Category: Essays

Radicalization to Revenge: Exploring the Relationship Between Blaxploitation and the L.A. Rebellion Through Bush Mama and Coffy Nyla Guilford   Coffy (Pam Grier) exacts violent revenge upon the criminals responsible for her sister’s addiction in Coffy.    Black people and … Read more

“Tender is the Ghost”: (In)visible, Reciprocal Breath, and the Realm of Memory in Aftersun Sean Sabye   Calum (Paul Mescal) and Sophie (Frankie Corio) embrace in a window’s reflection in Aftersun.    In The Place of Breath in Cinema, Davina … Read more

Reclaiming Black Autonomy in In the Heat of the Night Samantha Thompson    Police officers arrest Tibbs (Sidney Portier) upon his arrival in Sparta, Mississippi in In the Heat of the Night.   The 1960s saw rapid and radical change … Read more

The Wandering Eye: Slow Cinema, Spectatorship, and Surrealism in Memoria and 2001: A Space Odyssey Alyssa Ho    Jessica (Tilda Swinton) and Old Hernan (Elkin Diaz) share an extended moment together in Memoria.    Walking into a theater midway through a … Read more

Exposing the Interior Through Sound in Uncut Gems and Punch-Drunk Love Melissa Luna   In both Punch-Drunk Love and Uncut Gems, the interior of the character is expressed through sound design and score.   In Paul Thomas Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love (2002), Adam … Read more

Christiane, Liberated Doll: Surrealism and the Female Gothic in Georges Franju’s Eyes Without a Face Cassidy Englund    Christiane’s mask reflects the surrealist exploration of the “uncanny” and the animate/inanimate binary in Eyes Without a Face.   Until the final five … Read more

Eclipsing the Visual: Sonic Immersion, Suggestion, and Blurring in Blade Runner  Peter Snyder    Landscape shot of the smoggy Los Angeles skyline.    “The brilliance of Blade Runner, like Alien before it, is located in its visual density.” This assertion, … Read more

Metal, Fire, and Flesh: Surrealist Body Horror in Julia Ducournau’s Titane  Charlie Brownlee    Bodily binaries between (wo)man and machine are rendered frighteningly unclear in Titane.    Filmmakers have used the disfiguration of the human body to disturb and shock … Read more

“See You in My Dreams”: The Oneiric in Twin Peaks Noemi Walton    Agent Cooper’s “deductive reasoning” scene is an example of Twin Peak‘s dreamlike red herrings, misdirecting the audience.   In his 1924 “Manifesto of Surrealism,” André Breton “once and … Read more

Cinematic Attunement in Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival Rebecca Kelley    The heptapod chamber as an atmospheric locus in Arrival.    Cinema has the ability to stitch together different formal and aesthetic elements in order to create an experiential connection between the … Read more