1,721,002 research outputs found
Moving Pictures and People across the U.S.-Mexico Border: the Critical Reception of Sin Nombre and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
Full text linkThe declining sovereignty of nation-states intensifies the symbolic functions performed by physical borders. The frontier between Mexico and the U.S. is one of these ideologically charged places: it plays a defining role in national identities and narratives, and contributes to their hybridization. Nevertheless, in films involving a partnership between the U.S. and Mexico, critical discourse is predominantly shaped by separate ‘national’ paradigms. The paper considers as case studies two films concerned with border narratives: The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (Tommy Lee Jones, 2005) and Sin Nombre (Cary Fukunaga, 2009). Their critical reception is traced by examining reviews, articles and interviews both in the U.S. and in the Mexican press. The central premise of the two movies is, in fact, a journey towards the opposite side of the frontier (South-bound in the former, and North-bound in the latter). Concerns regarding the permeability of the national territory - which characterize contemporary surveillance culture - are filtered through the movies' genres and their different mise-en-scène. Migration emerges as the primary geopolitical framework through which the films are interpreted: the emphasis lies on the economic dimension and/or the ‘national security’ issues; hence, the dynamics of cultural hybridization are significantly overlooked
Italian-Americans' Contested Whiteness in Early Cinematic Melodrama
No full textIn the contemporary race studies debate, the concept of ‘whiteness’ has acquired a central role. The historical process through which the Italian-American community became ‘white’ is a relevant case study for showing the constructedness of such category, and the power relations implied in it. This paper focuses on the role played by early cinematic melodrama, in the light of wider social and political transformations that led to the assimilation of Italian immigrants into American racial discourse.
In early twentieth-century United States, mass immigration and the institutionalization of cinema were two interrelated phenomena. Cinema became a ‘respectable’ medium by assigning itself a moral and didactic role. To attend film screenings would be, for millions of immigrants, a way to become ‘Americanized’. In the same period wider socio-political discourses contributed to the re-signification of ‘whiteness’ in American society. In order to accommodate both the need of cheap immigrant labour and nativist ideologies concerned with the purity of the ‘white’ (e.g. Anglo-American) core of society, ‘whiteness’ became fragmented into an array of racially inflected ‘national types’. Among them, Italian-Americans were provided with ‘probationary whiteness’, but nevertheless were still deemed as racially inferior and ‘unfit for self-government’.
In portraying Italian-Americans, US cinema deployed melodramatic narratives to negotiate their ‘white’ status through the polarized moral discourse that characterized this particular genre. It is possible to trace different stylistic paradigms of early American cinema by comparing several melodramas directed by D.W. Griffith, portraying Italian-American characters, and later movies, such as Reginald Barker's The Italian (1915). The shift from early modes of representations (with a prevalence of sensational ‘attractions’) to the emergence of a classical narrative paradigm corresponds to a different status of Italian-American subjectivities. In earlier films, the Italian protagonist is an undefined member of a marginalized group, an anonymous subject marked as ‘other’ in relation to Anglo-American society. Later on, the Italian protagonist becomes a fully-rounded character through the use of cinematic devices, such as point-of-view shots and subtler acting, and it becomes possible to gain access to his subjectivity. The representation of Italian-Americans as ‘others’ in cinematic melodrama, and their subsequent assimilation into dominant racial ideology, reveals the variable and complex meanings of the social category of whiteness
Il noi e l'io. Alcuni film recenti su New York
No full textRecensione di alcuni film recenti su New York: Adam Leon, Gimme the Loot (2012), Noah Baumbach, Frances Ha (2012), Rashaad Ernesto Green, Gun Hill Road (2011), Ira Sachs, Keep the Lights On (2012), Andrew Dosunmu, Restless City (2011), Michel Gondry, The We and the I (2012
Swaralipi Nandi and Esha Chatterjee (eds.), Spectacles of Blood: A Study of Masculinity and Violence in Postcolonial Films, Zubaan Books: New Delhi, 2012
No full textMascolinità al cinema: prospettive teoriche e linee di ricerca
No full textL'articolo presenta una ricognizione del dibattito sulla mascolinità all'interno degli studi cinematografici. Il percorso tracciato va dalla decostruzione dello sguardo maschile nella Feminist Film Theory, passando per la nozione di “mascolinità come spettacolo” di Steve Neale, sino all'integrazione del contesto storico e al riconoscimento della fluidità e molteplicità dei modelli maschili. Da un punto di vista metodologico, si argomenta l'utilità di coniugare l'analisi della messa in scena e gli scenari socio-mediali in cui il film è inserito, secondo un approccio che emerge nei lavori di Veronica Pravadelli. Vengono poi introdotte le linee di ricerca più recenti sulla mascolinità, che integrano i film studies con gli studi postcoloniali, in relazione alle trasformazioni delle identità nazionali, razziali e culturali nell'immaginario cinematografico. Le interpretazioni proposte negli ultimi due decenni combinano quindi all'analisi del film una serie di saperi esterni: particolarmente importante è l'area di studi relativa alle dinamiche della globalizzazione e agli scenari transnazionali
Yosef Raz, Beyond Flesh. Queer Masculinities and Nationalism in Israeli Cinema, Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, 2004, pp. 203; Sergio de la Mora, Cinemachismo. Masculinities and Sexuality in Mexican Film, University of Texas Press, Austin, 2006, pp. 236.
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Raewyn Connell, Confronting Equality. Gender, Knowledge and Global Change, Polity: Cambridge, 2011.
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