tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/movie-21789/articlesMovie – The Conversation2024-01-23T14:00:20Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2216692024-01-23T14:00:20Z2024-01-23T14:00:20ZIf Mean Girls was part of your teenage years, you might not like the new one<p>The 2004 teen film Mean Girls has become part of the fabric of contemporary popular culture. Fans are able to enjoy quote-along screenings and take online quizzes to find out which member of the Plastics their personality most resembles, and 3 October is even now known as <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/mean-girls-day-movie-october-3-b2423249.html">Mean Girls day</a>.</p>
<p>The new musical version – an adaptation of the 2017 stage musical – aims to ensure that fans of the original are kept happy. It sticks closely to the same plot and retains the same iconic moments and quotable lines. </p>
<p>The film follows naive, formerly home-schooled new girl Cady (Angourie Rice) as she navigates the social hierarchies of high school. Encouraged by her new friends Janice (Auli‘I Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey), Cady infiltrates the clique at the top of the social order, known as “the plastics”, as part of a scheme to sabotage “queen bee” Regina George (Renee Rapp).</p>
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<p><em><strong><a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/quarter-life-117947?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=UK+YP2022&utm_content=InArticleTop">This article is part of Quarter Life</a></strong>, a series about issues affecting those of us in our twenties and thirties. From the challenges of beginning a career and taking care of our mental health, to the excitement of starting a family, adopting a pet or just making friends as an adult. The articles in this series explore the questions and bring answers as we navigate this turbulent period of life.</em></p>
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<p>The Mean Girls musical isn’t the first teen film to follow the film-to-stage-musical-to-film-musical trajectory. Hairspray, for example, followed the same 20-year-ish route (with a film in 1988, stage musical in 2002 and film musical in 2007). </p>
<p>As someone who has been thinking, teaching, and writing about teen films – with Mean Girls (2004) <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/aesthetic-pleasures-of-girl-teen-film-9781501349010/">as a key text</a> – for the last 20 years, I really wanted to like this film. Unfortunately as a pastiche of a film that was already a pastiche, this musical is a copy too far.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for the Mean Girls musical.</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Why a pastiche of a pastiche doesn’t work</h2>
<p>From its opening moments, the original Mean Girls film is postmodern and reflexive, with lines like: “And on the third day God created the Remington Bolt Action Rifle so that man could fight the dinosaurs … and the homosexuals.” </p>
<p>The film’s excessive self-awareness signals a rejection of the sincerity and sentimentality often attributed to teen films. Especially clean teen films such as Gidget (1959) or John Hughes films like Sixteen Candles (1984).</p>
<p>Mean Girls is a pastiche, not a parody. Where parodies makes fun of the subjects they imitate as a means to undermine the original, pastiches make fun with imitation in ways that leave the original unquestioned. Pastiche is a hyper-imitation that signals itself as such, but enables an experience of the pleasures of the imitated work all the same. </p>
<p>In the 2004 Mean Girls, this imitation is highly self conscious and central to the film’s comedy. In the winter talent show scene, for example, the plastics perform a dance routine to Jingle Bell Rock. When the CD player is accidentally kicked off stage and the prerecorded music stops, they freeze mid-performance. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The Jingle Bell Rock scene from the original Mean Girls film.</span></figcaption>
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<p>In a pastiche of traditional musical spontaneity, authenticity and musical contagion – in which bystanders in the world of the musical are overcome by the music and cannot help but tap their feet or sing along – the plastics finish the routine acapella. The audience in the film’s school auditorium seem almost possessed as they join in and sing along. </p>
<p>The fun of this type of pastiche is that we get to experience the pleasures of the thing that is being imitated, alongside the pleasures of self awareness. As I have argued in <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/aesthetic-pleasures-of-girl-teen-film-9781501349010/">my research</a>, while the scene self consciously winks with its knowingness of musical conventions, we get to enjoy a version of the sense of energy and togetherness that this kind of musical moment evokes nonetheless.</p>
<p>Because the new film itself is a traditional musical, the winter talent show scene in the 2024 musical film cannot have fun with those conventions in the same way. The film aims to utilise in earnest those techniques that the original uses to make fun with. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The creators of the Mean Girls musical talk about adapting the film.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Now danced to a song called Rocking around the Pole, the talent show number is no longer a pastiche of the musical genre, but an imitation of the scene in the original Mean Girls film. </p>
<p>As a double copy, the residual pleasures – the feelings of community and togetherness that the original offers – are lost. All we are left with is that knowing wink. On its own, this knowingness just isn’t that much fun.</p>
<p>The new film does involve some enjoyable nostalgia, including a fun unexpected cameo. There are excellent performances from the young cast and the fact that Renee Rapp <a href="https://www.gaytimes.co.uk/originals/mean-girls-renee-rapp-regina-george-queer/">plays Regina George as queer</a> adds its own fun. </p>
<p>But if you’re looking for a teen film that hits the fun and funny notes of the original Mean Girls film, as well as offering an authentically queer take on girlhood, I recommend watching Booksmart (2019) or Bottoms instead (2023).</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Samantha Colling does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The problem with the Mean Girls musical film is that it is a pastiche of a pastiche.Samantha Colling, Senior Lecturer in Film and Media, Manchester Metropolitan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2197622024-01-11T21:05:09Z2024-01-11T21:05:09ZNapoleon the lawmaker: What Ridley Scott’s film leaves out<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568089/original/file-20240105-27-wtm75j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=177%2C262%2C3633%2C2662&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Joaquin Phoenix in Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon.’ Napoleon was a prolific legislator who sponsored the Civil Code, later known as the Napoleonic Code.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Apple TV+)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/napoleon-the-lawmaker-what-ridley-scotts-film-leaves-out" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Ridley Scott’s biopic <em>Napoleon</em> veers from battlefield to boudoir, portraying Bonaparte <a href="https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/film/napoleon-review-ridley-scott-joaquin-phoenix-france-bonaparte-vanessa-kirby-c9547205">as a caricature</a> of masculine excess. </p>
<p>Such <a href="https://deadline.com/2023/12/napoleon-global-box-office-milestone-ridley-scott-sony-apple-1235682382">sensationalism might sell</a>, but critics maintain it comes at the cost of <a href="https://www.kcl.ac.uk/disjointed-rushed-inaccurate-historian-reviews-ridley-scotts-napoleon">narrative coherence</a> and <a href="https://variety.com/2023/film/news/napoleon-inaccuracies-french-historians-pyramids-1235823975">historical accuracy</a>.</p>
<p>As a historian who <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780367808471-31/fugitives-france-kelly-summers?context=ubx&refId=f0b06c28-a29a-49b5-a5ba-d37bee069054">specializes</a> in the <a href="https://ageofrevolutions.com/2021/01/25/a-cross-channel-marriage-in-limbo-alexandre-darblay-frances-burney-and-the-risks-of-revolutionary-migration/">French Revolution</a>, my main reservation about the film is not what it makes up, but what it leaves out. </p>
<p>Scott’s focus on Napoleon’s tactical triumphs, reckless miscalculations and sexual entanglements neglects his most paradoxical legacy: as a visionary, albeit self-serving, lawmaker. </p>
<p>A product of the Revolution’s decade-long experiment with “<a href="https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/coming-to-france/france-facts/symbols-of-the-republic/article/liberty-equality-fraternity#:%7E:text=A%20legacy%20of%20the%20Age,of%20the%20French%20national%20heritage.">liberty, equality and fraternity</a>,” Napoleon enacted egalitarian reforms that eroded the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/ancien-regime">social</a>, <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/napoleon-bonaparte">religious</a> and feudal hierarchies that pervaded Europe at the turn of the 19th century. </p>
<p>Yet at home and across France’s <a href="https://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/digital/collection/Civilization/id/591/">continental empire</a> and overseas colonies, he proved willing to sacrifice core revolutionary principles whenever they conflicted with his insatiable ambitions. </p>
<h2>Completing the French Revolution in law</h2>
<p>To its credit, the film’s moments of unexpected levity challenge both the hagiographic and anti-Bonapartist strands of Napoleonic mythology. In Joaquin Phoenix’s guttural rendering, “<a href="https://doi.org/10.4000/chrhc.5133">Little Boney</a>” comes off less Corsican ogre than oaf. </p>
<p>But this portrait of a socially awkward warrior neglects Napoleon’s greatest accomplishments and failures as a prolific legislator.</p>
<p>Just as impactful as the dramatic <a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-napoleonic-wars-9780199951062?cc=ca&lang=en&">military</a> and <a href="https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27435-1_11">political</a> feats that fuelled Bonaparte’s meteoric rise were the sweeping civil reforms he undertook after seizing power in 1799. </p>
<p>The young soldier-turned-statesman made an indelible mark as the energetic sponsor of new institutions and procedures. </p>
<p>These included a <a href="https://www.napoleon-series.org/research/society/c_education.html">secular education system</a> to staff his growing bureaucracy, ambitious <a href="https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/bullet-point-30-did-napoleon-transform-paris/">public-works</a> projects, and above all, a uniform system of laws.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A trailer for Ridley Scott’s film ‘Napoleon.’</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Converting feudal assets into property</h2>
<p>Back in the euphoric summer of 1789, deputies pledged to abolish the medieval land management system known as feudalism. They quickly swept away the mandatory fees, labour obligations and tithes that had, for centuries, bound peasants to their lords and priests. </p>
<p>But as historian Rafe Blaufarb has shown, successive governments would struggle with a thornier problem: <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230236738_8">converting feudal assets into modern property</a>. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Napoleonic-Code">1804 Civil Code</a> (soon dubbed the Napoleonic Code) aided the process by instituting a transparent system of <a href="https://www.crf-usa.org/bill-of-rights-in-action/bria-15-2-a-the-code-napoleon">property</a> and family law. </p>
<p>Napoleon did not stop there, however. His tireless <a href="https://archive.org/details/napoleonhiscolla0000wolo">collaborators</a> churned out complementary commercial, criminal, rural and <a href="https://www.napoleon-series.org/military-info/organization/France/Miscellaneous/c_FrenchMilitaryCode.html">military</a> codes. Together, they supplanted the Old Regime’s morass of feudal privileges and royal ordinances, as well as Roman, customary <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/canon-law">and canonical laws</a>.</p>
<h2>New law had didactic purpose</h2>
<p>Napoleon cast the Civil Code as an Enlightenment project par excellence: both a practical necessity and a tool to solidify revolutionary reforms. </p>
<p>Its straightforward prose and rational organization also served a didactic purpose, informing each citizen of the “<a href="https://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/code/c_code2.html">principles of his conduct</a>” and reconciling France’s fractured populace as equal citizens before the law. </p>
<p>As his Empire grew, Napoleon’s zeal for standardisation anticipated many of the <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/enlightened-elitist-undemocratic/">political and economic aims</a> of the <a href="https://www.cairn.info/revue-napoleonica-la-revue-2021-1-page-35.htm">European Union</a>. He envisioned a continent bound by a “<a href="https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k109845d/f279.image.r=216">supreme court, a single currency, the same [metric] weights and measures,” and, most importantly, “the same laws</a>.”</p>
<h2>Entrenched, exported, betrayed Napoleonic law</h2>
<p>If Napoleon exported an egalitarian legal framework across Europe, however, it was often imposed at gunpoint. </p>
<p>The man who transformed France’s hard-won First Republic into an imperial “<a href="https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/3424/">security state</a>” did not deliver “Enlightenment on horseback,” whatever his <a href="https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/articles/napoleon-hegelian-hero/">admirers</a> <a href="https://www.andrew-roberts.net/books/napoleon-a-life/">contend</a>. </p>
<p>While championing <a href="https://revolution.chnm.org/exhibits/show/liberty--equality--fraternity/item/277">freedom of conscience</a>, national sovereignty and representative government, Napoleon imprisoned a pope, rigged <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/plebiscite">plebiscites</a>, re-established hereditary monarchy and enlarged his empire through endless wars.</p>
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<span class="caption">Joaquin Phoenix in Ridley Scott’s ‘Napoleon.’ Napoleon and his collaborators replaced the Old Regime with new commercial, criminal, rural and military codes.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Apple TV+)</span></span>
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<p>Whatever its merits, the Civil Code reversed the revolutionary gains of workers and women — especially adulterous wives, who risked “<a href="https://archive.org/details/frenchrevolution00phil/page/156/mode/2up?q=civil+code">confinement in a house of correction</a>.” A cheating husband, on the other hand, was merely barred from receiving his “concubine” in the marital home. </p>
<p>The code’s free-speech provisions were compromised by its namesake’s paradoxical belief that, “<a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/enlightened-elitist-undemocratic/">controlled by the government, a free press may become a strong ally</a>.” Napoleon’s agents increasingly turned to preventive detention, <a href="https://revolution.chnm.org/d/530">exile</a> and censorship to suppress dissent. </p>
<p>In Scott’s rendering, major figures associated with these policies flit across the screen without uttering a word. These include Joseph Fouché, Napoleon’s wily Minister of Police who oversaw his vast surveillance operations, and Jean-Jacques-Régis de Cambacérès, the “<a href="https://archive.org/details/napoleonhiscolla0000wolo/mode/2up">second most important man in Napoleonic France</a>,” whose portfolio included drafting the Civil Code.</p>
<h2>Attempted to restore slavery</h2>
<p>As noted by <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-napoleon-that-ridley-scott-and-hollywood-wont-let-you-see-218878">historian Marlene Daut</a>, the film is also silent on Napoleon’s most egregious violation of revolutionary values: his attempt to restore “order,” and with it slavery, in France’s plantation colonies in 1802.</p>
<p>This included Napoleon’s <a href="https://www.historytoday.com/archive/feature/wrongful-death-toussaint-louverture">dastardly betrayal of Toussaint Louverture</a>, the Saint-Dominguan leader every bit as <a href="https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250800053/blackspartacus">complex, consequential and worthy</a> of a Hollywood blockbuster as his captor. </p>
<p>Coupled with <a href="https://doi.org/10.1353/fch.2005.0007">yellow fever</a>, the <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/00313220500106196">genocidal</a> violence in Saint-Domingue claimed <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/20/world/americas/haiti-aristide-reparations-france.html">more French soldiers than Waterloo</a>.</p>
<p>Along with its most profitable colony, the quagmire cost France its moral standing as the first European empire to abolish slavery. With the <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-the-louisiana-purchase-changed-the-world-79715124/">sale of Louisiana</a>, France’s dreams of a North American empire were quashed.</p>
<h2>Legacy of global legal code</h2>
<p>On remote <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/journey-st-helen-home-napoleon-last-days-180971638/">Saint Helena</a>, Scott captures the angst of an authoritarian deprived of authority, hobbled by hubris but still incapable of accepting responsibility for his errors and crimes.</p>
<p>What the movie does not show, however, is Napoleon’s clear-sighted appraisal of his most enduring legacy.</p>
<p>While in captivity, he told his entourage that his “real glory” was attained off the battlefield. If his final defeat would “destroy the memory” of his forty military victories, he took solace in the belief that “<a href="https://lasc.libguides.com/c.php?g=259216&p=1741864">nothing will destroy…my Civil Code</a>.” </p>
<p>This has proven true not only in countries that were occupied or colonized by France, but as far afield as Meiji-era Japan and pre-revolutionary Iran, which used the Napoleonic template for their own codification projects. Versions of the code are still in effect in <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Napoleonic-Code">multiple countries today</a>.</p>
<p>If Napoleonic tactics faltered at <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Trafalgar-European-history">Trafalgar</a>, <a href="https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/the-battle-of-vertieres">Vertières</a> and <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Battle-of-Waterloo">Waterloo</a>, the precedent set by the Civil Code has proven unconquerable. </p>
<p>Michael Broers, the <a href="https://www.napoleon.org/en/magazine/publications/napoleon-soldier-of-destiny-volume-i/">accomplished</a> <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/ca/europe-under-napoleon-9781350157675/">scholar</a> who advised Scott, has said legal intricacies “<a href="https://bigthink.com/high-culture/napoleon-ridley-scott/">don’t make for good cinema</a>.” </p>
<p>It has been <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0472027/">done</a>, <a href="https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2020/november/unleasing-hamilton-financial-revolution">however</a>. Perhaps Scott’s much-anticipated <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/obsessed/ridley-scotts-4-hour-napoleon-cut-why-i-cant-wait-to-see-it">director’s cut</a> will defy expectations by exploring some of these conundrums when it streams this spring.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219762/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Kelly Summers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Ridley Scott’s focus on Napoleon’s tactical triumphs, reckless miscalculations and sexual entanglements neglects his paradoxical legacy as a lawmaker.Kelly Summers, Assistant Professor of History, Department of Humanities, MacEwan UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2165942023-12-20T13:25:45Z2023-12-20T13:25:45Z50 years later, ‘The Exorcist’ continues to possess Hollywood’s imagination, reflecting our obsession with evil<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566712/original/file-20231219-29-5tk48y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=964%2C1264%2C2636%2C1671&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The film went on to gross nearly $450 million worldwide.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/poster-for-william-friedkins-1973-horror-the-exorcist-news-photo/504412731?adppopup=true">Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/">The Exorcist</a>” premiered 50 years ago, in December 1973, some theatergoers <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1974/01/27/archives/they-wait-hoursto-be-shocked-the-exorcist-got-mixed-reviews-why-has.html">fainted or broke down in tears</a>. A few <a href="https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-exorcist-what-it-was-like-to-see-the-movie-in-theaters">even vomited</a>.</p>
<p>The film, which cast a young <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000304/">Linda Blair</a> as a girl claiming to be possessed by the devil, was an almost instant success, with moviegoers <a href="https://nypost.com/2023/08/12/original-audience-reaction-to-the-exorcist-was-off-the-charts/">waiting in line for hours</a> to secure tickets. It went on to gross <a href="https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0070047/">over US$440 million</a> worldwide.</p>
<p>The horror film eventually <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070047/awards/">received two Oscars</a>, for Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay.</p>
<p>In the 50 years since, the cultural fascination with Satan has persisted. <a href="https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2023/07/89371/">But as religiosity has waned</a>, popular portrayals of Satan have also changed. Rather than embody pure evil, Luciferian characters that are complicated – even likable – have emerged. </p>
<h2>Cinema’s dance with the devil</h2>
<p>The devil has never been a stranger to the movies. He appeared as early as 1896, in Georges Méliès’ “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qt0w2qP6REg">The House of the Devil</a>, a three-minute silent film. </p>
<p>Just five years before the release of "The Exorcist,” Roman Polanski’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063522/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_7_nm_1_q_rosemary%27s%2520">Rosemary’s Baby</a>” told the story about a young woman, played by <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001201/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_1_nm_7_q_mia%2520farrow">Mia Farrow</a>, who was carrying Satan’s child. </p>
<p>That film also took home two Oscars. Still, critics generally credit “The Exorcist” with kicking off a run of movies about Satan and demonic possession. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Movie poster featuring drawings of various actors, young and old." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566722/original/file-20231219-23-ts8rod.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566722/original/file-20231219-23-ts8rod.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566722/original/file-20231219-23-ts8rod.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566722/original/file-20231219-23-ts8rod.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=957&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566722/original/file-20231219-23-ts8rod.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566722/original/file-20231219-23-ts8rod.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566722/original/file-20231219-23-ts8rod.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1202&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Italian theatrical poster for the 1974 film ‘Beyond the Door.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Chi-sei-italian-movie-poster-md.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Imitations appeared all over the world. There was the 1974 Italian film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071212/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_beyond%2520the%2520door">Beyond the Door</a>,” starring <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0005236/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_2_nm_6_q_juliet%2520mills">Juliet Mills</a> as a young woman pregnant with the Devil’s baby. The Turkish film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072148/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_seytan">Seytan</a>,” which told a story almost identical to “The Exorcist,” was released that same year. The 1976 film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075005/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Omen</a>” and its sequels imagined the rise of Satan’s son, Damien Thorn. </p>
<p>Other filmmakers showcased the versatility of the subgenre by imagining Satanic encounters everywhere from cruise ships to schoolyards. Jack Starrett’s “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073600/">Race with the Devil</a>” told the story of vacationers fleeing a Satanic cult. A slew of TV movies also appeared, such as “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073662/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_8_nm_0_q_satan%27s%2520triangle">Satan’s Triangle</a>” (1975) and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077429/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_2_nm_0_q_devil%2520dog%2520hound">Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell</a>” (1978).</p>
<h2>Interest in exorcisms surges</h2>
<p><a href="https://time.com/isgoddead/">Anxiety about social change and growing secularism</a> gave “The Exorcist” influence beyond the box office.</p>
<p>In November 1973, a month before “The Exorcist” premiered, The New York Times reported that among U.S. Catholics, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1973/11/12/archives/catholic-churchgoing-still-declining-based-on-samplings.html">attendance at weekly mass</a> had dropped to 48% from 61% between 1972 and 1973.</p>
<p>After the movie came out, curiosity about Catholicism rose significantly.</p>
<p>This was especially true with regard to exorcism, a rite <a href="https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/10/20/explainer-exorcism-catholic-priest-halloween">so rarely practiced within the church</a> that the film’s protagonist, Father Damian Karras, says that in order to find someone to perform it, he’d “have to get into a time machine and get back to the 16th century.”</p>
<p>Nonetheless, in January 1974, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1974/01/28/archives/-exorcist-adds-problems-for-catholic-clergymen-hit-film-the.html">The New York Times reported</a> that the Catholic Church was receiving “a wave of inquiries from persons who believe that they, or their acquaintances, are possessed by demons.” </p>
<p>Many of these requests came from people who were no longer, or never had been, churchgoers.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Black and white photo of bundled up people lined up outside of a movie theater." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566714/original/file-20231219-21-i5c7gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566714/original/file-20231219-21-i5c7gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566714/original/file-20231219-21-i5c7gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566714/original/file-20231219-21-i5c7gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566714/original/file-20231219-21-i5c7gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566714/original/file-20231219-21-i5c7gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566714/original/file-20231219-21-i5c7gx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=498&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A crowd braves frigid weather in New York City to see ‘The Exorcist’ in February 1974.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/scene-from-dantes-inferno-it-might-be-with-stem-rising-from-news-photo/1160965641?adppopup=true">Bettmann Archive/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Fears of satanism snowball</h2>
<p>“The Exorcist” and its imitators were very much still in the zeitgeist <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/31/us/satanic-panic.html">during the satanic panic of the 1980s</a>, which involved thousands of false accusations of Satanic ritual abuse throughout the U.S. and Canada.</p>
<p>In 1980, “<a href="https://www.cbc.ca/arts/satan-wants-you-filmmakers-q-a-sean-horlor-steve-j-adams-1.6822213">Michelle Remembers</a>,” a memoir about a young woman’s sexual abuse by a satanic cult, was published. Though it was eventually discredited, the book is thought to have kicked off the panic.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Cover of book featuring sinister devil looming over a girl clutching a doll." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566724/original/file-20231219-17-iyysn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/566724/original/file-20231219-17-iyysn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566724/original/file-20231219-17-iyysn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566724/original/file-20231219-17-iyysn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=990&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566724/original/file-20231219-17-iyysn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1244&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566724/original/file-20231219-17-iyysn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1244&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/566724/original/file-20231219-17-iyysn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1244&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">‘Michelle Remembers’ was eventually discredited – but not before helping to spur the satanic panic.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1177037179i/676637.jpg">Goodreads</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Throughout the 1980s, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/satanic-panic-film-movie-michelle-smith-memoir-b2300716.html">reports of satanic rituals and abuse</a> reached hysterical levels, perhaps most famously in <a href="https://rumble.com/vqpqxx-martensville-satanic-scandal-history-of-satanic-movement-in-canada.html">Saskatchewan, Canada</a>, where day care workers were accused of satanism and sexual abuse. Major media networks capitalized on fears of a fallen world, with NBC running a 1988 special entitled “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1988/10/26/business/program-on-satan-worship-spurs-controversy-at-nbc.html">Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground</a>.” </p>
<p>Meanwhile, accusations of satanism were leveled at everything from “<a href="https://theconversation.com/rival-fantasies-dungeons-and-dragons-players-and-their-religious-critics-actually-have-a-lot-in-common-40343">Dungeons & Dragons</a>” to <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-fate-of-the-metalheads-44876">heavy metal music</a>. Some people even believed the conspiracy theory that the Proctor & Gamble logo <a href="https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/procter-gamble-satan-conspiracy-theory">contained hidden satanic symbols</a>.</p>
<h2>Sympathy for the devil</h2>
<p>By the turn of the 21st century, the panic had run its course, as had representations of Satan as an embodiment of pure evil. </p>
<p>Growing secularism in the U.S. ran in parallel with depictions of a charming, more likable Satan. The public had grown increasingly disillusioned with institutionalized religion, especially with revelations of <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/3-big-us-churches-in-turmoil-over-sex-abuse-lgbt-policy">child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church and other denominations</a>.</p>
<p>This sympathy for the devil was nothing new: It went back at least as far as John Milton’s 1667 epic poem “<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/20">Paradise Lost</a>.” The poem’s depiction of Satan as the fallen angel Lucifer was so compelling, it caused poet William Blake <a href="https://theamericanscholar.org/the-devils-party/">to famously suggest</a> that Milton was “of the Devil’s party without knowing it.”</p>
<p>“Paradise Lost” has been adapted and reworked for modern audiences. </p>
<p>The television series “<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-a-biannual-gathering-of-1967-impalas-reveals-about-the-blurry-line-between-fandom-and-religion-216890">Supernatural</a>” includes a number of story arcs featuring a dangerous but charismatic Lucifer. The figure is also depicted sympathetically in <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/series/40372-the-sandman">Neil Gaiman’s “Sandman” comics</a>.</p>
<p>The 2015 film “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4263482/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_1_tt_7_nm_0_q_the%2520witch">The Witch</a>” takes a different approach, portraying communion with the Devil as preferable to a life of drudgery and abuse for teenage girls in Puritan New England. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, satanism has emerged as a secular movement. <a href="https://thesatanictemple.com/pages/about-us">According to the Satanic Temple</a>, its members seek to “encourage benevolence and empathy” and “reject tyrannical authority” to protect the separation of church and state.</p>
<h2>Everyday evil</h2>
<p>Still, neither sympathetic narrative portrayals nor secular movements have fully diminished the power of Satan to trouble the popular imagination. </p>
<p>In a society that has become increasingly divided, satanism has once again become a potent source of fear. The internet is rife with rumors about <a href="https://theconversation.com/hell-no-halloween-is-not-satanic-its-an-important-way-to-think-about-death-118391">the supposed satanic origins of Halloween</a> and <a href="https://www.ala.org/ala/pressreleasesbucket/pressreleases200/harrypotterseries.htm">the “Harry Potter” books</a>. Echoes of the satanic panic <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/05/18/997559036/americas-satanic-panic-returns-this-time-through-qanon">can be found in the QAnon movement</a>, which accuses some Democratic politicians of a satanic conspiracy to kidnap and sexually abuse children. </p>
<p>The hysteria expressed by <a href="https://theconversation.com/buying-into-conspiracy-theories-can-be-exciting-thats-what-makes-them-dangerous-184623">groups like QAnon</a> is an extreme example of a long-standing human impulse to label those who are feared and hated as personifications of evil. At the same time, this tendency is a way to understand the horrible cruelties of this world, and why people inflict such harm on each other.</p>
<p>During the original run of “The Exorcist,” many people questioned the impulse to embody all evil within a single supernatural figure. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1974/01/28/archives/-exorcist-adds-problems-for-catholic-clergymen-hit-film-the.html">In a 1974 interview about the film with The New York Times</a>, priest and psychologist Eugene Kennedy noted that it’s important for people to “[come] to terms with our own capacity for evil, not projecting it on an outside force that possesses us.” </p>
<p>This sentiment remains true today. Everyday acts of evil, small and large, may be easy to ignore when measured against the so-called “pure evil” embodied in the character of Satan. Nonetheless, the undiminished cultural fascination with the figure of Satan may be a way of trying <a href="https://home.csulb.edu/%7Eacargile/resources/Evil.pdf">to better comprehend evil</a> – and why people so often choose it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/216594/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Regina Hansen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>When the film premiered, theatergoers fainted and vomited. It went on to inspire a series of copycat films – while fomenting a cultural panic about the demons in our midst.Regina Hansen, Master Lecturer of Rhetoric, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2179512023-11-17T14:00:59Z2023-11-17T14:00:59ZDid Napoleon really fire at the pyramids? A historian explains the truth behind the legends of Ridley Scott’s biopic<p>Directors of historical feature films face a difficult task. How can they make the characters familiar to an audience without reducing them to caricature? How can they make sure that knowledge of the outcome – battles won or lost, empires built then ruined – doesn’t make the story seem like it’s writing itself? </p>
<p>Director Ridley Scott is not a historian and presumably wants to entertain rather than to enlighten. But the problem of historical truth is an interesting one. </p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/LIsfMO5Jd_w?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Napoleon.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is not easy to know the “real” Napoleon. There’s a recognisable version of him – the confident general beloved of his troops, the instinctive military tactician who could run on empty for days at a time, his stern and somewhat petulant gaze. But much of this is the product of layers of historical storytelling, accrued by the labour of generations of artists, journalists and memoirists – and of course, Napoleon himself.</p>
<p>Abel Gance’s spectacular <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6504eRh5h6M">silent film</a> Napoleon (1927), for example, charted the life and career of Napoleon up to his departure as a military general for the Italian campaign in 1796. In one scene, a heavy winter snowfall interrupts classes at Napoleon’s military college. The boys run outside to play and inevitably start throwing snowballs at each other. The scene depicts a very young Napoleon emerging as a natural commander, directing the combat as though on the field of battle.</p>
<p>Yet the veracity of this moment rests primarily on a single account – the <a href="https://archive.org/details/memoirsofnapole01bour/page/n7/mode/2up">memoir</a> of one of Napoleon’s childhood friends, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Louis-Antoine-Fauvelet-de-Bourrienne">Louis de Bourrienne</a>, who attended the same school. The author was later an employee of Napoleon, who sacked him for embezzlement in 1802.</p>
<p>Many years later, in 1829, de Bourrienne <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/files/3567/3567-h/3567-h.htm">penned a memoir</a> in the hope of cashing in on the popular appetite for authentic tales of the great general. What we think we know about the “real” Napoleon is often filtered through self-interested and partial accounts like this one.</p>
<p>Here are the facts and legends behind some of the major scenes from Ridley Scott’s new Napoleon biopic.</p>
<h2>Did Napoleon crown himself?</h2>
<p>Napoleon went to great lengths to craft his image as a benign ruler and man of the people, often enlisting the talents of artists to do so. </p>
<p>Most notoriously, <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacques-Louis-David-French-painter">Jacques-Louis David</a> was commissioned to produce a series of grand paintings <a href="https://artsandculture.google.com/story/story-of-a-coronation-palace-of-versailles/NgWhI7emoChPKw?hl=en">depicting Napoleon’s coronation</a> in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris in December 1804. In the most famous, we see Napoleon place a crown on the head of the new Empress Josephine while a reluctant Pope Pius VII looks on.</p>
<p>In an astonishing act of hubris, Napoleon had indeed already placed a crown on his own head, though the oil painting shows him only in laurel leaves to signify his martial triumphs. What Scott’s film depicts is the magnificence of the oil paintings, which showed Napoleon and his empress in the most flattering light, rather than the coronation ceremony itself. </p>
<h2>His relationship with Josephine</h2>
<p>There is no doubt that Napoleon felt a deep passion for <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Josephine">Marie Joséphe Rose de la Pagerie</a> – known to him as Joséphine – whom he married in 1796 as his military career was in the ascendant. Yet her depiction in Ridley Scott’s film as a young seductress probably speaks more to sexist cliche than to Joséphine’s undoubted self-assuredness. </p>
<p>She was six years older than Napoleon, a widow and mother of two young children when they met, and the young general’s romantic feelings were seemingly stronger than hers. While on campaign he wrote to her virtually every day, his pen sometimes piercing the parchment, such was the force of his emotions. Yet some of these <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Josephine.html?id=KS1MXwAACAAJ&redir_esc=y">letters</a> to her remained unopened. </p>
<p>Their relationship was as tumultuous as it was passionate, and both spouses had several affairs. Yet when Napoleon instigated divorce in 1809 for want of an heir, it was surprisingly amicable. The Empress retained her imperial title until her death in 1814 and was permitted to continue living in the imperial <a href="https://musees-nationaux-malmaison.fr/chateau-malmaison/en/history-chateau-de-malmaison">Château de Malmaison</a>.</p>
<h2>Was Napoleon present at the execution of Marie Antoinette?</h2>
<p>The autumn of 1793 was especially busy for Napoleon given his increasingly important role in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Siege-of-Toulon">Siege of Toulon</a>. Federalist rebels had handed over the French fleet to the British <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Samuel-Hood-1st-Viscount-Hood">admiral Samuel Hood</a>, and the young artillery officer commanded the operation that eventually seized it back. </p>
<p>Therefore it is highly unlikely that he ventured to Paris in October to be among the crowd that witnessed the execution of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marie-Antoinette-queen-of-France">Queen Marie-Antoinette</a>. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/OAZWXUkrjPc?wmode=transparent&start=12" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Another trailer for Napoleon shows the lead up to Marie Antionette’s execution.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In a <a href="https://ia800909.us.archive.org/7/items/lettersofdocumen006632mbp/lettersofdocumen006632mbp.pdf">letter to his older brother Joseph</a>, however, Napoleon did claim to witness the <a href="https://revolution.chnm.org/d/319">storming of the Tuileries Palace</a> by an angry crowd of republican protesters in June 1792. It revolted him.</p>
<h2>Did Napoleon really fire at the pyramids?</h2>
<p>Napoleon began his Egyptian campaign in 1798. The cultural legacy of the campaign can be seen in the well-stocked Egyptology section of the <a href="https://www.louvre.fr/en/explore/the-palace/a-royal-setting-for-egyptian-antiquities">Louvre</a>. But it was also the scene of atrocities. </p>
<p>At one point, several thousand <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/napoleon-9781408854693/">Ottoman soldiers</a> were shot or driven into the sea on Napoleon’s orders, rather than taken prisoner. You don’t need to invent ice traps or Napoleon ordering his men to fire at the pyramids, as Ridley Scott’s biopic does, to convey his callous disregard for life. </p>
<p>It was the rumour that he had ordered his own plague-stricken troops to be poisoned in the town of Jaffa that finally tarnished Napoleon’s reputation in the early 19th century. It stuck, no matter how brilliant the <a href="https://www.napoleon.org/en/history-of-the-two-empires/paintings/2-bonaparte-visiting-the-plague-victims-of-jaffa/">sanitising riposte of the artist Antoine-Jean Gros</a>, whom Napoleon commissioned in 1804 to paint a different story.</p>
<p>Ridley Scott’s film does not represent the past so much as carry versions of the tales and images depicting Napoleon that have spun him into existence since his own lifetime – many of which were crafted by his own hand. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/536131/original/file-20230706-17-460x2d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joan Tumblety is affiliated with the Labour Party as an ordinary member.</span></em></p>Here are the truths behind some of the major scenes from Ridley Scott’s new Napoleon biopic.Joan Tumblety, Associate Professor of French History, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2114192023-08-21T21:02:03Z2023-08-21T21:02:03ZEcological grief and uncontrollable reality in Wes Anderson’s ‘Asteroid City’<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542415/original/file-20230811-29-w4bkeb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=107%2C67%2C1686%2C935&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Director Wes Anderson notes that the concept for the film 'Asteroid City' was how we contend with things outside of our own control.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Focus Features/Indian Paintbrush)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/ecological-grief-and-uncontrollable-reality-in-wes-andersons-asteroid-city" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>Much has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/may/23/asteroid-city-review-wes-anderson-1950s-sci-fi-triumph">written</a> on the <a href="https://slate.com/culture/2023/06/asteroid-city-wes-andersons-new-movie-explains-wes-anderson.html">grief</a> in Wes Anderson’s <em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FXCSXuGTF4">Asteroid City</a></em>, with the director himself being candid enough to describe the film not only in terms of grief, but as being <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/asteroid-city-wes-anderson-interview-b2361408.html">centred chiefly around death</a>. Anderson also notes, however, that the concept for the film was how we contend with things outside of our own control. </p>
<p>Set in a fictional desert town in 1950s America, <em>Asteroid City</em> follows a father and his children to a Junior Stargazer convention, only to have the event <a href="https://www.focusfeatures.com/video/asteroid-city-video_official-trailer">“spectacularly disrupted by world-changing events.”</a></p>
<p>Research on <a href="https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/climate-change-and-mental-health-expert-tips-on-how-to-cope#Extreme-weather-events">the psychological effects of climate change</a> is <a href="https://www.open.edu/openlearn/nature-environment/environmental-studies/the-psychological-impacts-climate-change">yet unfolding</a>, but one could argue there is no greater site of collective grief for worldwide societies than the ongoing ecological loss visible to our own eyes. <em>Asteroid City</em> encompasses an environmental grief that manifests as a failure to accept an uncontrollable reality.</p>
<p>Three elements in the film highlight this best: a burnt hand, lucid dreaming and fumbled lines. </p>
<h2>Ineffable me</h2>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for Wes Anderson’s film ‘Asteroid City.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>One of the underlying contradictions of the term “<a href="https://www.britannica.com/science/Anthropocene-Epoch">anthropocene</a>” is the misleading <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-irony-of-the-anthropocene-people-dominate-a-planet-beyond-our-control-64948">insinuation of control</a>, when in reality our individual abilities can seem meaningless. It is a similar form of futility that haunts the protagonist of <em>Asteroid City</em>, Augie, who has recently lost his wife. </p>
<p>His place in the world is thrown further into doubt by the arrival of an enigmatic extra-terrestrial, leading the single father to ask searching <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HfxvZhemf8Q">existential questions</a>. The inability to dismiss his doubts leads the widower to do something important: without reason he burns his hand on a griddle.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-unfairness-of-the-climate-crisis-podcast-192469">The unfairness of the climate crisis — Podcast</a>
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<p>Although Augie has already exhibited self-destructive tendencies in his occupation as a war photographer, and also in the opening scene when he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfM93CmGm90">lights his pipe beside a petrol pump</a>, the burning of his own hand perplexes him. And yet all three of these things are linked. </p>
<p>The environmentally damaging <a href="https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/science/causes-effects-climate-change">retrieval and use of fossil fuels</a> and the sometimes overlooked devastating <a href="https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/how-war-impacts-the-environment-and-climate-change/">impact of war</a> on natural ecology are the equivalent of burning all of our hands without reason, and sometimes without even realizing we are doing it. We can equate this lack of awareness with sleep. </p>
<h2>Perchance to dream</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="A man in a black suit standing in front of a backdrop of wagon wheels and cacti." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543820/original/file-20230821-29-j4kcb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/543820/original/file-20230821-29-j4kcb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543820/original/file-20230821-29-j4kcb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543820/original/file-20230821-29-j4kcb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=978&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543820/original/file-20230821-29-j4kcb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1228&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543820/original/file-20230821-29-j4kcb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1228&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/543820/original/file-20230821-29-j4kcb0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1228&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Writer, director and producer Wes Anderson attends the New York premiere of his film ‘Asteroid City’ in June 2023.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Asteroid City is a minuscule town in the fictional locality of Arid Plains, a landscape of little else except sand and bleached rock. One thing it does possess, however, is threats. </p>
<p>Aside from the heat and lethal levels of teenage angst, Asteroid City sits adjacent to a nuclear testing site. It is also frequently visited by the sound of gunfire, as police chase a seemingly unending number of gun-toting outlaws. And yet neither of these dangers is afforded a second thought by the film’s characters — they are taken for granted.</p>
<p>While one of this year’s big releases has an atomic explosion as its <a href="https://youtu.be/MeIk9ap1u_E">centrepiece scene</a>, the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/07/1068481">very real</a> atomic dangers in <em>Asteroid City</em> are fringe events, seen and acknowledged but not processed. </p>
<p>This state of sleepwalking, akin to the <a href="https://sites.psu.edu/aspsy/2017/09/12/climate-change-and-cognitive-dissonance/">cognitive dissonance</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20190304-human-evolution-means-we-can-tackle-climate-change">unconscious biases</a> associated with the acceptance of climate change at a conscious level, comes to play a large role in the film. The ultimate expression of this is the assertion by one character that “you can’t wake up if you don’t fall asleep.” </p>
<p>While there are a number of <a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/interviews/asteroid-city-cast-cryptic-line-wes-anderson-new-film">interpretations</a> of this line, the call for an ongoing cognizance of our natural surroundings is as apt as any. </p>
<h2>Uncertain before the curtain</h2>
<p>The central conceit of <em>Asteroid City</em> is of a play within a film, meaning that the actors also <em>play</em> actors. Anderson has said that this helps the fictional cast to <a href="https://ew.com/movies/wes-anderson-interview-asteroid-city-cast-inspirations/">process things in their lives that don’t make sense</a>. The strain of this mental effort is evident in awkward delivery and repetition; at one point, silence even takes the place of a line.</p>
<p>While this artistic breakdown exhibits the <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/climate-anxiety-encourage-action-1.6935734">helplessness</a> that climate change can inflict on people, nothing epitomizes this uncertainty quite like the protagonist’s repeated confession that he <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDBduOZ43Rg">does not understand the play</a>. Anxiety about his role in the ongoing “story” leaves part and actor alike frozen, just as the decline of the natural world, so evident it seems inevitable, causes many to <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/30/how-to-stop-climate-change-despair-according-to-professor.html">freeze in futility</a>. </p>
<h2>Landgazing</h2>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A military general played by Jeffrey Wright gives a speech in ‘Asteroid City.’</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Does <em>Asteroid City</em> offer hope? While Augie himself struggles with his grieving role, his children seem far more capable of being simultaneously aware and proactive. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.firstshowing.net/2023/first-trailer-for-wes-andersons-junior-stargazer-film-asteroid-city/">Junior Stargazers</a> are bright enough to alter their future, but can they take their eyes from the heavens and look at their real surroundings? Can they stop inventing weapons and aids to interstellar advertising and do something ecologically beneficial? While the otherness of the alien fascinates them, the only remnant of terrestrial biodiversity — a small bird — is completely ignored by the cast as an unimportant fixture of the barren landscape around them.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-unfairness-of-the-climate-crisis-podcast-192469">The unfairness of the climate crisis — Podcast</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>Part way through the film, a military general played by Jeffrey Wright <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ja-R1k3mvCM">gives a speech</a> in which he tells the Stargazers: “If you wanted to live a nice quiet peaceful life, you picked the wrong time to get born.” </p>
<p>An ongoing acceptance of this <a href="https://www.nrdc.org/bio/christina-swanson/ipcc-report-climate-change-generational-justice-issue">fundamental unfairness</a> — and <a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/54937/coping-with-climate-grief-advice-from-an-environmental-psychologist/">acknowledging the grief</a>, loss and a lack of control at the <a href="https://blog.oup.com/2013/02/guzman-climate-change-acceptance/">root of it</a> — may be the first hurdle to <a href="https://natural-resources.canada.ca/changements-climatiques/impacts-adaptation/chapter-1-introduction-climate-change-adaptation/10081">tackling climate disaster</a>. We can’t control the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/05/sixty-years-of-climate-change-warnings-the-signs-that-were-missed-and-ignored">past</a>, but we should try to change the future. You don’t need to wake up if you don’t fall asleep.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211419/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chris Corker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Wes Anderson’s film ‘Asteroid City’ encompasses an environmental grief that manifests as failure to accept an uncontrollable reality.Chris Corker, PhD Student, Humanities, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2113052023-08-13T13:32:58Z2023-08-13T13:32:58ZBarbie: 5 ways to be more like Allan than Ken<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/542417/original/file-20230811-27-wzoqet.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=2%2C5%2C1914%2C902&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Barbie movie has a lot of folks upset about the patriarchy. Here Barbie (Margot Robbie) referees a standoff between two Kens (Simu Liu and Ryan Gosling). Ken's friend, Allan (not shown) is depicted in the film as a more suitable ally. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Warner Bros.)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/barbie-5-ways-to-be-more-like-allan-than-ken" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p><em>Barbie</em> is this summer’s hit movie, breaking all kinds of records at the box office. Many, including myself and family — as well as Canada’s prime minister and son — dressed in pink to watch a team of live-action Barbies confront the patriarchy. </p>
<p>The film has caused a media storm, even before <a href="https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/so-glad-i-m-not-canadian-piers-morgan-mocks-justin-trudeau-after-pm-shares-photo/article_f6bdbba9-9ec1-58ef-a1d5-32a2067e3ae3.html">the photo of the pink-clad Justin Trudeau and his son circulated on social media</a>. Much of the conversation about <em>Barbie</em> zoned in on men and masculinity.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1688265604799574016"}"></div></p>
<p>First, the frequent use of the word patriarchy by the Barbies in the film upset some commentators. They claim the film is <a href="https://www.tmz.com/2023/07/22/barbie-attacked-right-wingers-anti-man-feminist-trash/">“anti-male.”</a> </p>
<p>Conservative British journalist <a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/9882650/kitchener-mayor-piers-morgan-justin-trudeau-twitter/">Piers Morgan responded to the photo of Trudeau with son, both dressed in pink,</a> with a tweet saying “so glad I’m not Canadian” (to which many Canadians responded, “we’re glad too”). </p>
<p>Of course, others argue <a href="https://columbiachronicle.com/op-ed-new-barbie-movie-is-honest-not-man-hating"><em>Barbie</em> didn’t go far enough</a> in its critique of the patriarchy. </p>
<p>If you have not seen the film, Barbie and Ken live in a woman-centered (plastic) world until they accidentally find the real world. Once there, they have to confront the reality of patriarchy. Ken (played by Ryan Gosling), finds the “real world” empowering. He became “super cool” donning a big fur coat, showing off his rippling muscles and abs and adding ubiquitous horse motifs to his home. </p>
<p>The strong independent Barbies, however, suddenly find themselves in subservient roles.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Ken in a striped shirt waves." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541981/original/file-20230809-15-b42ojv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/541981/original/file-20230809-15-b42ojv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541981/original/file-20230809-15-b42ojv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541981/original/file-20230809-15-b42ojv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541981/original/file-20230809-15-b42ojv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541981/original/file-20230809-15-b42ojv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/541981/original/file-20230809-15-b42ojv.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Allan (played by Michael Cera) is Ken’s friend who shows up for the Barbies.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Warner Bros.)</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Meanwhile, Allan, Ken’s best friend (played by Michael Cera), remains his helpful, quiet self. Although <a href="https://mashable.com/article/barbie-allan-michael-cera">seen as awkward by some</a>, he is clearly an audience favourite. Requests for the Allan doll <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/barbie-allan-doll-price_n_64c01cb2e4b093f07cb637ec">have spiked</a> and many have <a href="https://www.kqed.org/arts/13931753/allan-doll-michael-cera-greta-gerwig-barbie-movie-review">called for men to be more like Allan</a>.</p>
<p>Ken, in the end, learns he doesn’t need to be the macho man and he is “Kenough” as he is. That is, he is OK with leaving the patriarchy behind.</p>
<p>Can men in the real world follow Ken’s lead? Can we stop trying to prove we are manly men, and instead be “Kenough?” Can we aspire to be more like Ken’s best friend, Allan — a more suitable ally to women? </p>
<p>And crucially: How do we know if we are more like Ken or Allan? </p>
<h2>What does allyship look like?</h2>
<p>Although not exactly the same, this concept of how to be more like Allan — or an “ally to women” — was basically the topic of my most recent collaborative study. My research focuses on white men’s allyship looking at anti-racism, anti-colonization and gender justice.</p>
<p>I spent the past five years working with the <a href="http://www.Albertamen.com">Alberta Men’s Network</a> and the <a href="http://www.aniw.org">Alberta Network of Immigrant Women</a> to look at white men’s allyship.</p>
<p>I worked with a group of diverse study advisers. Together, they <a href="http://www.albertamen.com/toolkits-1/2023/5/10/community-leaders-perspectives-on-white-mens-allyship-infographic-series">developed a curriculum to teach white men about allyship.</a> </p>
<p>The study included the wisdom and guidance of community leader’s expectations of allyship and also white men who shared their experiences of what it was like to try to become an ally.</p>
<p>Those white men aiming to achieve allyship shared their starting points and experiences. They all spoke about struggling with the expectations of being a man. </p>
<p>Some also spoke about being bullied and not wanting anyone to experience that kind of pain. Those that had been bullies in the past talked about experiencing intense regrets. </p>
<p>Many of the men identified a turning point that changed their lives and put them on a path toward allyship. For some, it was learning about patriarchy in university. For others, it was hearing the stories of people who faced oppression and marginalization that challenged their view of the world as a meritocracy. In this way, they began to make commitments to human rights and social justice.</p>
<p>For all of them, the work they did was helped along by women, who took the time and energy to mentor them.</p>
<p>If you are struggling with whether you are a Ken or an Allan, here are five questions to ask yourself.</p>
<h2>Are you a Ken or an Allan?</h2>
<p>1) <strong>How do I act with the group I want to ally with?</strong></p>
<p>How and why are you joining a group? What kinds of things should I be doing in the group? How can I be open to learning from critique and feedback? </p>
<p>For example, in the <em>Barbie</em> movie, Allan shared why he was motivated to help Barbie. Allan helped the Barbie’s plans, but he didn’t come in and take over. </p>
<p>Also, accept that you will inevitably say the wrong thing. Just learn from it and keep showing up when it gets uncomfortable.</p>
<p>2) <strong>How do I act with other allies?</strong> </p>
<p>Refrain from being competitive with other allies. Instead, create safe groups to support each other and share what you are learning. </p>
<p>3) <strong>How do I act within organizations of power?</strong> </p>
<p>Do you defend them? Do you simply think about making them more “diverse-friendly,” or do you listen to women and marginalized people and support what they are doing? For example, what should Allan do when Mattel offers him the position of Executive VP of Barbie Inclusion?</p>
<p>4) <strong>How do I act in my relationships with people who are not committed to justice and challenging the patriarchy?</strong> </p>
<p>Building relationships takes time. Everyone needs some space to learn and grow. Can you put in the work to help Ken’s become “Kenough?”</p>
<p>5) <strong>Can I be accountable for changing how I behave?</strong> </p>
<p>What is your relationship to your masculinity? Like Ken at the end of the movie, can you become “Kenough” and be open to what women have to say? Can you critique masculinity, and what it means for injustice in the world? Can you support the goal of equality?</p>
<p>If you’re a man, you can do all this while looking cool. Just do the work, don’t be a jerk. Strive to become “Kenough,” or an Allan, and follow Barbie, women and others who are marginalized in the fight to overthrow patriarchy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/211305/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeff Halvorsen receives funding from MITACS and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Halvorsen is also an active member of the Alberta Men's Network and consultant with the Alberta Network of Immigrant Women.</span></em></p>The Barbie movie has caused a media storm, even before the photo of the pink-clad Canadian PM and his son circulated on social media. Much of the conversation has zoned in on men and masculinity.Jeff Halvorsen, Post-Doctoral Associate, University of CalgaryLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2098402023-07-27T20:35:02Z2023-07-27T20:35:02Z‘The Kerala Story’: How an Indian film ignited violence against Muslims and challenges to interfaith marriage<iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/the-kerala-story-how-an-indian-propaganda-film-ignited-violence-against-muslims-and-challenges-to-interfaith-marriage" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p>A controversial low-budget Indian feature film <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65481927"><em>The Kerala Story</em>,</a> about a <a href="https://time.com/6280955/kerala-story-movie-india/">discredited anti-Muslim conspiracy theory</a>, has been causing a political storm, going all the way to India’s Supreme Court. </p>
<p>The movie has helped circulate the idea of <a href="https://theconversation.com/indias-love-jihad-anti-conversion-laws-aim-to-further-oppress-minorities-and-its-working-166746">“love jihad,”</a> a right-wing conspiracy theory that Muslim men are predators and out to marry and steal Hindu women. These ideas date back to the British colonial era and have far-reaching implications for people’s everyday lives. </p>
<p>The trailer claimed <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/4/kerala-story-film-on-alleged-indian-isil-recruits-gets-pushback">32,000 Hindu girls had been converted to Islam by Muslim men with the intent of recruiting them to ISIS.</a> </p>
<p>Once the film came out, citizens <a href="https://scroll.in/latest/1048448/amid-row-the-kerala-story-trailer-changed-from-being-the-story-of-32000-women-to-that-of-3-girls">tried to get it banned by sending a petition to the India’s Supreme Court</a>. </p>
<p>“Love jihad” is a conspiracy theory that claims Muslim men are converting Hindu and Christian women to Islam. Allegedly, the men feign love, get the women pregnant and eventually traffic them. The motive? To increase the Muslim population of India, perpetuate fanaticism and ultimately establish an Islamic state. </p>
<p>According to a recent <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2021/06/29/religious-segregation/">Pew Report</a>, 99 per cent of married people in India share the same religion as their spouse. Muslims account for approximately <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/projected-population-of-muslims-in-2023-to-stand-at-1975-crore-govt-in-lok-sabha/article67106178.ece">14 per cent</a> of India’s population. </p>
<p>There is no such thing as a “love jihad” and an investigation by India’s National Investigation Agency has said there is <a href="https://thewire.in/politics/nia-love-jihad-kerala-hadiya">no evidence of “love jihad” taking place.</a></p>
<h2>Political fallout</h2>
<p>The figure of 32,000 women in the film’s trailer was immediately <a href="https://www.thehindu.com/entertainment/movies/movie-the-kerala-story-an-attempt-to-destroy-states-communal-harmony-ruling-cpim-opposition-congress/article66792442.ece">challenged by Indian political leaders</a> and also debunked by <a href="https://www.altnews.in/32000-kerala-women-in-isis-misquotes-flawed-math-imaginary-figures-behind-filmmakers-claim/">fact-checkers from the website, Alt News</a>. </p>
<p>The filmmakers agreed to change the number and a new trailer was released. <a href="https://scroll.in/latest/1048448/amid-row-the-kerala-story-trailer-changed-from-being-the-story-of-32000-women-to-that-of-3-girls">It removed and replaced “32,000 girls” with “the true stories of three girls.”
</a> </p>
<p>And the movie went forward with its release, which according to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/23/india/indian-film-kerala-story-controversy-intl-hnk/index.html">some news reports, was successful at the box office</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539600/original/file-20230726-15-pfd09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539600/original/file-20230726-15-pfd09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=274&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539600/original/file-20230726-15-pfd09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=274&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539600/original/file-20230726-15-pfd09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=274&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539600/original/file-20230726-15-pfd09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539600/original/file-20230726-15-pfd09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539600/original/file-20230726-15-pfd09i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=345&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A cinema in Bangalore, India. (CP)</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Challenges in the Indian Supreme Court</h2>
<p>Some politicians decried the propagandist nature of the movie and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65523873">in West Bengal, it was banned by the government</a>. Politicians there said the film <a href="https://scroll.in/latest/1049228/the-kerala-story-contains-manipulated-facts-and-hate-speech-west-bengal-tells-sc">“manipulated facts and contains hate speech in multiple scenes”</a> and they banned the film to <a href="https://www.hindustantimes.com/entertainment/bollywood/mamata-banerjee-announces-ban-on-the-kerala-story-in-west-bengal-film-producer-reacts-101683546969420.html">“avoid violence and hatred.”</a> </p>
<p><a href="https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/prohibition-order-not-tenable-sc-stays-west-bengal-governments-ban-on-the-kerala-story/articleshow/100326856.cms">The Indian Supreme Court</a> lifted the state ban though agreed that a disclaimer on the film was necessary. The disclaimer indicated that the film provides “no authentic data” to support the 32,000 figure and that it presents fictionalized accounts.</p>
<p>Other politicians, including some from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, promoted the film. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-65481927">Some of them even offered complimentary tickets or organized free screenings</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://thewire.in/film/kerala-story-prime-minister-modi-misleading-claim">Prime Minister Narendra Modi</a> endorsed the movie, assigning to it a distinct legitimacy. </p>
<h2>Islamophobia from the 19th century</h2>
<p>The idea of “love jihad” is both current and historical with notions coming from Indian and Hindu nationalism as well as 19th-century British colonial narratives. Both streams constructed Muslim men as hypersexual and hyperaggressive. </p>
<p>In the 19th century, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230108196">Hindu scholars and new religious organisations (like Arya Samaj and Hindu Mahasabha)</a> began producing a new Hindu-centric version of Indian history. This history grew in response to British colonialism but <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvzgb88s">at the same time, shared similarities with British colonial ideas</a>.</p>
<p>The British portrayed themselves as just rulers, partly by contrasting themselves with their casting of Muslim kings as hypersexual fanatics. </p>
<p>They pointed to a medieval darkness marked by the lust and tyranny of Muslim rulers. Mughal rulers were <a href="https://dvkperiyar.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/We-or-Our-Nationhood-Defined-Shri-M-S-Golwalkar.pdf">portrayed as rapists attacking both Hindu women and “Mother India”</a>. This portrayal included the Muslim <a href="https://brill.com/display/title/5969?language=en">Prophet Muhammad who was portrayed in some places as sexually perverse</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.448955">These ideas became part of the curriculum</a> in certain Indian states and elite Hindu scholars, educated at colonial schools, <a href="https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvzgb88s">perpetuated these narratives in their writing</a>. And the idea of a type of “love jihad” became part of the discourse created through pamphlets, novels, newspapers and magazines — especially in North India.</p>
<p>By the late 19th century, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230108196">India was constructed around Hindu heterosexual relationships and family values</a> in opposition to Muslim sexual deviance and rampant Muslim sexuality.</p>
<p>In 1923, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230108196">Madan Mohan Malaviya, the president of the Hindu Mahasabha</a> said in a speech, “hardly any day passes without our noticing a case or two of kidnapping of Hindu women and children by not only Muslim <em>badmashes</em> (rogues) and <em>goondas</em> (hooligans), but also men of standing and means.” </p>
<h2>Challenges to interfaith marriage</h2>
<p>Today, it’s not just <em>The Kerala Story</em> that has circulated the “love jihad” myth. Reportage in Hindu nationalist media continues to make headlines.</p>
<p><em>Organiser</em>, a magazine run by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a network of Hindu nationalist organizations, recently reported that <a href="https://organiser.org/2023/06/28/181109/bharat/madhya-pradesh-three-cases-of-love-jihad-following-same-pattern-like-film-the-kerala-story-reported-in-a-month/">three cases of love jihad following the same pattern as those in ‘The Kerala Story’ were reported in a month</a>.</p>
<p>Love jihad’s centrality to Hindu nationalist politics has led to specifically stringent laws <a href="https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/12/12/1068">focused heavily on sexuality and marriage</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/indias-love-jihad-anti-conversion-laws-aim-to-further-oppress-minorities-and-its-working-166746">India’s 'love jihad' anti-conversion laws aim to further oppress minorities, and it's working</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://theintercept.com/2021/07/03/love-jihad-law-india/">Hindu vigilantes, in partnership with the police,</a> launch missions to separate interfaith couples. Muslim men have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/21/they-cut-him-into-pieces-indias-love-jihad-conspiracy-theory-turns-lethal">brutalized, killed, forced into hiding and incarcerated</a> using <a href="https://www.loc.gov/item/2018298841/">historic anti-conversion laws</a>. </p>
<p>One response to the chatter about “love jihad,” is an Instagram channel called <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/10/countering-love-jihad-by-celebrating-indian-interfaith-couples">India Love Project</a> launched to celebrate stories of interfaith love and marriages. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539606/original/file-20230726-25-5qmkg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539606/original/file-20230726-25-5qmkg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539606/original/file-20230726-25-5qmkg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539606/original/file-20230726-25-5qmkg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=336&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539606/original/file-20230726-25-5qmkg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539606/original/file-20230726-25-5qmkg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/539606/original/file-20230726-25-5qmkg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This photo of a newlywed couple is from the Instagram account called the India Love Project. The groom is Muslim and the bride is Hindu-Punjabi.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CptlucmPFgr/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3Dhttps://www.instagram.com/p/CptlucmPFgr/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D">(India Love Project)</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Hopefully, such efforts continue to address Islamophobia and broaden to include a larger public discourse looking at transnational Islamophobic interlinkages, both past and present.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209840/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Wajiha Mehdi receives funding from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Public Scholars Initiative UBC, International Development Research Centre Canada and the University of British Columbia</span></em></p>A controversial low-budget Indian feature film about a discredited anti-Muslim conspiracy theory has been causing a political storm, going all the way to India’s Supreme Court.Wajiha Mehdi, PhD Candidate, Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2102482023-07-24T19:26:34Z2023-07-24T19:26:34ZVisiting the Trinity Site featured in ‘Oppenheimer’ is a sobering reminder of the horror of nuclear weapons<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/539016/original/file-20230724-21-6lb7zx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3000%2C2398&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Visitors at the Trinity Site National Monument in Socorro, N.M. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">(Shutterstock)</span></span></figcaption></figure><iframe style="width: 100%; height: 100px; border: none; position: relative; z-index: 1;" allowtransparency="" allow="clipboard-read; clipboard-write" src="https://narrations.ad-auris.com/widget/the-conversation-canada/visiting-the-trinity-site-featured-in-oppenheimer-is-a-sobering-reminder-of-the-horror-of-nuclear-weapons" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<p><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/movies/christopher-nolan-oppenheimer.html">Christopher Nolan’s 2023 film <em>Oppenheimer</em></a> is a biopic about the theoretical physicist behind the atomic bomb. After watching the film, I was inspired to write about my visit to the actual <a href="https://www.nps.gov/whsa/learn/historyculture/trinity-site.htm">Trinity Site</a>, where the first atomic bomb was detonated.</p>
<p>As part of my research on nuclear weapons and civil defence, I visited the Trinity Site in 2015. Located in the desert in the southwest United States, the Trinity Site is isolated, peculiar and disconcertingly mundane. </p>
<p>The tower that held the bomb is featured prominently in the <em>Oppenheimer</em> film. A small fragment of it exists today, as the rest of it was vaporized. It was deeply unnerving being near the remainder of the vaporized tower.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/5ZYD-H4V2M0?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Actors in Oppenheimer talk about the Trinity test.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Arriving at the site</h2>
<p>The Trinity Site is open to the public for only a few hours twice a year, by permission of the U.S. Army. The predicted popularity of <em>Oppenheimer’s</em> release will possibly <a href="https://home.army.mil/wsmr/index.php/contact/public-affairs-office/trinity-site-open-house">overcrowd the next open house on Oct. 21</a>.</p>
<p>When I visited the site, I first had to make my way to a very remote area of the New Mexico desert. Arrival had to be well before sunrise to have any chance of being in the small group of persons granted entry.</p>
<p>Then, after waiting for hours at the secluded gate of an active missile and munitions testing range, I had to pass the rigour of a screening at an army checkpoint and closely adhere to a given set of rules and regulations verbatim. Our convoy, escorted by military police, then went to a more remote interior location of the missile testing range. </p>
<p>We stopped at a barren plain in the <a href="https://ahf.nuclearmuseum.org/ranger/tour-stop/early-trinity-site-history/">Jornada del Muerto</a> — “dead man’s journey” — desert. </p>
<p>I then walked a half kilometre along a dirt path leading to the crater. A chain-link fence distinguishes the area surrounding the crater from the rest of the desert. The blast crater is flatter than it is concave. The fence is demarcated with black and yellow signs reading “Caution Radioactive Materials.”</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538939/original/file-20230724-3162-xwj07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="fence with a CAUTION RADIOACTIVE MATERIAL sign" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538939/original/file-20230724-3162-xwj07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538939/original/file-20230724-3162-xwj07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538939/original/file-20230724-3162-xwj07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538939/original/file-20230724-3162-xwj07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538939/original/file-20230724-3162-xwj07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538939/original/file-20230724-3162-xwj07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538939/original/file-20230724-3162-xwj07r.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A chain-link fence distinguishes the crater from the rest of the Jornada del Muerto desert.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(J. Rozdilsky)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Visiting the site</h2>
<p>The main attraction at the Trinity Site is <a href="https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/17-473-the-politics-of-nuclear-proliferation-nuclear-history-strategy-and-statecraft-fall-2015/resources/17-473f15-th/">a simple obelisk</a> made of volcanic rocks marking Ground Zero. It was <a href="https://www.atomicarchive.com/history/trinity/landmark.html">erected in 1965</a>.</p>
<p>Adjacent to the obelisk, small fragments of the tower remained. In the distance, a low white structure shielded portions of the crater. Green glassy radioactive rocks, known as <a href="https://orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/nuclear-weapons/trinity/trinitite.html">Trinitite</a> litter the ground. </p>
<p>There are very few elements of interpretive information like what one would see at a museum. Military personnel dragged out a replica of the <a href="https://www.osti.gov/opennet/manhattan-project-history/Events/1945/nagasaki.htm">Fat Man bomb dropped on Nagasaki in 1945</a>. It served to occupy the attention of most visitors, who perhaps anticipated more to see and do.</p>
<h2>Vaporized tower</h2>
<p>The most significant observation I made at the Trinity Site was a small fragment of metal in the ground. It was a fragment of the tower, and proof of physicist Albert Einstein’s theory that mass is just a concentrated form of energy. And mass can turn to energy under the conditions of an atom bomb detonation.</p>
<p>Einstein’s famous equation <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/apr/05/einstein-equation-emc2-special-relativity-alok-jha">E=mc² explains the energy released in an atomic bomb</a>, but did not explain how to build one. <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2023/07/oppenheimer-einstein-movie-real-life">Einstein and Oppenheimer were colleagues</a>, and the task of developing the atomic bomb was designated to Oppenheimer and his crew.</p>
<p>The Trinity Test demonstrated that <a href="https://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/einstein/energy/the-sun-and-the-atom-bomb">humankind could tap the essence of the sun</a>. The bomb worked, creating temperatures hotter than the <a href="https://www.space.com/17137-how-hot-is-the-sun.html">sun’s 15 million degrees Celsius core</a>. Hot gas radiated its energy in the form of x-rays, which heated the surrounding air, annihilating everything in their path. The phenomenon created a <a href="https://str.llnl.gov/2018-06/rose">nuclear fireball</a>.</p>
<p>The tower that held the bomb last existed at 5:28 a.m. on July 16, 1945. It was no longer in existence at 5:29 a.m., at the time the Trinity Test commenced. The test vaporized the experimental structure, leaving behind a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2101350118">crater about 1.4 metres deep and 80 metres wide</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538940/original/file-20230724-27-xhh6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="an obelisk in the desert" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538940/original/file-20230724-27-xhh6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/538940/original/file-20230724-27-xhh6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538940/original/file-20230724-27-xhh6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538940/original/file-20230724-27-xhh6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538940/original/file-20230724-27-xhh6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538940/original/file-20230724-27-xhh6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/538940/original/file-20230724-27-xhh6e7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">An obelisk marks the site of Ground Zero.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">(J. Rozdilsky)</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Entertainment from horror</h2>
<p><em>Oppenheimer</em> is the latest film that explores the history of the atomic bomb. Other films go beyond this summer’s blockbuster to depict the full horror of what Oppenheimer created.</p>
<p>Jon Else’s 1981 documentary, <a href="https://doi.org/10.1119/1.13083"><em>The Day After Trinity</em></a>, shows the real history behind Nolan’s <em>Oppenheimer</em>. The 1983 made-for-TV movie, <a href="https://variety.com/2020/film/reviews/television-event-review-the-day-after-1234831819/"><em>The Day After</em></a>, dared to show the uncomfortable images of nuclear Armageddon to American audiences. And Mick Jackson’s 1984 British television show <em><a href="https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20190925-was-threads-the-scariest-tv-show-ever-made">Threads</a></em> is one of the scariest depictions of nuclear war. </p>
<p>Watching the fake tower at the set of the Trinity Site being vaporized in the <em>Oppenheimer</em> film’s version of the first atom bomb explosion is stunning. Especially in <a href="https://www.cp24.com/news/tech-issues-spoil-70mm-imax-screenings-of-oppenheimer-in-ontario-1.6491127">70-millimetre IMAX screenings of the film</a>.</p>
<p>Seeing the fragments of the real vaporized tower in the midst of a radioactive crater strewn with <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/chunk-trinitite-reminds-sheer-devastating-power-atomic-bomb-180972848/">green glass rocks</a> at the real Trinity Site was a bewildering and sobering experience.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/210248/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jack L. Rozdilsky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Christopher Nolan film ‘Oppenheimer’ is set to become a summer blockbuster. But one of the featured sites in the movie is a sobering reminder of the horror of nuclear war.Jack L. Rozdilsky, Associate Professor of Disaster and Emergency Management, York University, CanadaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2077652023-06-16T10:11:20Z2023-06-16T10:11:20ZThe Flash review: Michael Keaton’s Batman is the real star of this DC multiverse mashup<p><em>Warning: the following article contains spoilers.</em></p>
<p>The Flash is one of DC’s most versatile superheroes. First popularised in the 1940s, the speedster’s mantle has been worn by multiple characters in the comics – most famously Barry Allen and Wally West, but also the female Flash, Chinese American <a href="https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Avery_Ho_(Prime_Earth)">Avery Ho</a>. These Flashes have appeared not just in their own comics, but across the DC comics universe from <a href="https://teentitans.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page">Teen Titans</a> to the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cxixDgHUYw">Justice League</a>.</p>
<p>Director Andy Muschietti’s new film, The Flash, is Warner-DC’s attempt to wrap up DC Extended Universe of films (DCEU) directed by Zac Snyder, which started with <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6DJcgm3wNY">Man of Steel</a> in 2013. At the same time, it is launching James Gunn and Peter Safran’s <a href="https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/james-gunn-dcu-announcement-batman-superman-new-dc-slate#:%7E:text=%22Superman%3A%20Legacy%22%20will%20bring,released%20on%20July%2011%2C%202025.">new DC Universe</a> of film and TV as they take over as the heads of DC Studios. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Trailer for The Flash (2023).</span></figcaption>
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<p>Muschietti’s plan is to smash together – quite literally – previously unconnected film worlds from Warner-DC’s long history of superhero film and television adaptations, creating something new from everything old.</p>
<p>Some may see these colliding worlds as necessary to distract from the <a href="https://www.thecut.com/article/ezra-miller-allegations.html">slowly amassing flow of accusations</a> laid at the feet of The Flash’s central star, Ezra Miller. Indeed, Warner-DC has largely used another actor to promote The Flash: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzb7Q7HAIi8">Michael Keaton</a>.</p>
<p>Clever uses of stunt teams allow Keaton, the now 71-year-old star of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgC9Q0uhX70">Tim Burton’s Batman</a> (1989) and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Too3qgNaYBE">Batman Returns</a> (1992), to return to active duty as the dark knight in The Flash after a 30-year absence. </p>
<h2>Serving the fans</h2>
<p>Time travel is central in The Flash. Deft storytelling uses spaghetti metaphors to explain the complexities of messing with timelines. Slipping through the flow of time using the “<a href="https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Speed_Force#:%7E:text=The%20Flash%20Vol%202%20%2391&text=The%20Speed%20Force%20is%20a,grants%20all%20speedsters%20their%20power.">Speed Force</a>” (which grants him access to extradimensional energy), Miller’s Flash goes back in time. </p>
<p>He saves his mother’s life, but causes a rippling impact along a multiverse of timelines that takes the Flash out of the DCEU and drops him into the world of Keaton’s Batman.</p>
<p>The result is by turns a bombastically nostalgic and watered-down variant on Burton’s earlier blockbuster films. The Flash relishes in nostalgically recreating Burton’s Batcave, augmenting its gothic-industrial aesthetic with CGI bats which are more reminiscent of director Christopher Nolan’s cycle of Batman films. But, The Flash also tamps down the gothic flourishes that have made Burton a world-renowned director.</p>
<p>The Batcave is explored by two versions of Barry Allen/Flash, after an accident in the time stream deposits the original Allen into an alternate world. After meeting himself, the two travel to find Batman at his home in Wayne Manor. </p>
<p>Discovering the Batcave, the younger version of Allen gleefully pulls a dustsheet off the Batmobile prop from Burton’s 1989 film. As he does so, he wistfully remembers seeing the Batmobile on television. Fan-serving moments like these abound as The Flash reaches out to audiences who grew up watching Burton’s Batman.</p>
<p>Muschietti makes great use of these nostalgic cameos. Fans of comics are also rewarded with new twists on old favourites, such as an aside to the Superman-as-Soviet-superhero comic <a href="https://www.dc.com/graphic-novels/superman-red-son">Red Son</a> (2003), when Batman and the Flashes go to rescue a Kryptonian held in captivity by the Soviets.</p>
<p>Likewise, the film’s plot borrows elements from the <a href="https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Flash:_Flashpoint">Flashpoint comics saga</a> from the early 2010s. Among other scenes, these comics inspire one of the film’s more gruesome sequences, which shows the “original” Allen performing Frankenstein-like experiments on himself in an attempt to regain his powers.</p>
<p>These allusions, twists and borrowings culminate in a sequence of superhero cameos. As the original Allen confronts his limitations as a superhero, Muschietti places the Flash’s personal revelations against a backdrop of colliding worlds that contain what look like digitally scrolling film reels. </p>
<p>These filmstrips contain past DC superhero adaptations, reminding audiences of every incarnation of the DC universe’s favourite characters, from George Reeves’s 1950s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxL46STIZB0">television Superman</a> to Christopher Reeve’s 1970s and 80s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nprJvYKz3QQ">Superman blockbusters</a>.</p>
<p>Standing out among these myriad superheroes – the true star of The Flash, despite its title – is Keaton’s Batman. It is Keaton’s narrative arc and catchphrases (“You wanna get nuts? Let’s get nuts.”) that echo down the timelines of Warner-DC history and leave a lasting impact. </p>
<p>The film is even structured to give Keaton’s performance greater resonance. Early portions of sometimes silly superhero humour give way in the film’s second half, where Keaton’s razor-edged, comedic yet gothic darkness allows the film to gather emotional depth.</p>
<p>In mining Warner-DC’s iconic film and television history, The Flash is able to smash together a pantheon of screen superheroes. As it works to reset the core Warner-DC universe, The Flash’s colliding worlds remind audiences of why they love superheroes such as Batman and Superman in the first place. In doing so, it shifts away from the grim tone of the old DC Extended Universe, injecting hope (and humour) into the new one.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/207765/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rayna Denison is affiliated with University of Bristol. </span></em></p>It’s Keaton’s razor-edged, comedic darkness that allows the film to gather emotional depth.Rayna Denison, Professor of Film and Digital Arts, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2039582023-04-18T10:51:29Z2023-04-18T10:51:29ZRenfield: Nicolas Cage’s reimagining of Dracula pulls the vampire film into the 21st century<p>“Don’t make it a sexual thing!” Nicolas Cage’s Dracula tells Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield in this new interpretation of the classic vampire movie. “I eat boys … I eat girls.” </p>
<p>In a line, the film deftly dismisses a century of <a href="https://www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/dracula-couch">post-Freudian interpretations</a> of Bram Stoker’s vampire story – and with justification. Renfield is not about sex, but about power.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">The trailer for Renfield (2023).</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This is most obvious when Renfield, Dracula’s servant or “familiar”, attends a support group for codependent people. When the group facilitator, Mark (Brandon Scott Jones), asks Renfield what would happen if he were to stop focusing on his boss’s needs, he responds: “He won’t grow to full power.”</p>
<p>The group finds this apparent metaphor weird, but resonant. In its recognition that gaslighting and emotional abuse are about control rather than desire, the film provides a version of the vampire myth in tune with contemporary debates. There is more than a whiff of #TimesUp about Renfield’s mission to distance himself from his abusive employer.</p>
<p>The film’s most striking power move, however, is on behalf of its production company, Universal. In its latest attempt to reboot its <a href="https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a829209/universal-dark-universe-the-mummy-bride-of-frankenstein-the-invisible-man-trailer-release-date/">“Dark Universe” franchise</a> – a collection of movies based on the iconic horror film characters the studio established in the 1930s – the production company is aggressively laying claim to the Dracula story.</p>
<h2>Citational vampires</h2>
<p>Vampire films are, according to critic Ken Gelder, “<a href="https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/New_Vampire_Cinema/uQn8DwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&printsec=frontcover">citational</a>”. This means that they compulsively reference other vampire films, playfully reworking the conventions of the genre. The vampire film talks endlessly about itself.</p>
<p>In Renfield, an eye-catching sequence transposes Cage and Hoult’s faces onto footage from <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoaMw91MC9k">Tod Browning’s Dracula</a> (1931). This was the film that forever identified Hungarian actor <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Bela-Lugosi">Bela Lugosi</a> with the iconic vampire. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/vampires-rebirth-from-monstrous-undead-creature-to-sexy-and-romantic-byronic-seducer-in-one-ghost-story-114382">Vampire's rebirth: from monstrous undead creature to sexy and romantic Byronic seducer in one ghost story</a>
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<p>Renfield wants to draw our attention to the “original” (itself an adaptation of a stage version of Stoker’s novel) even as, almost 100 years later, it wants to remodel the vampire movie to 21st century specifications.</p>
<p>Recasting Cage in the image of Lugosi repurposes Browning’s film as an origin story for what is ultimately a kind of superhero movie. Renfield eats insects in order to stimulate turbocharged combat skills reminiscent of <a href="https://theconversation.com/five-exciting-additions-to-marvels-cinematic-universes-according-to-a-comics-expert-180634">Marvel characters</a>.</p>
<p>It also, however, evokes the <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20070930173700/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,952724,00.html">lawsuit that Lugosi’s heirs brought against Universal Pictures</a> in 1966. They accused the studio of profiting from Lugosi’s image after his death through merchandising, initiating a protracted case they eventually lost. It was a landmark ruling, determining that celebrities do not own their own images after their death.</p>
<p>In Renfield, the retrospective adjustment of the original film to star Cage rather than Lugosi is not only a canny joke that plays on the extreme recognition value of both actors. It is also a strategic move intended to bolster Universal’s association with the Dracula brand, as the Browning film’s copyright is due to expire this decade.</p>
<h2>Action versus comedy</h2>
<p>Renfield has the feel of the first instalment in an action franchise. But unlike previous attempts to hybridise the vampire and action genres, such as the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaU2A7KyOu4">Blade</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_IoL7g5Ub8">Underworld</a> series of the early 2000s, it does not take itself too seriously.</p>
<p>Stars Cage, Hoult and Awkwafina deliver their lines as if with permanently arched eyebrows. Indeed, at one point, Cage rapidly raises both eyebrows twice in such an exaggerated manner that it almost breaks the fourth wall. </p>
<p>Elsewhere, extreme gore is exploited for its slapstick potential. In the screening I attended, a scene in which Renfield tears off a villain’s arms with his bare hands and uses them to whack other opponents had some audience members in stitches.</p>
<p>There is a long tradition of vampire comedy. Stoker’s novel has vampire hunter Van Helsing break down in hysterical laughter, blaming “<a href="https://www.shmoop.com/dracula/chapter-13-full-text-11.html">King Laugh</a>”, a grinning skeleton who combines hilarity and death in the manner of the <a href="https://www.thecollector.com/danse-macabre-middle-ages-danse-of-death/">medieval danse macabre</a>.</p>
<p>The self-referential nature of vampire cinema gives rise to comedy. Appreciation of Renfield’s visual gags and snappy one liners is enriched by familiarity with previous vampire films. Cage’s characteristically over-the-top interpretation of his role inevitably recalls any number of his previous performances.</p>
<p>He even seems comparatively restrained besides his extraordinarily unhinged appearance in the 1988 black comedy <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnoSxO_2ghQ">Vampire’s Kiss</a> – another film that uses vampirism as a metaphor for gaslighting and abusive relationships.</p>
<p>The film never quite delivers what it promises, however. While comparable contemporary vampire film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAZEWtyhpes">What We Do in the Shadows</a> and its <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrEg-QGEonI">spin-off TV series</a> allow emotional insights to surface through the comedy, in Renfield any potential profundity is deflected into action stunts.</p>
<p>The gleeful lashings of ultraviolence result in a kind of moral murkiness, in which audiences are never sure whether they are rooting for the underdog or the violent enabler of a centuries-old serial killer.</p>
<p>A film less determined to please its audience might lean into this ambiguity and allow genuine complexity to emerge. Here, however, an uneven tone betrays an uncertainty of purpose. Ultimately, Renfield’s witty attempt to reframe a familiar story is compromised by its corporate brief: to shore up an unstable cinematic empire.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/203958/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Catherine Spooner does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Renfield attempts to remodel the vampire movie to 21st century specifications.Catherine Spooner, Professor of Literature and Culture, Lancaster UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1978592023-01-24T15:04:31Z2023-01-24T15:04:31Z‘The Whale’ is a horror film that taps into our fear of fatness<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505902/original/file-20230123-13-7h23y2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=11%2C14%2C2485%2C1642&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Over the course of 'The Whale,' Charlie's body gradually breaks down.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-1240w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2022-12/221209-Brendan-Fraser-the-whale-ew-255p-cc959f.jpg">A24</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>I knew before seeing “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13833688/">The Whale</a>” that it was a movie about a man named Charlie who weighs over 600 pounds, is grief-stricken over the death of his partner, and is effectively trapped in his apartment due to his weight.</p>
<p>I also knew that “The Whale” had attracted a great deal of criticism, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/10/opinion/the-whale-film.html">provoking anger</a>, <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/elaminabdelmahmoud/the-whale-brendan-fraser-darren-aronofsky-review">disgust</a> and accusations of <a href="https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-whale-movie-review-2022">exploitation</a>. Despite the controversy, <a href="https://movieweb.com/best-actor-2022-brendan-fraser/">Brendan Fraser’s performance has been widely praised</a>, and he won <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/13/entertainment/brendan-fraser-oscars-best-actor/index.html">best actor</a> at the 95th Academy Awards.</p>
<p>But what I didn’t know was that this film would make me cry. As I left the theater, I found myself hyperaware of my own fat body moving through the parking lot, and I started to feel the way I often do when I see a reflection of myself in a mirror: monstrous.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-case-for-a-fat-love-story">In my research</a> on fat characters in popular culture, I point out how the fat character usually must lose weight in order to gain acceptance or to be loved. </p>
<p>In “The Whale,” however, Charlie does not lose weight; the transformation goes in the opposite direction: he gets bigger and bigger, suffering a slow and painful physical breakdown. As I watched the film, I started to understand, with a looming sense of dread, that “The Whale” had no plans to recuperate this character. The fatness was the subject and the point. </p>
<p>I began to realize that this movie was not a melodrama, nor an uplifting tale about redemption; to me, “The Whale” is a body horror film that exploits the fear and disgust people feel toward fatness.</p>
<h2>The body as a monster</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/best-body-horror-movies/">Body horror</a> is a subset of the horror film genre that depicts the destruction, degeneration or mutation of the human body. These films are designed to gross out viewers, and the protagonist often becomes the monster of the story as their body becomes more and more repulsive. </p>
<p>Director David Cronenberg made the subgenre famous <a href="https://bloody-disgusting.com/sponsored/3716683/body-horror-david-cronenberg/">in films such as</a> “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091064/">The Fly</a>,” “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073705/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Shivers</a>,” “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086541/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0">Videodrome</a>” and “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076590/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_3">Rabid</a>.” </p>
<p>“The Fly,” a remake of the <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051622/">1958 film</a> of the same name, tells the story of a scientist named Seth Brundle who merges his DNA with that of a common housefly. Over the course of the film, he gradually degenerates into a disgusting creature nicknamed “<a href="https://villains.fandom.com/wiki/Brundlefly">Brundlefly</a>.” Another particularly disturbing body horror film is “<a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3099498/">Tusk</a>,” in which a man obsessed with walruses ends up kidnapping a cruel podcaster and dismembers him in order to turn him into a walrus. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Split image of man on one side and hideous monster on the other." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=310&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/505976/original/file-20230123-17-4gl88j.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=390&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">David Cronenberg’s ‘The Fly’ is a standout of the body horror genre.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.unilad.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/the-fly-35.jpg">20th Century Studios</a></span>
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<p>In body horror films, there is something viscerally disturbing about seeing the human body distorted, whether it’s due to <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078748/">a parasitic alien</a>, a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073705/">mutated virus</a> or the sadistic compulsions of a <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1467304/">mad scientist</a>. </p>
<p>“The Whale” suggests that although Charlie deserves pity, <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/elaminabdelmahmoud/the-whale-brendan-fraser-darren-aronofsky-review">he is nonetheless a monstrosity</a>.</p>
<p>Like Seth Brundle, who experiments on himself while drunk, Charlie regularly gorges on fried chicken, pizza and subs – the implication being that Charlie is directly responsible for his morbid obesity. </p>
<p>Seeing Charlie’s gradual physical disintegration is like watching a slow-motion car wreck; you cannot look away even though you know you should. He’s barely able to stand, and he loses the ability to perform the most basic of tasks, like picking up an object from the floor. In some scenes, the camera rests on Charlie’s distended gut, his swollen calves or his sweat-soaked clothes, inviting the audience to be repulsed. </p>
<p>In body horror, there is no return from being transformed; the damage is done. And although not every transformed body horror character dies, many do. </p>
<p>In the end, Charlie’s body ends up destroying him.</p>
<h2>Till flesh do us part</h2>
<p>Film <a href="https://www.cliffsnotes.com/tutors-problems/Writing/45763344-Film-critic-Robin-Wood-in-a-now-famous-essay-defined-the-true/">critic Robin Wood famously argued</a> that “the true subject of the horror genre is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses and oppresses.”</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/22697168/body-positivity-image-millennials-gen-z-weight">In a thin-obsessed culture</a>, fatness has become its own kind of monster. Despite the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_positivity">body positivity</a> movement, fat people are still often viewed as unattractive and <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866597/">abnormal</a>, and are more likely to be <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-03-15/weight-discrimination-remains-legal-in-most-of-the-u-s">discriminated against</a> at work, stigmatized by physicians and convicted by juries. </p>
<p>In 2012, <a href="https://doi.org/10.3366/soma.2012.0035">sociologist Francis Ray White wrote that</a> “fatness is increasingly being figured as anti-social” – something that “must be eliminated in the name of a viable future.” White points out that when obesity is talked about as an “epidemic,” it reinforces the idea that fatness is an illness that must be cured, and that fat people are not people but carriers of a contagion. </p>
<p>In the final moments of “The Whale,” viewers witness Charlie’s life ending: He vividly remembers a time when he was blissfully happy, on a beach with his daughter and the love of his life. As he is dying, he levitates, at last free from the monstrous burden of flesh.</p>
<p>It is the only time in the film where he seems weightless; indeed, it is the only moment of freedom for this character.</p>
<p>But the monster itself – fatness – lives on.</p>
<p>Darren Aronofsky, the film’s director, has said that his film is “<a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/darren-aronofsky-the-whale-fat-suit-criticism-1235280523/">an exercise in empathy</a>.” </p>
<p>But if empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, why was I left with the idea of my own body as an irredeemable monstrosity? I’m not alone in this unease; critic <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/10/opinion/the-whale-film.html">Roxane Gay</a> called The Whale a “carnival sideshow,” and “emotionally devastating.” To Gay, “The Whale” depicts fatness as “something despicable, to be avoided at all costs.” </p>
<p>She could have been describing a monster. She could have been describing me.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197859/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Beth Younger does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In a thin-obsessed culture, fatness has become its own kind of monster.Beth Younger, Associate Professor of English & Women's and Gender Studies, Drake UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1742662022-01-05T13:47:17Z2022-01-05T13:47:17Z‘Don’t Look Up’: Hollywood’s primer on climate denial illustrates 5 myths that fuel rejection of science<p>Every disaster movie seems to open with a scientist being ignored. <a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81252357">“Don’t Look Up”</a> is no exception – in fact, people ignoring or flat out denying scientific evidence is the point.</p>
<p>Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence play astronomers who make a literally Earth-shattering discovery and then try to persuade the president to take action to save humanity. It’s a satire that explores how individuals, scientists, the media and politicians respond when faced with scientific facts that are uncomfortable, threatening and inconvenient.</p>
<p>The movie is <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2021/12/dont-look-up-adam-mckay-netflix-movie/621104/">an allegory for climate change</a>, showing how those with the power to do something about global warming <a href="https://www.publicaffairsbooks.com/titles/michael-e-mann/the-new-climate-war/9781541758223/">willfully avoid</a> taking action and how those with vested interests can mislead the public. But it also reflects science denial more broadly, including what the world has been seeing with COVID-19.</p>
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<p>The most important difference between the film’s premise and humanity’s actual looming crisis is that while individuals may be powerless against a comet, everyone can act decisively to stop fueling climate change. </p>
<p>Knowing the myths that feed science denial can help. </p>
<p>As research psychologists and the authors of <a href="https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190944681.001.0001/oso-9780190944681">“Science Denial: Why It Happens and What to Do About It”</a>, we recognize these aspects of science denial all too well. </p>
<h2>Myth #1: We can’t act unless the science is 100% certain</h2>
<p>The first question President Orlean (Meryl Streep) asks the scientists after they explain that a comet is on a collision course with Earth is, “So how certain is this?” Learning that the certitude is 99.78%, the president’s chief of staff (Jonah Hill) responds with relief: “Oh great, so it’s not 100%!” Government scientist Teddy Oglethorpe (Rob Morgan) replies, “Scientists never like to say 100%.”</p>
<p>This reluctance to claim 100% certainty is a strength of science. Even when the evidence points clearly in one direction, scientists keep exploring to learn more. At the same time, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ipcc-climate-report-profound-changes-are-underway-in-earths-oceans-and-ice-a-lead-author-explains-what-the-warnings-mean-165588">they recognize overwhelming evidence</a> and act on it. The <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-i/">evidence is overwhelming</a> that Earth’s climate is changing in dangerous ways because of human activities, particularly the burning of fossil fuels, and it has been overwhelming for many years. </p>
<p>When politicians take a “let’s wait and see” attitude toward climate change (or “sit tight and assess,” as the movie puts it), suggesting they need more evidence before taking any action, it’s often a form of science denial.</p>
<h2>Myth #2: Disturbing realities as described by scientists are too difficult for the public to accept</h2>
<p>The title phrase, “Don’t Look Up,” portrays this psychological assumption and how some politicians conveniently use it as an excuse for inaction while promoting their own interests. </p>
<p>Anxiety is a <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2020.102263">growing and understandable psychological response</a> to climate change. Research shows there are strategies people can use to effectively cope with climate anxiety, such as <a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2012.02.004">becoming better informed and talking about the problem with others</a>. This gives individuals a way to manage anxiety while at the same time taking actions to lower the risks.</p>
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<p>A 2021 international study found that 80% of individuals are indeed willing to <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/09/14/in-response-to-climate-change-citizens-in-advanced-economies-are-willing-to-alter-how-they-live-and-work/pg_2021-09-14_climate_0-01/">make changes in how they live and work</a> to help reduce the effects of climate change.</p>
<h2>Myth #3: Technology will save us, so we don’t have to act</h2>
<p>Often, individuals want to believe in an outcome they prefer, rather than confront reality known to be true, a response that psychologists call <a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480">motivated reasoning</a>. </p>
<p>For example, belief that a single technological solution, such as <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/">carbon capture</a>, will fix the climate crisis without the need for change in policies, lifestyles and practices may be more grounded in hope than reality. Technology can help reduce our impact on the climate; however, research suggests advances are <a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200420125510.htm">unlikely to come quickly enough</a>.</p>
<p>Hoping for such solutions diverts attention from significant changes needed in the way we work, live and play, and is a form of science denial.</p>
<h2>Myth #4: The economy is more important than anything, including impending crises predicted by science</h2>
<p>Taking action to slow climate change will be expensive, but not acting has extraordinary costs – in lives lost as well as property. </p>
<p>Consider the costs of recent Western wildfires. Boulder County, Colorado, lost nearly 1,000 homes to a <a href="https://theconversation.com/devastating-colorado-fires-cap-a-year-of-climate-disasters-in-2021-with-one-side-of-the-country-too-wet-the-other-dangerously-dry-173402">fire on Dec. 30, 2021</a>, after a hot, dry summer and fall and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/12/31/colorado-fires-climate-weather-drought/">little recent rain or snow</a>. A study of California’s fires in 2018 – another hot, dry year – when the town of Paradise burned, <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-00646-7">estimated the damage</a>, including health costs and economic disruption, at about $148.5 billion.</p>
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<img alt="A runner passes the outlines of burned homes, with unburned houses behind them" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439417/original/file-20220104-19-tp2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/439417/original/file-20220104-19-tp2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439417/original/file-20220104-19-tp2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439417/original/file-20220104-19-tp2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439417/original/file-20220104-19-tp2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439417/original/file-20220104-19-tp2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/439417/original/file-20220104-19-tp2a2w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Nearly 1,000 homes burned in Boulder County, Colo., as strong winds whipped a grass fire through unusually dry landscape on Dec. 30, 2021.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/man-walks-by-burned-homes-in-the-coal-creek-ranch-news-photo/1362152925">Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>When people say we can’t take action because action is expensive, they are in denial of the cost of inaction.</p>
<h2>Myth #5: Our actions should always align with our social identity group</h2>
<p>In a politically polarized society, individuals may feel pressured to make decisions based on what their social group believes. In the case of beliefs about science, this can have dire consequences – as the world has seen with the COVID-19 pandemic. In the U.S. alone, more than <a href="https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#cases_casesper100klast7days">825,000 people with COVID-19 have died</a> while powerful identity groups actively discourage people from getting vaccines or taking other precautions that could protect them.</p>
<p>Viruses are oblivious to political affiliation, and so is the changing climate. Rising global <a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/">temperatures</a>, worsening storms and sea level rise will affect everyone in harm’s way, regardless of the person’s social group.</p>
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<h2>How to combat science denial – and climate change</h2>
<p>A comet headed for Earth might leave little for individuals to do, but <a href="https://www.count-us-in.org/en-gb/16-steps/">this is not the case with climate change</a>. People can change their own practices to reduce carbon emissions and, importantly, pressure leaders in government, business and industry <a href="https://thesolutionsproject.org/project-drawdown-solutions-climate-change-sustainable-development/?gclid=CjwKCAiAzrWOBhBjEiwAq85QZ6WdGTMbcwFnZbKi18De_7FXZ77ZDzClaLJrDYGyhyYY-XGUa69_bBoCp3QQAvD_BwE">to take actions</a>, such as reducing fossil fuel use, converting to cleaner energy and changing agricultural practices to reduce emissions.</p>
<p>In our <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Science-Denial-Happens-What-About/dp/0190944684">book</a>, we discuss steps that individuals, educators, science communicators and policymakers can take to confront the science denial that prevents moving forward on this looming issue. For example:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Individuals can check their own motivations and beliefs about climate change and remain open minded to scientific evidence.</p></li>
<li><p>Educators can teach students how to source scientific information and evaluate it.</p></li>
<li><p>Science communicators can explain not just what scientists know but how they know it.</p></li>
<li><p>Policymakers can make decisions based on scientific evidence.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>As scholars who work to help people make sound decisions about complex problems, we encourage people to consume news and science information from sources outside their own identity group. Break out of your social bubble and listen to and talk with others. Look up.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/174266/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gale Sinatra has received funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada, and Mattel Children's Foundation. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Barbara K. Hofer has received research funding from the National Science Foundation and Vermont EPSCOR.</span></em></p>Just because something isn’t 100% certain doesn’t mean you ignore it, and other lessons from two researchers who study the problem of science denial.Gale Sinatra, Professor of Education and Psychology, University of Southern CaliforniaBarbara K. Hofer, Professor of Psychology Emerita, MiddleburyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1738012021-12-21T12:47:22Z2021-12-21T12:47:22ZNine reasons why Die Hard really is a Christmas film<p>It’s that time of year for hunkering down to watch a Christmas film with the family – and to hold the annual debate over whether or not Die Hard actually counts as one.</p>
<p>This debate has now become, in some film history circles, as big a question as to the meaning of “Rosebud” in Citizen Kane or whether Han Solo or Greedo shot first in Star Wars. It’s even important enough to warrant a poll from YouGov, which concluded that <a href="https://www.radiotimes.com/movies/die-hard-christmas-movie-poll-exclusive-newsupdate/">Die Hard is not a Christmas film</a>.</p>
<p>The arguments around the “Christmassiness” of the 1988 movie revolve around three themes: <a href="https://stephenfollows.com/using-data-to-determine-if-die-hard-is-a-christmas-movie/">creative, commercial and cultural</a>. </p>
<p>The creative argument is based on the intentions of those involved in making the film. As both director <a href="https://screenrant.com/die-hard-christmas-movie-debate-john-mctiernan-director/">John McTiernan</a> and writer <a href="https://blog.finaldraft.com/steven-e-de-souza-die-hard-is-a-christmas-movie">Steven De Souza</a> have confirmed that Die Hard is a Christmas movie, then the creative case would seem very much in favour. </p>
<h2>The commercial and cultural arguments</h2>
<p>The commercial argument is that Christmas movies are released at Christmas and are generally intended for family audiences. However, Die Hard was a summer release (15 July 1988) in the United States and very obviously for adults. However, this argument that a summer release can’t be a christmas movie does not hold up to even the most cursory examination. </p>
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<p>That perennial seasonal favourite <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcU0o7N2vig&ab_channel=MovieclipsClassicTrailers">Holiday Inn</a>, in which Bing Crosby warbles Irving Berlin’s White Christmas, was also a summer release (4 August 1942), and no one argues that isn’t a Christmas movie. Even the remake, White Christmas, was released in mid-October 1954. So proximity to Christmas is not necessarily a criterion for a Christmas film.</p>
<h2>Nine reasons it is a Christmas film</h2>
<p>The most common understanding of a Christmas film - as outlined by Mark Connelly in the introduction to <a href="https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/christmas-at-the-movies-9781860643972/%20_">Christmas at the Movies</a> - is that the Christmas theme and motif are central to the film, such as It’s a Wonderful Life and the many versions of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.</p>
<p>But there’s another category, of films that just happen to be set around Christmas, a group that includes films such as the murder mystery <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkgYjeFYQ2c">The Thin Man</a> and the mercenaries-in-Africa violence-fest <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EzdeQbruayk">The Wild Geese</a>. And it’s this category to which Die Hard belongs.</p>
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<p>Here are nine Christmas motifs I detected (there are no doubt more):</p>
<ol>
<li>The basic narrative situation of Die Hard is a man returning to his family for Christmas.</li>
<li>His wife is called Holly.</li>
<li>It takes place on Christmas Eve. Not Thanksgiving or the Fourth of July. It could have been set any week of the year, but wasn’t.</li>
<li>The chief villain Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) explicitly invokes the Christmas spirit: “It’s Christmas, Theo, it’s a time for miracles.”</li>
<li>Gruber is a classic bad capitalist villain: he’s there to steal money. Just as Old Man Potter does in It’s a Wonderful Life.</li>
<li>The soundtrack features Christmas tunes new and old: Run DMC’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR07r0ZMFb8&ab_channel=RUNDMCVEVO">Christmas in Hollis</a> and Frank Sinatra’s rendition of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sE3uRRFVsmc&ab_channel=FrankSinatraVEVO">Let it Snow</a>.</li>
<li>Santa Claus makes an appearance (in the form of a dead terrorist).</li>
<li> The film ends with the of character of limo driver Argyle (De'voreaux White) looking forward to New Year’s Eve.</li>
</ol>
<p>And point nine, the clinching argument, perhaps, is that Christmas is a socially invented tradition, and like all invented traditions it continues to adapt and evolve. Films don’t need to include religious references or a man in a red suit, Christmas changes every year and as such what constitutes as a Christmas flick has expanded hugely.</p>
<p>Our tradition at chez Chapman is the Ultimate Christmas Eve Action Movie Double Bill: Die Hard and the James Bond film <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOLq5Rg9N-c&ab_channel=MovieclipsClassicTrailers">On Her Majesty’s Secret Service</a>. We start with Bond spying Diana Rigg on the beach around 4pm, take a break for dinner between films, and get around to Gruber taking his plunge from the 30th floor of Nakatomi Tower by 9:30. This is just in time for the repeat of the Christmas dinner episode of The Vicar of Dibley (which I’ve always thought would be a whole lot funnier if Dawn French wielded a Heckler & Koch MP5).</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/173801/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Chapman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>It’s the story of a man who just wants to get home for Christmas.James Chapman, Professor of Film Studies, University of LeicesterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1394382020-06-03T12:03:58Z2020-06-03T12:03:58ZA love letter to cinema – and how films help us get through difficult times<p>Have you ever turned to your favourite film when you felt sad or upset?
<a href="https://www.goodtherapy.org/learn-about-therapy/types/movie-therapy">Movie therapy</a> has shown to <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0225040">boost positive feelings</a> and make us feel more hopeful. </p>
<p>Indeed, stories have been with us since the beginning of time, and there is no doubt about their <a href="https://www.ucl.ac.uk/brain-sciences/news/2020/jan/why-watching-movie-could-improve-wellbeing">beneficial effects</a>. They help with loneliness, they lift our mood, they provide a great background for social bonding, and they are great entertainment. </p>
<p>As a healthy form of escapism, films provide temporary relief from daily problems and worries – film-making and digital storytelling can even be used as a form of <a href="https://namp.americansforthearts.org/sites/default/files/VideoFilmasPsychotherapy.pdf">psychotherapy</a> to treat people suffering from trauma and abuse. </p>
<p>But finding your way in the abundance of content provided by multiple platforms can sometimes prove difficult. And even though video on demand offers a very relaxed way of enjoying your favourite films from the comfort of your home, film-watching is a very social activity. </p>
<h2>The home cinema experience</h2>
<p>There is something special about “going to the cinema” and the collective <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/may/15/together-in-the-dark-what-we-miss-about-going-to-the-movies">experience of watching a film</a>. The mass intimacy and authorised voyeurism that comes with communal screams and laughter cannot be easily replicated. </p>
<p>The unexpected pandemic and the global lockdown that followed has meant a big change for the film industry. All physical film production initially stopped and all cinemas closed. Film premieres have been postponed or delivered via demand streaming services earlier than expected - as was the case with Star Wars: The Rise of the Skywalker, the French film, <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/reviews-recommendations/portrait-lady-fire-celine-sciamma-adele-haenel-period-romance-female-liberated-portrait">Portrait of a Lady on Fire</a>, and the Chilean film, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/may/02/ema-review-pablo-larrain-mariana-di-girolamo-gael-garcia-bernal">Ema</a></p>
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<p>The same strategy has also been applied to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/mar/19/cannes-film-festival-postpones-2020-edition-over-coronavirus-restrictions">film festivals</a> and resulted in the creation of brand-new formats, such as <a href="https://www.youtube.com/WeAreOne">We Are One</a>: a global film festival running from-May 20 until June 7 via YouTube. This virtual festival is showcasing a selection of feature films, shorts, documentaries, music, comedy and panel discussions from the greatest film festivals such as Cannes, Sundance, Toronto International, Berlin and Venice. </p>
<p>Curzon Home Cinema started its <a href="https://www.live.curzonhomecinema.com">live streaming events</a> series, and even the Oscars and other awards have had to change their rules to <a href="https://www.oscars.org/news/awards-rules-and-campaign-regulations-approved-93rd-oscarsr">adapt to the new status quo</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.newspostleader.co.uk/read-this/all-2020-films-being-released-online-cinemas-stay-closed-during-lockdown-and-how-watch-them-2842810">New regulations</a> for the industry have also come in place, including new filming protocols and insurance issues. And there have been multiple funds and initiatives setup to boost the industry at this time, including the <a href="https://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/news-bfi/announcements/covid-19-film-tv-emergency-relief-fund">BFI Film and TV Emergency Fund</a>. </p>
<h2>Drive-in cinema</h2>
<p>There has been much speculation as to the future of cinema post-lockdown. From <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/29/bbc-could-quarantine-actors-and-crews-on-dramas-to-aid-filming">group quarantine for entire film crews</a>, through to heavier <a href="https://www.voice-online.co.uk/entertainment/film/2020/04/12/film-industry-turns-to-vfx-and-cgi-to-overcome-travel-ban/">reliance on visual effects and animation</a>, to fully <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/05/this-is-how-the-film-industry-is-fighting-lockdown/">virtual productions</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338299/original/file-20200528-51445-1f9r6rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338299/original/file-20200528-51445-1f9r6rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338299/original/file-20200528-51445-1f9r6rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338299/original/file-20200528-51445-1f9r6rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=337&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338299/original/file-20200528-51445-1f9r6rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338299/original/file-20200528-51445-1f9r6rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338299/original/file-20200528-51445-1f9r6rt.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=423&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Virtual film production.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/solrogers/2020/01/29/virtual-production-and-the-future-of-filmmakingan-interview-with-ben-grossman-magnopus/#5fc7056675d4">Virtual Production</a> allows film crews to create scenes that are made up of a combination of the physical world and the digital world while still on set. These can then be changed and adjusted in real time. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-movie-industry-is-fighting-lockdown-139149">How the movie industry is fighting lockdown</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>For cinemagoers though, perhaps the most <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2020/may/05/social-distance-cinema-drive-in-theatres-boom-coronavirus-in-pictures">exciting</a> news is the renaissance of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/apr/29/us-drive-in-cinemas-coronavirus-boom">drive-in cinema</a>. This summer will be marked by the brand new <a href="https://www.atthedrive.in">@TheDriveIn festival</a>, a drive-in movie tour will take place across 12 locations including London, Manchester and Glasgow, running from July 2 to September 27. It will feature eighties’ classics and blockbuster films preceded by a range of entertainment including stand-up comedy, bingo or silent car discos. </p>
<p>A food delivery app will allow guests to order Americana-inspired food delivered straight to each car in special boxes via roller waiters. Similar initiatives have emerged globally, and they seem to be gaining significant popularity. </p>
<h2>Thrilling and fascinating</h2>
<p>If the current situation is anything to go by then, it’s clear the need for entertainment and cinematic experiences is not going anywhere. Indeed, if the number of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/2020/apr/21/netflix-new-subscribers-covid-19-lockdown">new subscriptions to streaming services</a> tells us anything, it’s that even at the most difficult of times, films still play an important role in people’s lives.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338931/original/file-20200601-95049-1e6o4x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/338931/original/file-20200601-95049-1e6o4x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338931/original/file-20200601-95049-1e6o4x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338931/original/file-20200601-95049-1e6o4x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338931/original/file-20200601-95049-1e6o4x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338931/original/file-20200601-95049-1e6o4x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/338931/original/file-20200601-95049-1e6o4x0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">At the drive-in.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But to compete with on demand streaming, cinemas have to offer different, better experiences – such as sharper sound and 3D screenings. Newer technologies such as <a href="https://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2019/04/cineworld-4dx/">4DX</a> can also tune into all five senses – stimulating effects like water, wind, scent and strobe lighting – thrilling you in your moving seat to provide a more immersive event. </p>
<p>There is no doubt that films can make challenging times somehow more bearable. The way <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/1225392?seq=1">we watch films</a> might keep evolving with technological advancements and changing social contexts, but if there is one thing I am sure of, it’s that films and film screenings will always be there to make our lives better.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/139438/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Agata Lulkowska does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There’s something special about “going to the cinema” and the collective experience of watching a film.Agata Lulkowska, Lecturer in Film Production, Staffordshire University, Staffordshire UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1174222019-05-23T04:32:59Z2019-05-23T04:32:59Z2040: hope and action in the climate crisis<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275803/original/file-20190522-187182-1vl1pq2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Optimism is an essential part of our climate solution.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source"> GoodThing Productions</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It was framed as “the climate election”, but last week Australia returned a government with climate policies that make the task of building a zero-emissions, safe climate Australia <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-major-parties-climate-policies-side-by-side-116896">even harder</a>.</p>
<p>This result comes at a time when international studies are raising the real and imminent spectre of a <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/extinction-crisis-70530">mass extinction crisis</a> and many communities are already struggling with the consequences of the climate emergency now unfolding around us.</p>
<p>Amid the growing strength of movements like Extinction Rebellion and climate activist Greta Thunberg’s advice to “act as you would in a crisis”, Australian film-maker Damon Gameau’s new climate change solutions film <a href="https://www.madmanfilms.com.au/2040film/">2040</a> focuses on highlighting the huge range of climate action opportunities being explored and accelerated, not just in Australia but around the world.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-art-has-a-part-to-play-in-tackling-climate-change-51537">Why art has a part to play in tackling climate change</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>Structured as a visual letter to Gameau’s four-year-old daughter, 2040 takes us on an engaging, upbeat journey, introducing us to a wide array of climate and energy solutions already underway. The film then fast-forwards 20 years to help us imagine how a zero-emissions world might unfold.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275831/original/file-20190522-187172-sdt673.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275831/original/file-20190522-187172-sdt673.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275831/original/file-20190522-187172-sdt673.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275831/original/file-20190522-187172-sdt673.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275831/original/file-20190522-187172-sdt673.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275831/original/file-20190522-187172-sdt673.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275831/original/file-20190522-187172-sdt673.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275831/original/file-20190522-187172-sdt673.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">2040 is a letter to Damon Gameau’s four-year-old daughter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GoodThing Productions</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The film and <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781760554149/">accompanying book</a> showcase a rich tapestry of climate action stories from around the world, from renewable energy microgrids in Bangladesh, to autonomous electric vehicles in Singapore and regenerative agriculture in Shepparton, Victoria.</p>
<p>Economist Kate Raworth speaks eloquently about the urgent need for a new “<a href="https://www.kateraworth.com/doughnut/">doughnut economics</a>” approach, which grows jobs and health and well-being rather than consumerism, pollution and inequality.</p>
<p>Paul Hawken, founder of the <a href="http://www.drawdown.org/">Drawdown</a> project reminds us we already have the tools required to build a just and resilient zero-carbon economy. Our key task now is to mobilise the resources and harness the creativity required to bring this work to scale at emergency speed.</p>
<p>Importantly, the 2040 project also includes the <a href="http://www.whatsyour2040.com/">Whats Your 2040</a> website, where audiences can explore their own personal climate action plans.</p>
<p>I have had the privilege to contribute ideas and advice to the 2040 film project, drawing on research I’ve undertaken over the last ten years on strategies for accelerating the creation of <a href="http://www.visionsandpathways.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Wiseman_Zero-Carbon-Economy-Transitions_290514.pdf">post-carbon economies</a>. Its also been exciting to see such enthusiasm and determination from audiences watching 2040, particularly among students and young people.</p>
<h2>From fear to hope and action</h2>
<p>While 2040 doesn’t avoid hard truths about the rapidly escalating risks and dangers of the climate emergency, Gameau has made a clear choice to focus his narrative of “fact based dreaming” on stories of hope and action rather than just chaos and catastrophe.</p>
<p>The goal is to offer viewers a refreshing and energising change from yet more images of burning forests and melting glaciers.</p>
<p>Of course, some will also bear in mind the cautionary warning of Greta Thunberg:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t want you to be hopeful…I want you to feel the fear I feel every day…I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house is on fire. Because it is.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>US author Rebecca Solnit provides another valuable perspective. “Hope”, she argues “is not about what we expect. It’s an embrace of the essential unknowability of the world. Hope is not a door but a sense that there might be a door.”</p>
<p>In my work with climate scientists, activists and policy makers over the last ten years I’ve had many challenging conversations about finding the right balance between fear and hope; threat and opportunity; naive optimism and paralysing despair.</p>
<h2>Emergency response</h2>
<p>One useful source of wisdom in navigating this tension is research on effective and timely responses to more immediate natural disasters, like <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/249404025_The_Emergency_of_Climate_Change_Why_Are_We_Failing_to_Take_Action">fast-moving storms, floods and fires</a>. </p>
<p>Successfully dealing with an emergency requires recognising that decisive action is urgently necessary, possible in the time available, and desirable. Broken down, this means understanding:</p>
<ol>
<li>the emergency is real and heading our way, <em>but</em></li>
<li>there is a clear course of action that will significantly reduce the danger, <em>and</em></li>
<li>the benefits of decisive collective action clearly outweigh the costs and risks of inaction.</li>
</ol>
<p>There is certainly no shortage of scientific and experiential evidence about the scale and speed of the climate emergency which has now arrived at our door. But the case for radical hope, defiant courage and decisive collective action also continues to strengthen.</p>
<p>We can see this in the remarkable rise and global impact of the <a href="https://www.schoolstrike4climate.com/">School Climate Strike</a>, <a href="https://www.sunrisemovement.org/gnd">Green New Deal</a>, <a href="https://rebellion.earth/">Extinction Rebellion</a>, and fossil fuel divestment initiatives like <a href="https://www.marketforces.org.au/">Market Forces</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275835/original/file-20190522-187182-1fetccb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275835/original/file-20190522-187182-1fetccb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/275835/original/file-20190522-187182-1fetccb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275835/original/file-20190522-187182-1fetccb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275835/original/file-20190522-187182-1fetccb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=250&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275835/original/file-20190522-187182-1fetccb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275835/original/file-20190522-187182-1fetccb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/275835/original/file-20190522-187182-1fetccb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=314&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">2040 trawls the world for innovative solutions to climate problems.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">GoodThing Productions</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This challenge is also being taken up by some sections of the <a href="http://www.climateaction100.org/">business world</a>. (See, for example, Ross Garnaut’s <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/australia-can-be-superpower-of-post-carbon-world-says-ross-garnaut-20190515-p51nsb.html">recent lecture series</a> outlining Australia’s great potential as a renewable energy superpower.)</p>
<p>Ideas like this are particularly important in developing a convincing and compelling narrative about a future post-fossil fuel economy that creates high-quality secure jobs and leaves no Australian worker or community behind.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-poster-is-political-how-artists-are-challenging-climate-change-58740">The poster is political: how artists are challenging climate change</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The election outcome is clearly a significant setback for those who had hoped that there might now be clearer air for a more mature conversation in Australia about the necessity, urgency and desirability of accelerating the transition to a just and resilient zero-carbon economy. </p>
<p>None of us know exactly how our journey into a harsh climate future will evolve. We can however be sure that the journey will be far tougher if we close our eyes and fail to act with honesty and imagination; wisdom and courage. 2040 makes an important contribution to this urgent and essential work.</p>
<p><br></p>
<hr>
<p><em>2040 was released in Australia on May 22.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117422/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John Wiseman provided technical and policy advice to the 2040 film and related projects.</span></em></p>A new movie highlights the importance of radical hope and courageous action in responding to the climate crisisJohn Wiseman, Professorial Fellow, The University of MelbourneLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1021092018-09-05T23:27:45Z2018-09-05T23:27:45ZTIFF premiere: Sgaawaay K'uuna, the first feature film about the Haida people<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234890/original/file-20180904-45169-1oebv9c.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">High school honour roll student Trey Arnold Rorick acts in the 'Edge of the Knife.' Rorick also works as a Cultural Interpreter at the K_ay Ilnagaay Haida Heritage Center. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.facebook.com/edgeoftheknifemovie">Facebook</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Sgaawaay K'uuna (Edge of the Knife)</em>, <a href="https://www.tiff.net/tiff/edge-of-the-knife/">premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival</a>, is the first feature film about the Haida people and in the Haida language.</p>
<p>The mystery-thriller, directed by Gwaai Edenshaw and <a href="https://www.tiff.net/the-review/meet-helen-haig-brown-the-co-director-of-edge-of-the-knife/">Helen Haig-Brown</a>, started as a collaboration between myself at the University of British Columbia (UBC), the Inuit film production company Kingulliit and the Council of the Haida Nation (CHN).</p>
<p>We hope the film will be a <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/film/on-bcs-haida-gwaii-history-is-being-made-with-a-film-in-a-language-very-few-people-canspeak/article35440940/">catalyst for language revitalization</a> as well as community economic development. In 2012, fewer than one per cent of the Haida were fluent in the Haida language and most of those were over the age of 70, so the language was regarded as in crisis.</p>
<p><em>Edge of the Knife</em> emerged out the results of a community planning process our students had been involved in at Skidegate a year earlier, a year of community engagement and envisioning Haida hopes and dreams. </p>
<p>The top three priorities identified by the Skidegate community were language revitalization, the creation of jobs that would keep youth on Haida Gwaii instead of moving to Vancouver and protecting the lands and waters of Haida Gwaii through sustainable economic development. I believed a film in the Haida language could potentially serve all three priorities. I pitched the idea to the Executive of the Council of the Haida Nation and the president, Peter Lantin, agreed. </p>
<h2>Inspiration</h2>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=900&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234895/original/file-20180904-45172-1f3gncg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1131&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
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<p>I was inspired by Kingulliit’s success making feature films in the Inuktitut language (most famously <em>Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner</em> in 2001) that showcase the Inuit culture and employ Inuit as actors, costume and set designers, writers and directors. </p>
<p>Developing a partnership with <a href="http://www.isuma.tv/kingulliit-productions">Kingulliit (formerly Isuma)</a> could mean nation-to-nation capacity building in all aspects of filmmaking. Jon Frantz, the producer and director of photography on <em>Edge of the Knife</em>, facilitated Kingulliit’s involvement. Frantz is a former UBC masters student who had moved to Igloolik to work with Kingulliit. </p>
<p>Norman Cohn, a co-founder of Kingulliit with Zacharias Kunuk, suggested working on a dramatic film rather than a documentary. I have a background in screenwriting, having completed an MFA in screenwriting at UCLA in 1989, so I was very enthusiastic about making a feature film rather than a documentary.</p>
<p>We received $200,000 in a Partnership Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC). My work explores the power of collaborative storytelling through film, which I hope can expand the potential and room for community planning interventions.</p>
<p>My 2010 documentary, <em>Finding our Way: Beyond Canada’s Apartheid</em>, used a collaborative method to tell the story of two small First Nations in north-central British Columbia, the Cheslatta Carrier Nation and the Burns Lake Band. The process of making that film was the beginning of my re-education about Canada’s history of colonizing and dispossessing Indigenous peoples. </p>
<p>I spent most of the next year on sabbatical and working on Haida Gwaii. The first step was to assemble a Haida Advisory Group composed of elders and other knowledge-holders to oversee the project. </p>
<h2>Community storytelling</h2>
<p>Working with two Haida partners, Dana Moraes in Skidegate and Lucille Bell in Old Massett, we co-designed and facilitated a series of community-based, story-gathering workshops in which community members were asked to suggest what Haida story or stories they would most like to see portrayed in a feature film. </p>
<p>We gathered those ideas and then ran script-writing workshops in the two communities for anyone interested in potentially becoming a writer for the film. After the workshops, we ran a writing contest and Haida community members were invited to submit a short story or film idea.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234891/original/file-20180904-45143-1pcmz9u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edge of the Knife/TIFF</span></span>
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<p>The jury for that contest was made up of both Haida and non-Haida. We read the submissions without names and the unanimous choice of three winners were the brothers Gwaai and Jaalen Edenshaw, who co-wrote a story, and Graham Richard. </p>
<p>We developed a film script which we had only six months to complete if we wanted to submit it for the 2015 application to the Canada Media Fund (CMF). We hunkered down through the winter, working mostly on weekends, to come up first with a three-page story outline, then a 10-page outline. We then mapped out the entire script in story cards and finally wrote the script. We learned the new script-writing software program together.</p>
<p>Vast amounts of junk food and coffee were consumed as we riffed off each other through long days that flew by. Graham and Gwaai often got on the floor to act out potential scenes. </p>
<p>In creating the story, we reflected on all the ideas that had been assembled during the community story-gathering workshops, and we also worked under two important guidelines from our advisory group. </p>
<p>The first was that the story should be roughly balanced between the northern (Old Massett) and southern (Skidegate) dialects to encourage members of both communities to learn their own dialect and to have a film that would showcase both. The second guideline was that the film should showcase Haida culture and technology, pre-settler contact. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=300&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234888/original/file-20180904-45151-vix34z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=377&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Edge of the Knife/TIFF</span></span>
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<p>A third significant factor was that the budget could not exceed $2 million, so we needed to imagine a story and a setting that could be portrayed within all these constraints.</p>
<p>Jaalen Edenshaw was also our historical researcher and checked archives online for details, often as we were in midst of writing. We also worked closely with elders and knowledge-holders from both villages to seek advice about specific scenes, such as a prayer of thanks for the first salmon caught that season. </p>
<h2>Production</h2>
<p>By September 2015, we heard that we had been funded $1.89 million. We hired Gwaai Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown (a Tsilhqot’in filmmaker now living on Haida Gwaii with her Haida partner and family) as co-directors, and Jon Frantz as producer. </p>
<p>Frantz and other folks from the Inuit film company mentored the Haida in setting up a Haida Production Company, Niijang Xyaalas Productions, which would be the majority owner of the film (with Kingulliit being the minority partner).</p>
<p>Translators fluent in the two dialects set about translating the script. The co-directors set about casting and also holding acting and language workshops. A few months before the film went into production, all the cast had to participate in a gruelling two-week language “boot camp” where they were sequestered in log cabins on the north shore of the archipelago and taught how to pronounce and say their lines. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/234889/original/file-20180904-45169-1swtf6t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">At the Hiellen Long House, actors practise and rehearse their lines from the script ‘The Edge of the Knife’ written entirely in Haida. These actors trained in a two-week language boot camp reading and speaking the Haida language.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">https://www.facebook.com/edgeoftheknifemovie/</span></span>
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<p>I was able to witness some of boot camp and I was bowled over by the commitment the new actors displayed in learning this difficult language. Many explained to me that they felt a responsibility to their ancestors to get it right. </p>
<p>The same was true on location, on the site of an ancestral village in the remote north of Haida Gwaii, in June 2017. The cast was dedicated to faithfully rendering Haida life as it was in the early 1800s.</p>
<h2>Keeping Haida alive</h2>
<p>One of the intentions of the Haida film (with English subtitles) is to generate interest, especially among the youth, in learning the language. </p>
<p>We hope that the film and the script will be developed into a one-month language module for high schools, and that teaching and learning relationships between youth and elders will be sustained beyond the premiere of the film itself. We also hope there has been sufficient training, tools and infrastructure set up during this project for future Haida film projects under the newly created production company. A group of writers, actors and producers are energized and inspired by this project; they will take this energy forward and train others in various aspects of production. </p>
<p>In that way, the initial community development goals of the project will eventually be fulfilled. I have a new SSHRC grant (2017-21) to monitor and evaluate the impact of the film in relation to our original goals and hope to share more of what we learned along the way. </p>
<p>I feel so fortunate to have been able to spend time in this resurgent community, Haida Gwaii, a magical place. I have both made new friends and continued with my re-education about Indigenous Canada.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A CBC documentary on the making of The Edge of the Knife.</span></figcaption>
</figure><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/102109/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Leonie Sandercock receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for ongoing research on the impact of the film, Edge of the KNife , on the Haida community, on Haida language, employment, and so on.</span></em></p>Sgaawaay K'uuna (Edge of the Knife) is a feature film project that works to entertain audiences and revitalize language.Leonie Sandercock, Professor, University of British ColumbiaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/973252018-06-03T20:22:09Z2018-06-03T20:22:09ZThe great movie scenes: Hitchcock’s Psycho and the power of jarring music<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/221301/original/file-20180601-69490-pbe93k.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=13%2C13%2C2977%2C1459&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Bernard Herrmann’s music for the final scene in Psycho fragments and breaks down, echoing the psychotic episode experienced by the character Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Graphics: Emil Jeyaratnam/The Conversation; Image: Still from 'Psycho' (1960)</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>What makes a film a classic? In this column, film scholar Bruce Isaacs looks at the contrasting uses of music to convey emotion in Lord of the Rings and Psycho.</em></p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Psycho, 1960.</span></figcaption>
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<p>Music has a strong presence in many of Alfred Hitchcock’s films. He was a director who obsessed about the score, and realised the importance of the relationship between music and film. </p>
<p>For his psychological horror film Psycho (1960), Hitchcock asked the great Bernard Herrmann to compose the music. Herrmann’s experimental score became an instantly recognisable classic that had a huge influence on the horror cinema of the 1970s and 1980s.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-vertigo-63320">The great movie scenes: Hitchcock's Vertigo</a>
</strong>
</em>
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<p>In this episode of Close-up, I compare and contrast one of my favourite pieces of music from Psycho with Howard Shore’s score for Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (2001). Both are compelling and evocative, but elicit dramatically different emotions and reactions from the viewer. </p>
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<p><em><strong>See also:</strong></em> <br></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-vertigo-63320">The great movie scenes: Hitchcock’s Vertigo</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-antonionis-the-passenger-65395">The great movie scenes: Antonioni’s The Passenger</a>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-74166">The great movie scenes: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</a>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-steven-spielbergs-jaws-79043">The great movie scenes: Steven Spielberg’s Jaws</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-the-godfather-98173">The great movie scenes: The Godfather</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-stanley-kubricks-2001-a-space-odyssey-100170">The great movie scenes: Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/97325/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In this episode of Close-up, Bruce Isaacs contrasts the unsettling musical score from Hitchcock’s Psycho with Howard Shore’s score for Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring.Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/846842017-09-26T01:16:38Z2017-09-26T01:16:38ZThe insufferable film mother! revives tired hysterical stereotypes<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/187470/original/file-20170926-22303-1ra8ne2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem in mother!</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The obstreperous exclamation mark that holds a bullhorn to the title of Darren Aronofsky’s latest film befits both the mounting clamour of the work itself, and a director who, in 48 years, has yet to discover his “indoor voice”. You feel he may well carry it on his business card: Darren Aronofsky!</p>
<p>But what is all the Sturm und Drang about? Other filmmakers not known for their subtlety – Lars von Trier, Matthew Barney, Gaspar Noé, Guillermo del Toro, Harmony Korrine – at least appear to stand for something, some unique force field of artistic sensibilities. Aronofsky, however, cannot seem to ally his bludgeoning style to any consistent vision or creed. His is an artistry bereft of stable coordinates, and that incoherence is nowhere better on view than in mother! (lowercase “m”, exclamation mark). </p>
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<p>Even without the punctuation, the title is intriguingly multidimensional. Referring not only to the maternal figure, “mother” takes in as well the Virgin Mary and the grace she emanates, the female head of a religious community (and house), Mother Earth herself, and an early modern term for a “female complaint” traditionally associated with the womb and whose chief symptom was a chronic shortness of breath: the so-called rising or suffocation of the mother. All of these meanings are at work in the film, to its symbolic detriment.</p>
<p>In King Lear, Shakespeare has the old king “feminise” himself in a telling figure of suffocation: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>O, how this mother swells up toward my heart! </p>
<p><em>Histerica passio</em>, down, thou climbing sorrow.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This cardinal link, between a malady of the womb, an inability to breathe, and that tell-tale word “Histerica”, would be crystalized in the medical literature as the now discredited disorder, hysteria.</p>
<p>The hysteric is a staple of the literature, theatre, TV, and film of male-dominated society. The woman who, worn thin by the trials of socialization and sexualisation, bends, warps, turns shrill, and finally breaks, offering disorienting glimpses into the cyclone of crazy consuming her. If it provides the actress with unprecedented opportunities to push beyond the conventions of everyday performance, hysteria also emanates strong signals of the misogyny that sees unleashed female passion as sickness.</p>
<p>Famous hysterics include Catherine Deneuve in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1swzjZvAeiI">Repulsion</a> (Polanski, 1965), Mia Farrow in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwRmCGtWGaE">Rosemary’s Baby</a> (Polanski, 1968), Sussannah York in Images (Altman, 1972), (my god, my god) Isabelle Adjani in <a href="https://vimeo.com/129275251">Possession</a> (Żuławski, 1981), or Julianne Moore in Magnolia (Anderson, 2000). We know Darren Araonofsky has a personal stake in this ambivalent stereotype, because we have seen Natalie Portman metamorphosing into a demented Cygnus in his openly hysterical schlocker, Black Swan (2010).</p>
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<p>Aronofsky’s new film begins in classic “hysteric” mode. Jennifer Lawrence plays a young woman devotedly restoring a grand country home for her older poet husband (Javier Bardem) while he struggles with writer’s block. Crucially, they aren’t fucking, and this explains the absence of children, her distracted and nervous disposition, and the strange yellow tonic she consumes to restore her straitened breath (honey and asafoetida being a traditional remedy for hysteria). Mystically attuned to the house, she can touch its walls and feel the beating heart of it throbbing there in the woodwork.</p>
<p>The film approaches this hysteria with a peculiar aesthetic: a roaming camera eye, turning and turning in the narrowing gyre of the rotunda-like house, always responsive to Lawrence’s restless movements, a swirling <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon">Panopticon</a> of cinematography. The internal doors are open, the sullen light washes across the circular floorplan, and outside no road or drive interrupts the grassland that extends to the very door (which she can never pass through).</p>
<p>Enter Man (Ed Harris) and Woman (Michelle Pfeiffer), who bring with them all the annoyances of the human condition (noise, bad habits, illness, curiosity, rudeness, etc.), and some of the benefits – devotion, sexuality, passion. This new source of domestic energy inspires the remarkably hospitable poet, but ties Jennifer Lawrence into knots of jealous anxiety and triggers her latent hysteria. If only she could banish these insufferable intruders! But, like the minor Kafka characters they resemble, they will not depart. Soon enough their sons are amongst them, violently feuding, and before long, a large funeral cortege has converged on the house, tearing into the very fabric of the couple’s co-existence.</p>
<p>Until, at last, a solution suggests itself. Sex on the staircase! In a moment’s writhing vertical passion, months, even years of frustration are worked off, and before anybody can say, “pregnancy test”, a baby is born. But this event, mirrored by the poet’s victory over his writer’s block with a sudden efflorescence of literary genius, is the portal to the truly distressing second half of a film which departs dramatically from the hysterical format.</p>
<p>For at this point, hysteria modulates into something else – dementia praecox or paranoid schizophrenia, the camera dwelling on the phantasmagoria of alien beings thronging the mental landscape. In the second part of mother! Jennifer Lawrence is literally besieged by the outside, as wave upon wave of human otherness invades and colonises her space to the last cubic millimetre. The forms they take are prototypical: a line of rioters squares off against a line of riot cops; religious devotees rip relics from the walls and clash over them; a war zone opens up in the parlour; assassinations and suicide missions occur.</p>
<p>There have been few episodes in cinema to compare with these vignettes of the domestic interior giving way so utterly to a hostile exterior (the films of Luis Buñuel, however, come to mind). For a few extraordinary minutes, it is as if the very ethic of domesticity and bourgeois “housekeeping” – the ethic that keeps a dominant movie industry ticking over – has been routed.</p>
<p>But that is swiftly forgotten once this episode leads to its inevitable (and pitiably stupid) climax. The woman, J-Law, is now understood to have been the mere circumstance of the poet’s creative rebirth. And as she runs to unleash the full power of her furious revenge, consuming the very home she has renovated in a great deluge of flames, we see that she is ultimately replaceable: a muse, and nothing more.</p>
<p>mother! then is a bleat of guilty conscience from a filmmaker who gets it: he’s a patriarchal artist too! Oh, how we do exploit our muses! That he is now romantically attached to Jennifer Lawrence makes this aspect of Aronofsky’s film a little sick-making.</p>
<p>But the allegories don’t end there. With another twist of the conveniently oiled kaleidoscope, we realise that that what we had first taken to be a “female malady” movie is also (at the same time!) a very clunky Biblical allegory, whose first half tackles the Book of Genesis (Eden, God and Mother Earth in perfect and empty homeostasis, until interrupted by Adam and Eve, with Cain and Abel, who “brought death into the world and all our woe”). The second half features the Gospels of the New Testament (immaculate conception, virgin birth, sacrifice, the rise of the world’s most successful religion, and the eclipse of God by the Church, along with a prophesied Apocalypse).</p>
<p>But wait, there’s more! Order now, and you get an up-to-date ecological allegory, completely free!! For with one last unbelieving twist of the device, all of this is transformed into still another story about the rape and pillage of Mother Earth herself. “He” just uses “her” up to propagate his own narcissistic image, inviting all and sundry to partake of her domestic bounty, which the flood of Yahoo-like humanity readily despoils and desecrates with each selfish gesture of unholy impermanence.</p>
<p>Aronofsky’s incoherence as a filmmaker, the various trajectories and false starts he has pursued as an artist, is reflected in this work’s inability to establish a stable axis of significance. Uncertain of its own truth, the film stretches itself across no fewer than four interpretive constructs, in a well-nigh medieval allegorical effort to come across as spiritually profound. But allegory doesn’t work that way today. The best contemporary allegories, like Lynch’s rebooted Twin Peaks: The Return, operate along two inconsistent paths simultaneously, dwelling in the discomfort and occasional radiance of the disjunction. Aronofsky’s ham-fisted attempt, despite some truly luminous moments, is a testament to his exclamatory commitments as an artist, and not any underlying vision.</p>
<p>You feel, by the end of this truly insufferable film, betrayed in every way imaginable. The looks of befuddlement and perplexity on the faces of people walking away from this film are not signs of their mental dimness or unadventurousness, but of the artist’s unforgivable failure to take them seriously.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84684/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Murphet has received funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>The obstreperous exclamation mark that holds a bullhorn to the title of Darren Aronofsky’s latest film befits both the mounting clamour of the work itself, and a director who, in 48 years, has yet to discover…Julian Murphet, Professor in Modern Film and Literature, Director of the Centre for Modernism Studies, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/790432017-07-05T20:08:00Z2017-07-05T20:08:00ZThe great movie scenes: Steven Spielberg’s Jaws<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/172676/original/file-20170607-11292-znf8yp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The mechanical shark used in the 1975 film Jaws. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://flic.kr/p/oD54ZQ">Tom Simpson/ flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>What makes a film a classic? In this column, film scholar Bruce Isaacs looks at a single sequence from a classic film and analyses its brilliance.</em></p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Jaws, 1975.</span></figcaption>
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<p>When <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/">Jaws</a> was released in 1975 it was a tremendous commercial success. Based on the novel by Peter Benchley, the movie became iconic thanks to the direction of a young Steven Spielberg and the instantly recognisable soundtrack by John Williams.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/stranger-things-inventiveness-in-the-age-of-the-netflix-original-84340">Stranger Things: inventiveness in the age of the Netflix original</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>The film is about a shark that terrorises the fictional town of Amity Island during the holiday season. It is, as Bruce Isaacs notes, generic, mainstream cinema. But through the direction of Spielberg, the film became a landmark movie that helped Hollywood reinvent itself. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/bridge-of-spies-spielbergs-cold-war-is-predictably-one-sided-50501">Bridge of Spies: Spielberg's Cold War is predictably one-sided</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<p>In this scene, the town’s police chief Martin Brody (played by Roy Scheider) witnesses the shark’s brutal attack for the first time and Spielberg masterfully inserts the viewer into chief Brody’s point of view. </p>
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<p><em><strong>See also:</strong></em> <br></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-vertigo-63320">The great movie scenes: Hitchcock’s Vertigo</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-antonionis-the-passenger-65395">The great movie scenes: Antonioni’s The Passenger</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-eternal-sunshine-of-the-spotless-mind-74166">The great movie scenes: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-psycho-and-the-power-of-jarring-music-97325">The great movie scenes: Hitchcock’s Psycho</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-the-godfather-98173">The great movie scenes: The Godfather</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-stanley-kubricks-2001-a-space-odyssey-100170">The great movie scenes: Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79043/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The 1975 film Jaws launched the career of a young Steven Spielberg. In this scene, the town’s police chief Martin Brody witnesses the shark’s brutal attack for the first time - taking the viewer along for the ride.Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/780592017-05-25T06:44:41Z2017-05-25T06:44:41ZSelling sex: Wonder Woman and the ancient fantasy of hot lady warriors<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170803/original/file-20170524-31352-nf584s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Wonder Woman embodies the male fantasy of warrior women.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://variety.com/2016/film/news/wonder-woman-female-director-gal-gadot-1201816060/">Variety.com</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the film Wonder Woman is released in early June, it will surely join the blockbuster ranks of other recent comic book-inspired film franchises, including Batman, Superman, Spiderman, and X-Men. But that’s not just because it features a sword-wielding Gal Gadot in knee-high boots and a metal bodice.</p>
<p>Wonder Woman has long been a bestselling creation, originally imagined in 1941 by the psychologist <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-Moulton-Marston">William Moulton Marston</a>, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INLzqh7rZ-U">the film follows</a> some of the main plot lines developed in the comic books. </p>
<p><a href="http://screenrant.com/wonder-woman-movie-synopsis/">Wonder Woman is a superheroine</a> known as Diana, princess of the Amazons, who is trained to be an unconquerable warrior. When an American pilot, Steve Trevor, crashes on the shores of her sheltered island paradise and tells tales of a massive conflict raging elsewhere, Diana leaves her home, convinced she can stop the threat.</p>
<p>Though Wonder Woman was portrayed <a href="http://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1022&context=kjur">as a feminist icon in the 1940s</a>, she is also a highly sexual character. </p>
<p>We can only wonder – no pun intended! – about the reasons for this imagined link between war and female sexuality. As a sexy but fierce lady warrior, Wonder Woman is hardly alone. Throughout history, cultures across the globe have envisioned and revered the femme fatale, from feline killers to sensual goddesses to sassy spelunkers.</p>
<h2>The Sumerian “wonder woman”</h2>
<p>In 3000 BC, in the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk in Mesopotamia, the first <a href="https://oi.uchicago.edu/research/symposia/religion-and-power-divine-kingship-ancient-world-and-beyond-0">kings of human history</a> ruled over the south of modern-day Iraq, protected by <a href="http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/inanaitar/">Ishtar</a>, a great goddess of war and love often associated with lions.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170400/original/file-20170522-7379-3zyidw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170400/original/file-20170522-7379-3zyidw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1327&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170400/original/file-20170522-7379-3zyidw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170400/original/file-20170522-7379-3zyidw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1327&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170400/original/file-20170522-7379-3zyidw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1668&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170400/original/file-20170522-7379-3zyidw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1668&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170400/original/file-20170522-7379-3zyidw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1668&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ishtar, naked on a vase.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ishtar#/media/File:Ishtar_vase_Louvre_AO17000-detail.jpg">Louvre/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ishtar would reveal the kings’ enemies and accompany them to the battlefield. It was said that she fought like an unleashed lioness protecting her young – in this case, the Sumerian people. Like Wonder Woman, Ishtar’s sacred duty was to defend the world. </p>
<p>She could also be sensual. More than merely worship the goddess, the Kings of Uruk claimed to be Ishtar’s lovers, who, according to <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Inanna-Queen-Heaven-Earth-Stories/dp/0060908548">royal hymns of the era</a>, would enter her bed and “plow the divine vulva”. </p>
<p>For the king, receiving sexual and military favours from a goddess served his political agenda, legitimised his reign and made him into an exceptional hero for his people. In the Wonder Woman film, this role is filled by the American pilot.</p>
<p>References to divine lovemaking <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3142012?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">are also found among ancient Palestinians, Babylonians</a>, though scholars can’t confirm what was really going on in those temples. </p>
<h2>Cat girls from Sekhmet</h2>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170409/original/file-20170522-7379-mdwihr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170409/original/file-20170522-7379-mdwihr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170409/original/file-20170522-7379-mdwihr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170409/original/file-20170522-7379-mdwihr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=967&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170409/original/file-20170522-7379-mdwihr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170409/original/file-20170522-7379-mdwihr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170409/original/file-20170522-7379-mdwihr.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1215&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Bastet as a lion.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P1070019_Louvre_statue_deesse_Bastet_E3915_rwk.JPG">Mbzt/Wikimedia</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170410/original/file-20170522-7384-18ud0hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170410/original/file-20170522-7384-18ud0hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170410/original/file-20170522-7384-18ud0hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170410/original/file-20170522-7384-18ud0hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170410/original/file-20170522-7384-18ud0hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1264&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170410/original/file-20170522-7384-18ud0hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1264&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170410/original/file-20170522-7384-18ud0hg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1264&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Lee Meriwether as Catwoman in the 1960s.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Lee_Meriwether_as_Catwoman_1966.jpg">Ebay/Wikimedia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What’s more sexy than a powerful woman? Taming her, of course. </p>
<p>In ancient Egypt, the most fearsome goddess <a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL2811524M/Sekhmet_et_la_protection_du_monde">was named Sekhmet</a>. Like Ishtar, she had two sides – fierce beast and loving companion. </p>
<p>Sekhmet was often portrayed as a terrible lioness, the butcher of the Pharaoh’s enemies. At times, though, she would transform into an adorable cat named Bastet.</p>
<p>Today, the feline is still symbolic of female sexuality. Catwoman, another comic book heroine, was born a few months before Wonder Woman (not that a lady reveals her age) and is the <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2tv6xs">most contemporary avatar of a feline woman</a>. </p>
<p>With her curves and her bondage fetish, Catwoman has always been hypersexual, though <a href="http://www.comicbookgrrrl.com/2011/06/12/catwoman-the-hyper-sexualisation-of-a-sexual-woman/">some critics</a> regret that her sexuality – not her intelligence – has become her greatest asset these days.</p>
<h2>Amazons, the lonely sailors’ dreams</h2>
<p>Warrior women with sexual natures are also found among the ancient Greeks. </p>
<p>Their myth of the Amazons tells of a <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/books/joshua-rothman/real-amazons">Mediteranean kingdom in which it was women who fought and governed</a>, while the men were relegated to domestic duties. Marston’s Wonder Woman comic invokes the Amazons’ city, Themiscyra, and the name of their queen, Hippolyta. </p>
<p>He embellished his ancient Amazonian setting with details from the legend of <a href="http://www.maicar.com/GML/Lemnos.html">the women of Lemnos</a>, in the Aegean Sea, adopting the isolated island idea as Wonder Woman’s home.</p>
<p>According to the Greek story, the women of Lemnos had revolted and massacred all the men on the island, young and old. Living in a forced sexual abstinence, the ladies were delighted when sailors unexpectedly landed on a local beach. They immediately set upon the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Argonaut-Greek-mythology">Argonauts, a team of beautiful and famous mythological heroes</a> that included Hercules and Theseus, compelling them into long orgiastic intercourse. </p>
<p>The sex-starved but unattached women theme is another favourite male fantasy, offering imaginary satisfaction of sexual scenarios that may be difficult to realise in real life. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170808/original/file-20170524-31317-10l6ars.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170808/original/file-20170524-31317-10l6ars.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170808/original/file-20170524-31317-10l6ars.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170808/original/file-20170524-31317-10l6ars.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170808/original/file-20170524-31317-10l6ars.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170808/original/file-20170524-31317-10l6ars.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170808/original/file-20170524-31317-10l6ars.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Our modern Amazon.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://tombraider.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Movies">TombRaider Wikia</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>By the late 20th century, Lara Croft came along to update the idea of the Amazons and the ladies of Lemnos. Croft, an English archeologist-adventurer who started life as a character in the 1990s video game Tomb Raider, was the ultimate virtual-reality dream girl: she is an expert in martial arts, great with a gun and super smart. </p>
<p>Plus, she always leaves the guys wanting more. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0146316/">Reincarnated on the big screen in 2001 by actress Angelina Jolie</a>, Croft often gave the cold shoulder to her male counterparts. Later sequels featuring Alicia Vikander continued to pitch Croft as a sex symbol <a href="http://time.com/4312396/lara-croft-alicia-vikander-sexism/">while bolstering her feminist credentials</a>.</p>
<h2>Women and weapons, the ultimate fantasy?</h2>
<p>The new Wonder Woman film seems to have made a careful choice of actress, looking beyond just a pretty face and a remarkable body. Gal Gadot has both of those, but she’s a lot like the heroine in other ways, too.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/29/gal-gadot-s-wonder-woman-a-hamas-bashing-ex-idf-soldier-and-former-miss-israel">Voted Miss Israel in 2004</a>, Gadot was also a sports coach in the Israeli army. <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3151210/Gal-Gadot-talks-serving-Israeli-army-playing-symbol-strength-Wonder-Woman.html">In a August 2015 interview with Fashion magazine</a> the actress, who was then 30, affirmed that her military experience prepared her well for a Hollywood career.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170813/original/file-20170524-31322-1bqi0k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170813/original/file-20170524-31322-1bqi0k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170813/original/file-20170524-31322-1bqi0k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170813/original/file-20170524-31322-1bqi0k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170813/original/file-20170524-31322-1bqi0k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170813/original/file-20170524-31322-1bqi0k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170813/original/file-20170524-31322-1bqi0k1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1067&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Gal Gadot in the Chinese film poster for Wonder Woman, to be released in China on June 2.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.reddit.com/r/DC_Cinematic/comments/69ay5m/photo_official_chinese_wonder_woman_poster/">Reddit</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>On screen and off, the ancient link between femininity, sexual attraction and the military, seems to still be going strong today. Everything from Wonder Woman and the <a href="http://nextshark.com/maria-miri-domark-instagram/">Instagram account of Israeli soldier-cum-amateur model Maria Domark</a> to the rise of a new <a href="http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5886-warrior-women">sub-genre of lady warriors in Asian cinema</a> and, of course, <a href="https://books.google.fr/books?hl=en&lr=&id=RZdzCQAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=women+and+guns&ots=Pc8uaQayIz&sig=KotTjlbi8m1wn-yNTMeFFgmprR0#v=onepage&q=women%20and%20guns&f=false">American weapons catalogues</a>, confirms the old masculine fantasy associating pretty faces with guns. </p>
<p>The new Wonder Woman film channels all this history. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/dec/05/wonder-woman-the-feminist">Pop culture attempts to showcase the heroine as a feminist</a> cannot counteract thousands of years of global sexual fantasy. But you can bet it’ll be a hit at the box office.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/78059/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Christian-Georges Schwentzel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Pop culture has always found something sexy about female fighters, who feature in everything from Sumerian hymns and Greek mythology to the new Wonder Woman film.Christian-Georges Schwentzel, Professeur d'histoire ancienne, Université de LorraineLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/753462017-05-24T09:09:14Z2017-05-24T09:09:14ZEach era gets the King Arthur it deserves – and we got Guy Ritchie’s<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170296/original/file-20170522-25076-1ys6pn2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Warner Bros.</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With a certain comforting certainty, a new version of the Arthurian legend seems to hit cinemas about once a decade: think of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2009/oct/01/camelot-reel-history">Camelot (1967)</a>, <a href="http://www.denofgeek.com/us/movies/excalibur/254302/john-boormans-excalibur-isnt-just-another-king-arthur-movie">Excalibur (1981)</a>, <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/first_knight/">First Knight (1995)</a> and <a href="http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/king-arthur-2004">King Arthur (2004)</a>. This is not to mention the numerous television versions that have appeared in between. Now we have director Guy Ritchie’s take on the subject, with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/2017/may/21/king-arthur-legend-sword-review-guy-ritchie">King Arthur: Legend of the Sword</a>.</p>
<p>Each of the previous iterations had a very different focus – and like all good (vaguely) historical fiction, tell us more about the present than the past. This is particularly true for myths because they always have a “built-in ambiguity that makes them applicable to a variety of times and places”, as the US theologian S. Brent notes. </p>
<p>For example, while Excalibur was emphasising the magical elements of the myth with the wizard Merlin at its centre, both First Knight and King Arthur tried hard to “historicise” the legendary king. </p>
<figure class="align-left zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170300/original/file-20170522-25076-c6xjns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170300/original/file-20170522-25076-c6xjns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170300/original/file-20170522-25076-c6xjns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170300/original/file-20170522-25076-c6xjns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170300/original/file-20170522-25076-c6xjns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=884&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170300/original/file-20170522-25076-c6xjns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1110&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170300/original/file-20170522-25076-c6xjns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1110&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170300/original/file-20170522-25076-c6xjns.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1110&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Sean Connery as Arthur and Richard Gere as love rival Lancelot in First Knight (1995).</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>First Knight presents a traditional Arthur as a benign and ageing king (played by Sean Connery) ruling over Camelot as the most advanced and bustling metropolis of its time. In his old age, he marries the much younger Guinevere (Julia Ormond), who will ultimately betray him with the much younger Lancelot (played by Richard Gere at the height of his career). </p>
<p>It is a tale of a great nation being brought down by individual failure. Religion also plays an important role in the film as it is faith rather than magic from which Arthur draws strength, for example when he publicly prays: “May God grant us the wisdom to discover right, the will to choose it, and the strength to make it endure.”</p>
<p>The 2004 version directed by Antoine Fuqua provides a stark contrast to this theme. Not only does it set the story about 1,000 years before the more common medieval period, it also boldly claims that the myth was “based on a real hero, who lived 1,600 years ago”. It promises its audience the “truth behind the myth” – by creating an entirely new version of it. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170302/original/file-20170522-25082-kt79xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170302/original/file-20170522-25082-kt79xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170302/original/file-20170522-25082-kt79xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170302/original/file-20170522-25082-kt79xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170302/original/file-20170522-25082-kt79xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=888&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170302/original/file-20170522-25082-kt79xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170302/original/file-20170522-25082-kt79xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170302/original/file-20170522-25082-kt79xe.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1116&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">King Arthur (2004) attempted to ‘historicise’ the Arthur legend.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Sitting neatly alongside other sword-and-sandal blockbusters of the same year, such as Troy and Alexander, King Arthur moves its subject to late Roman Britain. It presents Arthur (Clive Owen) as a Roman soldier, who is on a last mission to free the Pope’s godson from the savage tribes north of Hadrian’s Wall. </p>
<p>What he discovers, however, is the savagery of the Christian church, ultimately siding with the pagan tribes to free Britannia from Saxon invaders as well as from Roman deprivation. Magic is almost completely absent. Instead, it is Arthur’s skill as a seasoned soldier and clever strategist, rather than a magical sword, which makes him successful. </p>
<h2>Man, magic (and David Beckham)</h2>
<p>What then, can we learn from the most recent instalment of the myth, claimed to be the first in a series of six? First of all, Guy Ritchie’s version sets the story in a fantasy time that is somewhat hard to pin down. While the chainmail armour and lady’s dresses are loosely medieval, the settings of the Royal palace are hard to define, and the CGI skyline of Londinium (which features more prominently than Camelot) is scattered with Roman ruins, including an enormous Colosseum. </p>
<p>It also returns to a focus on the more magical elements of the story, stating in its opening line that “for centuries, man and magic lived in peace…” The first few minutes of the film establish its apparent attempt at offering a new Lord of the Rings, including giant elephants battling a hilltop city. We even get a close-up shot of a fiery magic eye that is reminiscent of Peter Jackson’s visual rendering of Sauron in Lord of the Rings. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170304/original/file-20170522-25068-vusdxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/170304/original/file-20170522-25068-vusdxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170304/original/file-20170522-25068-vusdxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170304/original/file-20170522-25068-vusdxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=360&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170304/original/file-20170522-25068-vusdxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170304/original/file-20170522-25068-vusdxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/170304/original/file-20170522-25068-vusdxd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=452&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">It wouldn’t be a Guy Ritchie movie without a bit of knuckle.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Courtesy of Warner Bros.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What then about the myth? In this film, Arthur is a streetwise boy rather than a royal knight or an experienced soldier, a rags-to-riches story fit for a time in which class hierarchies are continuously challenged. He is a thief, driven more by personal revenge than the higher motive of freeing his nation. </p>
<p>Moreover, the film revives and expands the magical and fantastic elements of Excalibur to align itself much more closely with epics such as the already mentioned <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444320589.ch11/summary">Lord of the Rings (2001-3)</a>, <a href="http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/The_Hobbit_(film_series)">The Hobbit (2012-14)</a> and the enormously popular television saga <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2011/apr/18/game-of-thrones-dont-believe-the-gripes">Game of Thrones</a>, rather than its immediate cinematic predecessors. This in itself is not a problem. </p>
<p>The problem is that Ritchie seems to misunderstand what makes those works successful as myths. Ritchie’s iconoclastic style may have worked well in small crime comedies such as <a href="https://reelrundown.com/movies/Snatch-2000-Movie-Review">Snatch (2000)</a> and maybe to some extent even in his take on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2011/dec/19/forensic-guy-ritchie-sherlock-holmes">Sherlock Holmes</a> (although I’m sceptical, but that’s another story). Here, it simply undermines the epic grandeur suggested by the visuals. </p>
<p>For example, as Robbie Collin <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/0/king-arthur-legend-sword-review-guy-ritchies-combat-heavy-camelot/">notes in the Telegraph</a>: “The sword-pulling scene … is sabotaged from within by a David Beckham cameo that goes on for line after forehead-slapping line, and saps the moment of its mythic excitement.” Whereas you could argue that myths have always been somewhat of a mash-up of various cultural influences, Ritchie’s film is so eclectic that it fails to develop any coherent mythical realm in which the audience can immerse itself. </p>
<p>Apart from the already mentioned cinematic elements, the film also features magical Egyptian pyramids, a powerful sea monster hiding in a cave reminiscent of <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/03/beow-m01.html">Beowulf (2008)</a> and a Kung Fu school – to name but a few. All this makes for an entertaining and visually stunning cinematic spectacle, but it fails to provide what myths can do best – namely offer a coherent and inspiring worldview and ethos. Sadly, it may be exactly this lack of this inspiring vision that makes this film so contemporary.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/75346/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sylvie Magerstaedt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Guy Ritchie’s blokey remake of the Arthur legend fails to establish any kind of coherent narrative.Sylvie Magerstaedt, Principal Lecturer in Media Cultures, University of HertfordshireLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/765112017-04-24T07:05:11Z2017-04-24T07:05:11ZGuardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2: a scientist’s review<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166397/original/file-20170424-12658-agv2pv.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">They're back: Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Nebula (Karen Gillan), Peter Quill (Chris Pratt), Drax (Dave Bautista) and Rocket voice by Bradley Cooper).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Walt Disney/Marvel Studios</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Star-Lord Peter Quill and the gang are back as <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3896198/">Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2</a> opens in cinemas from today in another outing of the galactic blockbuster.</p>
<p>It’s one of the most fun films I’ve seen in years, combining hilarity with characters you care about, and spectacular visuals that trump the first instalment, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2015381/">Guardians of the Galaxy</a> in 2014.</p>
<p>With the awesome music of “<a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/inside-the-guardians-of-the-galaxy-vol-2-soundtrack-w477515">Awesome Mixtape #2</a>”, the team unravel the mystery parentage of Quill (played by Chris Pratt) and meet several new characters (watch the credits carefully). Old foes become new allies and there are treats in store for fans of the comics.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YZWJXO1MSXo?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But what about the actual science in the film, how does that stack up?</p>
<p>I’m going to start by giving the film a very generous allowance for being a blockbuster made for entertainment, not an educational documentary. That being said, it’s always fun to get stuck into some of the maths- and science-filled scenarios in the film.</p>
<p>Be warned though, there are some mild spoilers ahead.</p>
<h2>Maths fail as humour</h2>
<p>It was fantastic to see the film uses explicit maths fails as an integral part of the humour. </p>
<p>Not surprisingly, some of the villain characters in the film aren’t particularly bright, and one memorable scene has them screwing up (in several different ways) elementary maths - basic fractions and percentages - when arguing about a juicy cash bounty.</p>
<p>Maths fails have been used as humour in other films and television shows; William Shatner’s tongue in cheek maths <a href="https://youtu.be/zBuykQHFQ1Q?t=47s">in Star Trek</a> being one good example:</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166350/original/file-20170423-22929-r8vxch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166350/original/file-20170423-22929-r8vxch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166350/original/file-20170423-22929-r8vxch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166350/original/file-20170423-22929-r8vxch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166350/original/file-20170423-22929-r8vxch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166350/original/file-20170423-22929-r8vxch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166350/original/file-20170423-22929-r8vxch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166350/original/file-20170423-22929-r8vxch.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Some baddies are a little thick… especially when it comes to understanding bounties.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Walt Disney/Marvel Studios</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These were pretty simple maths fails though and there was a lot of other maths and science in the rest of the film.</p>
<h2>Escaping a quantum asteroid field</h2>
<p>In one of the many starship chase scenes in the film, the ships have to navigate through what is called a quantum asteroid field.</p>
<p><img width="100%" src="https://i.imgur.com/FIAdwrH.gif"></p>
<h4>Asteroids come and go. <a href="https://www.123rf.com/">123rf.com</a>/Tom De Spiegelaere/Michael Milford</h4>
<p>Asteroids randomly appear and disappear as the ships navigate through the field, making it a very dangerous way to escape (a nice twist on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvJDItC6tE0">traditional asteroid fields</a> where you can see all the asteroids).</p>
<p>So what are the chances of a ship making it through the quantum asteroid field?</p>
<p>The field looks to be mostly empty space. So let’s say that each second the ship spends in the field, there’s a 1 in 100 chance that an asteroid will suddenly materialise on top of the ship, destroying it.</p>
<p>If a ship spends 3 minutes navigating the length of the field, we can calculate the chances of any one ship making it through:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>= (survival chance per second)<sup>number of seconds</sup></p>
<p>= (1 - destruction chance per second)<sup>number of seconds</sup></p>
<p>= (1 - 0.01)<sup>3 × 60</sup></p>
<p>= (0.99)<sup>180</sup></p>
<p>= 16.38%</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That’s pretty high actually, a 1 in 6 chance. From watching the film, it looks like not many make it through (apart from the heroes of course).</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166353/original/file-20170423-12658-ktg8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166353/original/file-20170423-12658-ktg8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166353/original/file-20170423-12658-ktg8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166353/original/file-20170423-12658-ktg8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166353/original/file-20170423-12658-ktg8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=317&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166353/original/file-20170423-12658-ktg8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166353/original/file-20170423-12658-ktg8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166353/original/file-20170423-12658-ktg8rz.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=398&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There’s a lot of hair-raising chases in restricted spaces.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Walt Disney/Marvel Studios</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>If we know how many of the ships actually make it through, we can work out the survival rate per second. Let’s say 1 (just the heroes’ ship) out of 100 ships make it through, then the chance of surviving the field per second becomes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>= (Chance of surviving field)<sup>1/number of seconds</sup></p>
<p>= (Chance of surviving field)<sup>1/180</sup></p>
<p>= (0.01)<sup>1/180</sup></p>
<p>= 0.9747</p>
<p>= 97.47%</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Which would suggest a higher danger from the asteroids - a 2.53% chance of being destroyed by a quantum asteroid in any second.</p>
<h2>Elevation grenades</h2>
<p>Rocket Raccoon (again voiced somewhat unrecognisably by Bradley Cooper) gets to kick some butt in this film too.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166351/original/file-20170423-22929-1962be0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166351/original/file-20170423-22929-1962be0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166351/original/file-20170423-22929-1962be0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166351/original/file-20170423-22929-1962be0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166351/original/file-20170423-22929-1962be0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=316&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166351/original/file-20170423-22929-1962be0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166351/original/file-20170423-22929-1962be0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166351/original/file-20170423-22929-1962be0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=397&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Rocket Raccoon packs some seriously innovative gravity-defying weaponry.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Walt Disney/Marvel Studios</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet another unique weapon is some sort of electrical effect mine, which chucks aliens high up into the air only for them to fall back to earth again (<a href="https://youtu.be/YZWJXO1MSXo?t=1m07s">see the trailer</a>):</p>
<p><img width="100%" src="https://i.imgur.com/DS9yiT6.gif"></p>
<h4>Elevating the aliens. <a href="https://www.123rf.com/">123rf.com</a>/Beata Kraus, Chastity/Michael Milford</h4>
<p>To chuck aliens so they reach the top of the pine trees (say 30m), we can work out the velocity of the blast:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>2 × gravity × height-change = v-final<sup>2</sup> - v-initial<sup>2</sup></p>
</blockquote>
<p>At the top, the alien’s velocity (v-final) is zero, so:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>2 × -9.81 × 30 = 0<sup>2</sup> - v-initial<sup>2</sup></p>
<p>v-initial<sup>2</sup> = 2 × 9.81 × 30</p>
<p>v-initial = square root (2 × 9.81 × 30)</p>
<p>v-initial = 24.26 m/s</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So to knock the aliens up to the treetops, the mine would have to propel them upwards at an initial speed of about 24m/s. </p>
<p>This is actually a very low blast velocity (possibly to reduce harm), <a href="http://www.military.com/video/ammunition-and-explosives/explosives/shockwave-captured-on-high-speed/763995636001">compared to typical conventional explosives</a> that can travel faster than the speed of sound (although objects hit by the blast don’t necessarily travel as fast).</p>
<h2>Visiting every planet</h2>
<p>One of the characters, the awesomely named Ego (Kurt Russell), has spent many years visiting many, if not all of the planets in the galaxy.</p>
<p><img width="100%" src="https://i.imgur.com/BNUNjxj.gif"></p>
<h4>Visiting every planet. <a href="https://www.123rf.com/">123rf.com</a>/Viktar Malyshchyts, Vadim Sadovski/Michael Milford</h4>
<p>This, one can imagine, is not a trivial feat.</p>
<p>According to a <a href="http://www.space.com/19103-milky-way-100-billion-planets.html">recent study</a>, there might be approximately 100 billion planets in our Milky Way galaxy.</p>
<p>To work out how long it normally takes to visit all these planets, you’d have to solve the <a href="https://plus.maths.org/content/travelling-salesman">infamous travelling salesman problem</a>. This problem is about calculating the fastest way to visit a number of locations.</p>
<p>Luckily for us, this particular character regularly has to return to home base. We can simplify the calculation a little by assuming they only visit one planet per trip away from their base.</p>
<p>We also need to know how big the Milky Way is. Best estimates are that it’s between <a href="http://www.space.com/29270-milky-way-size-larger-than-thought.html">100,000 and 180,000 light years</a> in diameter. We can simplify this by saying it’s a circle of uniform diameter 140,000 light years.</p>
<p>We can also simplify matters by assuming that the home base is optimally positioned at the centre of the galaxy.</p>
<p>Our traveller is going to need to make 100 billion trips out to a planet and back.</p>
<p>Stars (and associated planets) are generally more densely distributed near the centre of the galaxy, and more sparse further out. A rough approximation we can use is that the average distance from home base to a planet is one quarter of the galaxy diameter - 35,000 light years. That’s a return trip of 70,000 light years, so the total trip distance is:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>= average trip distance × number of trips</p>
<p>= 70,000 light years × 100,000,000,000</p>
<p>= 7,000,000,000,000,000 light years</p>
</blockquote>
<p>That’s 7 quadrillion (7×10<sup>15</sup>) light years. The universe is estimated to be only about 14 billion years old, which is nowhere near enough time to visit all those planets one by one.</p>
<p>With some more calculations, it turns out even visiting all the planets in one go takes longer than the age of the universe.</p>
<p>So, even with speed of light transportation, this is stretching what might be possible for Ego.</p>
<h2>Yondu kicks butt</h2>
<p>Yondu Udonta (Michael Rooker) is the morally ambiguous rogue and leader of a group of outlaw mercenaries called the Ravagers. He kidnapped Peter as a boy in the original Guardians film, and raised him into adulthood, resulting in a complex relationship to say the least.</p>
<p>Yondu is armed with one of the most unique of weapons in recent film history, a lethal arrow that he can control by whistling. He uses it to great effect in the first film, but steps up his game even further in Volume 2.</p>
<p><img width="100%" src="https://i.imgur.com/GhdmVrm.gif"></p>
<h4>Shooting the enemy, one arrow at a time. <a href="https://www.123rf.com/">123rf.com</a>/mik38, Chastity/Michael Milford</h4>
<p>In one scene, he clears out an entire ship of bad guys. It’s not clear how fast Yondu’s arrow can go, but let’s say it can go faster than a car but slower than a plane, say maybe 275kmh, <a href="http://www.mythbusterstheexhibition.com/science-content/dodge-a-bullet/">like a conventional arrow</a>.</p>
<p>A large spacecraft might have a couple of kilometres of corridors and various rooms spread out within it, so the time to clear out the baddies is: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>= total distance / speed</p>
<p>= 2km / 275kmh</p>
<p>= 0.0073 hours</p>
<p>= 26.3 seconds</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Most fight scenes involving Yondu don’t last more than a few seconds, so that sounds about right.</p>
<h2>The verdict</h2>
<p>Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 is a lot of fun. Hats off to the scriptwriters and director for the explicit maths fail jokes, and for all the other science- and math-filled content. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166354/original/file-20170423-12640-fifu8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166354/original/file-20170423-12640-fifu8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/166354/original/file-20170423-12640-fifu8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166354/original/file-20170423-12640-fifu8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166354/original/file-20170423-12640-fifu8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=393&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166354/original/file-20170423-12640-fifu8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166354/original/file-20170423-12640-fifu8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/166354/original/file-20170423-12640-fifu8n.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=494&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Good job guys and… aliens?</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Walt Disney/Marvel Studios</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Some of the fantastical situations in the film could happen mathematically, but at least one of them would be tough.</p>
<p>Still, films are made to be entertaining, and Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 delivers in an epic way.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76511/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michael Milford is a Chief Investigator at the Australian Centre for Robotic Vision, an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow and Founding Director of the education startup Math Thrills Pty Ltd. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Queensland Government, Caterpillar Corporation, Mining3, Microsoft, the Asian Office of Aerospace Research and Development and AMP.</span></em></p>The Guardians of the Galaxy team are rocking the universe again in the latest volume of the science fiction blockbuster. But how does the science stand up to some number crunching?Michael Milford, Associate professor, Queensland University of TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/741662017-03-09T00:24:50Z2017-03-09T00:24:50ZThe great movie scenes: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/159713/original/image-20170307-20746-crgjfa.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">(Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind) says to me...true love is still possible and you can put your faith in it.</span> </figcaption></figure><p><em>What makes a film a classic? In this column, film scholar Bruce Isaacs looks at a single sequence from a classic film and analyses its brilliance.</em></p>
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<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/206163878" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, 2004.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This month we look at <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338013/">Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</a> (2004), written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry. (Spoiler alert: this clip contains the last scene.)</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/anomalisa-why-animation-is-great-for-adults-55978">Anomalisa: why animation is great for adults</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
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<p>The film is about memory, desire, love and loss. In this scene, Isaacs focuses on what he calls two “cinematic gestures” in the closing sequences of the film.</p>
<p>The scene features Joel Barish (played by Jim Carey) and Clementine Kruczynski (brilliantly portrayed by Kate Winslet) as they realise their relationship is doomed but still worth pursuing.</p>
<p>It is, says Isaacs, a beautiful and deceptive sequence that includes one of Jim Carey’s finest moments on screen.</p>
<hr>
<p><em><strong>See also:</strong></em> <br></p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-vertigo-63320">The great movie scenes: Hitchcock’s Vertigo</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-antonionis-the-passenger-65395">The great movie scenes: Antonioni’s The Passenger</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-steven-spielbergs-jaws-79043">The great movie scenes: Steven Spielberg’s Jaws</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-hitchcocks-psycho-and-the-power-of-jarring-music-97325">The great movie scenes: Hitchcock’s Psycho</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-the-godfather-98173">The great movie scenes: The Godfather</a>
<br>
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-great-movie-scenes-stanley-kubricks-2001-a-space-odyssey-100170">The great movie scenes: Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74166/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Bruce Isaacs does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Bruce Isaacs analyses the deceptively complex closing scene of Charlie Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), starring Jim Carey and Kate Winslet.Bruce Isaacs, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/713382017-01-24T03:43:14Z2017-01-24T03:43:14ZBeware The Slenderman: how users created the Boogieman of the internet<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152803/original/image-20170116-16931-av8sv6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">New documentary Beware the Slenderman follows the horrific stabbing of a 12 year old girl in the name of an internet myth.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">IMDB</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>For as long as humans have been interacting with new media technologies, they have also <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/haunted-media">created monsters to haunt them</a>. When photography became mainstream in the late 19th century, for example, it wasn’t long before entertainers and spiritualists were using the technology to “capture spirits” through the process of double exposure. </p>
<p>Similarly, the radio, the telegraph, the cinema and video have all become, at various points, “haunted” as their presence in modern life became more ubiquitous. </p>
<p>It is therefore unsurprising that the internet gave birth to its own boogieman: a supernatural creature called the Slenderman. The preternaturally tall and faceless man in a black suit is the subject of the HBO documentary <a href="http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/beware-the-slenderman">Beware The Slenderman</a>, released today. </p>
<p>The documentary will examine the mythology of the Slenderman and the horrific 2014 “<a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2014/06/03/justice/wisconsin-girl-stabbed/">Slenderman stabbing</a>”, involving two US 12 year-olds who attempted to murder their friend in order to prove their loyalty to him.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152801/original/image-20170116-16931-m19ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152801/original/image-20170116-16931-m19ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152801/original/image-20170116-16931-m19ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152801/original/image-20170116-16931-m19ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152801/original/image-20170116-16931-m19ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=413&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152801/original/image-20170116-16931-m19ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152801/original/image-20170116-16931-m19ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152801/original/image-20170116-16931-m19ym.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=519&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Victor Surge’s original Slenderman image #1.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Victor Surge/Deviant Art</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The Slenderman came to life in June of 2009 in a post on the website Something Awful called <a href="https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3150591">Create Paranormal Images</a>. </p>
<p>Credited to Victor Surge, an alias for artist Eric Knudsen, the Slenderman began simply as two photoshopped pictures. In each they revealed an unusually tall, faceless man with tentacles growing from his back, watching over a group of children.</p>
<p>These two simple photos instigated a communal act of creating the Slenderman’s mythology, an early example of what has come to be known as <a href="http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/creepypasta">creepypasta</a>: short form horror stories, often in the form of fake eyewitness accounts, that were easily shared via the internet. </p>
<p>These creepypastas became “digital campfires”, a virtual location that in some manner replicates the old act of telling scary stories around a campfire.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152802/original/image-20170116-16949-h5ui1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152802/original/image-20170116-16949-h5ui1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152802/original/image-20170116-16949-h5ui1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152802/original/image-20170116-16949-h5ui1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152802/original/image-20170116-16949-h5ui1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=529&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152802/original/image-20170116-16949-h5ui1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152802/original/image-20170116-16949-h5ui1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152802/original/image-20170116-16949-h5ui1z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=664&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Victor Surge’s original Slenderman image #2.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Victor Surge/Deviant Art</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It could be argued that in a sense the Slenderman is a tulpa: a Buddhist term used to describe a being brought into creation through collective thought. Victor Surge described Slenderman’s proliferation as an “accelerated urban legend”. It differs from earlier urban legends in that, despite the audience’s awareness of its origins, it still managed to spread. </p>
<p>Key to the dispersal of the Slenderman legend is the manner in which he transcended the medium that created him. He quickly moved from photoshopped pictures, to web stories, and then into the various other forms of media, from the webseries <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MarbleHornets">Marble Hornets</a> and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/TribeTwelve">TribeTwelve</a>, to video games such as Slender: The Arrival and even into the cinema (in a poorly received <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2811690/">low budget horror film</a>).</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152804/original/image-20170116-16920-vfnt60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152804/original/image-20170116-16920-vfnt60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152804/original/image-20170116-16920-vfnt60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152804/original/image-20170116-16920-vfnt60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152804/original/image-20170116-16920-vfnt60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152804/original/image-20170116-16920-vfnt60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152804/original/image-20170116-16920-vfnt60.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Slender: The Arrival video game.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">from www.theslenderman.wikia.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In an age of scepticism and increasing access to information, how do we account for this growth of a mythological monster? Horror scholar Isabel Pinedo poses one possible explanation, in that horror narratives can be an “exercise in recreational terror… not unlike a roller coaster ride.” In the case of the Slenderman, the communal participation in his creation is a way to bring about the pleasurable aspects of scaring ourselves, with the safety of knowing he is just a fictional construct.</p>
<p>However, even the participants of the original forum identified the risks in doing so. A user named Soakie was one of the first to identify the Slenderman as a potential tulpa, writing: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Even if we don’t really believe in supernatural, even if our rational minds laugh at such an absurdity … we are cutting [the Slender Man] out and sewing him together. We’re stuffing him with nightmares and unspoken fears. And what happens when the pictures are no longer photoshops?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>One terrifying answer to this question emerged in May of 2014 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, when two 12 year-old girls allegedly enticed a third 12 year-old girl to follow them into the woods (a location which figures prominently in the Slenderman mythology). After doing so, <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/08/slender-man-stabbing.html">they allegedly stabbed her 19 times</a> in an attempt to prove their worth as Slenderman proxies. </p>
<p>The victim survived, having crawled to a nearby roadside where she was discovered by a passing cyclist. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQZzJpRWFCY">She has since recovered</a>. It is this act, and the origins of the delusions of the two perpetrators, that is <a href="http://time.com/4637861/slenderman-hbo-documentary/">the subject of the HBO documentary</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152806/original/image-20170116-16922-mw4z36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152806/original/image-20170116-16922-mw4z36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152806/original/image-20170116-16922-mw4z36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152806/original/image-20170116-16922-mw4z36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=325&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152806/original/image-20170116-16922-mw4z36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152806/original/image-20170116-16922-mw4z36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/152806/original/image-20170116-16922-mw4z36.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=409&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Screenshot from Marble Hornets.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">DeLage/Wagner</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>What is clear from this event, and the Slenderman’s still evolving presence as an internet boogieman, is that unlike the urban legends of the pre-internet world, these new monsters may become untethered to their fictional origins. Despite a general awareness of his artificial creation, the Slenderman has, like Frankenstein’s monster, been stitched together by communal storytelling and escaped the bounds of his creator’s intentions to simply scare the members of the original forum.</p>
<p>Part of the Slenderman mythology is the <a href="http://www.quibblo.com/quiz/jqsdfat/Steps-to-becoming-one-of-Slendermans-proxies-for-those-who-are-curious">Slender Sickness</a>, a fictional illness that affects those who have been in the presence of the monster. Its symptoms include coughing fits, memory loss and, ironically, irrational acts of violence. </p>
<p>While it is <a href="http://fox6now.com/2016/11/11/slenderman-stabbing-case-psychiatric-reports-filed-on-morgan-geyser-anissa-weier/">highly likely</a> that mental illness contributed to the actions of the perpetrators of the Slenderman stabbing, it’s also worth examining the effects of the new monsters of the internet and how effortlessly they can escape the bounds of “recreational terror”.</p>
<p><br></p>
<hr>
<p><em><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5329376/">Beware the Slenderman</a> premieres on HBO Go on January 24, Australia time.</em></p>
<p><em>For more on the Slenderman and the genre of YouTube horror, you can read Adam Daniel’s article <a href="https://www.academia.edu/29167054/Always_Watching_The_Interface_of_Horror_and_Digital_Cinema_in_Marble_Hornets">‘Always Watching’: The Interface of Horror and Digital Cinema in Marble Hornets</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71338/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adam Daniel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>From photoshopped images, to fake eye-witness accounts, to a real-life attempted murder, the Slenderman is the internet’s urban myth.Adam Daniel, Ph.d Candidate, Western Sydney UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/711492017-01-11T19:53:43Z2017-01-11T19:53:43ZBeyond La La Land: the top ten toe-tapping film musicals<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/152345/original/image-20170111-29019-91cr96.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in La La Land. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Black Label Media</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the Great Depression, movies were an escape from life, and musicals gave audiences hope that things would get better. The recent release of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3783958/?ref_=ttmi_tt">La La Land</a> – a contemporary twist on a classic formula – has reignited interest in the musical genre. At the Golden Globes this week, the film won Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy), Best Director (Damien Chazelle), Best Original Score, Best Screenplay, Best Original Song (City of Stars), Best Actor (Ryan Gosling) and Best Actress (Emma Stone).</p>
<p>I enjoyed the escapism of La La Land, and appreciated the bravery of both director and cast as they stepped into a challenging field. But there are other musicals that qualify as greats. </p>
<p>As a musical tragic, here is my list of the ten most memorable musicals. It’s not conclusive. It excludes silent films like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0018037/">The Jazz Singer</a> (1927); the first official Hollywood musical <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0019729/">The Broadway Melody</a> (1929); ground-breaking films like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077631/">Grease</a> (1978) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067093/">Fiddler on the Roof</a> (1971); cult musicals like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073629/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">The Rocky Horror Picture Show</a> (1975), and jukebox musicals like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0795421/">Mamma Mia!</a> (2008). Credit should also be given to shows that reference classic music theatre, for example, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4094300/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">Crazy Ex-Girlfriend</a>, a made for television musical comedy-drama series.</p>
<p>However, the following musicals continue to influence today’s world of music theatre. Each has a unique quality that lends to its iconic status.</p>
<h2>42nd Street (1933)</h2>
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<p>The plot of 42nd Street, based on the creation of a musical show during the Depression, launched the career of Ruby Keeler, a name synonymous with early musicals. The film showcases the visual imagery of choreographer Busby Berkeley, whose method is still unrivalled today. Berkeley was famous for his filming from above. It meant that his choreography was not only visually stunning for a seated audience, but when viewed from above, each step helped illustrate an image. For instance, a series of dancing girls might spin in a circle in flowing gowns. A dancer in the centre would spin in the other direction and the viewer would see a beautiful, spinning flower. </p>
<h2>Top Hat (1935)</h2>
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<p>Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers were the leading dancing duo of the 1930’s, starring in 10 films. Their pairing happened by accident, when they were brought together for the first time on the set of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0024025/">Flying Down To Rio</a> (1933), as support characters. The production team was stunned by the chemistry between the pair – as the saying goes, Ginger could do everything that Fred did, but backwards and in heels. This was the first film written specifically for them as leading characters, and as The Oxford History of World Cinema puts it, in a Fred & Ginger musical, “boy meets girl; boy dances with girl; boy gets girl”. In the film’s classic song and dance scene, Cheek to Cheek, Rogers wore a dress swathed in feathers, which kept floating off during filming. If you look very closely, you can see one errant feather that fell on the set and was missed in the post-production editing.</p>
<h2>An American in Paris (1951)</h2>
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<p>This Oscar-winning film brought together dancers Leslie Caron and Gene Kelly. The tale of an American painter living in Paris who falls in love is fairly straightforward. But the dance sequences are sumptuous. One of them, An American in Paris ballet, is a 17-minute extravaganza choreographed by Kelly. It features costumes inspired by a smattering of French painters (including Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec) and a beautiful George Gershwin score.</p>
<h2>Singin’ in the Rain (1952)</h2>
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<p>With the recent passing of Debbie Reynolds, this film has a new poignancy. Reynolds was just 20 when she made it, starring alongside Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor. One of the most successful musicals ever filmed, it is filled with memorable songs, lavish dance routines and of course, that scene-stealing title song. This film is a light-hearted look at Hollywood, at the time when silent films gave way to “talkies”. Amongst surveys of the greatest American films, Singin’ in the Rain inevitably ranks in the top ten. Several stage revivals have appeared in recent years. And everyone I know is able to sing (or hum) along to Good Morning.</p>
<h2>Oklahoma (1955)</h2>
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<p>This first collaboration between Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, based on Lynn Riggs’ play Green Grow the Lilacs (1931), explores the love story between a cowboy (Gordon MacRae) and a farm girl (Shirley Jones). It develops the idea of the “book musical” – a musical play where the songs and dances are an integral part of the narrative, emerging from the story to evoke profound emotional responses.
There is a darker side to this story, with the secondary character Jud, a farmhand, in love with the leading lady. Some classic numbers from this production include Oh, What a Beautiful Morning and the title song.</p>
<h2>My Fair Lady (1964)</h2>
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<p>This Lerner & Loewe adaptation of Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion is a tale of transformation. A cockney flower girl wants to “better” herself, so she can work in a flower shop. An arrogant phonetics professor wagers that he can teach her to speak “proper” English, and training ensues. Audrey Hepburn charmed as the wayward Eliza – although her singing was dubbed by another. Her partner in musical crime was Rex Harrison, who, strangely enough, doesn’t sing, but is completely convincing as Higgins. Eliza’s father was entertainer Stanley Holloway, who delighted audiences with the classic I’m Getting Married in The Morning, sung in a pub, his favourite place on earth. The film ends with hope, unlike the play that inspired it, and won eight Academy Awards. </p>
<h2>The Sound of Music (1965)</h2>
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<p>Adapted from the Broadway musical of 1959, this Oscar-winning film introduced audiences to Julie Andrews. As Maria (Andrews) and the Von Trapp children sang and danced their way across the Austrian Alps, songs such as Do-Re-Mi and My Favourite Things became classics. Though not a dance musical, per se, it is still one of the most commercially successful films of all time, and has continued to enjoy revivals throughout the world. </p>
<h2>Jesus Christ Superstar (1973)</h2>
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<p>This rock opera began as a concept album, before launching on Broadway in 1971. There is no spoken dialogue, hence the term “opera”. It is a loose depiction of the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ life, with added struggles between the key protagonists. This musical was the launching pad for singers, such as the late Jon English, Marcia Hines, and more recently, in the West End, Tim Minchin. Again known for its singing rather than the dancing, the title song, and Mary Magdalene’s I Don’t Know How to Love Him, were softer moments in an intense score. The film of the show was released in 1973 and is a leading work in the rock opera genre. </p>
<h2>The Phantom of the Opera (2004)</h2>
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<p>Lloyd-Webber’s composition is based on Leroux’s novel Le Fantôme de l’Opéra. The plot focuses on a soprano ingénue who becomes the obsession of a mysterious, disfigured musical genius. This musical is surprisingly popular, because its main hero is an anti-hero. He is unbalanced, unattractive and his only saving grace is a God-given talent for composing. Which, I must say, holds him in very good stead. If the Phantom is well cast, one sympathizes with this sad creature. The opening sequence with the chandelier suspended above the stage reduces my sister to tears each time, and is truly a spectacle to behold. And who can resist an overacting opera singer with a dodgy Italian accent and musical spectacles such as the amazing choreography of Masquerade, or the simplicity of Christine’s singing to her father’s grave, in Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again? The 2004 film featured Gerard Butler in his first singing role, which, as an accomplished actor, he performed very creditably, alongside Emmy Rossum as Christine. The standout however, as the obnoxious opera singer, was Minnie Driver, who put in a sterling performance, evoking much laughter.</p>
<h2>Les Misérables (2012)</h2>
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<p>Based on Victor Hugo’s novel, this Tony Award winner is another sung-through musical, having run continuously in the West End since 1985. This story of love, freedom and morality, set within the tragedy of the French revolution, evokes great emotion and composers Schönberg and Boublil manage to sustain the intensity throughout. The 2012 film was a vision of cinematic brilliance, with Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe as Valjean and Javert respectively. Jackman has sung with great artistry in other productions, but I felt that in making himself physically portray the struggles and weakness of Valjean, his vocal performance suffered. However, Crowe’s portrayal of Javert showed his moral compass swaying, and he sang with technical proficiency and artistic expression. There are so many pieces of note within this score, but Do You Hear the People Sing?, as the revolutionaries face their death, is perhaps for me, the most touching moment. This is a classic piece of music theatre history. It will bring you emotionally to your knees.</p>
<p>If I had to choose one of these as my favourite, I’d be hard pressed. However, Oklahoma stands out as a performance full of love and laughter, where something good can come out of something bad. I like hope in my musicals - as Rosie O'Donnell said to Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle: “You don’t want to be in love - you want to be in love in a movie”. Well, I want to be in love in a musical.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71149/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nicole Thomson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Musicals are back in vogue, with La La Land cleaning up at the Golden Globes. The film is, among other things, an homage to the classic musicals of old. So what are the must see movies of the genre?Nicole Thomson, Associate Lecturer - Theatre, CQUniversity AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.