Category: Film Studies
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Nicolas Winding Refn and the Construction of a Stable Masculinity: Part II
Christopher Olson’s writing on the portrayal of masculinity in the films of Nicolas Winding Refn moves into a focus on one characteristics that seems to define what a “real man” is: stoicism. The strong, silent type. The man who acts instead of speaks. We see it all the time in our pop culture, and Olson…
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The Problem with Prequels: The Beginning and Dominion
It’s no secret that the Exorcist series of movies were plagued with bad luck and controversy; however, no other movie in that series was probably as plagued as the planned prequel that would explore Father Lankester Merrin’s experiences with the demon Pazuzu in Africa. According to Mark Kermode, writing for The Guardian back in 2004,…
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Nicolas Winding Refn and the Construction of a Stable Masculinity: Part I
As part of his master’s thesis, Christopher Olson is considering how Nicolas Winding Refn is creating and depicting a stable notion of masculinity in his films; specifically, in Pusher, Bronson, Valhalla Rising and Drive. In this blog post, he explores what is Refn’s notion of a mythical masculinity, and how he begins to develop and…
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The Exorcist III: A Regan-less Affair
Going in chronological order, we started our series on Feminist Tensions in Exorcism Cinema by examining what occurred in the movie that started it all, The Exorcist, and then continued with its bonkers, not-really-about-exorcism sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic. Next in this series of exorcism cinema comes the next sequel, The Exorcist III. This movie is unique in…
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The Bonkers Exorcist II: The Heretic
To use the words of my partner, this movie is just bonkers. Continuing the reporting of our initial thoughts on the Feminist Tensions in Exorcism Cinema, we come to the sequel to the horror blockbuster that started it all, The Exorcist. Coming out four years after the blockbuster that supposedly scared audiences into sickness and shock, Exorcist…
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The Exorcist: The One That Started It All
As part of this project on Feminist Tensions in Exorcism Cinema, we decided to watch the movies. All of the movies, if we can get our hands on them. We wanted to know if there were any patterns in what they were representing. As we watched each movie, we liveblogged our experience. Using Facebook or…
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A Brief History of Postwar Japanese Cinema
In this latest blog post, A Brief History of Postwar Japanese Cinema, Christopher Olson discusses how being the only nation to suffer from an atomic attack impacted Japan’s national cinema and identity. From Godzilla to Akira, and even non-science fiction stories, the cinema shows that the fallout from Hiroshima and Nagasaki continues to impact Japan,…
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The Demon Within: Tensions in Exorcism Cinema
This year, while concluding the virtual world television project with Pooky Amsterdam and continuing projects on gender and media engaging (such as My Little Pony and cross-gendered media engagings), I will also be working with Christopher J. Olson on a number of projects. One of the new ones is a consideration of the representation of women and feminist discourses in…
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Exploring the Trauma of the Spanish Civil War at the Intersection of Fantasy and Reality
Guillermo del Toro — when he isn’t thrilling us with hellboys or kaiju — has given us some of the most intensely personal and fantastically dark films to explore how we cope with living. In The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, according to Christopher Olson’s interpretation, del Toro is utilizing fantasy tropes to illustrate how…
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