shifting thesis on gender and action cinema, and Donato Totaro on time and the long take in the cinema. And what a truly astounding variety of topics!

• SooJeong Ahn, The Pusan International Film Festival 1996-2005: South Korean cinema in local, regional, and global context, PhD Thesis,  University of Nottingham, 2008

• Steven William Allen, A pleasure in pain: contemporary mainstream cinema's fascination with the aestheticized spectacle of the controlled body, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2003

• Noor Al-Qasimi, The codes of modesty: reconfiguring the Muslim female subject, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2007

• Tom Brown, From intimate pleasures to spectacular vistas: musicality and historicity in French and American 'classical' cinema of the 1930s, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2007

• Felicia Chan, In Search of a Comparative Poetics: Cultural Translatability in Transnational Chinese Cinemas, PhD Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2007

• Brigid S. G. Cherry, The female horror film audience : viewing pleasures and fan practices, PhD Thesis, University of Stirling, 1999

• Marisa Farrugia, The plight of women in Egyptian cinema (1940s 1960s), PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 2002

• Dongning  Feng, Text, politics and society : literature as political philosophy in post-Mao China, PhD Thesis,  University of Stirling, 1997

• Michael Flanagan, True sons of Erin: catholic/nationalist ideology and the politics of adventure in Our Boys 1914-32, PhD Thesis, Dublin Institute of Technology, 2006

• Mary Gillan, In the shadow of the church: Irish and Quebec cinema, PhD Thesis, Dublin City University, 2009

• Leighton Grist, Authorship and context: the films of Martin Scorsese 1963-1977, PhD Thesis,      University of Warwick, 1996

• Henrik Gustafsson, Out of Site: Landscape and Cultural Reflexivity in New Hollywood Cinema 1969-1974, PhD Thesis, Stockholm University, Sweden, 2007 and errata

• Eirik Frisvold Hanssen, Early Discourses on Colour and Cinema : Origins, Functions, Meanings, PhD Thesis,  Stockholm University, Sweden, 2006

• Timothy John Hollins, The presentation of politics : the place of party publicity, broadcasting and film in British politics, 1918-1939, PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 1981, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2

• Christopher James Homewood, From Baader to Prada The Representation of Urban Terrorism in German-Language Film, PhD thesis, University of Leeds, 2008

• Claire Jenkins, Family entertainment: representations of the American family in contemporary Hollywood cinema,   PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2009

• Krzysztof Jozajtis, Religion and film in American culture: the birth of a nation, PhD Thesis, University of Stirling, 2001

• Abdelrhaffar Bourkiba Larbi, Parody and ideology: The case of Othello, PhD Thesis, Universitat de València, 2005

• Barbara Lehin, Cinema and society: Thatcher's Britain and Mitterand's France, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2003

• Elaine Lennon, The screenplays of Robert Towne 1960-2000, PhD Thesis, Dublin Institute of Technology, 2009

• Maasilta Mari, African Carmen. Transnational Cinema as an Arena for Cultural Contradictions, PhD Thesis, University of Tampere, 2007

• Laurent Marie, The French Communist Party and French cinema 1944-1999, PhD Thesis,  University of Warwick, 2000

• Sara Martin Alegre, More human than human: aspects of monstrosity in the films and novels in english of the 1980s and 1990s, PhD Thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 1996, (chapters are: 1 Fascinating Bodies: The New Iconography of Monstrosity; 2 Old Monsters, New Monsters: Vision and Re-Vision From Screen Adaptation to Novelization; 3 Nostalgia for the Monster: Mythical Monsters and Freaks; 4 Evil and Monstrosity: The Moral Monster, 5 The Politics of Monstrosity: The Monsters of Power; 6: Frankenstein's Capitalist Heirs: The Uses of Making Monsters; 7 Gendered Monstrosity: The Monstrous-Feminine and the New Woman Saviour and 8 Little Monsters?: Children and Monsters)

• Anthony T.  McKenna, Joseph E. Levine: showmanship, reputation and industrial practice 1945-1977, PhD Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2008

• Christopher Meir,  Underwriting national sovereignty?: policy, the market and Scottish cinema, 1982- present, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2007

• Douglas Morrey, Jean-Luc Godard and the other history of cinema, PhD Thesis,  University of Warwick, 2002

• Fabio Parasecoli, Food and men in cinema: an exploration of gender in blockbuster movies, Universität Hohenheim, 2009

• Louise Ann Parsons, An analysis of 'The Gold Diggers' (1983) by Sally Potter: feminist film, Julia Kristeva and revolutionary poetics, PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 1994, Vol. 1 and Vol 2

• Martin Luther Patrick, The myth of the Black male beast in postclassical American cinema: ‘Forging’ stereotypes and discovering Black masculinities, PhD Thesis, University of Birmingham, 2009

• Anna Sofia Rossholm, Reproducing Languages, Translating Bodies : Approaches to Speech, Translation and Cultural Identity in Early European Sound Film, PhD Thesis, Stockholm University, Sweden, 2006

• Trevor Ryan, Labour and the media in Britain 1929-1939: a study of the attitudes of the Labour movement towards the new media, film and radio, and of its attempts to use them for political purposes,  PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 1986, Vol. 1 and Vol. 2

• Alice Stanley, Representations of sexuality in the films of Francois Ozon, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2009

• Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular bodies: gender, genre and the action cinema, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 1995

• Gewain Francis Henry Tickell, Homelands and the representation of cultural and political identity in selected South-Asian texts, 1857 to the present, PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 1998

• Donato Totaro, Time and the long take in The Magnificent Ambersons, Ugetsu and Stalker, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2001

• Louise Ann Williams, Masculinity on the run: history, nation and subjectivity in contemporary mainland Chinese cinema, PhD Thesis, University of Leeds, 2004

• Leila Wimmer, The French reception of British cinema, PhD Thesis,  University of Warwick, 2006

In fond memory of Patrick Swayze

The power behind Film Studies For Free's e-throne is a 'person of a certain age', making her (chrono) logically susceptible to a good number of the many charms and talents of actor Patrick Swayze. She is, thus, saddened by the news of his untimely death.

Swayze was an actor of surprisingly slight physical stature, but one who loomed very large and very beautifully, not only in Hollywood and independent cinema, and, of course, in the estimation of his many fans and admirers, but also in the musings of quite a few Film Studies scholars. In particular relation to the latter, he helped to inspire -- FSFF is sure -- many worthwhile studies of (post-)modern gender and sexuality, 'looking relations', and acting in film.

In fond memory of his work for the screen, a few links to openly-accessible items of some of that scholarship are given below:

• Katherine Barscay, 'Kathryn Bigelow's Gen(d)re', Cinephile (Post Genre Issue), Vol. 4, Summer 2008
• Douglas Booth, 'Surfing Films and Videos: Adolescent Fun, Alternative Lifestyle, Adventure Industry, Journal of Sport History, Fall 1996
  
• Kathryn Kane, 'Passing as Queer and Racing Towards Whiteness: To Wong Foo, Thanks but No Thanks', Genders OnLine Journal, Issue 42, 2005
  
• Ahava Leibtag, '"The only thing you have to be is yourself": Ideology and Identity Politics in Dirty Dancing and The Last Dance', MA Thesis, Georgetown University, 2002
• Marianne Mulvey, 'Is there sincerity in hollow speech? Feeling the cliché in contemporary performance', Nowiswhere, Issue 3, 2009 (scroll down)
  
• Thomas Piontek, 'Kinging in the Heartland; or, The Power of Marginality', Journal of Homosexuality, Vol. 43, No. 3/4, 2002, pp. 125-143
• Nicola Rehling, ''White Masculinity in Cross-Dressing Comedies', All or Nothing: White Heterosexual Masculinity in Contemporary Popular Cinema, PhD Thesis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 2005 (pp. 228-233)
  
• Tracy Sutton and Gregory Fouts, 'Measuring and Contextualising "Chemistry" in the Movies', Journal of Media Psychology, Volume 10, No. 1, Winter 2005
• Brenda Wilson, 'Blurring the Boundaries: Auteurism & Kathryn Bigelow', Cinephile (Gender and Violence Issue), Vol. 1, April 2005

Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular Bodies: Gender, Genre, and the Action Cinema (London: Routledge, 1993)

Christina Lane, Feminist Hollwyood: From Born in Flames to Point Break (Wayne State University Press, 2000)


John Izod, Myth, Mind, and the Screen: Understanding the Heroes of Our Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)