‘Daddy’s dead. Noooo!’: Quentin Tarantino and Psychoanalysis Beyond the Paternal principle

 Image from Death Proof (Quentin Tarantino, 2007)

Today, Film Studies For Free brings you links to audio recordings from a symposium on Quentin Tarantino and psychoanalysis "beyond the paternal principle", hosted by The London Graduate School and the London Society for the New Lacanian School. It took place on 4th April, at the Institute for Contemporary Arts, The Mall, London. The symposium engagingly described itself thus:

‘Daddy’s dead. Noooo!’ (Tarantino, from Dusk Till Dawn)

Tarantino’s movies frequently turn on the abjection of a paternal figure (Marcellus Wallace, Jacob Fuller, Bill, Stuntman Mike), who loses his place and authority to become a redundant figure of consumption and expenditure. Tarantino’s movies themselves, in their restless play of reflexive images and references, are always seeking to produce the maximum in cinematic affect irrespective of the aesthetic unities of generic form, symbolic consistency, realism. This symposium explores the suggestion that Tarantino’s movies best symptomatise a tendency in Hollywood generally where cinema is no longer a vehicle of (anti)Oedipal desire, but a febrile, speculative generator of thrills, pleasures and anxieties swarming along an accelerating death drive which is itself death proof. In Tarantino’s film of the same name, for example, the impotence of itinerant ex-stuntman Mike is the condition of a romance between two iconic automobiles, vehicles not of male potency but an altogether Other jouissance.

• INTRODUCTION: Véronique Voruz (the London Society of the New Lacanian School)[AUDIO HERE] Right click to save

• TARANTINO’s GIRLS: Gérard Wajcman (writer, psychoanalyst, curator and art critic. He teaches at the Department of Psychoanalysis of Paris 8 University and is a member of the École de la Cause Freudienne and the World Association of Psychoanalysis) read by Scott Wilson [AUDIO HERE]

• POST-PHALLIC LIBIDINAL ECONOMIES: Hager Weslati (London Graduate School, Kingston University) [AUDIO HERE]

• SCREEN, DRIVE, ROMANCE: Fred Botting (London Graduate School, Kingston University, co- author of the Tarantinian Ethics (Sage, 2001)) [AUDIO HERE]

• PSYCHE, THAT INGLOURIOUS BASTERD: Scott Wilson (London Graduate School, Kingston University, co- author of the Tarantinian Ethics (Sage, 2001)) [AUDIO HERE]

• TOUGH LOVE: Marie-Hélène Brousse (practising psychoanalyst in Paris, a member of the École de la Cause freudienne and of the World Association of Psychoanalysis) [AUDIO HERE]

Studies of Film Noirishness, with Love

50+ new links added on February 27, 2011

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.

Private Property - Joseph Losey's The Prowler by Matt Zoller Seitz 
at The L Magazine, March 2010
(also see Justin Stewart's essay on this film in the same issue)

Film Studies For Free is delighted to present its own contribution to the remarkable fundraising effort for the Film Noir Foundation that has been taking place in the last week, namely the For the Love of Film (Noir) Blog-a-thon, organised by film critics Farran Smith Nehme (Self-Styled Siren) and Marilyn Ferdinand (of Ferdy on Film).

Awed by the contributions so far, FSFF proffers (above) a little video-primer on its favourite noir - Gilda - together with a reposting of Matt Zoller Seitz's fabulous audiovisual essay on The Prowler (also above), and a whole host of direct links (below) to openly accessible scholarly reading and viewing on Film Noir, and on all varieties of Neo-Noir, too - taken altogether, some of the most essential of film studies topics.

The Film Noir Foundation works to preserve and restore movies in its chosen mode from many eras and from many countries. The film nominated to be restored with monies raised this year is a fine and important noir called The Sound of Fury (aka Try and Get Me) directed by Cy Endfield (1914–1995).

One of the resources FSFF links to is an excellent interview with Endfield, conducted in 1989 by Brian Neve, in which he discusses that film in the context of his career as a whole and the historical events which formed the background to his work. Here's what Endfield concludes about The Sound of Fury.

I consider that my talent for making pictures was best expressed in two pictures, Zulu and The Sound of Fury. I think the one big talent I have is to make big pictures. There is a sense of structure about something of dimension that I have found lacking even in pictures that were supposed to be big. [...] The Sound of Fury was made mostly from my blood circulation and nervous system. 

FSFF knows that feeling only too well! It can't wait to see the restored film. So, please, if you love Film Noir, join this blog's author in donating some of your hard-earned dough (or even some of your ill-begotten gains...) on this occasion. Just click here. Thank you!

• New Jason Ambrosiano, '"The Ties That Bind and Bless the Soul": Grace and Noir in Schrader's Light Sleeper', Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1998

• John Belton, 'Film Noir's Knights of the Road', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 54, November 2006

• New Jamaluddin Bin Aziz, 'Future Noir', Crimeculture, Summer 2005

• New John J. Blaser and Stephanie L.M. Blaser, Film Noir Studies (dozens of essays and clips), 2008

• New Zoe Bolton, 'Entertainment and Dystopia: Film Noir, Melodrama and Mildred Pierce', Crimeculture, 2005

• David Bordwell, 'Cognition and Comprehension: Viewing and Forgetting in Mildred Pierce',  Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism Vol. VI, No. 2, Spring 1992

•  Dominique Bregent-Heald, 'Dark Limbo: Film Noir and the North American Borders', The Journal of American Culture, 29:2, 2006

• New Kurt Bullock, 'Vertical Apocalypse: Altered Noir Cityscape within Blade Runner’s Dystopia', SBCC.edu 

• Dan Callahan, 'Fatal Instincts: The Dangerous Pout of Gloria Grahame." Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 61, August 2008

• New Tessa Chudy, 'Cinema: Noir: The Darkest Vision', M/C Reviews, November 4, 2004

• Angela Curran, ' Review of Dan Flory, Philosophy, Black Film, Film Noir', Notre Dame Philosophical reviews, March 10, 2009

• 'Dossier: An Interview with Cy Endfield', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)

• Richard Dyer, 'Homosexuality in Film Noir', from Jump Cut, No. 16, 1977, pp. 18-21

• Dan Flory, 'Introduction: Philosophy and the Blackness of Film Noir', Philosophy, Black Film08, Film Noir, Penn State University Press, 2008

• Dan Flory, 'The Epistemology of Race and Black American Film Noir: Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam as Lynching Parable', In: Film and knowledge: essays on the integration of images and ideas / edited by Kevin L. Stoehr. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002

• Vincent M. Gaine, '‘We’re on Flashdrive or CD-ROM’: Disassembly and Deletion in the Digital Noir of Collateral', Networking Knowledge, Vol. 2, No. 1, 2009

• Saverio Giovacchini, 'Introduction: Taking Hollywood Seriously', Hollywood Modernism: Film and Politics in the Age of the New Deal (Temple University Press, 2001)

• New John Hall, 'Touch of Psycho: Welles' Influence on Hitchcock', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 14, September 1995

• Daniel Herbert, Transnational film remakes: Time, space, identity, University of Southern California, PhD Thesis, 2008

• Ken Hillis , 'Film Noir and the American Dream: The Dark Side of Enlightenment', first published in Velvet Light Trap 55, Spring 2005 (1-18). Reprinted (2006) in Multicultural Film: Essays, Pearson Publishing

• New Katharine and Lee Horsley, ‘Mere Fatales: Maternal Guilt in the Noir Crime Novel’,
  Modern Fiction Studies 45.2 (1999) 369-402

• New Lee Horsley, 'Fatal Women in the Hard-Boiled Fifties' An extract from The Noir Thriller (Palgrave, 2001; 2009)

• New Images Journal Special Issue (No. 2): 10 Shades of Noir, including essays on The Big Heat; The Big Sleep; The Big Combo; Double Indemnity; Force of Evil; Gun Crazy; Lady from Shanghai; Pickup On South Street; Shadow of a Doubt; Sweet Smell of Success; Some Additional Choice Noirs.

• New Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture, 10 (3), 2004: Special Issue on crime cinema and television, including essays on Deep Cover, NYPD Blue and Law and Order, among others.

• D.B. Jones, 'Review of Wheeler Winston Dixon, Film Noir and the Cinema of Paranoia', Screening the Past, Issue 25, 2009

• New Edvin Kau, 'Great Beginnings and Endings. Made by Orson Welles." P.O.V. , Issue 2, Nov. 1996

• New Matthew Kennedy, 'On Commies, Stoolies, and Other Assorted Lowlifes', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 44, May 2004

• New Naomi King, ‘Male Identity and the Threat of the Feminine’, Crimeculture, 2002

• John Kraniauskas, 'Noir into history James Ellroy’s Blood’s a Rover', Radical Philosophy 163 (September/October 2010)

• Jennifer E. Langdon, Caught in the Crossfire: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Americanism in 1940s Hollywood (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008)

• Jennifer Langdon-Teclaw, 'Negotiating the Studio System: Adrian Scott and the Politics of Anti-Fascism in Cornered', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)

• New Scott Loren, 'Self-fashioning, Freedom, and the Problem of His-story: the return of noir', European Journal of American Studies, 1, 2008

• New Michael Mills,  'High Heels on a Wet Pavement: Film Noir and the Femme Fatale', Modern Times (date unknown)
  

• New Richard Misek, 'Wrong Geometries in The Third Man', Rouge, No. 11, July 2007

• Gary Morris, 'Film Noir.",' In: glbtq: An Encyclopedia of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Culture, 2002

• New Gary Morris, 'Out of the Past: A noir classic revisited', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 29, July 2000

• Brian Neve, 'The Hollywood Left: Robert Rossen and Postwar Hollywood', Film Studies Volume 7, Winter 2005, pp 54-65

• John S. Nelson, 'Four Forms for Terrorism: Horror, Dystopia, Thriller, and Noir', Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003

• John S. Nelson, 'Realism as a Political Style: Noir Insights', Poroi, 5, 2, November, 2008

• Stanley Orr, 'Connected Guys: The Reconstructed Subject of 1990s Film Noir', in Darkly perfect world: colonial adventure, postmodernism, and American noir (Ohio State University, 2010) scroll down in PDF to p. 198

• Chris Pallant , 'Review: Mark T. Conrad, ed. (2007) The Philosophy of Neo-Noir. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press', Film-Philosophy, 14.1, 2010

• New Bryan D. Palmer, 'Night in the Capitalist, Cold War City: Noir and the Cultural Politics of Darkness',  Left History 1997

• Fred Pfeil, 'Revolting Yet Conserved: Family "Noir" in Blue Velvet and Terminator 2', Postmodern Culture, Vol. 2, No. 3, May 1992

• Brock Poulin, 'Dark time (s): non-linear narratives in the postmodern film noir', Masters Thesis, University of British Columbia, April 2005

• Julianne Pidduck, The "fatal femme" in contemporary Hollywood film noir : reframing gender, violence, and power, Masters Thesis, Concordia University, 1993

• Robert J. Read,  The film noir collection and the legacy of nineteenth century modernity. Masters thesis, Concordia University, 2003

• Nathaniel Rich,  "San Francisco in Film Noir,", Conversations with History, 6/23/05 (direct video link here)

• David Ross-Gerling, 'Spanish Cinema Noir and Novela Negra: A Case Study on Racial Profiling',  (scroll to p. 1263 in PDF), History and Civil Rights Monograph, Vol. 11

• New José Luis Sánchez Noriega, 'Psychoanalytical Culture in the American Film Noir', Journal of Medicine and Movies, No. 4, 2008

• Torben Schmidt, 'Christopher Nolan’s Memento – Analysis of the narrative structure of a noirish revenge film', Seminar: “Decadence and Modernism in Late 20th Century American Cinema, 2003

• New Alain Silver, 'Introduction', Film Noir Reader 1 (Limelight Editions, 1996)

• New Alain Silver, 'Kiss Me Deadly: Evidence of a Style', Film Noir Reader 1 (Limelight Editions, 1996) (Go to Kiss Me Deadly: Evidence of A Style, Part Two)

• Imogen Sara Smith, 'In Lonely Places: Film Noir Outside the City', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 65, 2009

• Imogen Sara Smith, 'Past Sunset: Noir in the West', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 66, 2009

• Imogen Sara Smith, 'Plumbing the Depths of Capitalism: On Force of Evil', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 61, August 2008

• Imogen Sara Smith, 'Dana Andrews: The Forties Hero and His Shadow', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 62, November 2008

• Peter Stanfield, 'A Monarch for the Millions: Jewish Filmmakers, Social Commentary and the Postwar Cycle of Boxing Films', Film Studies, Volume 7 (Winter 2005)

• Peter Stanfield, 'Review of Edward Dimendberg, Film Noir and the Spaces of Modernity', Film Studies, Vol. 6, Summer 2005 (Scroll down in PDF)

• New Scott F. Stoddart, '"Queer Eye" for a "Straight Dick": Contextualized Homosexuals in Film Noir', MLA Convention, Philadelphia, 2004

• Stephen Swanson, The Stranger inthe Dark: the Ethics of Levinasian-Derridean Hospitality in Noir, PhD Thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2007

• Grant Tracey, 'Force of Evil' (10 Shades of Noir) Images, Issue 2 (scroll down for full index)

• New Anja Christine Rørnes Tucker,  "Teen Noir" A Study of the Recent Film Noir Revival in the Teen Genre, MA Thesis, University of Bergen, 2008

• Jans B. Wager, 'Percolating Paranoia: Fritz Lang's The Big Heat', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 27, January 2000

• New Elizabeth Ward, 'The Post-Noir P.I.: The Long Goodbye and Hickey and Boggs', Film Noir Reader 1 (Limelight Editions, 1996)

• Deborah Walker, 'Re-reading the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: an evolutionary perspective', The Journal of Moving Image Studies, Vol. 5, No. 6

• New Nancy West and Penelope Pelizzon, 'Snap Me Deadly: Reading the Still Photograph in Film Noir', American Studies, 43:2, 2002

• New Emma Whiting, 'Dangerous Women and the Abject in the Noir Thriller', Crimeculture, 2005

Note: The first video essay (by Catherine Grant) embedded at the top of this post was made according to principles of Fair Use/Fair Dealing, primarily with scholarly and critical aims, and was published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 License in February 2011. If you found this video or FSFF's Film Noir entry useful or enjoyable, please consider supporting with a donation the valuable work of the Film Noir Foundation. Thank you.

Double-Strength: Videos and Links in Celebration of Barbara Hammer

Clip from Maya Deren's Sink by Barbara Hammer (via UndergroundFilm at Vimeo)


Clip from NITRATE KISSES by Barbara Hammer



Clip from SANCTUS and other films from the 1980s by Barbara Hammer
(You can see Sanctus @ubuweb)

HAMMER! Making Movies Out of Sex and Life Book Performance, Barbara Hammer at British Film Institute, March 2010

"I have chosen images rather than words for the act of naming myself an artist and a lesbian because the level of meanings possible for images and image conjunctions seemed richer and held more ramifications" Barbara Hammer

Film Studies For Free today presents a tribute to the remarkable American, experimental filmmaker and activist Barbara Hammer. The tribute takes the form of a listing of online videos and scholarly links to studies of Hammer's work, as well as of related queer film and politics.

Hammer is seventy-one years old, still making films and still protesting against injustice and censorship. In 2010, she published her wonderful autobiography, HAMMER! Making Movies Out of Sex and Life, which addressed her personal history and philosophies on art (see a review here).

FSFF says, "Thank you, but... keep it up, please, Barbara! Your work and activism is needed now more than ever." (This blog can be a rather greedy and merciless task-mistress at times...)

Modern Women: Barbara Hammer on her career and Feminist film

Modern Women: Barbara Hammer on Maya Deren

• Barbara Hammer Faculty page at European Graduate School 

• Barbara Hammer. Resisting Paradise. Video Lecture Documentary 2005 1/4, 2/4, 3/4, 4/4

• Barbara Hammer's Video Channel at Vimeo (16 videos so far archived) 

• Barbara Hammer's website

• Barbara Hammer interviewed in February 2010 about her research on medical science film 'No bones about it!'

• Edith Becker, Michelle Citron, Julia Lesage, B. Ruby Rich, 'Lesbians and film, p. 2', from Jump Cut, no. 24-25, March 1981

• Sarah Boslaugh, 'Getting Past the Stereotypes: Woman and Motorcycles in recent Lesbian Novels', IJMS, March 2006

•  Martin P. Botha, 'The New African Queer Aesthetics: the Portrayal of Homosexuality in International Cinema', Kinema,

• Joan Braderman, 'Feminism and Video: A View from the Village', Camera Obscura, Volume 22, Number 1, 2007

• Julia Erhart, 'Performing memory: compensation and redress in contemporary feminist first-person documentary', Screening the Past, December 1, 2001

• Claudia Gorbman, 'Barbara Hammer's recent work: Body displaced, body discovered', from Jump Cut, no. 32, April 1987

• John Hess, 'Notes on U.S. radical film, 1967-8', from Jump Cut, no. 21, Nov. 1979 

• Tricia Jenkins, '‘‘Potential Lesbians at Two O’Clock’’: The Heterosexualization of Lesbianism in the Recent Teen Film', The Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. 38, No. 3, 2005 

• Chuck Kleinhans, 'Teaching sexual images: some pragmatics', from Jump Cut, no. 40, March 1996 

• Laura U. Marks, 'Loving a Disappearing Image', Cinémas : revue d'études cinématographiques / Cinémas: Journal of Film Studies, vol. 8, n° 1-2, 1997

• Susan E. McKenna, 'Seeing lesbian queerly: visibility, community, and audience in 1980s Northampton, Massachusetts', PhD Thesis, University of Massachusetts, September 2009

• Fiontán Moran, 'Anatomies of Desire', Afterall, May 2010

• Gary Morris, 'Tender Fictions: Barbara Hammer's Truth Club', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 17, 1996

• Ricardo Peach, Queer Cinema as a Fifth Cinema on South Africa and Australia, PhD Thesis,University of Technology, Sydney, March 2005

• John Ramirez and Larry Horne, 'UCLA Gay and Lesbian Media Conference', from Jump Cut, no. 29, February 1984 

• Jennifer Beth Simmons, Visions of Feminist (Pom(o)nanism): Masturbating Female Postmodern Subjectivity in American Television and Film, MA Thesis, University of Florida, 2004

• Jamie L. Stuart, The Business and Pleasure of Filmic Lesbians Performing Onstage. PhD Thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2006 

• William C. Wees, 'Carrying On: Leslie Thornton, Su Friedrich, Abigail Child and American Avant-Garde Film of the Eighties', Canadian Journal of Film Studies, Vol. 10, No. 1, Spring 2001

• Andrea Weiss, 'Women I Love. Double Strength : Lesbian Cinema and Romantic Love' , from Jump Cut, no. 24-25, March 1981

• Jacquelyn Zita, 'The films of Barbara Hammer: Counter-currencies of a lesbian iconography', from Jump Cut, no. 24-25, March 1981

Screening 9/11 and its aftermath in film and media studies

Image from In America (Jim Sheridan, 2002), the first film to be (partly) shot in New York after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, according to Seán Crosson's article "‘They can't wipe us out, they can't lick us. We'll go on forever pa, ‘cause we're the people'..." (2008)

The absence of the Twin Towers from the post-9/11 New York City skyline posed a number of dilemmas for the creators and producers of television shows and movies that were ‘symbolically’ set in New York City after 9/11. Whilst the World Trade Center towers had been destroyed, editors in studio lots in California faced the prospect of the late 2001 ratings season commencing with stock reels of New York City that prominently featured the Towers prior to 9/11. This posed an odd dilemma for the producers of television shows such as Friends, Sex and the City, and Spin City, programs in which the Twin Towers often appeared as a backdrop and a powerful signifier of being in New York City. The response seemed universal – the Twin Towers must be removed from the tele-visual pop-cultural locations. They needed to be purged, exorcised and air- brushed out of the shot. But by airbrushing out the Towers, the producers have purged post-9/11 television of more than just the steel and concrete of the iconic buildings. I suggest that this purging is powerful, a little odd, and deeply symbolic. In order to recover, perhaps some space – and some forgetting, if only temporary – was needed. But I argue that the missing Towers also represented a missing terror, a missing city. It was as though the creators and producers of some post-9/11 television believed that the world’s viewers would have no stomach for seeing images of a pre-9/11 New York City – a city that in many respects no longer existed. Perhaps the problem lies in how the destruction of the Twin Towers was witnessed – live on TV, in real-time, as heinous, immediate and real violence. It was ugly, sickening, horrific, terrifying. Yet it was also difficult to look away. [Luke John Howie, 'Representing Terrorism: Reanimating Post-9/11 New York City', International Journal of Žižek Studies, Vol 3, No 3 (2009)]

It is the eve of another anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in America.

Film Studies For Free respectfully remembers the tragic and traumatic events of nine years ago tomorrow, and other closely related ones since, with a list of links to important, insightful, and openly accessible studies of the cultural depiction and (re)media(tiza)tion of the 9/11 attacks, as well as of their aftermath.

• Marco Abel, 'Don DeLillo’s “In the Ruins of the Future”: Literature, Images, and the Rhetoric of Seeing 9/11', PMLA, 118.5, 2003 
• Raúl Álvarez Gómez, 'Terrorism and Social Panic in British Fantastic Cinema', in The Many Forms of Fear, Horror and Terror edited by Leanne Franklin and Ravenel Richardson, InterDisciplinary.net, August 2009 (scroll to p. 3 in pdf)
• Kari Andén-Papadopoulus, 'The Trauma of Representation: Visual Culture, Photojournalism and the September 11 Terrorist Attack', NORDICOM Review 24, No. 2 (December 2003): 89-104
• Francis A. Beer and G. R. Boynton, 'Globalizing Terror', Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003
• James Brassett, 'Cosmopolitan Sentiments After 9-11? Trauma and the Politics of Vulnerability', Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue 2 (2010)
• Gordon V. Briggs, White Masculinity in the American Action Film Pre and Post 9/11, Masters Thesis, College of Fine Arts of Ohio University, June 2007
• Mary Caputi, 'Ground Zero, an American Origin', Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003
• Steven Alan Carr, 'Staying for Time: The Holocaust and Atrocity Footage in American Public Memory', Violating Time: History, Memory and Nostalgia in Cinema. Christina Lee, ed. New York NY: Continuum, 2008
• Aimee Carrillo Rowe and Sheena Malhotra, 'Chameleon Conservatism: Post-9/11 Rhetorics of Innocence', Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003 
• Dana L. Cloud, 'Therapy, Silence, and War: Consolation and the End of Deliberation in the “Affected” Public', Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003
• David Crawford, 'Realism vs. Reality TV in the War on Terror: Artworks as Models of Interpretation', Geometer, January 19, 2009 
• Seán Crosson, "‘They can't wipe us out, they can't lick us. We'll go on forever pa, ‘cause we're the people' - Misrepresenting death in Jim Sheridan's In America (2003)", Estudios Irlandeses: Journal of Irish Studies, Issue 3, (2008)
• Sven Cvek, 9/11: Event, Trauma, Nation, Globalization, PhD Thesis, University of Zagreb, 2009
• Marieke De Goede, 'Beyond Risk: Premediation and the Post-9/11 Security Imagination', Security Dialogue 2008; 39; 155
• Arne De Boever, 'The Politics of Retirement: Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country for Old Men after September 11', Image and Narrative, 10.2, 2009 
• Elizabeth Ellsworth, 'Media and the Un-Representable: The Brief Time of Audience-as-Witness to 9/11', MIT3: Television in Transition International Conference, Cambridge, May, 2003
• Phoebe Fletcher, 'Apocalyptic Machines: Terror and Anti-Production in the Post-9/11 Splatter Film', in The Many Forms of Fear, Horror and Terror edited by Leanne Franklin and Ravenel Richardson, InterDisciplinary.net, August 2009 (scroll to p. 81 in pdf)
• Gabriel Garcia Mingorance, 'Monsters, Feérie Fear, Threaten Global And the Uncanny in the Cinema of M. Night Shyamalan', in The Many Forms of Fear, Horror and Terror edited by Leanne Franklin and Ravenel Richardson, InterDisciplinary.net, August 2009 (scroll to p. 23 in pdf)
• Silvia Herreros de Tejada, 'Drumming the Horror Away', in The Many Forms of Fear, Horror and Terror edited by Leanne Franklin and Ravenel Richardson, InterDisciplinary.net, August 2009 (scroll to p. 47 in pdf)
• Will Higbee, 'Ungrounding the Narrative of Nation" - Review: David Martin-Jones (2006)', Film-Philosophy, 13.1, April 2009 
• Luke John Howie, 'Representing Terrorism: Reanimating Post-9/11 New York City', International Journal of Žižek Studies, Vol 3, No 3 (2009)
• Luke Howie, 'I’ll be there for you – the meanings and consequences of 9/11 in Friends', TASA: Re-imagining Sociology, The University of Melbourne, December 2-5, 2008
  
• Carolyn Jess-Cooke, 'Narrative and Mediatized Memory in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind', Scope, Issue 8, June 2007 
• Jonathan Kahana, excerpt from Intelligence Work: The Politics of American Documentary (Columbia University Press, 2008)
• E. Ann Kaplan, 'Feminist Futures: Trauma, the Post-9/11 World and a Fourth Feminism?', Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol 4 #2 April 2003
• Mina Karavanta on C. Cilano’s From Solidarity to Schisms », European journal of American studies [Online], Reviews 2010-1, document 7, Online since 16 March 2010
• Laurie A. Manwell, 'Faulty Towers of Belief: Part II. Rebuilding the Road to Freedom of Reason', Journal of 9/11 Studies, August 2007
• Alan S. Marcus, '“It Is as It Was”: Feature Film in the History Classroom', Social Studies, March/April 2005
• Peter Knight, 'Conspiracy Theories about 9/11', Centre for International Politics Working Paper Series, No. 34, August 2007
• Allen Meek, 'Walter Benjamin and the Virtual: Politics, Art, and Mediation in the Age of Global Culture, Transformations, Issue No. 15, November 2007 
• William Merrin, 'Total Screen: 9/11 and the Gulf War Reloaded', International Journal of Baudrillard Studies,  Volume 2, Number 2 (July 2005)  
• Robin Marie Merrick Murphy, 'Post-9/11 Rhetorical Theory and Composition Pedagogy: Fostering Trauma Rhetorics as Public Space, PhD Thesis, Bowling Green State University, August 2007
• John S. Nelson, 'Rhetorics of Response to 9/11: The Aftermath of Terror', Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003
• John S. Nelson, 'Four Forms for Terrorism: Horror, Dystopia, Thriller, and Noir', Poroi, 2, 1, August, 2003
• Marc A. Ouellette, “I Hope You Never See Another Day Like This”: Pedagogy and Allegory in “Post 9/11” Video Games', Game Studies, Vol. 8, Issue 1, 2008
• Chrysavgi Papagianni, 'American Multiculturalism after 9/11: Transatlantic Perspectives, by Derek Rubin and Jaap Verheul', European journal of American studies [Online], Reviews 2010-2, document 5, Online since 12 August 2010
• Isabel Pinedo, 'Tortured logic: entertainment and the spectacle of deliberately inflicted pain in 24Battlestar Galactica', Jump Cut, No. 52, Summer 2010
• Maria Pramaggiore, 'The global repositioning of the city symphony: sound, space, and trauma in 11’09”01—September 11', Jump Cut, No. 52, 2010
• Susannah Radstone, ‘Trauma theory: Contexts, Politics, Ethics’, Paragraph 30 (1): 2007, 9-29
• Christina Rickli, 'An Event “Like a Movie”? Hollywood and 9/11', COPAS, 10.10, 2006
• Araceli Rodríguez Mateos, 'Cinema and Social Trauma after Terrorist Attacks: the Spectatorship Perception. Approaching to the Spanish Case', in The Many Forms of Fear, Horror and Terror edited by Leanne Franklin and Ravenel Richardson, InterDisciplinary.net, August 2009
• Antonio Sánchez-Escalonilla, 'Hollywood Under Siege: The Entrenched As a Dramatic Role in the Wake of 9/11', in The Many Forms of Fear, Horror and Terror edited by Leanne Franklin and Ravenel Richardson, InterDisciplinary.net, August 2009 (scroll to p. 13 in pdf)
• Thomas Shevory, "From Censorship to Irony: Rhetorical Responses to 9/11," Poroi: Vol. 2: Iss. 1, 2003: p. 8-4 
• Elisabeth Siegel, '“Stuff That Happened to Me”: Visual Memory in Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)', COPAS, 10.7, 2010
• Louise Spence, 'Teaching 9/11 and Why I’m Not Doing It Anymore', from Cinema Journal 43, No. 2, Winter 2004
• Lynn Spigel, 'Entertainment Wars: Television Culture after 9/11', American Quarterly, Vol. 56, No. 2 (June 2004)
• Kim Toffoletti and Victoria Grace, 'Terminal Indifference: The Hollywood War Film Post-September 11', Film-Philosophy, Vol 14, No 2 (2010)
• M. Karen Walker, 'Analyses of Post-9/11 Media Coverage: A Review of the Communications Literature', RhetoricaLens.info, July 17, 2006
• M. Karen Walker, 'Visual Rhetoric: A Literature Review', RhetoricaLens.info, July 17, 2006
• Cynthia Weber, 'Fahrenheit 9/11: The Temperature Where Morality Burns', Journal of American Studies, 40 (2006), 1, 113–131

Immaturity Abides! On Teen, "Gross Out" and Dumbass Comedy

Jonah Hill and Michael Cera in Superbad (Greg Mottola, 2007)

Film Studies For Free is two years old today. You go, blog!

In honour of its tentative entry into digital post-toddlerdom (and hopefully not the terrible twos), it wanted to celebrate online and openly accessible studies of what FSFF likes to think of (in its über-scholarly way) as those liminal film genres and cycles of comic immaturity, awkwardness, stupidity, and tastelessness -- that is to say, all varieties of the teen (or arrested development) comedy (including the "teen sex comedy", the "gross-out" comedy, comic "dude flicks" and "bromances"), as well as studies of related issues.

Today's scattershot links list is partly an offshoot of FSFF's recent entry on the romantic comedy, and partly its first experiment in "crowdsourcing" via its blossoming Facebook page. Thanks so much to those who suggested items there.

If anyone else has any bright ideas for further additions, do please 'fess up. FSFF earnestly promises that you won't be ritually humiliated, or mercilessly laughed at, at all  :o)

• Joseph Aisenberg, 'Here Come the Bromides: Living in the Era of the Bromantic Comedy', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 65, August 2009

• Peter Alilunas, 'Male Masculinity as the Celebration of Failure: the Frat Pack, Women, and the Trauma of "Victimization" in the "Dude Flick"', Mediascape,  Spring 2008/Fall 2009

• Steven W. Bender, 'Knocked Down Again: An East L.A. Story on the Geography of Color and Colors', Harvard Latino Law Review, Vol. 12, 2009

• Nick Burns, 'Heathers: Scent of dominance', from Jump Cut, no. 36, May 1991, pp. 32-36

• Zachary Campbell, ‘"Sorry About All the Gravity!" Anna Faris, Serious Respect for the Unserious', Rouge, 13, 2009

• Isabel Sterling Clark, 'The Challenge of Being Yourself: Adaptation, Adolescence, and Disguise in Teenage Romantic Comedy Films of the Late 1990s and Early 2000s', Senior Thesis, Haverford College, 2009

• Evan Elkins, 'Great Job?: Tim and Eric’s Comedy of Failure', FlowTV, August 8, 2008

• Caroline Haggod, 'Bruno and Bromances: Modern Masculinity Goes to the Movies', The Huffington Post, March 10, 2010

• Peter Hutchings , 'Welcome to Royston Vasey: Grotesque bodies and the horror of comedy in The League of Gentlemen', Intensities 4, December 2007

• Carmen Induráin Eraso, 'Riding on divergent but similar roads: Airbag or the Spanish experience of the American Road Movie', Estudios Ingleses de la Universidad Complutense 2005, vol. 13, 107-121

• Ewan Kirkland, 'Romantic Comedy and the Construction of Heterosexuality', Scope, Portals Special Issue, Issue 13, 2008

• Barbara Klinger, 'Say It Again, Sam: Movie Quotation, Performance and Masculinity', Particip@tions Volume 5, Issue 2 (November 2008)

• Zachary Lamm, 'The Cinematic Shrews of Teen Comedy: Gendering Shakespeare in Twentieth-Century Film', Genders On-Line, Issue 49, 2009

• Christina Lee, Beyond the Pink: (Post) Youth Iconography in Cinema, PhD Thesis, Murdoch University, 2005

• Christian Lorentzen, 'Dicking Around', N1FR Issue 1, August 2010

• James MacDowell, 'Notes on Quirky', MOVIE: A Journal of Film Criticism, 1.1, 2010

• James MacDowell, 'Knocked Up', Alternate Takes, November 14, 2007

• Gabrielle Moss, ' From the Valley to the Hellmouth: “Buffy”’s Transition from Film to Television', Slayage: A journal of Buffy Studies, 1.2 [2], 2001 

• Joshua Louis Moss, 'Historiography of the World Part 1: The Jewish Body, Historical Crisis and The Comedic Farce', Mediascape,  Spring 2008/Fall 2009

• Scott Murray, '“Cameron Fry, this one’s for you.” Or: Why the Sausage King of Chicago Doesn’t Turn Up for Lunch at Chez Quis', Senses of Cinema, Issue 51, 2009

• Diane Negra, "Where The Boys Are: Postfeminism and the New Single Man", FlowTV April 14, 2006

• Jakob Isak Nielsen, 'There's something about comedy theory', P.O.V. No.26, 2008

• Sharyn Pearce, 'Sex and the cinema: What American pie teaches the young', Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning 6 (4) 2006: pp. 367-376

• Sina Rahmani, 'Hollywood and Diversity: Subversion, Apologetic, or Both? Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. Dir. Danny Leiner. New Line Cinema, 2004', Colloquy, 9, 2005

• Michael Joshua Rowin, 'I Love You, Man and the Apatow Comedy Factory', Reverse Shot, Issue 24, 2009

• Philip Scepanski, 'Out of the Mouths of Babes: Animated Sitcoms and Political Incorrectness', Mediascape, Fall 2008

• Ethan de Seife, 'Gremlins in the Mix', 16:9, 6.25, 2008

• Carter Soles, Falling Out of the Closet: Kevin Smith, Queerness, and Contemporary Independent Film. PhD Thesis, University of Oregon, September 2008

• Carter Soles, 'A Stalker's Odyssey: Arrested Development, Gay Desire, and Queer Comedy in Chuck and Buck', Jump Cut 49, Spring 2007

• Lesley Speed, 'A World Ruled by Hilarity: Gender and Low Comedy in the Films of Amy Heckerling', Senses of Cinema, Vol. 22, 2002

• Scott F. Stoddart, 'Love and Death on Long Island (Dir. Richard Kwietniowski, 1998)', Scope, Portals Special Issue, Issue 13, 2008

• Donato Totaro, 'Screwballs: Teen Comedy Canadian Style', Offscreen Journal, Vol. 13, Issue 8, 2009

• Lisa Trahair, 'Comedy and Beyond: Geoff King's Film Comedy', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 8, No. 15, 2004
  

• Eric King Watts and Mark P. Orbe , 'The Spectacular Consumption of “True” African American Culture: “Whassup” with the Budweiser Guys?', Critical Studies in Media Communication Vol. 19, No. 1, March 2002, pp. 1–20

• Cynthia Weber, '"Oi, Dancing Boy!" Masculinity, Sexuality, and Youth in Billy Elliot', Gender 37, 2003

• Jessica Winter, 'Knocked Up', Cinemascope, 31, 2008

Video Essay on The Big Lebowski, Kevin. B. Lee with Karina Longworth, March 2010

Good Fella: Martin Scorsese Studies

Updated August 19, 2010

Ray Liotta as Henry Hill in Goodfellas (Martin Scorsese, 1990)

Charlie Rose - An hour with Martin Scorsese (1998)

(Persevere beyond the opening few minutes - it's worth it)

Here's a not so little links list that Film Studies For Free has been concocting for tanto tempo... It's a collection of mostly academic, and all great quality, studies of the work of American filmmaker Martin Scorsese, one of the most utterly beloved of all directors among Film Studies undergraduates. And with Afterhours, Goodfellas and The Age of Innocence among this blog's author's favourite films, who is FSFF to disagree with such intensity?

Suggestions for any high-quality additions to this list would be most welcome.

• Marc Abramson, 'Mountains, Monks and Mandalas: Kundun and Seven Years in Tibet', Cineaste, Vol. XXIII, No. 3, 1998

• Daniel Balderston, 'Borges and The Gangs of New York', Variaciones Borgianas, 16, 2003 

• Bruce Alistair Barber, Trans/actions: Art, Film and Death, PhD Thesis, European Graduate School, August 2005 

• Todd Berliner, 'Visual Absurdity in Raging Bull', Preprint of Chapter in Raging Bull: A Cambridge Film Handbook. Ed. Kevin Hayes. Cambridge, U.K. and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005

• David Bordwell, 'Scorsese, 'pressionist', Observations on Film Art, April 21, 2010 

• Lenay Breeland, 'A Hieroglyphic World: Representations of Repression in Scorsese’s Age of Innocence',  in Fixing a Hole: Bridging the Gap between Text and Performance, State University of West Georgia, 2001 (scroll to p. 21 in PDF) 

• Aaron V. Burton, Jesus in the Movies: A Rhetorical Analysis of Selected Films from 1912-2004, PhD Thesis, Bowling Green State University, May 2008

• Andre Caron, 'Last Temptation of Travis Bickle', Offscreen Journal, September 1997

• Robert Castle, 'Average Nobodies: The Dark Knights of Goodfellas', Bright Lights Film Journal, issue 32, April 2001

• James A. Clapp, '‘‘Are You Talking to Me?’’—New York and the Cinema of Urban Alienation', Visual Anthropology, 18, 2005

• Adrian Danks, 'Who’s That Knocking at My Door', Senses of Cinema, Issue 54, 2010 

• Russell E. Davis, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Under the comic frosting', from Jump Cut, no. 7, 1975

• Jonathan Dawson, 'After Hours', Senses of Cinema, Issue 54, 2010

• Rebecca Dawson, And Staring as Jesus Himself: Cultural Context and Images of Christ in North American film, PhD Thesis, Bowling Green State University, August 2007 

• Carolyn D’Cruz and Glenn D’Cruz, 'The body of Christ: Blasphemy as a necessary transgression?', Negotiating the Sacred II: Blasphemy and sacrilege in the arts, pp. 93-101, ANU E Press, 2008

• Christopher Robert Deacy, 'Redemption and Film: Cinema as a Contemporary Site of Religious Activity', WACC Archive, 2001

• Cristina Degli-Esposti Reinert, 'Martin Scorsese's Invisible City in Bringing Out the Dead', Film-Philosophy, Vol. 4, No. 12, May 2000

• Roger Ebert, 'Introduction', Scorsese by Ebert (University of Chicago Press, 2008) 

• Rebecca Feasey. 'Stardom and Distinction: Sharon Stone and the Problem of Legitimacy', Scope, May 2004

• Christopher Garbowski, 'The Catholic Imagination in Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz', Journal of Religion and Film Vol. 5, No. 2 October 2001

• Luis M. García-Mainar, « Contemporary Hollywood Crime Film and the New Individualism », European journal of American studies, 2, 2009

• Paul A. Gilje, 'Gangs, the Five Points, and the American Public', Common-Place, Vol. 3, No. 4, July 2003

• Paul E. Graham III, Violence and the Scapegoat in American Film: 1967-1999, PhD Thesis, Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, December 2002

• New Leighton Grist, Authorship and Context: the Films of Martin Scorsese, 1963-1977, PhD Thesis, University of Warwick, 1996

• Leighton Grist,  'Masculinity, Violence, Resistance: A New Psychoanalytic Reading of Raging Bull', Atlantis Journal, 29.1, June 2007

• Peter Hourigan, 'Scorsese Missing In Action: Martin Scorsese’s America by Ellis Cashmore Hollywood Under Siege: Martin Scorsese, the Religious Right, and the Culture Wars by Thomas R. Lindlof', Senses of Cinema, Issue 54, 2010 

• Christine Hoff Kramer, 'Wrestling with Flesh, Wrestling with Spirit: The Painful Consequences of Dualism in The Last Temptation of Christ', Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Vol. 8, Fall 2004 

• Peter Hutchings, '[Review of] A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies by Martin Scorsese and Michael Henry Wilson, London: Faber, 1997', Scope, August 1999

• Matthew J. Iannucci, 'Postmodern Antihero: Capitalism and Heroism in Taxi Driver', Bright Lights Film Journal,Issue 47, February 2005

• Karyn Kay and Gerald Peary, 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore: Waitressing for Warner's', Jump Cut, no. 7, 1975

• David Kelly, 'Model Citizens: The Irish Films of Martin Scorsese', Australasian Journal of American Studies, Vol. 26, No. 1, July 2007

• Tammie Kennedy, '(Re)Presenting Mary Magdalene: A Feminist Reading of The Last Temptation of Christ', Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Vol. 9, Spring 2005

• Robert P Kolker, 'Algebraic Figures: Recalculating the Hitchcock Formula', in Horton, Andrew, and Stuart Y. McDougal, editors Play It Again, Sam: Retakes on Remakes (Berkeley:  University of California Press, 1998)

• Robert P. Kolker, 'The Moving Image Reclaimed', Postmodern Culture, 5.1, September 1994 

• Ekkehard Knörer, "Why Martin Scorsese's "The Departed" does not live up to [...] "Internal Affairs"', Signandsight.com, January 2007

• Joseph Jon Lanthier, 'Outstanding Defense Mechanisms: The Phrenology of Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island', Bright Lights Film Journal, Issue 68, May 2010

• Maximilian Le Cain, 'Orphans of the Storm: Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York', Senses of Cinema, Issue 25, 2003

• Karli Lucas, 'Creative Visions: (De)Constructing “The Beautiful” in Scorsese's The Age of Innocence', Senses of Cinema, Issue 25, 2003

• Brian McIlroy, 'Exodus, Arrival & Return: The Generic Discourse of Irish Diasporic and Exilic Narrative Films' [First published in Keeping It Real: Irish Film and Television, eds. Ruth Barton and Harvey O’Brien (London: Wallflower Press, 2004): 69-77

• Duncan McLean, 'The Evolution of the Term ‘New Hollywood’, NEO, 2009

• Eve L. Mullen, 'Orientalist Commercializations: Tibetan Buddhism in American Popular Film', Journal of Religion and Film, Vol. 2, No. 2 October 1998 

• Kartik Nair, 'Aura, Auteurism and the Key to Reserva', Widescreen Journal, No. 2, 2010

• Josh Nelson, '[Review of] Roger Ebert, Scorsese by Ebert. Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 2008', Screening the Past, Issue 26, 2009

• Richard Oestreicher, 'How Should Historians Think about ‘The Gangs of New York’?', History Workshop Journal, Issue 56, 2003

• Colm O’Shea, 'Review: Thomas R. Lindlof (2008) Hollywood Under Siege: Martin Scorsese, the Religious Right, and the Culture Wars. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky', Film-Philosophy, 14.1, 2010

• Steven Peacock, 'Holding onto moments in The Age of Innocence', Film Studies, Volume 9, Winter 2006

• Åke Persson, 'The Mafia in the Drawing Room: Martin Scorsese’s Film Adaptation of Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence', Nordic Journal of English Studies, Vol 7, No 2 (2008)

• Linda Petříkova, 'Review: Mark T. Conard (ed.) (2007) The Philosophy of Martin Scorsese Lexington: University Press of Kentucky', Film-Philosophy, 11.3, December 2007

• Patrick Phillips, 'Genre, star and auteur critical approaches applied to Martin Scorsese’s New York, New York', in Jill Nelmes' (ed), Introduction to Film Studies, 4th edition (London: Routledge, 2007) 

• Mark C. Pilkinton, 'The True Temptation of Christ: "To Suffyr temptacion it is grett peyn"', The Journal of Religion and Theatre, Vol. 3, No. 1, Summer 2004

• G. Thomas Poe, '(Beyond) The Pleasures of the Hollywood Musical Film: A Re Viewing of Martin Scorsese's New York, New York', Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, Vol. IV, No. 2: Spring 1990

• Marc Raymond, 'Martin Scorsese', Senses of Cinema, May 2002

• Constanza del Río Álvaro, 'Genre and Fantasy: Melodrama, Horror, and the Gothic in Martin Scorsese’s Cape Fear (1991)', Atlantis Journal, 26.1, June 2004

• Wieland Schwanebeck, 'From Shakespeare’s Kings to Scorsese’s Kingpins: Contemporary Mob Movies and the Genre of Tragedy', ASPeers, Issue 3, 2010 

• Martin Scorsese: "Discusses Film-Making" at Princeton University, May 4 1999 (scroll down page for videocast)

• Martin Scorsese, 'Pinewood Dialogues', Moving Image Source, November 9, 2002

• Kaile Shilling, 'Servant of the Story: Judas as Tragic Hero in Film', Journal of Religion and Film. 8 (2): October 2004  

• Matthew Sorrento, 'Scorsese by Ebert by Roger Ebert', Senses of Cinema, Issue 51, 2009

• Katherine Spring, 'After Hours on the Miracle Mile: The Logic of Nightmares in Film', 16:9, No. 11, November 2007

• David Sterritt, 'Six Books about Scorsese', Film Quarterly, Vol. 63, no. 2, 2009

• John Thurman, 'Citizen Bickle, or the Allusive Taxi Driver: Uses of Intertextuality', Senses of Cinema, Issue 37, 2005

• Daniel J. Walkowitz, ‘The Gangs of New York’: the Mean Streets in History', History Workshop Journal, Issue 56, 2003

• Teena Webb and Betsy Martens, 'Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore: A Hollywood liberation', Jump Cut, no. 7, 1975

• Martin Weinreich, 'The urban inferno. On the æsthetics of Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver', 'The Art of Film Editing', Special Issue of P.O.V: A Danish Journal of Film Studies, edited by Richard Raskin, Number 6 December 1998 (scroll down in PDF) 

• M.C. Zenner, 'Bringing Out the Dead', Senses of Cinema, Issue 7, 2000