Author: Shyla Fairfax
Double Indemnity and The Politics of Gender
In 1943, the story of Double Indemnity had earned the label of “unfilmmable” in Hollywood due to its controversial and ‘immoral’ subject matter (Biltereyst 148). But despite objections and impositions from the Production Code Administration, through compromise and strategy, Billy Wilder managed to create and release the film in 1944. Somehow, what remains is still…
Horror Cinema and the Female Villain: The Perpetuation of Female Victimisation
Monsters have long dominated the realms of the gothic and horrific, both in literature and the cinema. What’s more, these monsters are often male, seeking out women to overtake or destroy. Subsequently, the most common image of women in horror has been a pose of utter victimisation – the scream. In a seminal article entitled…
Exoticism and Tourism: Representations of Sexuality in Exils and Edge of Heaven
In “Discovering Form, Inferring Meaning: New Cinemas and the Film Festival Circuit”, Bill Nichols has argued that the viewing of festival films, specifically those of foreign countries, positions the spectator as a tourist. This got me thinking about how such “tourism” may also exist within migrant cinema. Films dealing with issues such as colonialism, exile…
Narrative Cinema, From the Modernity Thesis to New Digital Technologies: Traffic in Souls, Avatar, and Beyond
How do you feel about 3D cinema? About CGI, and other SFX? Touchy subject, right? But hardly a new one. Opinions about the development of cinema and even the changing technologies of cinema have been up for debate since the very beginning. As new technologies invade how we experience life more rapidly than ever before,…