2022/1 - #Rumors
Recent Submissions
- ArticleEditorial NECSUSNECSUS Editorial Board (2022) , S. 1-3
- ArticleAgainst the tyranny of the fact: Autofabulation as a queer strategy of resistanceLoiseau, Benoît (2022) , S. 111-127Queerness has always had a particularly vexed relationship to evidence. Because the latter has historically served to discipline the former, José Esteban Muñoz suggests that anecdotes can become queer acts of resistance against the ‘potential tyranny of the fact’. Drawing on this argument, this article examines the ways in which American artist, filmmaker, and AIDS activist Gregg Bordowitz uses autofabulation to destabilise evidential discourses in his performance practice. Specifically, it looks at ‘Some Styles of Masculinity’ (2017-ongoing), a series of anecdotal monologues in which Bordowitz reflects on the formation of his identity as a queer Jewish man living with HIV.
- ArticleTruth and truths-to-come: Investigating viral rumors in ‘Q: Into the Storm’Pastel, Renée; Dalebout, Michael (2022) , S. 128-149This article interrogates how Q: Into the Storm (HBO, 2021) pursues the conspiratorial thinking of QAnon adherents in two ways: first, as an investigative docuseries into the world of rumors, mapping the phenomenon for a wider audience, and second, as filmmaker Cullen Hoback’s entrance into QAnon as an alternative reality game (ARG), interacting with the sociotechnical network underpinning it. Both modes train viewers to anticipate truths-to-come, key to enjoying both media forms. Taking rumor-tellers seriously, Hoback intervenes in QAnon’s effects while indulging viewers’ prurient interest in the conspiratorial logic the series characterises as socially harmful. Considered in light of Bernard Stiegler’s concerns about the contemporary industrialisation of consciousness, the series fails as a consciousness-raising endeavor. We view Storm ambivalently as both an effective usurpation of such thinking and a reinstantiation of it.
- Article‘I’m not a racist . . . but’: Conservative media and the plasticities of color-blind racismKrzych, Scott (2022) , S. 150-168This essay examines the role of color-blind racism and rumors in contemporary political media, especially as racial rumors circulate in right-wing political discourse and on the conservative cable news network Fox News. Analysing a variety of examples in which rumors proliferate and contribute to the policing of communities of color, the article surveys Catherine Malabou’s deconstruction of self-sovereignty, treating Malabou’s work as a useful theoretical supplement to relevant critiques of systemic racism as developed by scholars working in Black studies and critical race theory. Ultimately, the article argues that the emphasis on representation alone in media studies is inadequate to the study of race, rumor, and political media.
- ArticleAnonymous, QAnon, Tik-tok teens, K-pop fansCho, Michelle (2022) , S. 169-193This essay examines online rumors concerning K-pop fans’ transitioning group affinity from one of media fandom to one of progressive political organising against white supremacy and police brutality in the US context. Rather than aiming to confirm or debunk these rumors, I instead argue that they are worthy of attention in their own right, as a window into the importance of social media rumor as ‘improvised public opinion’ in today’s media environments. I assert that one particular set of rumors – comparing K-pop fans and Anonymous – promotes timely reflection on anonymity’s affordances for the politics of fandom and processes of knowledge production in transnational media ecosystems. Doing so, I argue, confirms anonymity’s importance toward building solidarity, while also revealing the key epistemological function of rumor on Twitter.
- ArticleVintage furniture: The significance of the casting couch as industry gossip and rumorFortmueller, Kate (2022) , S. 18-40Hollywood gossip circulates through both formal publications and informal interpersonal networks. In this article, I argue that both types of gossip and rumor are essential for understanding Hollywood’s business inefficiencies. Focusing primarily on the role of informal gossip, I explore its importance for aspirant networking and, as #MeToo reporting revealed, as a warning mechanism for women who must navigate the predatory men of Hollywood. Tracing the history of casting couch lore as a particular genre of gossip, I show how informal gossip can empower women working in Hollywood yet also retrench gendered hierarchies.
- Article#Rumors: A Roundtable Discussion with Mladen Dolar, Richard Dyer, Alexandra Juhasz, Tavia Nyong’o, Marc Siegel, and Patricia TurnerBaer, Nicholas W.; Hennefeld, Maggie (2022) , S. 194-210Unverified beliefs and truth-claims have been topics of enduring fascination for scholars of media and culture, gaining renewed urgency with the viral spread of fake news via social media and the bitter attacks on scientific knowledge amid the Covid pandemic and climate crisis. In this roundtable discussion, we gather six distinguished thinkers to help us understand rumors, gossip, and the broader allure and danger of unsubstantiated information. With their wide-ranging expertise, our six panelists address the ramifications of rumors and gossip for queer underground cinema, political allegory, star and celebrity cultures, AIDS and Covid media activism, racialised belief systems, and the status of truth and logos in our time.
- ArticleUncanny sounds and the politics of wonder in Christian Petzold’s ‘Undine’Nguyen, Mai; Greenhill, Pauline (2022) , S. 211-230We examine uses of sound in German director Christian Petzold’s Undine (2020), based on the story of a water sprite who marries a human and acquires a soul. We employ the concepts of ‘acousmatic sound’ and ‘the acousmêtre’ to suggest that the film’s uncanny soundscape invites a mode of listening that challenges and transforms habitual perception. While Undine largely adheres to cinematic realism, its sound design evokes intrusion by the preternatural and fantastical. By auditory allusions to the mysterious and uncanny, Undine asserts the significance of fairy tales and storytelling for perceiving and understanding reality and for imagining alternatives.
- ArticleInhabited stories: An enactive media archaeology of virtual reality storytellingGatti, Giuseppe (2022) , S. 231-257What makes a story designed for (and experienced via) real or imaginary VR systems so different from other stories and storyworlds? Through an enactivist perspective on media archaeology, I will address the issue by discussing the notion of virtual reality storytelling (VRS) as the art of crafting ‘inhabited stories’ and a discursive frame where VR narrativity has been articulated. In fact, narratives of and for VR identify a recurring discourse, or ‘topos’, that circulated from medium to medium during Western media history. After discussing theoretical notions such as that of ‘virtual reality’, ‘storyworld’, and ‘presence’, I will address the historical and cognitive relationship between VR space design and narrative of environmental storytelling by exploring different examples from peep media tradition, gaming, and VR cinema. Second, I will propose a media archaeology of ‘human enhancement’, a recursive topos in real and imaginary VR and haptic technologies. In doing so, I will highlight some recurring narrative strategies at the basis of VRS: the illusion of non-narration, i.e. the ability to direct the story-making activity of the virtual user without his/her awareness; the craftsmanship of paths of ‘attentional matching’ made of haptic responses and spatialised stories; and the design of new senses which can disclose enhanced processes of world- and story-making.
- ArticleThe filmmaker as Instagram auteur: A case study on Claire DenisMurphy, Cáit (2022) , S. 258-284In this article I propose further inclusion of auteurs’ Instagram profiles within contemporary auteurism. Examining selected auteur profiles, I trace aesthetic and commercial tendencies. I compare the forms of film and Instagram, connecting this to Lev Manovich’s research and Timothy Corrigan’s ‘commerce of auteurism’. Instagram’s individualism extends Alexandre Astruc’s caméra-stylo theory. My case study is Claire Denis’ profile. I argue that her posts share aspects with her filmic ‘corpus’, like fragmentation and transience. Her profile has thus far expressed an anti-promotional stance, a distinctive design aesthetic, and the highly autobiographical part of her ‘work’ is indicative of Instagram’s authorial potential for filmmakers.
- ArticleScreen decorum: Silent Hollywood and neoclassical concepts of actingGalili, Doron (2022) , S. 285-301This article revisits the debates around the notion of ‘classical Hollywood cinema’ in order to call attention to how various traits of neoclassical aesthetics characterised discourses on film acting in American cinema of the silent era. Drawing on a host of film acting manuals, how-to guidebooks, magazine advice columns, and interviews with actors from the 1910s and 1920s, the article demonstrates that besides film’s indebtedness to melodrama, pantomime, and other contemporary theatrical practices, variants of neoclassical aesthetic ideas came to play an important role in informing how silent-era Hollywood reflected on ideal forms of screen acting. By placing the early discussions on silent film acting in the context of the American renewed interest in the classics during the early twentieth century, the article makes a case for the importance of classical ideas in Hollywood cinema, alongside – and indeed often in conflict with – the prominent demand for realism.
- ArticleSound and the audiovisual essay, part 2: The theory, history, and practice of film sound and music in videographic criticismGreene, Liz (2022) , S. 302-303
- ArticleSyncedBinotto, Johannes (2022) , S. 304-308
- ArticleThe Place of the Pop Song in Academic Audiovisual Film and Television CriticismGarwood, Ian (2022) , S. 309-314
- ArticleLe Plaisir: Voices and viewpointsGibbs, John; Pye, Douglas (2022) , S. 315-318
- ArticleIrresistible instrumentalism: Materially thinking through music-making in the story worlds of silent filmsGrant, Catherine (2022) , S. 319-328
- ArticleThe Gravity of the Acousmêtre: Listening via the radio and through paratext in filmGreene, Liz (2022) , S. 329-335
- ReviewMirror, mirror on the wall: AKS International Minorities Festival Pakistan 2021Chadha, Siddart (2022) , S. 336-343
- ReviewFilm festivals and market intelligence: From audience surveys to data analytics?Smits, Roderik (2022) , S. 344-350
- ReviewRIDM 2021: Act local, think globalPignato, Justine (2022) , S. 351-359