A new piece from now-serial contributor, Aiyesha McInerney:

Part I

Introduction

Mulvey’s psychoanalytic feminist film theory had many implications for the study of cinema, and this essay aims to first delineate the way in which these implications have influenced and challenged feminist film theory. Mulvey’s article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” raised several issues which have been taken up by feminist film theorists since; as primary examples in relation to horror cinema I use Barbara Creed and Carol Clover, whose works on the monstrous-feminine and the slasher film (respectively) are both seminal and deeply indebted to Mulvey’s theory. The examination of those sources in relation to Mulvey’s theory concludes Part I of this essay.

Part II will analyse two modern horror films which, I argue, take as their subject woman and the feminine in ways which challenge and oppose what Mulvey calls “the language of the dominant patriarchal order” (Mulvey 485). This essay will argue that it is now possible to attempt an analysis of some – by no means all – modern horror cinema, which occupies a position outside of traditional or mainstream patriarchal codification, a position referred to (and henceforth described) as primal sisterhood. ¹ Read the rest of this entry »

This latest article comes courtesy of guest writer, William Boyle. Carl Jung’s religious writings propose a highly unconventional revision to our understanding of God. Religion, Jung asserts, must take into account humanity’s potential for evil. His psychological approach attributes evil to the compensatory function of the shadow, expressing urges repressed by the ego. In this sense, the repressive function of religious morality is directly responsible for evil. Writing in the first half of the 20^th Century, Jung perceived evil manifested through the unbridled violence of two World Wars. Faced with such devastation, Jung believed that religion must abandon its repressive function and incorporate an understanding of God that responds to the darkness in humanity. In his autobiography and the essay, “Answer to Job” Jung suggests that the Judeo-Christian tradition once incorporated an understanding of God’s darkness, but that understanding has since been severed. In spiritual terms, therefore, the incorporation of divine darkness represents the reawakening of the primal aspects of God. Jung’s claims would suggest that visions of this primal god should resonate throughout what he calls the collective unconscious. Indeed, W.B. Yeats’ The Second Coming , Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness and H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu could all be interpreted as visions of the reawakening of some dark and primal god.

Jung’s understanding of individual evil is not a supernatural one; rather, he defines evil as something people are capable of. Individuals are not, themselves, evil. The personal nature of evil, he claims, simply consists of characteristics and urges rejected by the ego, or consciousness. Such inclinations are repressed by the ego, as it cannot countenance that within itself which it regards as evil. These characteristics then constitute the shadow, therefore “to become conscious of [the shadow] involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality” (1951: 145), that which the ego calls evil.

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The submissions from guest authors keep coming, with this fine article by Anna Gardner. Anna is a colleague of mine from La Trobe University who’s currently completing her honours, specifically focusing on the rise and fall of Buster Keaton.

-Morgan

The spirited bush girl was a feature of early Australian film. As part of the patriotic nation building drive of the 1920s and 1930s, the bush girl was a wholesome and admirable ideal of womanhood, independent and healthy, representing the prosperity and fertility of the nation. The bush heroine was a prominent figure in films such as A Girl of the Bush (Barrett, 1921) and The Squatter’s Daughter (Hall, 1933). However, somewhat in opposition to the emancipated bush girl, are bush heroines who suffer in their relationships with men. Films such as The Woman Suffers (Longford, 1918) and The Far Paradise (McDonagh, 1928) feature girls trapped by circumstances beyond their control. The young female protagonist is portrayed as the innocent victim of unprincipled men and the inevitable marriage that resolves the film rescues the heroine from her situation, rather than consolidating her power. Read the rest of this entry »

Greetings, intrepid readers! I am very please to present to you the first in a series of science articles from my dear friend and colleague, Simon Hanslow. Simon is currently completing his second degree and is well on his way to becoming an authority on everything on, within and around Earth, with the notable exception of us pesky human beings. Simon has chosen to begin his contributions to Wonderbread with a somewhat ambitious take on what the next century may hold for the planet and those who inhabit it.

-Morgan

The next generation of modern society will be affected in serious ways by the much debated “climate crisis” that may soon arise on this planet. What would be the ramifications, if any, of said disasters for the modern culture? For instance an example used by Al Gore in his 2006 movie “An Inconvenient Truth” describes a situation wherein the refugees arising from displacement globally could eventually number in the hundreds of millions (in many disaster scenarios, this number can climb to even a billion). In such a situation, would the traditional values of the societal zeitgeist survive? To present an alarmist view of the situation: what of the simple fact that if you look around right now, every single thing on your desk, table etc., comes either directly or indirectly from oil. Imagine a world without plastic, imagine a world where the simple luxuries we take for granted like abundant food and diverse entertainment are not present, where the shoes you wear belonged to your father because it’s difficult to make new ones where the comforts of western civilization become a hindrance rather than a boon. The outcomes of the next 100 years are no more or less extreme, complex or terrifying then the previous century, the difference is that that experience rarely carries and we must learn anew how to adapt to changing conditions in an unstable future.

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We’re pleased to present the work of guest writer Aiyesha McInerney: her submission on the life and times of Jean Renoir, Orson Welles and Renoir’s arguable master-stroke, 1939’s The Rules of the Game.

It would be genuinely remiss, at this late stage, to discount outright any of the films considered momentous by the foremost critical minds of the Western World, as subsequently critically or cinematically unimportant, in opposition to their accrued reputations. The re-evaluatory anti-establishment instincts that reside within most contentious critics have wrought their best and their worst on our modern understanding of the world that the cinema gifts us with, and yet, these films still stand tall.

That having been said, it would be equally negligent not to consider the possibility that many of the films elevated to the status of pantheon members are as celebrated on account of their oft-torturous histories as their content, which is not to their detriment, but ought be taken into consideration nonetheless. Read the rest of this entry »