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Marshall, Kingsley. 2022. ‘The Aesthetics of Asymmetrical Warfare. Cinema’s representation of Conflict in the Twenty-First Century’. In Choe, Steve and Aboujieb, Lina (Eds). 2022. The Palgrave Handbook of Violence in Film & Media. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan
No full textThe paper asserts that innovative production practices have been adopted by filmmakers, in part, as a response to representing the compromised nature of recent conflicts that have been complicated by unknowability and complexity. Contemporary warfare has been characterised as asymmetrical; where new modes of 21st century conflict can be distinguished from the “old wars” of the 20th century in terms of their politics, use of technology and combat tactics (Freedman and Barnett, 2003; Kaldor 2012).
Joshua Clover has described this as having presented an “unnarratability” (2009: 9) to the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and, more recently, Syria. I argue that filmmakers have made use of unconventional and sophisticated combination of sound design, cinematography and visual editing in cinema in order to emulate transmedia representations of these conflicts and that this aesthetic builds upon news media, documentary, video games and emergent forms such as first-person combatant-originated footage.
A number of films advance what I describe as a Gulf War Aesthetic, which privileges verisimilitude through the combination of subjective first-person point of view with a similarly subjective sonic point of audition. This paper makes use of The Hurt Locker (Bigelow, 2009) as a primary case study in order to certain tendencises of this aesthetic and brings together two traditions of analysis – the study of film’s production discourse through practitioner interview and the textual analysis of the intrasoundtrack, or relationship between the visual components of the film and elements of the soundtrack – dialogue, effects, music and silence (Altman, Jones and Tatroe: 2000: 339-346).
Indicative Bibliography
Altman, R., Jones, M. and Tatroe, S. (2000) ‘Inventing the Cinema Soundtrack: Hollywood’s Multiplane Soundsystem’, in Buhler, J., Flinn, C., and Neumeyer, D. (eds.) Music and Cinema (Music/Culture). Hanover, US: University Press of New England, pp. 339–359.
Bigelow, K. and Boal, M. (2009) ‘Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal Interview’. Interview with Kingsley Marshall for Unpublished Transcript, 20 September 2009.
Clover, Joshua. (2009) ‘Allegory Bomb’, Film Quarterly, 63(2), pp.8-9.
The Hurt Locker (2009) Directed by Kathryn Bigelow [Film]. USA: Summit Entertainment.
Freedman, L.D. and Barnett, R. (2003) ‘Asymmetrical Warfare: Today’s Challenge to U.S. Military power’, Foreign Affairs, 82(3), p. 151.
Kaldor, M. (2012) New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Global Era. 3rd edn. Washington DC, US: Stanford University Press.
Sergi, G. (2004) The Dolby Era: Film Sound in Contemporary Hollywood (Inside Popular Film). Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
Stilwell, R. (2001) ‘Sound and Empathy: Subjectivity, Gender and the Cinematic Soundscape’, in Donnelly, K. (ed.) Film Music: Critical Approaches. New York, US: Continuum, pp. 167–187.
Stilwell, R. (2003) ‘Breaking Sound Barriers: The Soundscapes of The Loveless to Blue Steel’, in Jermyn, D. and Redmond, S. (eds.) The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow: Hollywood Transgressor. London, UK: Wallflower Press, pp. 32–56.
Stilwell, R. (2015) ‘Audiovisual Space in an Era of Technological Convergence’, in Richardson, J., Gorbman, C., and Vernallis, C. (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics. Oxford, UK: Oxford Universit
untitled review of SOUVENIR: LONDON, 1979-1986, MICHAEL BRACEWELL (2021) London: White Rabbit, 124pp., ISBN: 9781474622301, h/bk, £14.99
Get PDFA book review, with specific reference to popular music references and the written form & style of the boo
Walking with teachers: A study to explore the importance of teacher wellbeing and their careers
Get PDFTeacher turnover and retention is a global challenge. It appears that in times of teacher shortages, policymakers often focus on recruitment. Yet, it could be argued that focussing on retaining experienced teachers not only addresses teacher shortages but provides additional benefits to the teachers, their students, and the teaching profession. The aim of this interpretive case study was to investigate the views of experienced primary school teachers. Twelve teachers, who had taught in English primary schools for more than five years, participated in walking interviews. The research looked at the areas where teachers want to feel supported by the culture of the school, created by the leadership team
Game, Set and Match
Get PDFa book review of The Last Days of Roger Federer and other endings, Geoff Dyer (283pp, £20, Canongate
Peer Evaluation Questionnaire
Get PDFThis questionnaire explores the student experience of peer evaluation. It has been used in a group project module that forms part of the undergraduate courses in the Games Academy
Interview with Jason Whittaker, by Rupert Loydell
Get PDFJason Whittaker, who has previously worked at Falmouth University, is now Head of the School of English and Journalism at the University of Lincoln and teaches on the MA Creative Writing and Publishing programme which is run by Lincoln and The Guardian.
This interview covers a recent book on Industrial Music which Whittaker edited and Loydell contributed to, music, Blake, the body, journalism and the evolution of publishing
Research engagement among UK care home staff: a reflection
Get PDFConducting research in care homes is difficult, and research originating from care homes is lacking. This article provides reflective insights into the determinants that affect research engagement among UK care home staff. The Capability, Opportunity, Motivation, Behaviour (COM-B) model of behaviour has been used to structure and explore our reflections relating to time, funding and skills. Our reflections suggest that wider determinants influence research engagement among care home staff and that a culture of research within care homes remains in its infancy. Our reflections highlight that more needs to be done to enable and empower care home staff to engage in research
circling, tumbling, dancing around: Back pieces
Get PDFThis article consists of six text–image pieces that share practical research into modes of moving, perceiving and thinking through the back and extended notions of dorsality. Since 2019, through workshops, studio residencies, presentations and collaborative moving, conversational, drawing and writing practices, I have been developing physical exercises and choreographic devices for tuning into the back, bringing attention to and exploring the unseen surfaces and axial technologies of the back. These dorsal practices are evolving through movement and sensory research as well as opening a wider set of philosophical concepts and possibilities for orientating in and co-habiting a world amongst other bodies and things. The pieces combine short written texts, sidenotes and images. The texts have evolved from sensory observation in practical movement tasks and conversations, in the form of notes and recordings, often working in a dynamic process between embodied experience, memory and imagination. The footnotes are a playful device for allowing other peripheral ideas such as light, moth, vestibular labyrinth, tree, tracing paper, ghost, voice, front-crawling to enter and generate gaps for the reader in which to linger, skip, skim, imagine, (re)connect. The still images, diagrams and drawings are another way of taking note, testing, proposing, articulating and reading
