CINEJ Cinema Journal
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The Ultimately Determinant Role of Economy in Yilmaz Güney\u27s Movies: An Essay From the Perspective of Marxist Theory
Full text linkThe study examines a different aspect of the films of actor, screenwriter, and director Yılmaz Güney, who brought a new sense of reality to Turkish cinema. Güney\u27s film Umut (The Hope), which he acted and directed in 1970, is a turning point for Yılmaz Güney cinema and Turkish cinema. The breath of Marxism can be felt in almost all of Yılmaz Güney\u27s films after The Hope. In his films, Güney aimed to convey to the audience the fundamental contradictions of Turkish capitalism, the socioeconomic inequalities it created, and the resulting class differences. It can be argued that Güney\u27s films discussed within the scope of the study Umut, 1970 (The Hope), Endişe, 1974 (The Anxiety), Sürü, 1978 (The Herd), Düşman, 1979 (The Enemy) focus on social class differences in the capitalist system by relying on Marxist ideology. Although the reasons for these differences in the movies are associated with factors such as politics, ideology, religion, culture, family, and education, it is thought that the most significant share of the factors that play a role in the formation of social classes is given to the economy. The study started with the problem of proving this claim. The films discussed within the study\u27s scope revealed that the economy is the critical factor determining social class differences
Imagining Friends and Foes: The (Re)Education of Jojo Rabbit
Full text linkThe film Jojo Rabbit is a coming-of-age story that explores the power of the imagination in constructing and deconstructing Nazi ideals. Ten-year-old Johannes (Jojo) Betzler was educated by Nazi society to imagine Hitler, the Nazis, and the “Aryans” as his friends and the Jews as his diabolical foes. Only when he meets and befriends Else, a Jewish girl hidden in his attic, is he able to break free and begin to recognize and deconstruct these imagined friends and foes. Moreover, Jojo Rabbit demonstrates how friendship is a context in which vice or virtue can develop (depending on the friend) by enabling transformation, training the emotions, and enslaving or setting free. The filmmakers turn the Nazi imagination upon its head: they dismantle the Nazi view of jungle animals fighting each other for survival to show that it is only by laying down hatred and animosity that we can rely on each other and survive together amid the chaos
A Sentimental Android? M3GAN (2022) and Monstrous Doubling as a Negotiation of the Gendered Neo-Liberal Self
Full text linkThis paper analyses the android M3GAN in the 2022 film of the same name, problematising recent framings that celebrate M3GAN as a gay icon, a feminist figure, or understand her as embodying our collective fear of artificial intelligence. Instead, I place M3GAN in a long line of narratives that mediate on the role of women in society, following the loosening of possibilities for woman brought about in the Enlightenment. I go on to suggest ways in which contemporary neoliberal values are forcefully communicated in popular culture and how in turn, the subject reacts and internalises ideology
Finding Leadership in Media Education
Full text linkThis article is an exploration of leadership in media education and some of its identifying features. As lecturers in media studies and production, our teaching philosophy weaves through these themes: active learning (Budhai 2021), learning by doing (Schank et al 2013), peer and self-assessment (Iglesias Pérez, Vidal-Puga, and Pino Juste 2022) and constructive alignment (Loughlin, Lygo-Baker and Lindberg-Sand 2021)
Ancient Telling, Contemporary Showing: A Reading of The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017) As Film Adaptation
Full text linkThis article aims to investigate the contemporary aspects of adaptation from ancient plays, presenting a reading of The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017). A comparative view towards Iphigenia at Aulis by Euripides (405 BC) raises the question of how story elements of that play are recreated within the film adaptation. Also, it seeks to explore the relationship between the type of engagement, from hypotext (play) “telling” to hypertext (film) “showing”. The theoretical framework of the article utilized theories of Gerard Genette’s “hypertextuality” and Linda Hutcheon’s “adaptation”. The results indicate subtle thematic connections, as well as a significant interplay between hypotext and hypertext. The Killing of a Sacred Deer represents an adaptation with a creative interpretation, one which reimagines the forms and themes of ancient tragedy in a modern-life context. Various influences, imitations and transformations of Euripides’ story elements are interwoven in the adaptation process and discussed in the article
Experimenting with Epos: 3 Characters from 3 Directors in Turkish Cinema
Full text linkWhile the narrative tradition, which has been developing for thousands of years, can be examined by dividing it into three parts as Drama, Lyricos and Epos, since the discovery of cinematography 127 years ago, narrative in cinema has developed narratives parallel to the two most basic theories of cinema, Realistic Film Theory and Formalist Film Theory, as well as contributing to experimental, feminist, etc. narratives in addition to these theories. The main purpose of this article is to examine three different pioneering films and heroes of Turkish Cinema (Umut-Yılmaz Güney-hero: Cabbar, Anayurt Oteli-Ömer Kavur-hero: Zebercet, Uzak-Nuri Bilge Ceylan-hero: Mahmut), which were shot in a realistic theme, and to reveal how they developed their heroes and what kind of experience they offered to the audience with the heroes they presented, starting from the literary narrative genre Epos. Based on the concept of objectivity, the presentations of the heroes were examined by using the cinema\u27s own language and forms with the cooperation of the screenwriter-director
Joker: Film, Working Class and Post-Truth
Full text linkThe film Joker (2019) garnered huge interest from audiences worldwide and honored at the box office with an amount exceeding one billion dollars. Indeed, Joker has a class and political reflection on society. This article claims that the film Joker is a manifesto against the political forces that prioritize populist, authoritarian, and ruthless capitalist policies all over the world. The aim of our study is to analyze how the class movement is shown and examined in Joker. Joker\u27s anti-system and anti-capitalist stance needs a sociological analysis; this analysis examines how Joker reflects people\u27s subconscious and inspires class resistance. Another important point is to analyze the movie scenes with a descriptive analysis that will help us understand the transformation of the social movement. How the characters are assigned semiotically in the script is another requirement in terms of emphasizing what the film tells implicitly. It is important both to understand the chaos of the working class, which has not yet positioned itself in the production relations of the postmodern period after, and to see the film\u27s recipe for why the working class should not incline towards right-wing populist politics. Understanding these two points will be the most important result and achievement of our study
Deceptive Retrospective Narrative Strategy and Synchronistic Prerequisite: Case Study on The Design of Impossible Puzzles
Full text linkThe deceptive clues in the impossible puzzle film confirm the viewer’s internal expectations and allow retrospective attributing. In the film, a transcendental object negates an internal expectation, causing a retrospective blockage. Retrospectivity does not stop there; the transcendental object reinterpreting deceptive clues in the associative area leads to repeated attribution. This article consists of three parts. First, it discusses impossible puzzle films in the context of complex narrative classification. The following section introduces the Jungian concept of synchronicity and illustrates how it works. The article concludes with a case study of Long Day’s Journey into Night (2018), which contains more complicated puzzles and explains how mind-game narrative techniques create deceptive clues and induce deceptive retrospective attribution
Getting Your Money Back: Swedish Funding Institutions and Questions About Quality Films
Full text linkThis article explores the ways in which policymakers, national institutions, and film funding bodies try to navigate the current challenges for Swedish cinema, and if/how distinctions such as “commercial value”, “circulation potential” and “quality” remains important criteria for them. This is done by analyzing reports and interviewing people from both the industry and funding bodies.
Excursion among the Countries, Documentary, and Essay: Layered Narratives and Self-Representation in A Dog Called Money
Full text linkThe film elements, especially in the documentary or essay films, carry the director\u27s point of view more prominently. A Dog Called Money (2019) is a film with essayistic and documentary features by photographer Seamus Murphy about the creation process of British musician PJ Harvey\u27s latest album, The Hope Six Demolition Project. The film focuses on the artists\u27 journey in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Washington DC and the album\u27s production process, which takes place in a live museum exhibition. Murphy uses visual narrative, while Harvey takes on the role of the textual and auditory narrator with voice-over, text, and music. Therefore, this study analyses the textual and audio-visual features of the documentary film that reflect the self-representation of both artists. The representation form created by the layered narrators that the film\u27s narrative varies between the essay and the documentary genre is interpreted in the context of image, sound, and text