Author: nrftsjournal

Review of Lesbian cinema after queer theory

By Katrin Horn Excerpt: “Clara Bradbury-Rance’s book Lesbian Cinema after Queer Theory addresses a deceptively simple question with broad implications: can there be a lesbian cinema after queer theory’s critique of politics that are built around stable gender and sexual identities? The question is made more urgent by the crucial changes our media landscape has…

Rom-com without romonormativity, gays without homonormativity: examining the People Like Us web series

Rom-com without romonormativity, gays without homonormativity: examining the People Like Us web series By Eve Ng Excerpt: “Certainly, rom-coms featuring same-sex relationships may be narrativelyflawed, including retreading the ground of straight rom-coms. LGBTQ themed media have been critiqued for failing to offer more radical challenges to sociopolitical norms, instead homonormatively (Duggan 2002) reinscribing discourses about…

How does she look?: Bigelow’s Vision/Visioning Bigelow

By Deborah Jermyn Excerpt: “Bigelow’s distinct brand of edgy but desirable, and, it must be recognised, white femininity has been instrumental in her admission to what remains principally a ‘masculine’ club…this article draws on a cultural breadth of print media coverage of Bigelow from the broadsheet press to women’s magazines, focusing largely but not only…

Kathryn Bigelow as a Neo-Star Director

By Carl Sweeney Excerpt: “Bigelow’s short documentaries represent an extension to her other work concerning terrorism. I Am Not a Weapon (2018), for instance, sees her and journalist Dionne Searcey co-direct nine videos featuring female survivors of terrorist acts carried out by the Nigerian group Boko Haram, as part of a campaign made to tie…

Kathryn Bigelow: New Action Realist 

By Vincent M. Gaine Excerpt: “This is a distinctive aspect of Bigelow’s place within new action realism – narratives are left unresolved and goals unachieved… Bigelow openly presents a contradiction: the viewer participates in the action but does not understand it, the film presenting an inexplicable experience in minute detail that should allow understanding, and…

The Poetics of Obsession: Understanding Kathryn Bigelow’s Characters

By Christa Van Raalte Excerpt: “The obsessive commitment of Bigelow’s heroes can be said to fuel both the stylistic excesses that hold the spectator at a reflexive distance and the diegetic excesses that mark her characters, challenging the spectator’s allegiance. Blue Steel makes explicit the relationship between commitment and obsession, on the one hand clearly distinguishing between them…