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This study of British director Andrea Arnold and her award-winning films addresses auteur theory and its implications for woman filmmakers. I argue that the important difference between men and women in assuming the director's chair has been opportunity – and not a matter of essentialized gender differences. Pivoting to readings of Arnold's films, the analysis addresses the stylistic signatures and thematic motifs that characterize her feature films: Red Road (2006), Fish Tank (2009), Wuthering Heights (2011), American Honey (2016) and the short films Milk (1998) and Wasp (2003). I will discuss the implications of Arnold's film style vis-à-vis gender and the discourse on what constitutes social realist film in the U.K. As for thematic motifs, Arnold's films return to voyeurism, primal scenes and nature's persistence in seemingly denatured environments. The analysis further examines identities (marked by age, class and gender) as motifs that circulate through Arnold's work; a concern with identity that, nonetheless, refuses sentimentality and essentialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation introduces a concept that bookends Herman and Chomsky's seminal theorization of flak. While both Kevlar and flak are deployed on contentious grounds, flak goes on the attack against ideological opponents whereas discursive Kevlar assumes a posture of defense. Kevlar is also distinct from media management strategies that coopt news media and create a Teflon coating around an administration. A case study of National Review's coverage of the first Trump impeachment maps out Kevlar tendencies. The investigation analyzes the array of Trump-affirming defenses that National Review marshaled during the impeachment. Despite its rarefied reputation, National Review's discourses were saturated with punditry that refused considered analysis; exceptions to the rule of Kevlar on behalf of Trump are also discussed. National Review's Kevlar campaign included pervasive attempts to delegitimize the Democratic Party, beginning with vagueness that glossed over the proximal cause of impeachment: Trump's extortive shakedown of Ukraine's government over congressionally-certified funds in an effort to seed news narratives favorable to Trump's 2020 campaign. National Review constructed further Kevlar defenses through "whataboutism" toward Democrats while the publication's misgivings about Trump were tempered by "confirming criticisms." One implication is that Trump's illiberal political project has been immeasurably assisted by elite ("tree-tops") rightwing platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Españoles en el mundo ('Spaniards in the world') is a long-standing programme of Spain's television channel TVE1 ('La 1') that constructs contemporary Spanish identity in the registers of nationalism and cosmopolitanism as well as socio-economic class. The programme assumes the form of soft-focus journalism that is upbeat and apolitical. Episodes revolve around presenters visiting Spaniards who have settled in other countries to document their everyday lives. The analysis focuses on twelve episodes and presents evidence of a nationalist message of efficacious Spaniards fanning out into the world and prospering, personally and professionally, as their talents enable them to successfully integrate themselves as travellers abroad ('all the world has enjoyed Spaniards', one informant claims). At the same time, within the programme's gaze, nationalism is synergized by cosmopolitanism. The programme affirms (and even banalizes) cultural cosmopolitanism as Españoles en el mundo engages respectfully with other cultures – aside from some Orientalist moments discussed in the analysis. Whatever the merits of Españoles en el mundo in its openness to cultural cosmopolitanism and its affirmations of Spain's post-Franco generations' stepped-up engagement with other nations, the programme is also silent on the implications of the informants' predominantly professional, middle-class status as the ticket into the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The signature Scottish film Trainspotting (1996) and its continuation T2: Trainspotting (2017) vibrate with symptoms of the United Kingdom's post-1970s neoliberal economic program. Trainspotting channels neoliberal Thatcherite subjectivity in the relative eclipse of class consciousness and the ensemble of characters' concerns with (licit and illicit) consumption—albeit, with contradictory elements that implicate the film's highly stylized evocation of poverty and marginality. Twenty years later, in T2: Trainspotting, Edinburgh is constructed as transformed by neoliberalism's convulsions that also drive intensified globalization, manifested by the Bulgarian immigrant (quasi- femme fatale Veronika) and the film's tourism motif. T2 presents the ravages of the neoliberal regime on the ensemble of now middle-aged men (but not "phallically sufficient") men while also cross-examining the dead-end of Brexit populism. In its closing, T2 retreats from critique into traditionalism in answer to what troubles the U.K., 40 years after the launch of neoliberalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In analyzing the distinction between flak and scandal, this investigation focuses on the discourse around Solyndra in 2011-2012 on two media platforms. Solyndra was a solar panel firmthatwent bankrupt after receiving American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ('The Stimulus') funds. The analysis shows that National Review--a rightwing journal of opinion that increasingly operates as an online platform--unswervingly utilized the Solyndra bankruptcy as an instrument of political combat. Following flak lines rehearsed by Republicans in congressional hearings, National Review narrated Solyndra as scandalous evidence of the Obama administration's putative ineptitude and/or criminality that, moreover, discredited the efficacy of green energy. The performance of the mainstream newspaper The Washington Post presented a grab-bag mix as its objective methods insinuated flak packaged as scandal into stories when they followed Republican talking points. At the same time, The Washington Post's discourse noted that no evidence of administration corruption was discovered despite extensive investigation and that government intervention into the economy is often highly beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Flak may be concisely defined as political harassment and is detrimental to community for its strained ethical posture, cynicism and corrosive impact on social and political bonds of trust. Following conceptualization of flak that differentiates it from scandal and activism, this investigation focuses on Project Veritas as its case study. Veritas is a right-wing flak mill that, using media, has set out to professionally damage people and organizations across almost a decade. The investigation telescopes in on two Veritas stunts that provoked reviews by the justice systems of California and Texas. In these cases, the California Attorney General and Texas special prosecutors delivered astringent criticisms of Verita's covertly-recorded "sting" videos, while largely or wholly exonerating their flak targets (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now [ACORN], Battleground Texas). Along with conceptualizing and critiquing flak, the investigation concludes with a call for news that extends beyond fact-checking and the limited, complacent techniques of objectivity in favor of more ambitious pursuit of truth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation draws on tropes of movement derived from Bauman to analyze recent “road movies” from prolific British director Michael Winterbottom, whose work is often characterized as confrontational toward the political and cinematic status quo. In addressing movement, the analysis also addresses the films’ contrasting postures toward globalization, where salient. Following a quick case study of Everyday (2012) that calls upon tropes of the tourist, traveler, and vagabond, In This World (2002) is interpreted as a quasi-fictional portrait of marginalized vagabonds that reveals the hard edges of an exclusionary global regime—as well as contradictions within that regime. By contrast, Genova (2008) is structured around privileged subjects’ extended travel experience as they partake of globalization’s benign opportunities for therapeutic discovery. Finally The Trip (2010) and The Trip to Italy (2014) stage tourism in largely affirmative, consumerist terms that reproduce male and class privilege, in a retreat toward conventionality in the filmmaker’s work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary Spanish horror auteur Jaume Balagueró's films are animated by thematic motifs that surround traditionally marginal 'Others.' This study focuses on Balagueró's more recent works, which include three films in the [·REC] series and Mientras Duermes. Specifically, this study reads Balagueró's film symptomatically, drawing on auteur theory and the horror genre as well as its relation to Spain. The psychoanalytically inflected concept of the Monster teases out the films' sociopolitical symptoms that surround traditionally marginalized people (immigrants, women, children). The 'archaic mother' and 'final girl' further flesh out the sociopolitical meanings around Balagueró's conjuring of zombies and viruses. The analysis also encompasses Balagueró's relation to the 'found footage' horror sub-genre and his male characters' lack of 'phallic sufficiency.' While Balagueró's work can be interpreted as tacitly right-wing (despite channeling strong doubts about male authority), the films present one moment within a larger sociopolitical national discourse. That is, Balagueró's films do not perform a simple 'mirror' function - even as they are deeply embedded in Spain today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Design by Ikea, Sara Kristoffersson (2014) London: Bloomsbury, 148 pp., ISBN: 9780857858146, p/bk, £19.98 The Black Irish Onscreen: Representing Black and Mixedrace Identities on Irish Film and Television, Zelie Asava (2013) Bern: Peter Lang, 213 pp., ISBN: 3034308396, p/bk, £36.00 The Cinema of Michael Winterbottom: Borders, Intimacy, Terror, Bruce Bennett (2014) 1st ed., London: Wallflower Press, 232 pp., ISBN: 9780231167376, p/bk, £18.50; ISBN: 9780231167369, h/bk, £33.50 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the argument that the very act of reporting shapes the raw material of news, this investigation examines “Us” and “Them” dichotomization as it is routinely insinuated into news narratives. Specifically, this investigation analyzes 215 articles from the “hard news” and commentary sections of the International Herald Tribune (IHT), the globally circulating, hard-copy emissary of The New York Times. Us/Them dichotomization pervasively structures news narratives in IHT with the United States cast as “Us” and the rest of the world largely constructed as “Them”. Whereas We are orderly, harmonious, and steeped in democratic mystique in IHT's news narratives, They are characterized by constant struggles for unity and all shades of illiberalism (e.g., Statism, corruption, mayhem). These constructions mutually reinforce each other when they appear side by side on newsprint, day after day. Particular emphases in the analysis concern coverage of China, Russia, the coup in Egypt, the “world historic” gravitas of Barack H. Obama, and the aftermath of Edward Snowden's whistle-blowing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Roald Dahl and Philosophy: A Little Nonsense Now and Then, Jacob M. Held (ed.) (2014) 1st ed., Plymouth: Rowman & Littlefield, 243 pp., ISBN: 9781442222526, p/bk, £11.95 Contemporary Romanian Cinema: The History of an Unexpected Miracle, Dominique Nasta (2013) 1st ed., London: Wallflower Press, 256 pp. ISBN: 9780231167451, p/bk, £18.00; ISBN: 9780231167444, h/bk, £55.00 From Communism to Capitalism: Nation and State in Romanian Cultural Production, Florentina C. Andreescu (2013) 1st ed., New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 200 pp., ISBN: 9781137276919, h/bk, £62.50 Sport and Film, Seán Crosson (2013) Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, ISBN: 9780415569927, h/bk; ISBN: 9780415569934, p/bk, £78.40/£22.87 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This discussion of Romanian director Cristian Mungiu's internationally circulated 'popular highbrow' films - 4 luni, 3 saptamâni si 2 zile/Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days (2007); and Dupa dealuri/Beyond the Hills (2012) - is grounded in the auteur theory. In particular, the analysis telescopes in on the thematic motif of surveillance that animates the two films. At the same time, on a Foucauldian view, the motif plays out in distinct forms in each cinematic text. In Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days, surveillance in the late Ceaus¸escu-era is depicted as gaining expression through the internalized discipline of the monadic subject. In contrast, in the contemporaneous Beyond the Hills, surveillance implicates the practices of the pure community convened in distinction to an exiled other. Psychoanalytic concepts (primal crime, return of the repressed) are also summoned to tease out the social tensions in the films. Mungiu's work vigorously cross-­examines the official mythologies of national harmony; in other words, Mungiu may be construed as engaging with what Mike Wayne calls 'anti-national national cinema'. However laudable the practice of socially conscious critical film is, auto-problematization of 'peripheral' nations may also bring reproduction of marginalization in its train when the films circulate internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation analyzes Mission Impossible-text and context-during its popular and creative zenith (1967-1969). The series channels fantasies of equality achieved (on race) and a chimerical posture toward traditionalism on gender via a female protagonist who oscillates between femme fatale and femme attrapée. Where nationality is concerned, it constructs the North American 'Us' as volunteer citizen/spies within a de-centered liberal order. Nonetheless, the U.S. citizen/spies actively reinforce the status quo (capitalism, male authority, and U.S. interventionism). By contrast, the series problematizes 'Their' ostensibly illiberal identity in episodes set abroad by positing other societies as rigidly top-down. In its version of 'Red Scares,' Mission: Impossible also enacts strategic vagueness about what finally constitutes 'Us' aside from superiority over 'Them.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hedy Lamarr. The Most Beautiful Woman in Film, Ruth Barton (2010) Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 281 pp., ISBN 978-0-8131-2604-3, h/bk, $ 29.95 Destination Dictatorship, Justin cumbaugh (2009) Albany: State University of New York Press, 173 pp., ISBN: 978-1-4384-2665-5 (hbk) ($US70.00), 978-1-4384-2666-2 (pbk), $US23.95 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Celebration/Festen (Thomas Vinterberg, 1998, Denmark) was the first film to have been certified under the rigours of the Dogme95 Vow of Chastity (von Trier and Vinterberg, 1995). It is also notable as a political film that presents a rebellion against an abusive patriarchal regime on the microcosmic bourgeoisie estate during the titular birthday celebration. In fashioning a comprehensive treatment of The Celebration's text and its context, I open with an account of ideology that is indebted to the materialist emphases of Louis Althusser (1994) and Terry Eagleton (1991). Next, I briefly address the trajectory of Denmark's national film history out of which Dogme and The Celebration emerge. With respect to Dogme, I cross-examine assumptions about realism by positing it as irreducibly a style and artistic strategy (Stam 2000); in turn, I shift the accent from the quest for realism to whether The Celebration meets the looser standard of being surface-plausible. In detail, I discuss the film's style as it deviates from realism via shadings of foreshadowing and extensive cross-cutting. Finally, I interpret the film as a progressive (but not humourless) myth of ‘bottom-up’ revolt against abusive authority and the ideologies that nourish it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the restoration of its Republic in the late 1970s, Spain has made enormous strides in liberalizing its domestic society and in moving prominently onto the world stage. The essay addresses the contours of contemporary Spain via two recent films: Te doy mis ojos/Take my eyes (Icíar Bollaín 2003) and Hable con ella/Talk to her (Pedro Almodóvar 2002). The two films differ markedly with respect to their artistic strategies and may be broadly construed as relatively realistic ( Te doy mis ojos) versus relatively formalistic ( Hable con ella). The strategy of realism in Te doy mis ojos organizes its depiction of domestic violence and a woman's gradual shift from tense complicity with to assertion against it; realism that is, in turn, paradoxically achieved by a carefully measured script that features, for example, foreshadowing and parallel scenes. By contrast, the more formalist Hable con ella approaches tropes of femininity and masculinity more playfully and challenges traditional dichotomies, most notably in its stress on male masochism. Both films herald Spain as a nation that has long ‘punched above its weight’ in the arts and that is currently confronting the traditional Iberian machista. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation examines ¡Qué me dices! (What are you telling me!), an entry in Spain's prensa rosa (‘pink press’) ensemble. The celebrity- and female aesthetics-oriented magazine presents as staunchly apolitical as it resolutely ignores contemporary issues (e.g. the economy, immigration). However, I posit that ¡Qué me dices! channels a distinct political posture. The publication affirms celebrity as a form of meritocracy enacted to market specifications that bestows popularity on figures that resonate with mass audiences. ¡Qué me dices! is, nonetheless, silent on the production of celebrity via the media apparatuses of which it is a part. Where ideology and gender are concerned, ¡Qué me dices! is traditionalist in exhorting women to surveil their appearances and to make interventions with an eye toward attracting men; intensifying consumption to eradicate presumed personal defects is emphasised at the exclusion of other projects. Surveillance of celebrity also eases readers' participation in the ‘new’ information-based economy with its emphasis on obtaining customer details. Thus, a publication that refuses formal politics teems with political implications, particularly for women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation orients to sociological propaganda (Ellul, 1965) and its implications in a new media environment. In particular, the investigation concerns seven reader-composed threads from the online version of the left-wing US publication, The Nation. The seven threads encompassed 931 posted comments in which posters clashed over contemporary US politics. I posit that the threads' discourse reproduces sociological propaganda; specifically, the "American Way of Life" as channelled through a technological substrate that is assumed to be an enabler of vigorous democratic discourse. Alongside sociological propaganda, I unpack the ideology that is manifested in the topoi and uses of evidence that posters present (van Dijk, nd). Despite often heated confrontations between posters of the left and right, consensus was often part of the threads' endgame in which the "American Way of Life" was affirmed laterally between citizens. This conclusion is also born out by the ensemble of posters' dismissiveness toward a conspiracy poster who is not as easily squared with the prevailing sociological propaganda. On the basis of this sample, I conclude with an evaluation of new media's potential and limitations with respect to enhanced democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines director Michael Winterbottom's film Code 46 within a tradition of social-political interpretation of film. Code 46 fits uneasily within the science-fiction genre as it is set in a near future of global integration and environmental catastrophe. The ferociously classist social order is governed by a panoptic corporation, The Sphinx, that also regulates gene-environment interactions. The author argues that Winterbottom's film engages with a cross-examination of the widely circulating "Narrative of Progress" as it intersects with globalization. In particular, the narrative and mise-en-scène presents some of the enabling and -- with greater emphasis the dystopic features implicit within liberalism that are channeled through capitalism with its concomitant class striation. Code 46 also engages with the Oedipal narrative that informs the critical gaze that film directs at the future/present and its implications for gender and the internalization of bureaucratic authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay conducts an ideological analysis of George F. Will's editorials published between July 1, 2002 and July 8, 2004. Will is a prestigious, high-profile, and decorated commentator within the US media landscape. Across the 196 editorials examined here, his discourse moves squarely within a right-wing meta-ideology that strongly conditions his judgments (about, e.g., Usonians and Europeans, Republicans and Democrats, the invasion of Iraq). Following in the tradition of Teun A. van Dijk's scholarship, the paper demonstrates that Will's editorializing relies heavily on “Populism”, “Us/Them” dichotomies, and “National Self-Glorification” in channeling the right-wing meta-ideology. In his editorial construction of reality, and of the players within it, Will conveys his version of the meta-ideology with its particular accents (e.g., an Otherizing “Them” posture toward Europe). In doing so, Will re-circulates and re-affirms the right-wing meta-ideology and endows it with prestige and the patina of “common sense”—even as it moves athwart of facts on the ground. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I present an analysis of Steven Soderbergh's The Limey that is informed by auteurism and an effort to unpack the film's antinomies. Although it was not as high profile as subsequent Soderbergh films. The Limey presents an interesting entry in the director's corpus for its stylistic signature and its "liberal" politics; a political posture that, nonetheless, only extends so far in entertaining a critical discourse about the society that produced it. I begin the Investigation by filling in the background. First, I unpack the newer formulations of auteur theory and emphasize themes, stylistic signature, and social determinations in constituting auteurs. Second, I characterize the independent sector of U.S. film production and its relation to the major studios while positioning Soderbergh as a chimerical case between an independent and a studio director. Thereafter, 1 orient to the film and its place within Soderbergh's corpus. I analyze Soderbergh's striking and acclaimed stylistic signature (notably with respect to editing). Proceeding to the themes embedded in the film, I examine some of the antinomies in The Limey and their political valence. In particular, I discuss The Limey's class antinomies, its presentation of the United Kingdom in contrast with that of its former colony, the US and the tropes of femininity that circulate within the film. On the view developed here. Soderbergh's The Limey entertains some fundamental criticisms of the United States, class striation, masculinity and femininity, before making a partial and uneven retreat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, I examine more than 560 articles in The Guardian (UK) and The New York Times from 2002 to 2003 in order to characterize the coverage of Spain in the two prestigious English-language newspapers. I argue that along with being more extensive, The Guardian's coverage of Spain is generally more attentive to the textures of Spanish life. Nonetheless, The Guardian also exhibits a form of Orientalism (Said, 1979) in its at times Otherizing constructions of stasis and crypto-authoritarianism in Spain. The New York Times, by contrast, often exaggerates similarity between Spain and the United States. I use the concepts of ‘personalization,’ ‘authority­disorder,’ and ‘fragmentation’ (Bennett, 2001) that frequently structure the narratives of US journalism in order to illuminate the Times' coverage. Personalization is evident particularly in the Times' coverage of the then Spanish President José María Aznar. Massive popular peace advocacy during the spring of 2003 in Spain was also understated by the Times as it was parsed into fragmentary coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the contentious post-election discourse that followed the balloting in the 7 November 2000 US presidential election. More specifically, I discuss the post-election coverage in two news media: the venerable Washington Post and the upstart internet daily Salon.com. In developing a comparison between the two, I characterize media-state relations in the US and, second, tease out differences between "old" and "new" media. With these explanatory frameworks in place, I compare the two media with respect to the degree of formality that they present in their coverage of the post-election, the extent to which they do or do not adopt "vox pop" and "insiderly" storylines, and their respective critiques of media as media. The article then directly addresses the content of each publication's coverage of the post-election. I argue that, along with channeling some of the "legitimate controversies" that circulated around the post-election, Salon exceeded the Post in developing an explanatory framework in the aftermath of 7 November. Alongside some op-ed words of circumscribed criticism, the Post closed ranks and garnished the Supreme Court's favorable decision for George W. Bush with legitimacy. By contrast, several of Salon's op-ed pieces addressed their critique to a multidimensional right-wing effort to dictate the political weather with strict construction of the constitution as its final instrument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the first three films directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. One of the rising auteurs in the U.S. film industry, Anderson's films have generated passionate and mostly favorable responses from audiences and critics. In their narratives and visual style, Anderson's films are striking for their sympathetic portrayals of marginal figures and their audacious use of the film medium to tell stories. In examining the ideology that is inscribed within the three films, I will argue that they strain against the core ideologies of the market and patriarchal family. Although the strain is considerable, the films affirm the ideology of the patriarchal family in part by transposing it to the surrogate family. Similarly, the films present relations of dominance and submission within market relations; nonetheless, slippage occurs and market relations are recuperated as the optimal steering mechanism for society. In this manner, Anderson's films demonstrate how far a liberal critique may extend before closing ideological ruptures that it has opened. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This investigation presents an analysis of 650 articles published in the New York Times from 1996 to 1998 concerning the US-backed UN sanctions regime against Iraq. After a brief survey of media-state relations in the US, and background on Iraq before and after the advent of sanctions, I argue that the Times adhered closely to US government claims in crafting its news narratives. Although more than one million Iraqis have died preventable deaths as a result of the sanctions regime, the Times 's reporters and editorialists largely ignored the sanctions' part in the disaster and its civilian impact. Rather, the Times hewed closely to the US government's emphasis on alleged Iraqi defiance of the UN and the attendant narrative of monocausal Iraqi blame for the consequences of the sanctions. Moreover, the Times personalized US policy toward the nation of Iraq as a confrontation with one Iraqi, Saddam Hussein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines several articles in `The New York Times' newspaper from January 1 through November 18, 1993 that concern the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Description of the campaign to legitimize NAFTA; Discussion on the paper's treatment of the opposition; Implications of the NAFTA discourse for journalism and democracy.

Presents several approaches in analyzing the 1986 independent film of Alex Cox entitled `Sid & Nancy.' Tension between illusion and allusion featured in the aestheticized interpretation of the title figures of the film; Criticism of the punk era and the representations of Cox; Class-oriented politics of punks.