Journals @ KPU (Kwantlen Polytechnic University)
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An Exploration into the Experiences of Student-Athletes
Get PDFThis paper investigated the experiences of student-athletes in British Columbia and aimed to address the limitations highlighted by the developers of the College Student-Athlete Life Stress Scale (CSALSS). By using the College Student-Athletes Life Stress Scale, factors which were the leading contributors of stress among student-athletes in British Columbia (BC) were identified. Furthermore, researchers discovered coaching relationships and injuries are significantly associated with the largest fluctuation in overall stress levels experienced at the population level
The Influence of the Framing Effect Paradigm Upon Perspectives of Individuals on COVID-19 Vaccinations
Get PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic, and the encouragement of people to get vaccinated, has been received with mixed opinions. This study was conducted to assess if a positively framed passage, compared to a negatively framed passage, would increase one's perspective in support of COVID-19 vaccinations. This between-groups experimental design, in which one group received a positively framed passage and one received a negatively framed passage, was conducted online anonymously through Qualtrics. After reading the passage, participants answered a 17-item survey on a 5-point Likert-scale that was categorized into four subscales. The results of a series of independent samples t-tests showed a statistically significant difference for only the attitude subscale as the score of the positive frame condition was higher (M = 4.34) than the negative frame condition (M = 4.07). The higher score indicates a positive attitude towards COVID-19 vaccinations and the small effect size suggests a minor influence of the framing effect upon attitudes of post-secondary individuals in regard to COVID-19 vaccinations (r2 = .07). However, no major differences were found for the remaining three subscales: reactance, emotions, and vaccination intentions
Same Women, Altered Autonomy: A Close Look at the Perception of Power in Carol
Get PDFTodd Haynes’s 2015 cinematic production, Carol, largely based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1952 novel, The Price of Salt, offers a glimpse into the complicated relationship of a conflicted housewife, Carol Aird, and twenty-something, seasonal retail worker and aspiring photographer, Therese Belevit. In this article, I will identify the power dynamic between Carol and Therese and illustrate the major character transformations that take place. Both Carol and Therese’s metamorphosis can be identified through close analysis of mise en scene throughout the film, specifically in the restaurant scene. This scene occurs twice. The first time the scene is shown, it is from Therese’s point of view, and the second, through Carol’s. Through slight alteration of camera angle and reframing, alternate perspectives are offered. I suggest this scene was repeated because Haynes wanted to amplify the drastic shifts in the characters’ autonomy. In the second iteration, the viewer’s perception of both Carol and Therese is altered. The shots from the scene I will analyze occur inside a restaurant, where Carol and Therese are sitting alone at a table
The End of Everything: Millennium Anxiety in Gregg Araki’s Nowhere
Get PDFThis article will deconstruct and analyze a scene from the 1997 feature film Nowhere, directed by Gregg Araki. The final chapter of the "Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy" Nowhere draws upon teenage alienation to evoke a polysemy of death - as the disintegration of the human body and as the collapse of time. Considering mise-en-scène details, narrative progression, and further cinematic aspects it can be asserted that, on a symptomatic level, the film conveys feelings of anxiety and detachment associated with the arrival of the new millennium
The Remix, Archive, and Memory in Fifi Howls from Happiness
Get PDFInspired by archival remix in diaspora cultural productions that deal with cultural memory, this featurette demonstrates the potential of filmic remix as a technology of remembrance for challenging normative archives and historiographies. The featurette brings to the fore various remixed elements at work in a poetic documentary of Iranian cinema, Fifi Howls from Happiness (2014) directed by Mitra Farahani. With a background in visual arts, the France-based director positions her film as an act of writing the neglected visual artist Bahman Mohasses into a much needed historiography and moving image archive of Iranian contemporary art. This featurette envisions the filmic montage in Fifi Howls from Happiness as a technology of remembrance that recreates quasi-abstraction and queer compositions that were central to Mohasses’ oeuvre with many pieces missing and lost
Colored Lighting and the Aura of Hollywood in Damien Chazelle's La La Land
No full textLooking at Damien Chazelle’s La La Land (2016), I explore the visual experience of colored lighting that Chazelle prioritizes throughout his film. While these moments of colored lighting may initially appear to simply create mood for aesthetic purposes, I would like to contend that Chazelle is doing more by purposefully choosing to fully saturate certain scenes in order to highlight stark moments of reality that his characters endure throughout both their relationship and their individual artistic pursuits. In doing so, Chazelle creates a dichotomy between the fantastical and often unrealistic elements of Hollywood and the grounding, everyday realities of life. Chazelle’s intentional introduction of color in La La Land, signaling the fantastical aura of Hollywood lore, personifies this sentiment as it proves that the aesthetic use of color is a warning that is doomed to fail because it represents a fantasy, something controlled and unreal
Kobayashi's Kwaidan: Horror, History, and Culture
Get PDFThis essay focuses on the uniqueness of Masaki Kobayashi’s Kwaidan through the lenses of history and culture, for instance, the significance of hair, not just as an abject figure, as seminally theorized by Julia Kristeva, but as symbolic of the avenging spirit of a distinct woman, a trait not uncommon in the East. Similarly, the significance of the ears to the musician: it has to do with art, as detailed by scholars, but more importantly, with Kobayashi’s history during wartime. The final episode often considered inferior to the other episodes by critics, is arguably the most effective invocation of the specter to indict the erasure of homosexuality in the official history of the male-centric Samurai world and, thereby, wartime Japan. Additionally, the second story of the Yoko-onna––the snow woman, at the intersection of the material and the ethereal deconstructs the angry ghost by positing it as the mindless victim of the militarist system by disavowing any personal reason for her murderous action. This essay interrogates the importance of causality through her behavior. Through such a reading, I want to draw attention to the cultural specificity of Kwaidan in engaging with the horror genre to address the specters which haunt the Japanese psyche. The disregard of a loving and caring wife and the inattention to the words of a wife who is seductive but part of the system, the possibility of music to evoke nostalgia and simultaneously mourn loss/destruction point to Kwaidan’s investment in the sensorium through sight and sound. Furthermore, the teacup that instead of leading to a meditative state, as entrenched in the popular imaginary regarding the Eastern ritual of tea drinking, invokes a past and simultaneously threatens the present, and leads us through the eruption of transgressive desire to the rupture of the apparent calmness and control of heteropatriarchy. Most important, Kobayashi’s ornate sets, stylized framing, and mise-en-scene, and Toru Takemitsu’s experimental music point to their predilection for art and sensuosity to layer the surface and delineate the uncanniness of the specter and play with its ephemeral quality through presence and absence rather than one of unswerving fearsomeness and devastation/conquest like in much cinema in the West where the ghost is posited as a binary opposite to be yielded to or challenged. Thus, the point of entry into Kwaidan is in reading it as a specter of history and departure is analyzing it as an exemplar of the horror genre predicated on the specificity of culture that privileges the sensorium
Under the Skin: Color and Production Design in The Brides of Dracula (1960)
Get PDFFollowing the success of Hammer Films’ Horror of Dracula (1958), international distributor Universal Studios was understandably eager for a sequel (Barnes and Hearn 50). The Brides of Dracula (1960) is consistently praised for its “exquisite” production value, “opulently mounted with Technicolor flashing, slickly [and] meticulously produced” (Hearn 41). While Brides follows the Hammer tradition of mixing violence, sensuality, and beauty, the film goes one step further by exploring the realm of vampirism, sexuality, and madness in its rich color palette
Of Other Homes: Creating Space for Belongingness in Midsommar
Get PDFUsing Michel Foucault’s concept of “heterotopias” (other spaces) and “heterochronies” (other times), this essay argues that space and time are essential to understanding Ari Aster’s Midsommar. It examines how Aster uses Hårga’s bygone civilization as a counter-space of deviation that exists outside of modernity. Aster’s spatiotemporal filmmaking techniques serve to cinematize the heroine’s journey of finding a place to call home