Comic woman,victim woman: Pushing gender and genre boundaries in popular Hindi Cinema

“Women's film” in Hollywood is associated both with the genre of melodrama, the “weepie”, and with female spectatorship. In the Indian context of popular Hindi cinema, first, genre analysis itself is a questionable line of inquiry since several genres, the melodrama, musical, gangster, or mystery, combine in a single film, known locally as the masala (spicy) film; and second, films are scarcely divided by a gendered viewership. Yet I identify “women's films” as a distinct category in Hindi cinema, emerging around the ‘70s. These women's films typically center on female protagonists, dramatize their victimization and vindication; by the ‘80s under a range of influences these films mutated into rape‐revenge narratives.

However, another strain emerged within the ‘70s’ “women's film,” which drew on cinema's rich visual iconographic tradition of the sight gag, promulgating the comedic/tomboy heroine figure. It favored laughing and mocking patriarchal structures rather than surrendering to them in tears. Focusing on Ramesh Sippy's Sita aur Gita [1972] emblematic of this trend I explore theoretical concerns about associating genres with gender. In keeping with recent poststructuralist theories about gender and media ‘consumption I show how the film destabilized clear‐cut gender identification and stood for a promising trend that was sadly undercut. Thus, while genre might still be a useful analytical tool for Hindi cinema, defining women's film as female‐centered narratives is a viable category as long as we appreciate the instability in gendered viewer identification.     

Race and place at the city limits: imaginative geographies of South Central Los Angeles

In the early 1990s, a new cycle of films emerged that depicted complex portrayals of the lives of African-Americans in the neighbourhoods in which they lived. This so-called ‘hood genre was quite radical in its foregrounding of structural racism and police violence. But Hollywood's marketing of these films muted this radical content by directly contradicting explicit signifiers in the films’ story worlds. While many of the ‘hood films take place on the urban fringe and in suburbs, their promotional materials worked to confine the action, to a mythic ‘inner city'.

This essay studies the two most popular films of the genre, Boyz n the Hood and Menace II Society, to illustrate how ‘paratexts' redistricted 'hood films. Through a comparative analysis of the films and their promotional materials, this essay argues Hollywood marketed a racialized ‘imaginative geography' for this important genre of African-American cinema.     

Visions of Blood,Sex and Money: Fantasy Spaces in Popular Ghanaian Cinema

This article focuses on Ghanaian popular cinema,' which emerged in the late 1980s and has become a major form of entertainment for urban audiences. It shows that the filmmakers, who produce films in the video format which are very close to everyday life experiences and dreams, offer visions which they and their audiences regard as being similar to those provided by religious prophets and preachers. Watching these films allows for complex negotiations between the desires for transgression of the moral order, the longing to feel morally superior, and the striving for knowledge to understand one's world. On the basis of a detailed analysis of the film Women in Love, which conjures up a fantasy space located at the bottom of the sea where money and commodities are generated in exchange for sex and blood, this article argues that popular cinema is part and parcel of a new culture of vision, one characterized by the visualization of otherwise invisible fantasy spaces as well as by its easy accessibility through such modern mass media as video and TV. The article argues that these fantasy spaces should not be regarded as misguided distortions, but as sources for gaining insight into what Marx called “the religion of everyday life,” and thus as revelations of the fantasy dimension of global capitalism.     

The Neoliberal World Order and Patriarchal Power: A Discursive Study of Korean Cinema and International Co-production

This research is an attempt to examine the ideological aspects of Korean cinema in the context of politico-economic changes. Korean cinema is in the process of economic restructuring, driven by neoliberal forces on a global scale. These economic forces also influence film texts on a concrete level, creating hybrid characters and narratives in blockbusters and co-produced films. These new genre films have tended to reinforce patriarchal ideology, making it increasingly pronounced, as Korean films become more technologically advanced and the production system globalized. To illustrate these effects, this article offers a textual analysis of Never Forever [Kim Jina 2007], which was the first U.S.–Korean co-production.     

The reification of concrete work in Egyptian film production

The anthropology of cinema has been instrumental in describing the ‘unseen’ labour invested in making films. What has been less explored is film workers’ erasure of each other's concrete effort in a similar manner. This process is what I call ‘reification’. Extending Georg Lukács's reflections, I argue that the relations of production throughout the film-making process seem to be transformed into relations between things (images and sounds) in a recurring pattern. In Egypt, this transformation impacts every juncture in commercial film production, and film workers manage its continuous impact via conventional means of recognition towards their concrete work. The overarching project is to understand, on the one hand, how the serial erasure of concrete work contributes to creating the film as a commodity and, on the other hand, how workers find value in their work under conditions where their effort is consumed by the things that they produce.     

Measuring Long-Term Impact Based on Network Centrality: Unraveling Cinematic Citations

Traditional measures of success for film, such as box-office revenue and critical acclaim, lack the ability to quantify long-lasting impact and depend on factors that are largely external to the craft itself. With the growing number of films that are being created and large-scale data becoming available through crowd-sourced online platforms, an endogenous measure of success that is not reliant on manual appraisal is of increasing importance. In this article we propose such a ranking method based on a combination of centrality indices. We apply the method to a network that contains several types of citations between more than 40,000 international feature films. From this network we derive a list of milestone films, which can be considered to constitute the foundations of cinema. In a comparison to various existing lists of ‘greatest’ films, such as personal favourite lists, voting lists, lists of individual experts, and lists deduced from expert polls, the selection of milestone films is more diverse in terms of genres, actors, and main creators. Our results shed light on the potential of a systematic quantitative investigation based on cinematic influences in identifying the most inspiring creations in world cinema. In a broader perspective, we introduce a novel research question to large-scale citation analysis, one of the most intriguing topics that have been at the forefront of scientific enquiries for the past fifty years and have led to the development of various network analytic methods. In doing so, we transfer widely studied approaches from citation analysis to the the newly emerging field of quantification efforts in the arts. The specific contribution of this paper consists in modelling the multidimensional cinematic references as a growing multiplex network and in developing a methodology for the identification of central films in this network.     

Social cognition on the Internet: testing constraints on social network size

The social brain hypothesis (an explanation for the evolution of brain size in primates) predicts that humans typically cannot maintain more than 150 relationships at any one time. The constraint is partly cognitive (ultimately determined by some aspect of brain volume) and partly one of time. Friendships (but not necessarily kin relationships) are maintained by investing time in them, and failure to do so results in an inexorable deterioration in the quality of a relationship. The Internet, and in particular the rise of social networking sites (SNSs), raises the possibility that digital media might allow us to circumvent some or all of these constraints. This allows us to test the importance of these constraints in limiting human sociality. Although the recency of SNSs means that there have been relatively few studies, those that are available suggest that, in general, the ability to broadcast to many individuals at once, and the possibilities this provides in terms of continuously updating our understanding of network members' behaviour and thoughts, do not allow larger networks to be maintained. This may be because only relatively weak quality relationships can be maintained without face-to-face interaction.     

The Texture of Events and the Stuff of Dreams: Jean Rouch at the Heart of Film and Anthropology

Too little known in the English‐speaking world, Jean Rouch died in 2004, leaving a prolific body of work. Influenced by the surrealists, by dance, cinema and music, his ‘shared anthropology’ and filmmaking began when he was an engineer in colonial West Africa during World War II—through friendship with African public works employees and revolt over the working and living conditions of the people forced to labour. Rouch saw his engineering, anthropology and filmmaking as creating with the concrete, ‘building bridges’. He did not renounce the ‘rational’, but wanted to supplement and broaden it with other ways of searching and knowing, always concerned with the relationship of the concrete material to the spiritual, dream and fantasy—working in the imaginative place where art meets science. This article discusses Rouch's ciné‐ethnography, focusing on a few of the many films he made.     

The Future of Lao Cinema: The New Wave

The debut work of Mattie Do and Anysay Keola attests to the manner in which Lao cinema is being shaped by a new wave of young filmmakers determined to build a viable movie industry in the Lao PDR. With Chantaly, the first Lao horror movie, Mattie Do conjures up a world that cannot be fully explained rationally. She relies on the phi figure, and the belief of Lao people in supernatural beings, to raise serious questions about the traditional position occupied by women in the Lao family. Another film, Anysay Keola’s At the Horizon, the first Lao thriller, provides an edgy vision of contemporary Laos. The divide between the poor and the rich, tradition and modernity, is conveyed most originally via the soundtrack. Mattie Do and Anysay Keola are part of a new wave of promising young Lao directors who are fashioning a modern film industry in Laos.     

Moral Publics: Human Trafficking,Video Films and the Responsibility of the Postcolonial Subject

This article analyzes the ways in which a Nigerian video film about human trafficking is received by Nigerian women who have themselves experienced trafficking in their migration to Italy. This contextualized case study is used as a methodological “lockpick” to open up new lines of enquiry into the relationship that southern Nigerian video films create with their audiences. The essay argues that, by virtue of their specific “addressivity,” the genre of Nigerian video films that focus on female migration and prostitution participates in the creation of moral publics that are concerned with the definition of the postcolonial subject’s responsibility in shaping his/her own destiny.     

The Last of the Great (Foot-Slogging) Explorers: Lewis Cotlow and the Ethnographic Imaginary in Popular Travel Film

This essay focuses on the popular travel films and books of Lewis Cotlow (1898-1987), an American explorer, author, filmmaker, insurance broker and amateur ethnographer who made photographic expeditions to Africa, South America, New Guinea, and the Arctic from the 1930s to the 1950s. This essay aims to uncover the shared historical practices and narratives in travel film and ethnographic film, examining scientific films in light of popular forms of anthropological cinema. In particular, the author examines the construction of an ethnographic imaginary and modes of ethnographic realism in the feature-length color film Jungle Headhunters [1950], shot during Cotlow's various expeditions to the Amazon during the 1940s.     

An effective calibration technique for radiochromic films using a single-shot dose distribution in Gamma Knife®

PurposeA method of calibrating radiochromic films for Gamma Knife^® (GK) dosimetry was developed. The applicability and accuracy of the new method were examined.MethodsThe dose distribution for a sixteen millimeter single-shot from a GK was built using a reference film that was calibrated using the conventional multi-film calibration (MFC) method. Another film, the test film, from a different set of films was irradiated under the same conditions as the reference film. The calibration curve for the second set of films was obtained by assigning the dose distribution of the reference film to the optical density of the test film, point by point. To assess the accuracy of this single-film calibration (SFC) method, differences between gamma index pass rates (GIPRs) were calculated.ResultsThe SFC curves were successfully obtained with estimated errors of 1.46%. GIPRs obtained with the SFC method for films irradiated using a single-shot showed differences less than one percentage point when dose difference criterion (ΔD) was 2% and the distance to agreement criterion (Δd) was 1 mm. The GIPRs of the SFC method when the films were irradiated following a virtual target treatment plan were consistent with the GIPRs of the MFC method, with differences of less than 0.2 percentage points for ΔD = 1% and Δd = 1 mm.ConclusionThe accuracy of the SFC method is comparable to that of conventional multi-film calibration method for GK film dosimetry.     

Onward, Christian penguins: wildlife film and the image of scientific authority

Within US media reactions to March of the penguins, animal images became an arena for displaced conflicts of human interest. This paper examines an intermediary step through which the film became a medium for social disagreement: conflict over control of the cultural authority to interpret animal images. I analyze claims to the cultural honorific of science made within disputes over readings of the film as evidence for intelligent design (ID). I argue that published refutations of this reading were largely misguided in that they tended to group arguments-for-ID with a suite of social-allegorical readings of the film. By failing to address essential differences between interpretations, critics of the arguments-for-ID necessarily overlooked their problematic and unexamined claim that the film shares the cultural authority of science. Furthermore, where critics of the ID readings might have challenged this claim, they often replicated it instead. This overarching failure critically to assess the status of the film's scientific authority may have resulted from audience expectations about the genre of wildlife films, the advertising strategy of the film's US distributors, and structural ambiguities within the film concerning its status as a scientific representation.     

There Once Was a Maiden and a Middle Class: The Making of a Neoliberal Thriller

Coinciding with India's turn to neoliberalism, a new genre—the conspiracy thriller—has appeared in popular Hindi cinema. Its aesthetics of speed, movement, and surprise express the fear and furious reasoning of an individual who must save her- or himself from a conspiracy that threatens to destroy them. This article contextualizes the genre in the urban spaces of neoliberalism, its architecture of private enclosures, and the paranoid subjectivities it has produced.     

Hollywood and the Travelogue

Although documentary films, in formats such as the travelogue-expedition film, are rarely considered as a basis for insight into the Hollywood cinema, the early 1930s provide one historical period during which travelogues produced by independent filmmakers achieved such public popularity that the Hollywood studios were forced to respond. Studios produced some feature-length documentaries themselves, began distributing others, and generated "hybrid" films, such as M-G-M's Trader Horn [1931], that demonstrate a surprising willingness to give up the priority of narrative for the advantage of providing audiences with digressive documentary interludes devoted to the spectacle of exotic cultures, landscapes and wildlife.     

Does being Roma matter? Ethnic boundaries and stigma spillover in musical consumption

Manele songs, an updated version of traditional Romani music, are excluded from mainstream Romanian media due to their association with the country’s large Roma minority. The genre is at the intersection between Romania’s democratic transition and growing efforts to strengthen boundaries between the country’s marginalized Romani minority and the non-Romani majority population. But we find that media discussions around manele underscore a fluid relationship between ethnic boundaries and stigmatized cultural consumption. All those who listen to manele are portrayed in negative terms by the media, no matter whether ethnic markers are used as part of the portrayal. In the context of manele, genre-based stereotypes extend beyond ethnic boundaries to assign negative social value to a wide swathe of people who consume the genre. The stigma spillover surrounding manele audiences therefore underlines the ways in which Roma identity is fluid, and anyone associated with the Roma can be relegated to the lower rungs of social status. Manele show how the political process of ethnic boundary-making draws a wide net over those located at the bottom of power hierarchies.     

Active viewing: An Ethnography of the Indian film audience

Audiences of popular Hindi cinema¹ present a strategic site for study of the active audience as they adopt a viewing style that is participatory and interactive. In cinema theaters viewers applaud and whistle loudly, sing along with the soundtrack, shout out comments and throw coins at the screen. Viewers transform the meaning of the film and shape the collective experience of viewing. Plural audiences encounter varying interpretations of the film arising from a diversity of world views and from life‐worlds different from their own. Rather than homogenising viewers, mass produced Hindi films appear to differentiate them. The intersubjectivity of the viewing experience becomes an achievement, rather than a taken‐for‐granted. The film is seen to become a resource both for the formation of community and for the generation of conflict and the theater, a public forum and arena for situated culture wars.     

A Black Box for Participatory Cinema: Movie-making with “Neighbors” in Saladillo,Argentina

This article explores the phenomenon of neighborhood cinema (Cine con vecinos) in Saladillo, Argentina. Since 1995 it has been appropriating screening and production spaces wrested from local television, and more generally challenging the hegemony of national TV and industrial cinema production. Cine con vecinos is analyzed here in terms of social agency, participation and sociality. It has democratized media production through films shot entirely with locals, and has also promoted a revival of local movie theaters. Finally, the prospects of this type of cinema are assessed in contrast to other types of participatory community cinema, and also in view of its recent project of making a future “community set,” or large-scale production site, for community cinema.     

Global patterns of body size evolution are driven by precipitation in legless amphibians

Body size shapes ecological interactions across and within species, ultimately influencing the evolution of large‐scale biodiversity patterns. Therefore, macroecological studies of body size provide a link between spatial variation in selection regimes and the evolution of animal assemblages through space. Multiple hypotheses have been formulated to explain the evolution of spatial gradients of animal body size, predominantly driven by thermal (Bergmann's rule), humidity (‘water conservation hypothesis’) and resource constraints (‘resource rule’, ‘seasonality rule’) on physiological homeostasis. However, while integrative tests of all four hypotheses combined are needed, the focus of such empirical efforts needs to move beyond the traditional endotherm–ectotherm dichotomy, to instead interrogate the role that variation in lifestyles within major lineages (e.g. classes) play in creating neglected scenarios of selection via analyses of largely overlooked environment–body size interactions. Here, we test all four rules above using a global database spanning 99% of modern species of an entire Order of legless, predominantly underground‐dwelling amphibians (Gymnophiona, or caecilians). We found a consistent effect of increasing precipitation (and resource abundance) on body size reductions (supporting the water conservation hypothesis), while Bergmann's, the seasonality and resource rules are rejected. We argue that subterranean lifestyles minimize the effects of aboveground selection agents, making humidity a dominant selection pressure – aridity promotes larger body sizes that reduce risk of evaporative dehydration, while smaller sizes occur in wetter environments where dehydration constraints are relaxed. We discuss the links between these principles with the physiological constraints that may have influenced the tropically‐restricted global radiation of caecilians.     

Renovated: Gender and Cinema in Contemporary Vietnam

This article discusses the changes in Vietnamese cinema from the Socialist to the contemporary period from the viewpoint of gender representation. Under socialist conditions of cultural production, films were made by state-funded studios, with a clear mandate to provide the population with film material appropriate to the state's ideals. Since Doi moi (“Renovation”) in the late 1980s, Vietnam was opened up to market forces and cinematic practices have responded. Issues of gender have come into focus, and films exploring these themes have emerged from both state studios and private investors. Nevertheless conservative social values remain strong, and gender remains an area of dynamic uncertainty.