Magnifying Mirror: On Barbara Stanwyck and Film Performance Studies

 
"[F]ilm and criticism re-united"? MAGNIFYING MIRROR 
Video by Catherine Grant, based on text and narration by Andrew Klevan

Film Studies For Free proudly presents an entry on the wonderful work of American actress Barbara Stanwyck as well as on film performance studies more generally. Stanwyck's illustrious career began in the 1920s and spanned sixty years. During that period she starred in major films of many genres and worked with some of the most distinguished Hollywood directors. Writing on her work may provide, therefore, an excellent, indeed exemplary case for reflection on film critical methodologies in performance studies.

As well as the usual links to online scholarly work on these topics (scroll down for those), the entry presents, below, an interview with Andrew Klevan, Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Oxford. Klevan discusses the rationale behind his recent book on Hollywood film star Barbara Stanwyck (London: BFI/Palgrave, 2013). He also talks about some of the issues that arise when film performance is the object of study, around intention and attribution of agency and value.

During the interview, which took place in October this year, Klevan read aloud an excerpt from his book, a reading which inspired, and formed the narration of, the above FSFF video on Stanwyck, MAGNIFYING MIRROR. Klevan also wrote a short statement about the video and about his collaboration with FSFF more generally, which you can also find below.

FSFF Interview: Andrew Klevan on writing about Barbara Stanwyck and film performance 

A Note by Andrew Klevan
I am grateful to Film Studies For Free for highlighting my work, and I hope the expression of some nervousness will not be taken as ungracious. The problem of enlarging on rationale and method as I do in the interview is that, aside from risking accusations of self-importance and self-promotion, by simply stating matters which should, perhaps, remain implicit, one overstates the case, and raises expectations, especially with regard to, what we affectionately call, little books. My answers, drawing out many of the things I tried to do, may create the incorrect impression that the Barbara Stanwyck study is comprehensive and voluminous. (Even the use of expressions such as ‘moment-by-moment’ or ‘movement of meaning’ might suggest an exhaustive sequential tracking.) In fact, one of the compositional aims was to try, using the short form of the little book, to achieve a balance between elaboration and concentration, extraction and distillation. This partly reflects a similar balance achieved in the films and performances, and Catherine Grant’s fascinating video riff, ‘Magnifying Mirror’, which matches the film to my pre-existing text, captures some of this by looping a sequence and in doing so emphasises the moment’s compactness by way of repetition.

I am conscious that [fellow film scholar] E.A. Kaplan is a casualty, and it appears as if her comment on Stella Dallas is singled out where actually quite a few accounts are tested in the course of the study and the isolation is a consequence of uprooting. It is true that I take issue with her assessment, but this is a difference over an interpretation, not a charge against her work more generally, or the value of it. I feel that her account reduces, and overlooks an achievement of the film, but this is something that we are all prone to do. Indeed, much nervousness on my part again as the film returns, insistently, to probe my own description and interpretation – alas too late to make adjustments – but also some satisfaction as film and criticism are reunited. This image/speech track relationship struck me as quite different to a DVD commentary (which is limited by the real time of the film) and the narration of audio-visual criticism (which is conceived in relation to the handling of images). I got the sense of a new form of criticism, using audio-visual material, happily meeting an old form of criticism, using words, and not simply exemplifying the ‘close reading’, but enhancing and interrogating, and more generally revivifying (and magnifying). The iteration in Catherine’s video productively interacts with the distension of written representation. The collaboration with FSFF has illuminated for me the stimulating relationship between commentaries in different forms so that the book gets commented upon in an audio interview and in a video film which in turn gets commented upon in this web statement, allowing the different media to differently elucidate.

Andrew Klevan is Lecturer in Film Studies at the University of Oxford, UK. He is author of Disclosure of the Everyday: Undramatic Achievement in Narrative Film and Film Performance: From Achievement to Appreciation. He is the co-editor of The Language and Style of Film Criticism, and is on the editorial boards of MOVIE - A Journal of Film Criticism and Film-Philosophy Journal]

On Barbara Stanwyck

• Linda Berkvens, No Crinoline-Covered Lady: Stardom, Agency, and the Career of Barbara Stanwyck, DPhil Thesis, University of Sussex, 2011
• Linda Berkvens, 'From Below to Above the Title: The Construction of the Star Image of Barbara Stanwyck, 1930-1935', Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, Vol 2, No 1 (2009) 
• Maria DiBattista, 'Fast-Talking Dames, New York Times: Books, 2001
• Gary Johnson, 'Barbara Stanwyck, With her Hands on her Hips', Images Journal, Issue 1 
• Glenn Kenny, 'A Woman's Equipment: Barbara Stanwyck's Anklet in DOUBLE INDEMNITY', Balder and Dash, October 14, 2013
• Andrew Klevan, sample chapters from Barbara Stanwyck (London: BFI/Palgrave, 2013) 
• Andrew Klevan, 'A Reply to Adrian Martin', Undercurrent, Issue 4, 2008
• Michelle Orange, 'Review of  A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True, 1907-1940 by Victoria Wilson. Simon & Schuster', Slate, November 8, 2013
• V.F. Perkins, 'Acting on Objects', The Cine-Files, Issue 4, 2013
• Catherine Russell, 'Frank Capra: The Early Collection', Cineaste, 38.3, 2013
  
• Christopher Sharrett, 'Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow', Cineaste, 35.4, 2010
• Imogen Sara Smith, 'Passing the Test: On Repetition, Performance, and the Greatness of Howard Hawks', Moving Image Source, September 4, 2013
• Suzanna Danuta Walters, 'My Heart Belongs to Mama: Stella Dallas and the Politics of Class', in Lives Together/Worlds Apart: Mothers and Daughters in Popular Culture. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  1992
• Victoria Wilson, author of Barbara Stanwyck Steel-True 1907-1940 interviewed by Warner Archive Podcast, November 7th, 2013 
• 'An Interview with Victoria Wilson, Author of A LIFE OF BARBARA STANWYCK: STEEL-TRUE (1907-1940)', Backlots, October 24, 2013

On film performance

• Nicole Brenez, 'Incomparable Bodies', Screening the Past, 31, 2011
• Dan Callahan, 'Fatal Instincts: The Dangerous Pout of Gloria Grahame." Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 61, August 2008  
• Charles Chaplin Conference Proceedings, BFI, July 2005
• Anna Dzenis, 'On Film Performance', Screening the Past, 20, 2006
• Julie Grossman, Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: Ready for Her Close-Up (London: Palgrave/BFI, 2009) Book info. 
• Kylo-Patrick R. Hart, 'Introduction', Film and Television Stardom, ed by K-P R Hart (Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008)
• Susan Hayward, 'Stardom: Beyond Desire?' in History of Stardom Reconsidered, edited by Kari Kallioniemi, Kimi Kärki, Janne Mäkelä and Hannu Salmi. Turku: International Institute for Popular Culture, 2007 
• Tamar Jeffers, "Should I surrender?": performing and interrogating female virginity in Hollywood films 1957-64', PhD thesis, University of Warwick 
• 'Jerry Lewis Dossier' in La Furia Umana, Issue 12 - currently offline but will be back soon
• Christian Keathley, 'The Man in the Back Seat', The Cine-Files, Issue 4, 2013 
• Andrew Klevan, 'A Reply to Adrian Martin', Undercurrent, Issue 4, 2008
• Andrew Klevan, 'Expressing the In-Between', LOLA, Issue 1, 2011
• Andrew Klevan, Disclosure of the everyday : the undramatic achievements in narrative film, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 1996
• Victoria Lowe, 'Performing Hitchcock': Robert Donat, Film Acting and The 39 Steps (1935)', Scope, Issue 14, June 2009  
• Jean Ma, 'Close Reading: The Mise-en-scène of Song Performance', The Cine-Files, Issue 4, 2013
• Adrian Martin, 'Secret Agents [Review of Andrew Klevan, Film Performance: From Achievement to Appreciation], Undercurrent, Issue 4, 2008
• Adrian Martin, 'Hands Across the Table', The Cine-Files, Issue 4, 2013
• Adrian Martin, 'At Table: The Social Mise en scène of How Green Was My Valley', Undercurrent, no. 5, 2009
• Steve Masters, 'Review of Film Performance: From Achievement to Appreciation by Andrew Klevan', Scope, Issue 9, October 2007
• Daniel Morgan, 'Max Ophuls and the Limits of Virtuosity: On the Aesthetics and Ethics of Camera Movement, Critical Inquiry, Autumn 2011 
• Warwick Mules, ''Mise-en-scène and the Figural: A Reading of Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life'', The Cine-Files, Issue 4, 2013
• Rebecca Claire Naughten, Spain Made Flesh: Reflections and projections of the national in contemporary Spanish stardom, 1992-2007, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 2010 
• V.F. Perkins, 'Acting on Objects', The Cine-Files, Issue 4, 2013
• V.F. Perkins, 'Moments of Choice', Rouge, no. 9, 2006
• V.F. Perkins, 'Same Tune Again! Repetition and Framing in Letter from an Unknown Woman' (originally published in CineAction! no. 52), 16:9, September 2003
• VI Pudovkin, Film Technique And Film Acting, Grove Press Inc, 1958 
• Laura Sava, 'Théâtre du Soleil Meets the Cinema: Acting and Mask Work in Ariane Mnouchkine’s Molière', Screening the Past, Issue 31, 2011
• Imogen Sara Smith, 'Passing the Test: On Repetition, Performance, and the Greatness of Howard Hawks', Moving Image Source, September 4, 2013
• Joerg Sternagel, 'From Inside Us: Experiencing the Film Actor in Michael Haneke's Caché', Film International #39, vol. 7, no. 3
• Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular bodies: gender, genre and the action cinema, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 1995
• Sarah Thomas, Face-maker : the negotiation between screen performance, extra-filmic persona and conditions of employment within the career of Peter Lorre, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 2008
• Dolores Tierney, 'Latino Acting on Screen: Pedro Armendariz Performs Mexicanness in Three John Ford Movies', Revista Candiense de Estudios Hispanicos 37.1, 2012

 
Framing Incandescence: Elizabeth Taylor in JANE EYRE by Catherine Grant

 
Refashioning the Femme Fatale? Gilda in Motion by Catherine Grant

More about → Magnifying Mirror: On Barbara Stanwyck and Film Performance Studies

"Dangerous" Cinematic Women Studies

The above is a short video primer by Catherine Grant. It offers an audiovisual introduction to issues of gender, sexuality and movement in relation to Rita Hayworth's performance as Gilda in Charles Vidor's 1946 film.

The femme fatale is a product of the male imaginary, which emerges in literature and the visual arts under contingent socio-political conditions as a challenge to coherent and stable identities. [...]
     The emergence of the femme fatale motif in literature, art and cinema generally coincides with periods of social or political instability and is not specific to a culture, society or era, but exhibits countless masks as she may manifest herself in diverse historical or geo-political contexts, and through a variety of artistic and literary forms. She embodies traces of a myriad of powerful, as well as menacing, historical, biblical and mythical female figures, such as Cleopatra, Salome, or the Sirens; yet this wicked and barren creature is always imbued with an alluring beauty and rapacious sexuality that is potentially deadly to man. The femme fatale figure is a recurrent patriarchal construct, a projection of all that exists beyond that which is normal, familiar, or safe. As Rebecca Stott observes, she is a multiple sign, or ‘the Other around whom the qualities of all Other collect in the male imagination’ (1992: 39). As such, her appearances are always symptomatic of a society in crisis. [Eva Bru-Domínguez, 'The Body as a Conflation of Discourses: The femme fatale in Mercè Rodoreda’s Mirall trencat' (1974)', Journal of Catalan Studies 2009]

[I]s it possible that the tangled webs of violence, sexuality, pathology, and intrigue at the core of certain film noir offer moments of reversal and exception which challenge women's role as eternal victim? How is an anti-feminist backlash or male anxiety around women's power projected into these paranoid film scenarios? To what extent can such disruptions be contained through conventional "happy family" closure - or through the violent death of the (anti-)heroine whose glittering image lingers as the credits rolls? Working against the inescapable grain of the "repressive rule" of female victimhood, I choose here to seize on the exceptional figure of the "fatale femme." While the exception may help define the rule, she also keeps alive the possibility, the inevitability, of transformation in gendered relations of power. [Julianne Pidduck, The "fatal femme" in contemporary Hollywood film noir: reframing gender, violence, and power, Masters Thesis, Concordia University, 1993: 6-7]

Rather than promoting images of women that emphasize their spirit and unknowable power, and rather than promoting images of women that rely on their bodies, finally, we need to illustrate the contexts that inform women’s experience. I want to suggest some of the reasons why we’ve grown accustomed to identifying film noir’s “femme fatale” without examining these contexts that inform her presence in film noir, by doing just that: examining the settings—social, psychological, political, physical, and geographical—that define her experience, which is, I want strongly to suggest, a far better thing to define than “woman” herself.
     This study seeks to modify the tone of feminist discussions about film noir’s women by reorienting our attention to the narrative, social contexts, and mise-en-scene that show the relationship between women’s powers and the limits placed on them by social rules. Both the view of the “femme fatale” as misogynist projection and the view of the “femme fatale” as opaque yet transgressive female force emphasize her status as object or symbol (as object of scorn or as the mysterious and opaque “other” that threatens to destroy the male subject). My aim is to adjust our focus on film noir and gender so that we illuminate these women’s narratives rather than mystifying women as objects or images. [Julie Grossman, Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: Ready for Her Close-Up (London: Palgrave/BFI, 2009): 5. Book info.]

Film Studies For Free wishes its reader a very happy International Women's Day with a varied curatorial selection of online scholarly work touching on possibly the most studied 'object' in all of feminist film theory: the 'dangerous' woman, sometimes fatal, sometimes a fatality...

If you are a film goer you know her kind. She is attractive, alluring, enigmatic, enticing, teasing, siren-like. Totally tautological. You might come across her dancing in a cinematic cabaret or show, smoking in a private detective's office, gracing a film noir alleyway, or haunting a difficult to decipher flashback. Or turning up like a beautiful but bad penny, provoking your scopophilia (and/or your epistemophilia), just about anywhere in almost every period of international film history.

Just what is it about these cinematic women? There certainly isn't one answer to that question, but the studies linked to below might very well help you to begin to tackle it.

If there are any important online resources that FSFF has missed, please do list them in the comments thread.

• Rihab Kassatly Bagnole, Imaging the Almeh: Transformation and Multiculturalization of the Eastern Dancer in Painting, Theatre, and Film, 1850-1950, PhD, Ohio State University, 2005
• Linda Berkvens, 'From Below to Above the Title: The Construction of the Star Image of Barbara Stanwyck, 1930-1935', Networking Knowledge: Journal of the MeCCSA Postgraduate Network, Vol 2, No 1 (2009) 
• Rebecca H. Bias, From golden age to silver screen: French Music-Hall Cinema from 1930-1950, PhD, Ohio State University, 2005
• John J. Blaser and Stephanie L.M. Blaser, Film Noir Studies (dozens of essays and clips), 2008 
• Dan Callahan, 'Fatal Instincts: The Dangerous Pout of Gloria Grahame." Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 61, August 2008 
• Derek Dubois, 'Silent Subversions : Exploring the Enigma of Female Spectatorship in Silent Cinema', Master's Theses, Dissertations and Graduate Research Overview. Paper 32, 2009
• Richard Dyer, 'Homosexuality in Film Noir', from Jump Cut, No. 16, 1977, pp. 18-21
• Maura Edmond, 'Fashionable Attractions: Fashion Parades in Popular Entertainment from Lady Duff-Gordon to Lady Gaga', SCAN, 7.2, November 2010 
• Catherine Gomes, “‘The Era Of Lustrous Screen Sirens Lives On, Thousands Of Miles From Hollywood’: The Cross-Cultural Reception Of Chinese Martial Arts Cinema’s Sword-welding Actresses,” Reception: Texts, Readers, Audiences, History, Vol 1, The Reception Study Society, 2008
• Julie Grossman, Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: Ready for Her Close-Up (London: Palgrave/BFI, 2009) Book info.
• Melissa Jane Hardie, 'Loose Slots: Figuring the Strip in Showgirls', Xtext 1 (1996): 24-35
• Lee Horsley, 'Fatal Women in the Hard-Boiled Fifties' An extract from The Noir Thriller (Palgrave, 2001; 2009) 
• Thomas Kiely, 'Erendira: A not-so-innocent film', from Jump Cut, no. 31, March 1986 
• Naomi King, ‘Male Identity and the Threat of the Feminine’, Crimeculture, 2002
• Aspasia Kotsopoulos and Josephine Mills, 'The Crying Game: Gender, genre and "postfeminism"', from Jump Cut, no. 39, June 1994
• Elizabeth Lee, 'The Femme Fatale as Object', Victorian Web, 1997
• Scott Loren, 'Self-fashioning, Freedom, and the Problem of His-story: the return of noir', European Journal of American Studies, 1, 2008
• Maree Macmillan, 'Beyond the femme fatale: The mythical Pandora as cathartic, transformative force', in Illuminating the Dark Side: Evil, Women and the Feminine, edited by Andrea Ruthven and Gabriela Mádlo (InterDisciplinary.net, 2010)
• Maasilta Mari, African Carmen. Transnational Cinema as an Arena for Cultural Contradictions, PhD Thesis, University of Tampere, 2007
• Michael Mills,  'High Heels on a Wet Pavement: Film Noir and the Femme Fatale', Modern Times (date unknown)
• Daniel Morgan, 'Max Ophuls and the Limits of Virtuosity: On the Aesthetics and Ethics of Camera Movement, Critical Inquiry, Autumn 2011 
• Laura Mulvey, 'Visual pleasure and narrative cinema', Screen, 1975
• Fred Nadis, 'Mechanical Dolls and Rank Ladies', Left History,Vol 7, No 1 (2000)
• Rebecca Claire Naughten, Spain Made Flesh: Reflections and projections of the national in contemporary Spanish stardom, 1992-2007, PhD Thesis, University of Newcastle, 2010 
• Sheila O'Malley, 'Five Things About Peggy Cummins in Gun Crazy', The Sheila Variations, February 19, 2011
  
• Anne Helen Petersen, The Gossip Industry: Producing and Distributing Star Images, Celebrity Gossip, and Entertainment News, 1910 - 2010, PhD Thesis, University of Texas at Austin, 2011
• Julianne Pidduck, The "fatal femme" in contemporary Hollywood film noir: reframing gender, violence, and power, Masters Thesis, Concordia University, 1993
• Patricia Pisters, 'Lili and Rachel: Hollywood, History and Women in Fassbinder and Verhoeven' in Kooijman, Jaap, Patricia Pisters, Wanda Strauven (eds), Mind the Screen: Media Concepts According to Thomas Elsaesser (Amsterdam University Press, 2008)
• Barbara L. Romanczuk, Screening Zola’s women, PhD, Ohio State University, 2002 
• Sarah Sik, '[Review of] Evil by Design: The Creation and Marketing of the Femme Fatale by Elizabeth K. Menon (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006), Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide, 2012
• Cheryl Inez Simon, Gender, genre and globalization : discourses of "Femininity" in the popular culture of the 1990's. PhD thesis, Concordia University, PhD Thesis, Concordia University, 1998
• Scott Snyder, 'Personality Disorder and the Film Noir Femme Fatale', Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 8(3) (2001)
• Jamie L. Stuart, The Business and Pleasure of Filmic Lesbians Performing Onstage, PhD, Bowling Green State University, 2006
• Yvonne Tasker, Spectacular bodies: gender, genre and the action cinema, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 1995 
• Deborah Walker, 'Re-reading the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: an evolutionary perspective', The Journal of Moving Image Studies, Vol. 5, No. 6
• Emma Whiting, 'Dangerous Women and the Abject in the Noir Thriller', Crimeculture, 2005

More about → "Dangerous" Cinematic Women Studies

Networking Knowledge on Michael Mann, Lindsay Anderson, Barbara Stanwyck and much more

Will Smith as Muhammad Ali in Ali (Michael Mann, 2001) [See Vincent M Gaine's article on this and other Mann films]

From time to time, Film Studies For Free can be ever so dim. It has referred on a number of occasions in previous posts to choice items published in the online periodical Networking Knowledge: Journal of the Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) Post-Graduate Network (PGN). But it omitted to mention the journal in its permanent listing of Online Film and Media Studies Journals. D'oh!

Not only has FSFF now rectified this unfortunate error, but it has decided to carry out proper penance in the form of the below complete listing of direct links to all items so far published in this excellent journal, including many articles of note on film and moving image studies. Enjoy!

• Vol 3, No 1 (2010) - Table of Contents

Re-Mediated Mann:The Re-Mediation of Public Figures and Events in The Insider and Ali	PDF
Vincent M Gaine

The Cinema Authorship of Lindsay Anderson: Anderson’s Directorial Practice	PDF
Isabelle Gourdin-Sangouard

Publicising the News: Publicity and Australian Commercial Television News	PDF
Michaela Jackson

Th’ Abstract of All Faults: Antony vs. the Hegemonic Man	PDF
Rachael Kelly

Reporting Religion and Enemy Images in the Nigerian Press	PDF
Odamah Musa

Journalistic Blogs in China: Political Dissent and the Formation of a Public Sphere	PDF
Hai Tang

The Role of Media in Supporting Communication in Cultural Institutions. Case Study: Communicating Media Art	PDF
Michela Negrini

• Vol 2, No 1 (2009) -MeCCSA PGN Conference 2008 -Table of Contents

Activism, Resistance and Online Presence

Digital vs Material: the Everyday Construction of Mediated Political Action	Abstract PDF
Veronica Barassi

Igorots in the Blogosphere: Claiming Spaces, Re-constructing Identities	Abstract PDF
Liezel C. Longboan

Blogging in China: Freedom of Expression vs Political Censorship in Sexual and Satirical Blogs	Abstract PDF
Hai Thang

The Press and the Political Process

Scottish Press Coverage of UK General Elections after Devolution: the 2001 and 2005 Campaigns	Abstract PDF
Marina Dekavalla

Women and the Media

“Focus on the Housewife”: the BBC and the Post-war Woman, 1945-1955	Abstract PDF
Kristin Skoog

The Representation of Motherhood in Post-socialist Chinese Cinema	Abstract PDF
Huili Hao

Theorising Film

‘We’re on Flashdrive or CD-ROM’: Disassembly and Deletion in the Digital Noir of Collateral	Abstract PDF
Vincent M. Gaine

Indeterminate Film-thinking and Interpretation	Abstract PDF
Jimmy Billingham

Audiences and Fans

Underworld vs the World of Darkness: Players and Filmgoers Respond to a Legal Battle	Abstract PDF
Rachel Mizsei Ward

Wots Not Queer: the Search for Sexual Representation in Audience Research	Abstract PDF
Craig Haslop

Screen Icons

From Below to Above the Title: the Construction of the Star Image of Barbara Stanwyck, 1930-1935	Abstract PDF
Linda Berkvens

The Iconography of Mark Antony	Abstract PDF
Rachael Kelly

Locating Media Productions

Representing National Culture, Values and Identity in the Brazilian Television Mini-series	Abstract PDF
Niall Brennan

‘I Will Survive’: Forty Years of Amber Films and the Evolution of Regional Film Policy	Abstract PDF
Paul O'Reilly

Place, Communication, Translation

Read My Voice: Expressing Silence and Sound in Text-messages	Abstract PDF
Agnieszka Knaś

The Medium is Global, the Content is not: Translating Commercial Websites	Abstract PDF
Yvonne Lee

• Vol 1, No 2 (2007) - MeCCSA PGN Conference 2007 -Table of Contents

Branding, Advertising and Corporate Cultures

Steve Jobs: the human logo	Abstract PDF
Chloe Peacock

Interpersonal Communication Competence in SME Internationalization	Abstract PDF
Pipsa Purhonen

Design for Screen

One Form, Many Letters: Fluid and transient letterforms in screen-based typographic artefacts	Abstract PDF
Barbara Brownie

Fan Culture and Online Audiences

Dressing up as Vampires: Virtual vamps - negotiating female identity in cyberspace	Abstract PDF
Maria Mellins

Film and Theatre

The Playwright as Filmmaker: History, Theory and Practice	Abstract PDF
Othniel Smith

Imperialism and Globalisation

The evolution of Hollywood's representation of Arabs before 9/11: the relationship between political events and the notion of 'Otherness'	Abstract PDF
Sulaiman Arti

Popular Culture

"Little Englander" : Fawlty Towers - A textual analysis of nationalistic ideology	Abstract PDF
Matthew Bartley

Public Service Broadcasting and Radio

Reducing the difference between citizens and consumers: a critical discourse analysis of the Communications White Paper 2000	Abstract PDF
Simon Dawes

Reporting the Conflict

The Ideology of Objectivity: Constructs of Language in the Popular Press of Early Twentieth-Century Britain	Abstract PDF
Claudia Heske

Explaining Media Frames of Contested Foreign Conflicts: Irish National ‘Opinion Leader’ Newspapers’ Frames of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (July 2000 to July 2004)	Abstract PDF
Mary O'Regan

Sexual Representations in Cinema

The Killer Father and the Final Mother: Womb-Envy in The Cell	Abstract PDF
Shweta Sharma

Still Image

Photojournalism as a Creator of Values: otherness in Sámi representations	Abstract PDF
Heli Lehtela

Uses of Music and Sound in Film

Music, identity, and oblivion	Abstract PDF
Gerry Moorey

• Vol 1, No 1 (2007) -Minding the Gap: Reflections on Media Practice & Theory -Table of Contents

Sound and Image: Alternative Methods of Research and Presentation

Summary of Panel Presentations	Abstract PDF
Dr Charlotte Crofts

'High Definitions': Articulating Media Practice As Research	Abstract PDF
Dr Charlotte Crofts

Video Diary Making as a Research Method: Just Another Jargon of Authenticity?	Abstract PDF
Tony Dowmunt

Bringing Work Back to School: Professional Experience in Media Research

Dilemmas of Ethnographic Research: The Practitioner/Academic’s Quandary	Abstract PDF
Somnath Batabyal

A Return to the ‘Big’ Discourse : Interviewing History Documentary-Makers	Abstract PDF
Dafydd Sills-Jones

Theoretical Models in Mass Media Practice: Perspectives from the West

Introduction	Abstract PDF
Line Thomsen

Do Journalists know how to listen and should they be taught how to? Some thoughts on contemporary interviewing practices.	Abstract PDF
Gavin Rees

‘Documents of Ordinariness – The BBC Video Nation Project’	Abstract PDF
Jo Henderson

Daily or Diary? Towards a New Profile in e-Journalism	Abstract PDF
Cristina Perales, Mon Rodríguez

A Shield for Whom? First Amendment Implications of a Federal Shield Law	Abstract PDF
Patrice Holderbach

Theoretical Models in Mass Media Practice: Perspectives from the Developing World

Introduction	Abstract PDF
Venkata Vemuri

Journalism and Political Democracy in Brazil	Abstract PDF
Dr Carolina Matos

‘Reporting Back’: Al Jazeera English	Abstract PDF
Nina Bigalke

Grounds for Development: Media Development Practice and Theory in Post-Conflict Afghanistan	Abstract PDF
Sarah Kamal

Understanding the Complexity of Journalistic Practices: the Case of Xinhua	Abstract PDF
Dr Xin Xin

Double Vocations: Media Practice and Theory

Introduction	Abstract PDF
Dafydd Sills-Jones

Media Corporatism: Whither Journalistic Values?	Abstract PDF
George Nyabuga

More about → Networking Knowledge on Michael Mann, Lindsay Anderson, Barbara Stanwyck and much more

Fruity film and television studies links!

Due to a devastating case of total PC meltdown (following painful months of on-and-off digital trouble and strife), Film Studies For Free brought you nothing new for over a week...

But now it's back.  Its mission is possible once again. And this time it's brought to you by a new, more reliable, and thoroughly inspirational computer host (think Scottish fruit). 

FSFF never wants to go away again (until vacation time at least). But it may struggle for a wee while, while its owner learns the cool new language of her wonderful new i-World.

Anyhoo, here are some choice links to celebrate its stylish return:

• One of FSFF's favourite film blogs -- Videoarcadia -- is back after a hiatus. Lots of things to read, but FSFF really liked the little post on Gus Van Sant's Milk.
• The new online issue of Flow: A Critical Forum on Television and Media Culture is now available with Martin Roberts on Euro-American subcultural fascination with Japan; Michael Z. Newman on the ethical issues around P2P filesharing; Ben Aslinger on 'popular music and urban place'; Serra Tinic on the US Life on Mars and the cultural politics of imports and adaptations; Jeffrey Sconce on nineties comedy; Carly A. Kocurek on youth, video gaming and the law; Daren C. Brabham on 'Crowdsourced advertising'; and Priscilla Peña Ovalle on racialised bodies in Mexican Breakfast.
• A brilliant stream of posts over at Film For The Soul, thanks to its (now, spinoff) project 'Counting Down the Zeroes: The Noughties in all their glory'. There are twelve great guest posts on noughties films, so far (on Requiem for a Dream, X-Men, Pollock, You Can Count on Me, Traffic, Yi Yi/ A One and a Two, Werckmeister Harmonies,  Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, InuYasha, High Fidelity, Boiler Room, and Battle Royale). If you'd like to contribute your own essay on a noughties film, please contact Ibetolis of Film for the Soul asap.
• If your bag is very heavyweight but brilliant philosophy with your film and literary studies (think Wittgenstein, Blanchot, Lacan, T.S.Eliot, plus David Cronenberg, Dario Argento, and Lucio Fulci...), do venture a visit to the remarkable blogspot of Michael Grant, one of FSFF's owner's friends and former colleagues. For the as yet uninitiated, two good posts to try out first are: 'David Cronenberg: Style and Extremity' and  'Clint Eastwood: Avatar of the Undead'. 
• Other great blog posts from AP at the Movies ('Barbara Stanwyck, Cowboy Queen' and 'Waiting on a train [on The Train Robbers, 1972]''); Cinebeats (on Yusako Matsuda); Spectacular Attractions (on M. Night Shyamalan's underrated film Unbreakable); the peerless Tativille on Abbas Kiarostami's Through the Olive Trees; and lots of wonderful recent posts at Shooting Down Pictures (FSFF loved the one on the 'best documentary of the decade').

More about → Fruity film and television studies links!