Cult Film

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This panel discusses the possibility of appreciating video games that are otherwise considered "flawed" or "bad". The concepts of paracinema (Sconce) and camp (Sontag) describe ways of appreciating cinema and culture that is otherwise derided as low quality by dominant standard of taste. Using these as starting points, we can begin to understand how also games can be enjoyed or valued precisely because they fail to meet established quality criteria. Paragaming can be seen as the practice of valuing games because they fail to meet game-specific quality criteria like usability, stability, flow, etc.

William Shakespeare’s Hamlet is one of the most influential and known works regarding drama
and more precisely tragedies. Its central character, Hamlet, is a many-faced protagonist whose
actions, emotions and perceptions will shape the narrative arc of the play. By ‘many-faced’ I
mean that he is a tortured soul going through an existential crisis of which stems a seemingly
irrational desire for vengeance and of proving of oneself; Hamlet is emotional, melancholic,
overtly dramatic, lost. Yet our main character is also lyrical, prone to fight to save his honour
and he is willing to accomplish his goals however brutal and self-destructive they are. This
prince of Denmark could well be compared to Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac in his fencing
capabilities and his prowess with poetry. Nonetheless, the main point of this essay is not to
write an ode to Hamlet as a character however utterly magnificent he is, the goal here is to
uncover how one stages and represents this rich and visceral mind. To do so, three performances
have been chosen by myself which are all significantly different in their meanings and
ambitions. One of those is meant as an accurate and passionate portrayal of Hamlet, another is
a free adaptation taking place in Japan in the ‘60s, showing a corporate and manipulative
depiction. Finally, the last version is an utter failure and complete misunderstanding of
everything that Shakespeare represents; it will serve as a yardstick of what one should not do
when representing Shakespeare. In the correct order, those versions are Kenneth Branagh’s
Hamlet, Akira Kurosawa’s The Bad Sleep Well and Hamlet in its “Letní shakespearovské
slavnosti” version (In English: Summer Shakespeare Festival) as performed on the night of the
11th August 2020 at the Castle of Prague, staged by Michal Vajdička. In a nutshell, I will uncover how one stages Hamlet almost perfectly, how one reinvents it, and how one completely fails to represent it. To do so, a few scenes have been selected for comparison purposes in chronological order. The many faces of Hamlet will be explored, analyzed, and
deconstructed.

This article considers the significance of different Shakespearean allusions in a political docudrama miniseries This England (2022), directed for Sky by Michael Winterbottom and scripted by Winterbottom and Kieron Quirke. The action focuses on the first crucial months in England after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, offering a panoramic view of the nation under duress as a newly formed government, with Boris Johnson at its helm, mishandles the crisis. The article seeks to explain the presence of multiple Shakespearean references, from the title alone, through numerous direct quotations to the casting of Kenneth Branagh as Johnson. Shakespearean traces play a pivotal, though confusing, role as they both critique the actions of the government and its leader by offering an ironic framing device while increasing the viewer's sympathy for its central protagonist via the presence of a Shakespearean celebrity.

Film remakes, akin to palimpsests, are layered texts that bear the imprint of their creation, influenced by the dynamic interplay of political, ideological, and social contexts. They represent a complex convergence of artistic vision, commercial interests, and cultural currents, serving as both reflections and reframings of the original source material. As such, they occupy a unique space within the cinematic landscape, offering insights into the evolving nature of storytelling, audience reception, and the zeitgeist of their respective eras.
At their core, remakes embody a tension between tradition and innovation, fidelity to the past and the impulse to reinvent. They navigate a delicate balance between honoring the legacy of the original film and forging new paths of creative expression. This tension is particularly pronounced in the realm of cultural relevance, where remakes serve as barometers of shifting tastes, values, and technological advancements. By revisiting familiar narratives through a contemporary lens, filmmakers aim to strike a chord with audiences of the present moment, infusing classic tales with fresh perspectives and contemporaneous themes.

This was to have appeared in the proceedings of the Shakespeare on Film Centenary Conference in Malaga in 1999. There were various delays, and this version was essentially ready by 2004 at the latest, at which point family illness seems to have prevented the editor proceeding with the volume.
The essay seeks to approach acting of the past, specifically in Shakespeare's theatres, not by asking what it was like but by comparing its dramaturgical functions with the functions of acting in films of Shakespeare's plays.

Within the large and generically diffuse corpus of adaptations, spin-offs, backstage or biographical dramas, and other cinematic reworkings of Shakespeare's life and art, there have been a number of films that are also concerned with media history, transitions from one medium to another, or media systems and regimes. I call these films Shakespeare media allegories when such concerns are sustained throughout the work and when they become, in effect, a second narrative in addition to the play being adapted or the story being told. 1 Such films are often also parables of authorship and cultural origin in which Shakespeare is variously present as the paradigm of authorship, as a figure for the literary past as it encounters the vicissitudes of modern and postmodern styles and technologies, and even as the patron or inventor before the fact of cinema, multimedia hypertext, and other media that were only developed centuries after his death. Shakespeare in Love may be the most widely known example. Here, scenes of writing (cued, perhaps, by the image of "the dyer's hand" in Sonnet 111), shot close enough to see the inkpot, the quill in motion, and the bitten nails and fingertips stained by the work of authorship, alternate with scenes of performance (e.g., auditions, rehearsals, running lines, and the first public staging of Romeo and Juliet) while anachronism and wordplay systematically undermine period setting, bringing the business, the lingo, the cynicism, and the "mystery" of late twentieth-century theater and London life into the world of the Elizabethan playhouse. Indeed, its virtuoso cinematography suggests an enhancement of Shakespeare's work through the power of film to cross times, blend media, and connect lived experience to the art it inspires.

A cult film valued for being 'so bad it's good'-in Jeffrey Sconce's terminology, 'badfilm'-is championed via a form of interpretative competence which values incompetence. Scholarship addressing the terms 'bad' and 'good' in relation to such films has unsurprisingly tended to focus on the important issue of reception. What we suggest in this paper, however, is that the badfilm is also capable of prompting a reconsideration of two very old, but vital, questions for aesthetics. Discussions of evaluation and badfilm regularly argue that such films confirm the inherently unstable, discursive, and/or socially-determined nature of aesthetic value. Relatedly, it has been claimed that the cult fan practice of conscious counter-interpretation demonstrates the 'intentions' of readers or taste communities prevailing over the intentions of filmmakers. We suggest, however, that (1) badfilms offer a robust challenge to the assertion that intrinsic a...

This article delves into the profound impact of LGBTQ themes in modern drama by analyzing Tony Kushner's "Angels in America" and Mart Crowley's "The Boys in the Band." Exploring resilience, love, and societal challenges within the LGBTQ community, both plays offer nuanced portrayals of queer experiences. Kushner's exploration of the AIDS epidemic and character development sets a gold standard for authenticity in depicting the LGBTQ journey. "Angels in America" resonates across theatre, inspiring subsequent playwrights to delve into the intricacies of identity and societal challenges. Concurrently, Crowley's "The Boys in the Band," a historical candid portrayal of openly gay characters, leaves an indelible mark on LGBTQ representation. Kushner's play, "Angels in America," adds another layer. Inspired by George Bernard Shaw's "The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism" and Mary Baker Eddie's "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," Kushner weaves historical and intellectual threads into his narrative. Beyond individual narratives, both plays contribute substantially to the broader cultural landscape. They serve as touchstones in the evolution of LGBTQ representation, influencing subsequent works and societal attitudes towards LGBTQ rights. The article reflects on implications for contemporary drama, emphasizing the transformative power of authentic LGBTQ storytelling in challenging stereotypes and fostering understanding. As the cultural impact reverberates, the article suggests future research. This includes exploring evolving LGBTQ narratives in contemporary drama, examining intersectionality, and investigating broader sociocultural implications. The study recommends delving into emerging playwrights contributing to ongoing LGBTQ representation, ensuring a dynamic understanding of queer narratives in the dramatic arts.

Riff-Raff (1991) is analysed as a functional hinge between the British documentarymovement of the twenties, the free cinema of the fifties and the present current ofsocial films such as Trainspotting (1996), Brassed off (1996) or The Full Monty(1997). Kenneth Loach seems to have incorporated the theoretical doctrine of theBritish documentary tradition in most of his films, especially in Riff-Raff, as we cansee in his way of dealing with scripts and actors. Simultaneously he has introducedwhat we may call the humour factor, widely used in the working-class films of the1990s.

This essay offers a discussion of policy and its relationship to film culture in Britain focusing primarily on the last twenty-five years, and concentrating exclusively on England. Necessarily a foreshortened overview, it nevertheless seeks to cover the recurring, general reference points in policy analysis, such as the opposition between commerce and culture; the relationship between state and 'nation'; the wider cultural policy discourses within which film has taken its place, particularly that of the 'creative industries' model (CI), and, lastly the constraining and enabling socioeconomic contexts within which film and cultural policy acquire their complexion in specific eras. This last emphasis, on social democratic and the neoliberal contexts, is designed to keep the political and cultural issues raised by policy developments foremost and to avoid the de-politicising lure of pragmatic 'realism' or critical timidity in assessing these developments.

This essay delves into the portrayal of the "unpresentable" in contemporary performances centered around cancer, probing how such artistic endeavors defy conventional aesthetic paradigms. I anchor my analysis on the mixed-media dance piece Still/Here (Iowa 1994) by the renowned American experimental choreographer Bill T. Jones. My perspective is enriched by Jean F. Lyotard's interpretation of the Kantian sublime in postmodern art, contemporary performance theories, art criticism, and personal reflections from cancer-related performances I have experienced. I compare two performances for illustrative purposes: the British musical theater performance A Pacifist's Guide to the War on Cancer (B. Kimmings, B. Lobel, T. Parkinson, 2016) and the Greek documentary-theater performance In Spite of Everything (Georgia Mavragani and the Hellenic Cancer Society, 2018). Both draw inspiration from genuine cancer narratives and incorporate a blend of professional and amateur artists. Ultimately, my investigation seeks to trace the progression of the representation of cancer in performance.

This thesis presents the first academic analysis of key US motion picture production company Laurel Entertainment. Established in Pittsburgh by Night of the Living Dead (1968) director George A. Romero and his business partner Richard P. Rubinstein, Laurel's geographical and ideological separateness from bicoastal filmic centres was unprecedented. Yet despite being at the forefront of a number of practices that came to shape non-Hollywood production, including synergetic crossovers and diversification, Laurel has been neglected from previous investigations of the independent sector. This study traces Laurel's growth from grassroots subsidiary to publicly-owned enterprise, revealing the strategic and creative thinking that ensured survival on the margins of the industry. Here, an analysis of the firm's infrastructure employs a synthesis of ethnographic research, empirical data and business and economic theory, considering the complex array of stakeholders and changing opportunity structures that fed into and helped dictate output. Scrutiny of Laurel and its cofounders also provides new insight into the cinema of major genre filmmaker George Romero, while shedding light on the under-researched figure of the independent film producer. By looking towards the activities of the Laurel partners, this study offers a revisionist account of auteur filmmaking, cult film and independent cinema from a "real-world," practitioner-level perspective, asking how these strands intersected within the firm and mapping out the innovations, compromises and contradictions of this convergence.

not only a new translation of de Brosse's 1760 text but a 43page introduction by Daniel Leonard treating the author and his work and a 186-page afterword by Rosalind Morris following the subsequent deployments of fetishism in the work thinkers like Kant, Hegel, Freud, Marx, Lacan, Bataille, and Derrida. Scholars of the history of comparative religion, anthropology of religion, and continental philosophy of religion will find this book to be a valuable resource in elucidating a highly significant and long-debated concept.

BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license, which means that you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and you may also remix, transform, and build upon the material, as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors (but not in a way that suggests the authors or punctum books endorses you and your work), you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that for any remixing and transformation, you distribute your rebuild under the same license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/bync-sa/4.0/ Throughout The(y)ology is a consistent advocacy of "the many": many genders, many sexualities, many embodiments, many disciplines, many faces of the divine, and their expression in the poetics of queer mythmakers. This manifesto is also many in its origins, a chimeric baby born to a superfecundation of polyamory, if you consider with me that artistic collaborations, rehearsals, conversations, critiques, book readings, meals together, holiday festivities, community organizing, religious rites, and theological intercourse are manifestations of love. The(y)ology began as my Master's thesis at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities, so my first thank you goes to my readers, Dr. Demian Wheeler and Dr. Jennifer Awes Freeman. Demian takes his students' writings as seriously as the books and treatises he assigns in class, questioning, drawing connections, delighting in (and challenging) each of our arguments. More so, for every paper handed in, including every chapter of this book, Demian finishes his detailed comments with a love letter to the scholarship because he believes everyone has something to offer in the long conversation of theology. As for Jennifer, there is much to say, but if I said it all, she would deflect the praise with a crass joke and a bit of snark. From being her student in numerous classes and attending her lectures, to being a guest lecturer in her courses, or our collaborating on performances and visual art, running events, and hosting weekly Arts Lunches, there is not one moment of my time at United that was not bettered by xv

This article investigates the history of Christian patriarchy, misogyny and devaluation of the body, and the response of the feminist theological movement to this history; namely to reclaim the (female) body as sacred. It uses a metaphorical method to rediscover the goddess traditions as one of the main sources for such are-appraisal of the body as sacred. This is done because, in these ancient traditions, the female (and male) body was regarded as sacred, powerful and

Ophelia in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet (2004) is a potent discursive site whose interpretive and critical valences have been salvaged through various adaptations of this play. Through the utilization of critical insights of critics, such as Jacques Lacan (1977), Elaine Showalter (1985), and commentators like David Leverenz (2004), Bridget Gellert Lyons (1977), and Philip Armstrong (1996), the study identifies Ophelia’s schizophrenic characterization, her reminiscences of the past, and her representation through the play’s iconographic values as the negotiable features for taping into Ophelia’s multi-layered characterization. The study chooses Laurence Olivier’s adaptation (1948) as the more theatrical rendition of the play next to two more modernized and experimental adaptations done by Michael Almereyda (2000) and Kenneth Branagh (1996) to discuss its identification of these discursively potent features in Ophelia’s adapted renditions. While utilizing its main critical insights, the study would also use the interpretive readings of commentators, such as Amanda Rooks (2014), Jessica Maerz (2011) and Gulsen Teker (2006) on the cinematic and literary significance of each of the selected adaptations in the continuum of the adaptations done on Hamlet. In the study, it would be argued that although none of the adaptations could deny the patriarchal dominance over Ophelia, the more experimental ones by Branagh and especially Almereyda do manage to tap into the ambivalent points of resistance which Ophelia’s characterization could create against this dominance. These ambivalent points expose the incomplete nature of strategies which are adopted by the patriarchy in containing and othering figures such as Ophelia.

This thesis explores the relationships between science fiction, social theory and social transformation through an in-depth analysis of three feminist science fiction novels. It develops innovative reading practices that bring together narrative theories and ...

Every body contains multitudes, but no body is immune to the ideology of oneness: one true self, one sexuality, one gender, one vision of the world, one true God. For many who identify (or who have been named by others) as transgender, queer, and nonbinary, the refusal to fit within the illusion of one set of sex and gender expectations has been met with violence and suppression. While the myth of oneness is a powerful story that shapes the contours of our societies and our selves, it is not the only myth. Performances, fictions, rituals, and theologies can transform current realities. The(y)ology: Mythopoetics for Queer/Trans Liberation is a manifesto for artists, teachers, theologians, clergy, and activists looking for ways to resist rigid paradigms of gender, sexuality, self, and the sacred. In these pages, we are called to tell new stories about who we are and how we relate to each other within our ecosystems. The myths discussed wrestle with and transform the complex mytho-hist...

Introduction [1] There is an ongoing debate in the field of religion and film studies about whether or not film makes a unique contribution to our understanding of religion. Since most religion and film scholars are concerned about the representation of religion on the silver screen, only a few scholars who are interested in something more than how religion is portrayed in the movies carry out the debate about the uniqueness of film. So far, the debate has not yielded results that would move the question of the uniqueness of film to the center of religion and film studies. It seems to me, however, that the uniqueness of film deserves more attention than it has received. In this paper, I explore the debate about the uniqueness of film, identify several of the efforts to explain the uniqueness of film, and try to see if there is enough in common to influence the future of religion and film studies.

Acknowledgements Introduction Chapter One: Defining Cult Films 1.1 "I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey": What is Cult Film? 1.2 "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night": Fan based accounts of Cult 1.3 "You've arrived on a rather special night": Promoting the cult Chapter Two: "Don't Dream It, Be It": The Rocky Horror Picture Show and The Creation of Fan Communities 2.1 "Give yourself over, to absolute pleasure": The Rocky Horror Picture Show 2.2 Reflections on Rocky: "Do you think I made a mistake splitting his brain between the two of them?" 2.3 "Enchante. Well! How Nice!" The Rocky Horror Picture Show fan community 2.4 "Whatever happened to Saturday night?" Fandom in everyday life Chapter Three: Other Audiences 3.1 Opinion Leaders and Active Audiences 3.2 Public Viewing: The Multiplex 3.3 Community viewing in Public 3.4 Public Viewing: The Art house 3.5 Film Festivals and Audiences 3.6 'Home is where the moving image is': Home cinema viewing 3.7 New Media, Interactivity and Spectatorship Chapter Four: Research Strategy 4.1 Towards filling the gap 4.2 Introducing … Australian cult film groups 4.3 The Research Process 4.4 Inside or Outside: The Position of the Researcher Chapter Five: "Beyond All Reason": Organisers of Cult Events 5.1 "A good many dramatic situations begin with screaming": Beginnings of cult screenings 5.2 "We accept her. One of us! One of us! Australian film as cult 5.3 "We return to Transylvania. Prepare the transit beam": The Place of Space 5.4 "I think perhaps you better both … come inside": Nostalgia and Access 5.5 "Due to the horrifying nature of this film, no one will be admitted to the theatre": Gatekeeping and Cult Fandom 5 5.6 Cult Film as a Shared Experience Chapter Six: Alternative Spaces: Audiences, Cult Viewing and Heterotopias 6.1 The Cult Audience in Australia 6.2 Ritual or Routine? Reasons for attending screenings 6.3 The Nexus of Public and Private Spaces 6.4 Other Spaces: Cult Viewing and Heterotopias Chapter Seven: Cult, Community and Nostalgia 7.1 Cult film and Nostalgia 7.2 Defining Community 7.3 Moving Community research forward Conclusion: Where Cult Meets Community Works Cited Appendices I would firstly like to thank my trio of supervisors-Brian Yecies, Sue Turnbull and Nicola Evans for being the 'Best Directors'. To Brian, for your long-term commitment to, and interest in my project, your support, 'tough love' when needed, and patience. To Sue, for your 'special guest appearance' in the final act as my wonderful second primary supervisor, who untangled the years of writing and gave me hope that finishing was possible. I truly appreciate your clarity and superior taste in footwear! And to Nicola for your cameo role in the final stages, as an insightful reader, and for providing much needed moral support. Thank you all so much! I must acknowledge all of the cult film organisers, audience members and participants who generously shared their time and insights. Special thanks to the core audience members in the Annandale group, and to the organisers of the Annandale screenings, Jay Katz and Miss Death, who shared so much of your knowledge during this journey-your screenings were both an escape, and a reminder of my passion for the topic. Thank you for allowing me access to your community, of which I am honoured to be a part. To my core support team, the Best Supporting Cast I could ask for-my Mum, Dad and Aaron, for your support and for never nagging me about being a 'professional student'; my fantastic friends Mish, Ryan, Jo, Leo, Eliza, Henry, Jeff, Ximena and Jackie, for listening to complaints, and offering distraction and hugs in equal measure; and to Brendan, for keeping me caffeinated. Finally, to two of the best leading men I know-my husband Andrew, for being my long suffering partner in crime, your unwavering support, never resenting the time spent on the project and for always being up for repeat viewings and cult movie madness! Finally, to my brother Glenn, for introducing me to the best coffee in Melbourne, and always asking about my studies when you were in the fight of your life. I promised to finish my thesis-this is for you.

Comics are an innovative way to translate health knowledge and research to service providers and communities. A theoretical framework intertwining poststructuralism and queer theory was used to explore the experiences of queer artists in the creation and production of body image comic anthology entitled Rainbow Reflections: Body Image Comics for Queer Men. The aim was to examine the beliefs of the artists about the potentiality of comics to address body image concerns for queer men. Body image concerns may create negative health experiences, isolation, loneliness, and sexual intimacy concerns. Nineteen self-identifying queer artists participated in the study. Discourse analysis revealed five threads of discourse that bring understanding on how comics can improve body image, and the health and well-being of both the artists through the act of creation and the reader through the act of consumption. Theses threads of discourse include: 1) Creating a unique language, 2) Revealing and healing themselves, 3) Exploring cultural influences, 4) Expanding spaces for queer men and their bodies, and 5) Connecting men. The findings reveal that comics can create knowledge and stimulate discussions about body image and has the potential to positively influence the health of queer men.

The aim of this project has been to explore the possibility of applying Phenomenology and Classical Indian Theories to cinema with the hope that their systematic application would generate new insights in a deeper understanding of cinema. This need has been felt in the context of the existing film discourse having reached a stage of stagnation, even a “crisis”, in recent times. The reason for this moribund state of contemporary film discourse has been analyzed in my thesis as due to the failure of the existing film theories to incorporate film audiences‟ ordinary experiences of cinema, viz. the romance, the thrills, and the emotions which motivate them to come to the cinema halls all over the world. The film theories have failed to acknowledge the importance of this phenomenon which is built on the audiences‟ embodied experiences of the world and their socio-cultural practices that have grown on top of them which together form, at the very basic level, what constitutes the audiences...

This work proposes a (re)reading of the stage play The Boys in the Band, written by American playwright Mart Crowley in 1967, focused on the first staging of the play one year later. The theoretical framework for this analysis is based on cultural studies and, in particular, queer studies. This analysis of the play regards it as a valuable historical and cultural narrative, especially for the LGBTQIA+ people, and highlights the contemporary character of a range of affections and temporalities. I challenge the “gay corpse” image
commonly taken from a line in the play and metonymically amplified as an emblem of the entire work. I conclude with a reflection on how political, ideological, and historical aspects of the play – especially with regard to issues of representation raised by the development of the Gay Movement, marked by the Stonewall Riots in 1969 – influenced critical readings of
the play and its adaptations over the years.

Conservative religious ideology is a key contributor to the ongoing violence of LGBTIQ2S+ exclusion and discrimination in Canada. This qualitative arts-based research project foregrounds the life experiences of 2 queer individuals from conservative Hindu (Manchari (Ari) Paranthahan) and conservative Christian (Jonathan Brower) upbringings to activate a conversation about the possibilities and limitations of queer religious agency and futurity. Using critical narrative inquiry and theatre creation, Paranthahan and Brower collaged their narratives about gendered, sexual, racial, and religious attachment and exclusion into a script and then publicly performed it as a live full-length play. The script and performance, titled That Power, are included within the thesis as findings. Key theoretical influences framing the discussion are the responsibility of witnessing testimony (Oliver, 2001), depathologizing trauma (Cvetkovich, 2003; Rothberg, 2014), the potentialities of queer performance utopias (Muñoz, 2009; Pryor, 2017), and feminist anti-racist solidarity (Mohanty, 2003). The analysis is guided by questions regarding how performance mobilizes queer trauma through relationality; the ways stories can galvanize an intersecting analysis about race, gender, and faith; and how a theatre creation model enriches the possibilities for queer futurity. The discussion positions That Power as a cultural product that helps reconstitute subjectivity for its creators while also becoming a mode of embodied collective resistance by performatively working through trauma and reframing queer relationality and feminist solidarity. 1 This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Dedications This is not one man's effort; though my name appears first, I walk alongside giants who I owe so much. This thesis would have been impossible without the love and support of many. First to my ancestors, whose survival and love brought me into existence and continue to offer me new ways forward. To Ari, my immense gratitude and learning with and from you is woven through this work (more on that in the introduction). To mon grand chou Kyall, it is no secret that your love and affection is the magic that restores and rejuvenates me, that has brought me back to life, that ushers me into our future. To my supervisor, Dr. Margot Francis, in the face of many obstacles and while providing mentorship to many, your time with me has always felt like a priority and a gift-almost as if I was your only student. Your care, delicate guidance, constant belief, and trust in my capacities has brought me back time and again to strive to finish this thesis. Thanks for keeping me honest, just, and in pursuit of the generative. To my supervisory committee: Dr. Susan Spearey and Dr. Brenda Anderson, I am so grateful for the behind-the-scenes support. Your excitement for this work, your help in the final stages, and all the unseen contributions are invaluable. And Sue, thank you for giving me the lens and language to recalibrate how I think about my work. To my external examiner, Beau Coleman, MFA, your theatrical enthusiasm for the work during my defense was a dream. To Colin Anthes, thank you for your devising workshop. To the Department of Dramatic Arts, thank you for the rehearsal/performance spaces provided. iv To my immediate, in-law, extended, and chosen family: thank you for being steadfast and enthusiastically supporting this period in my life. To my Niagara family, thank you for marking each milestone with wine and camaraderie. To my SJES cohort, your compassion and drive for a just equitable world taught me how to see the seemingly invisible. To my past (Jonathan ages 0 to 34) and to my future, thank you for desiring growth, compassion, and betterment. Thank you for not giving up. This is for you. This is for me. I will carry all of you with me always. Land Acknowledgment As a settler on this land, I want to acknowledge the Turtle Island territories on which this thesis was written, and the workshop of That Power performed. While researching, co-creating, and performing That Power, and writing the first half of this thesis, I was an uninvited guest on the ancestral lands governed by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Anishinaabe Nation (known as St. Catharines, Ontario). I finalized this thesis as an uninvited guest on the unceded ancestral lands of the Coast Salish Lekwungen-speaking peoples, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations (known as Victoria, British Columbia). I thank these peoples for their hospitality as I live, work, and play on these territories and I choose to live as a guest who respects the hospitality shown to me and choose the path of mutual respect that leads to all persons co-existing side-by-side, in agreement. I have much to learn about how acknowledgment can be an integration of "intentions, states of being, and actions in your own bones and blood and breath" (Ravensbergen, 2019, p. 30). This work and learning towards living in an active state of acknowledgment as a permanent uninvited guest and settler on these lands will continue past this thesis. v

The myth of the Androgyne is appropriated in John Cameron Mitchell's movie adaptation of his eponymous off-Broadway musical play titled Hedwig and the Angry Inch. This is a cinematic feat as the filmmaker foregrounds the main topic in the theme itself in a lowbrow approach clashing with its two main canonical sources: the Christian myth of Biblical creation and Plato's mythological account in The Symposium. The transgender protagonist, Hedwig, is a human divide looking to be symbolically made whole, which she eventually manages to do through her art as rock musician. Thus, Plato's myth of creation finds its natural artistic correlate in glam rock. Musical art is here equated with creation, and the androgynous artist Hedwig, endowed with both female and male psychic principles represents the core of the artistic duality. Hedwig and the Angry Inch is not only an opus about creation in general, but a movie about the myth of the author and his/her intrinsic nature. Keywords: Androgyne-Creation myths-Plato's Symposium-Rock music-Glam rock-Hedwig and the Angry Inch.

Born in Lódź just a year before the outbreak of WWII, Jerzy Skolimowski is a true Renaissance man: a filmmaker, playwright, scriptwriter, painter, actor, poet, and even an amateur boxer. He is believed to be one of the most interesting voices of not only Polish but also European cinema. His films made in the 60s, such as Rysopis (Identification Marks: None), Walkower (Walkover), and Bariera (Barrier), immediately established him as a valid member of the New Wave movement. Skolimowski's first important achievements, however, were his contributions to two scripts: he collaborated on the script of Innocent Sorcerers (1960) for Andrzej Wajda and co-authored Roman Pola ski's international hit Knife in the Water (1961). At the time of his collaboration with Polanski, he was preparing for his entry exams to Łódź National Film School. Hamleś (Little Hamlet), a 9-minute black and white film from 1959/1960, was his first short film project completed under the premises of the school. The film was made in 1959/1960, three years after the October Revolution which initiated the so-called "Gomułka's thaw" - viewed as a time of change with loosening relationships between Poland and the

Political theater reveals the problematic issues of a society to make its audience stand up for their suppressed rights and to compel the States to make political and social reforms. Although the American politicians claim to have established justice, equality and morality, the marginal minorities have lost their identity in the American society as a result of the discrimination imposed by the government and the mainstream. This Article aims at depicting the dark reality and the real position of marginal minorities in the American society as well as the solution of this issue suggested by Tony Kushner in his play Angels in America . This study was conducted under the light of Levinasian ethical principles and his concepts of the other and face to face encounter. Having scrutinized Angels in America , it was found that marginalizing the minorities causes them not to participate in social movements and also to hide their real identity. Also the result of this study showed that solidar...

There's always been a difficulty with the rhetoric of AIDS. You're trying to find positive things in a holocaust like this, so you say, 'Well, it has taught people certain things and it's made us a different kind of community,' and it actually has forged alliances between the lesbian community and the gay community that didn't exist. Those are good things, but still, wouldn't we all much rather never have had it.-Tony Kushner, qtd. in Vorlicky 201 Scare Tactics to Care Tactics AIDS, the most dreaded epidemic in the final decades of the 20 th century, has become an afterthought in the 21 st. The seemingly miraculous preventive drug Truvada is only the most recent of incredible medical advances; increased awareness and behavioral changes have also helped to transform a previous plague into an innocuous news item. Nevertheless, HIV remains incurable and still afflicts1.2 million Americans, and almost thirty-seven million people worldwide (CDC). Popular media has contributed to this transition; AIDS appears less and less frequently in the news, in television, in film. The animated series South Park used a running pun on ‚AIDS‛ and ‚aides‛ in the 2002 episode, ‚Jared Has Aides,‛ in which AIDS is touted as a weight-loss strategy and, in the end, is declared funny because a sufficient (and arbitrary) amount of time had passed: ‚22.3 years. That's how long it takes for something tragic to become funny‛ (Parker). 1 Perhaps in response to trivializations such as these, Louise Hogarth created a short documentary with the telling title, Does Anyone Die of AIDS Anymore?; in 2003 she completed a longer film, The Gift, which details the horrifying practice of ‚bugchasing,‛ or engaging in risky behavior to deliberately catch HIV. Both films The Apollonian 2.3 (December 2015) 85 suggest the danger of our current societal attitude; while the disease is still a killer, it is rarely presented as such, thus encouraging complacency rather than activism. The queer theater community, struck particularly hard by the disease, was once at the forefront of AIDS representations, galvanizing the populace to combat an encroaching epidemic. As Steven Winn described earlier plays in the San Francisco Chronicle, ‚It was in the live theater, more than anywhere else in the arts, that AIDS found its most penetrating voice. The forms and immediacy of the medium; the centuries-old potency of agit-prop; the almost sacramental power of live actors enacting stories of death, defiance and endurance all preordained it‛ (201). This, too, has changed, in our contemporary era. A 2004 Village Voice article describes the recent trend in AIDS plays, citing Biro, The Long Christmas Ride Home, and Small Tragedy, as plays in which ‚when AIDS appears, it's just another bombshell-a thematic layer that alerts the audience to something profound‛ (Goldstein). When, then, did the theater community begin to move from a strong activist position to one of peaceful coexistence between man and disease? In this article I examine three queer AIDS plays of the 1990s indicative of the transition from demonizing the virus to demonizing excessive anxiety over its proliferation. As Tony Kushner's epigraph here implies, this change likely stems from an understandable desire to mitigate some of the harsh stereotypes of AIDS victims by creating ‚a kind of community‛ and ‚forg*ing+ alliances‛ (Vorlicky 201). In Angels in America, Jeffrey, and Rent, this sense of community appears so important as to outweigh concerns for safe sex practices; indeed, it is consistently the uninfected who appear outcast and alone. Decades after these plays, what are we to make of their impact? Fear, once a galvanizing force for prevention, becomes the thing to fear itself; safe sex practices become denials of connection and intimacy; the HIV-negative suffer from survivor guilt and exclusion for this sense of community. As the AIDS crisis continues, our response to it-in the media and in art-may well impact out attempts at prevention and an actual cure. Looking Back: How Did We Get Here? Immediately following the first official announcement of the retrovirus by the Center for Disease Control in 1981, AIDS appeared a gradually encroaching intruder, and the theater of the time portrayed it as an emerging and increasingly horrifying menace. Much has been written about Larry Kramer's 1985 The Normal Heart, now revived into an HBO original movie, which contrasts enraged activism and timid passivity. William Finn's less well-known Falsettos, a two-part musical premiering in

There's always been a difficulty with the rhetoric of AIDS. You're trying to find positive things in a holocaust like this, so you say, 'Well, it has taught people certain things and it's made us a different kind of community,' and it actually has forged alliances between the lesbian community and the gay community that didn't exist. Those are good things, but still, wouldn't we all much rather never have had it.-Tony Kushner, qtd. in Vorlicky 201 Scare Tactics to Care Tactics AIDS, the most dreaded epidemic in the final decades of the 20 th century, has become an afterthought in the 21 st. The seemingly miraculous preventive drug Truvada is only the most recent of incredible medical advances; increased awareness and behavioral changes have also helped to transform a previous plague into an innocuous news item. Nevertheless, HIV remains incurable and still afflicts1.2 million Americans, and almost thirty-seven million people worldwide (CDC). Popular media has contributed to this transition; AIDS appears less and less frequently in the news, in television, in film. The animated series South Park used a running pun on ‚AIDS‛ and ‚aides‛ in the 2002 episode, ‚Jared Has Aides,‛ in which AIDS is touted as a weight-loss strategy and, in the end, is declared funny because a sufficient (and arbitrary) amount of time had passed: ‚22.3 years. That's how long it takes for something tragic to become funny‛ (Parker). 1 Perhaps in response to trivializations such as these, Louise Hogarth created a short documentary with the telling title, Does Anyone Die of AIDS Anymore?; in 2003 she completed a longer film, The Gift, which details the horrifying practice of ‚bugchasing,‛ or engaging in risky behavior to deliberately catch HIV. Both films The Apollonian 2.3 (December 2015) 85 suggest the danger of our current societal attitude; while the disease is still a killer, it is rarely presented as such, thus encouraging complacency rather than activism. The queer theater community, struck particularly hard by the disease, was once at the forefront of AIDS representations, galvanizing the populace to combat an encroaching epidemic. As Steven Winn described earlier plays in the San Francisco Chronicle, ‚It was in the live theater, more than anywhere else in the arts, that AIDS found its most penetrating voice. The forms and immediacy of the medium; the centuries-old potency of agit-prop; the almost sacramental power of live actors enacting stories of death, defiance and endurance all preordained it‛ (201). This, too, has changed, in our contemporary era. A 2004 Village Voice article describes the recent trend in AIDS plays, citing Biro, The Long Christmas Ride Home, and Small Tragedy, as plays in which ‚when AIDS appears, it's just another bombshell-a thematic layer that alerts the audience to something profound‛ (Goldstein). When, then, did the theater community begin to move from a strong activist position to one of peaceful coexistence between man and disease? In this article I examine three queer AIDS plays of the 1990s indicative of the transition from demonizing the virus to demonizing excessive anxiety over its proliferation. As Tony Kushner's epigraph here implies, this change likely stems from an understandable desire to mitigate some of the harsh stereotypes of AIDS victims by creating ‚a kind of community‛ and ‚forg*ing+ alliances‛ (Vorlicky 201). In Angels in America, Jeffrey, and Rent, this sense of community appears so important as to outweigh concerns for safe sex practices; indeed, it is consistently the uninfected who appear outcast and alone. Decades after these plays, what are we to make of their impact? Fear, once a galvanizing force for prevention, becomes the thing to fear itself; safe sex practices become denials of connection and intimacy; the HIV-negative suffer from survivor guilt and exclusion for this sense of community. As the AIDS crisis continues, our response to it-in the media and in art-may well impact out attempts at prevention and an actual cure. Looking Back: How Did We Get Here? Immediately following the first official announcement of the retrovirus by the Center for Disease Control in 1981, AIDS appeared a gradually encroaching intruder, and the theater of the time portrayed it as an emerging and increasingly horrifying menace. Much has been written about Larry Kramer's 1985 The Normal Heart, now revived into an HBO original movie, which contrasts enraged activism and timid passivity. William Finn's less well-known Falsettos, a two-part musical premiering in

The Queering of Family Values in Angels in America "There are no gods here, no ghosts and spirits in America, there are no angels in America, no spiritual past, no racial past, there's only the political, and the decoys and the ploys to maneuver around the inescapable battle of politics" (Millennium Approaches, Act III, Scene 2

The Boys in the Band," a play by American playwright Mart Crowley (1935-2020), represents a milestone in the representation of urban gay men in theater. By exploring on stage the lives of a group of male gay friends in the late 1960s, Crowley challenged social and dramaturgical norms and conventions. As an integral part of the narrative, New York City, specifically Manhattan Island, makes itself present in the text through direct and indirect references, whether on the level of plot, character construction, or the setting of the play itself. As a paradigmatic play in a moment of special prominence of the Gay Movement in the United States, soon after its premiere in 1968 and before the release of its first film adaptation, "The Boys in the Band" came to be seen differently by critics and activists under the influence of a historical event that also occurred in Manhattan, the Stonewall Riots. This article explores the various instances in which the play, especially in its first Off-Broadway staging, represents not only a gay New York City, but also how this same place made possible the existence of this story and these characters.

Studies have shown that children share both positive and dark spiritual experiences. The former dominates the literature but whilst the need to address the dark side of spirituality has been raised it has not, as yet, been dealt with as widely as the more positive aspects (de Souza 2012). This paper draws on an empirical study with 44 children aged 8-11 who were interviewed in school after visiting a sacred space. Three key themes arising from their conversations are covered in this paper: divine encounter; physical feelings and fear. It is argued that the most appropriate way of understanding these phenomena is to draw on different fields and disciplines, notably although not exclusively theology, psychoanalysis, psychology and neuroscience are considered. The paper concludes that it is important to recognise both the light and dark and the blurred boundaries between them, in addition to different ways of perceiving them, in order to understand the whole child.

The Boys in the Band," a play by American playwright Mart Crowley (1935-2020), represents a milestone in the representation of urban gay men in theater. By exploring on stage the lives of a group of male gay friends in the late 1960s, Crowley challenged social and dramaturgical norms and conventions. As an integral part of the narrative, New York City, specifically Manhattan Island, makes itself present in the text through direct and indirect references, whether on the level of plot, character construction, or the setting of the play itself. As a paradigmatic play in a moment of special prominence of the Gay Movement in the United States, soon after its premiere in 1968 and before the release of its first film adaptation, "The Boys in the Band" came to be seen differently by critics and activists under the influence of a historical event that also occurred in Manhattan, the Stonewall Riots. This article explores the various instances in which the play, especially in its first Off-Broadway staging, represents not only a gay New York City, but also how this same place made possible the existence of this story and these characters.

This article suggests that reading John Cameron Mitchell’s musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch as a religious classic undermines the logic of complementarity within Catholic theological anthropology, particularly the Theology of the Body of John Paul II. A religious classic, a term coined by theologian David Tracy, describes a work with an “excess of meaning” that offers hope and resistance against a normative social structure. Hedwig resists the hegemonic structure of sexual dimorphism, as represented by the logic of complementarity operative within the Theology of the Body. This theological anthropology proposes a normative framework for human beings as gendered and sexual agents who “complete” each other through heterosexual and monogamous marital acts, reinforcing heterosexist and transphobic bodily norms. The work of Judith Butler helps illuminate the embodied performance of gender that the musical so brilliantly subverts. Hedwig, while toying with gender norms, also undermines t...

A constant in the history of film since its inception, William Shakespeare's <em>Hamlet, Prince of Denmark</em> has been delivered to filmgoers throughout the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries in various adaptation schemata of the three versions of the text available for free interpretation and reprocessing. While Laurence Olivier's, Franco Zeffirelli's and Kenneth Branagh's acclaimed 'multimodal rewritings' seem to have acquired critical consensus, tens of other <em>Hamlet</em> films are launched regularly, placing the young Dane's tragedy in the most unexpected settings or periods of time. A telling example is Gregory Doran's 2009 filmed theatrical performance, which places Elsinore in a modern-day British society under constant surveillance, probably with a view to transposing the old Elizabethan habits of espionage and control of the population in a manner both accessible and relatable to the contemporary viewer. Thi...

Robert A. Heinlein, "a handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future, events based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method". Rod Serling's definition is "fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science fiction is the improbable made possible. Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who comes to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians. The novel explores his interaction with and eventual transformation of terrestrial culture .In 2012, the U S Library of Congress named it one of 88 "Books that Shaped America". The title "Stranger in a Strange Land" is an allusion to the phrase in Exodus 2:22. The novel is set in the backdrop of newer technologies, space exploration, psychology liberal ideologies and physical freedom. It presents a critique often an ironic view of the Heinlein's contemporary society. It explored the nature and limits of the religious institutions especially of the Fosterites.

Conservative religious ideology is a key contributor to the ongoing violence of LGBTIQ2S+ exclusion and discrimination in Canada. This qualitative arts-based research project foregrounds the life experiences of 2 queer individuals from conservative Hindu (Manchari (Ari) Paranthahan) and conservative Christian (Jonathan Brower) upbringings to activate a conversation about the possibilities and limitations of queer religious agency and futurity. Using critical narrative inquiry and theatre creation, Paranthahan and Brower collaged their narratives about gendered, sexual, racial, and religious attachment and exclusion into a script and then publicly performed it as a live full-length play. The script and performance, titled That Power, are included within the thesis as findings. Key theoretical influences framing the discussion are the responsibility of witnessing testimony , depathologizing trauma , the potentialities of queer performance utopias , and feminist anti-racist solidarity . The analysis is guided by questions regarding how performance mobilizes queer trauma through relationality; the ways stories can galvanize an intersecting analysis about race, gender, and faith; and how a theatre creation model enriches the possibilities for queer futurity. The discussion positions That Power as a cultural product that helps reconstitute subjectivity for its creators while also becoming a mode of embodied collective resistance by performatively working through trauma and reframing queer relationality and feminist solidarity. 1 To my immediate, in-law, extended, and chosen family: thank you for being steadfast and enthusiastically supporting this period in my life. To my Niagara family, thank you for marking each milestone with wine and camaraderie. To my SJES cohort, your compassion and drive for a just equitable world taught me how to see the seemingly invisible. To my past (Jonathan ages 0 to 34) and to my future, thank you for desiring growth, compassion, and betterment. Thank you for not giving up. This is for you. This is for me. I will carry all of you with me always. As a settler on this land, I want to acknowledge the Turtle Island territories on which this thesis was written, and the workshop of That Power performed. While researching, co-creating, and performing That Power, and writing the first half of this thesis, I was an uninvited guest on the ancestral lands governed by the Dish With One Spoon Wampum between the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Anishinaabe Nation (known as St. Catharines, Ontario). I finalized this thesis as an uninvited guest on the unceded ancestral lands of the Coast Salish Lekwungen-speaking peoples, now known as the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations (known as Victoria, British Columbia). I thank these peoples for their hospitality as I live, work, and play on these territories and I choose to live as a guest who respects the hospitality shown to me and choose the path of mutual respect that leads to all persons co-existing side-by-side, in agreement. I have much to learn about how acknowledgment can be an integration of "intentions, states of being, and actions in your own bones and blood and breath" (Ravensbergen, 2019, p. 30). This work and learning towards living in an active state of acknowledgment as a permanent uninvited guest and settler on these lands will continue past this thesis. v

In the following chapter the discussion focuses on Shakespeare films which produce metacinematic effects by editing process, trick photography, lighting, the positioning and presence of the camera, bare scenery, and the themes they signal, such as film as a form of cult of memory, the medium's obsession with death and violence, and the viewer's complicity in creating and participating in the "spectacles of death." Through such disintegrated texture and disintegrated bodies these films bring into light the idea of "absence" that cinema depends on. Rather than facilitate identification, their association with "death" on many different levels self-reflexively locates these movies in the tradition of the Kingdom of Shadows. 4.1 "Inexplicable dumb shows": the origins of cinema as necropolis Cinema was the product of the era of inventions that radically transformed the social scene. Together with the phonograph, electric light, rapid transit, masscirculation newspapers, and advertising it marked the beginning of modern life itself. 258 Initially, it was regarded as science, magic, experimentation, or a toy, hardly ever considered an art. It was primarily a product of an era of scientific discoveries and its founders were technical minds and inventors of the 19 th century. The prehistory of cinema, as Gerald Mast points out, lay in the hands of inventors, not artists. 259 Its origins and affinities are manifold, photography being one of them. Indeed, films heralded as motion pictures are a combination of a number of shots/photographs which, when projected at a certain speed, create the impression of movementthe optical phenomenon known as persistence of vision. If there is anything that literally "moves" in the motion pictures, it is only the filmstrip running through the projector. The movie projector projects a quick succession of photographs whereas simultaneously it destroys the inherent differences between the distinct photographic images that the camera has recorded. Merging them into an apparently continuous image, it annihilates the interspace between the frames. 260 Cinema is founded on absence in order to create a sensation of presence and movement. Thus, it may bear more similarities with the photographic image than is evident at first sight. Therefore, in order to examine the tradition of cinema as the Kingdom of Shadows, we should first of all look at the history of photography.

Thanks needed to be expressed to a number of people over the last three years – and I apologise if I forget anyone here. First of all, thank you to Rayna Denison and Keith Johnston for agreeing to oversee this research – which required reining in my enthusiasm as much as attempting to tease it out of me and turn it into coherent writing. Thanks to Mark Jancovich, who helped me get started with the PhD at UEA. A big thank you also to Andrew Kirkham and Adam Torel for doing what they do at 4Digital Asia, Third Window, and their other ventures – if they did not do it, this thesis would not exist. Also, a big thank you to my numerous other friends and family – whose support was invaluable, despite the distance between most of them and Norwich. And finally, the biggest thank you of all goes to Christina, for constantly being there with her support and encouragement.

This thesis explores how British social realist films are framed in relation to the past, with a significant focus on the work of Shane Meadows. In this explorative study, the choice to use nostalgia to interrogate the British social realism is motivated by the contemporary cultural trend of the nostalgic mode. Fredric Jameson has suggested that ‘everything in our culture suggests that we have not ceased to be preoccupied with history’ (1992: 282). Jameson’s sentiments can be seen through countless reflections of the past through many forms of media and countless film genres, including that of the social realist style and Meadows’ work. Using the research methodologies of thematic and close analysis through a selection of social realist films, this thesis examines, not only why and how social realist filmmakers, including Meadows have framed their films in relation to moments of history or past styles, but observes said past and filmmaking in terms of what Melanie Williams states as...

The opening of Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight conjoins the iconic landscape of the Western, Christianity’s chief symbol the crucifix, and Tarantino’s oeuvre. The film gives the crucifix so much screen time that one wonders what its significance might be. That the film climaxes with the lynching of Daisy Domergue renders the crucifix teasingly parabolic. The opening-closing frame parallels the two hangings, as do the various eulogies associated with the lynching. That Daisy’s lynching takes place at the hands of the film’s two surviving characters—who, like the horses that lead the stagecoach team delivering Daisy to her fate, are black and white—seems to suggest that this crucifix raises some questions about U.S. racial violence. The crucifix is certainly atypical for cinema in that it does not hallow or bring triumph. Instead, this dangling crucifix (or aesthetics and ethics arising from it and the Western) may contribute to, rather than ameliorate, U.S. racial violence. At ...