Category Archives: Content

2019, 2019 Essays, Essays

Triforce of the gods: a sacred realm of new media

by Barrett Burgin

This essay explores the ways that the “Legend of Zelda” series has purposefully capitalized on religion. The essay demonstrates how the series accessed religion, how religion developed organically within it, and how the series centered around it, and the implications this has for religion and ritual surrounding new media. The suggestion is made that religion has actually played a vital role in the success of the series, providing both a familiar sense of cultural structure, as well as a valid religious experience. 

Continue reading Triforce of the gods: a sacred realm of new media →
2019, 2019 Essays, Essays

Space and place in visages villages

An Eco-critical Perspective of Building Communities via the Face of the Other

by Samuel Moynihan

This essay employs the work of Lawrence Buell, Marc Augé,and Emmanuel Levinas to examine Agnes Varda’s Visages Villageswithin an eco-critical context. The text shows that Visages Villagesand its makers work to create communities by transforming the liminal spaces, from symptomatic to modernity , into places that are connected with the people who inhabit them. This connection is facilitated by street art that amounts to an encounter with the “face of the other” described by Levinas. 

READ MORE
2018, Essays, Essays

Movement in “Paprika” and Baudry’s Apparatus Theory

by Kaily Goodro

Jean-Louis Baudry’s apparatus theory suggests that movie viewers experience an immobility that makes watching a film akin to dreaming. Spectators are unable to freely move, unable to affect what they see, and unable to differentiate between self and other as well as the ideologies of a film and their own thoughts. Theorists like Noël Carroll criticize Baudry’s concept, claiming that viewers maintain at least limited movement while watching a film and, therefore, retain ideological autonomy. Director Satoshi Kon’s Paprika (2006) can be used to explore Baudry’s idea of whether or not a spectator blindly accepts the subliminal ideologies of a film through the way three of its characters experience motion.

Continue reading Movement in “Paprika” and Baudry’s Apparatus Theory →

2018, Essays, Essays

Mulholland Thanatos: Noir Theories of Identity in the Work of David Lynch

by Brendan Lund

Thanks to the dream scene which occupies most of the running time of the film, Mulholland Drive, directed by David Lynch, can be read as representing the internal conscious and unconscious states of its protagonist.  In this paper, I will argue that Mulholland Drive characterizes its protagonist using two mirrors of identity, the Jungian way in which she perceives herself in the dream (as opposed to how she really is) and the projection of Rita (an amnesiac stranger in need) that she subconsciously invents in order to try to fill her empty identity with the love of another.

Continue reading Mulholland Thanatos: Noir Theories of Identity in the Work of David Lynch →