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Metadata only Item type: Item , Desiring Domestic Workers in "The Maid" and "The Desert Bride"(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Osborne, ElizabethThis article analyzes the representation of feminine desires in two Southern Conefilms, The Maid (La nana, Sebastián Silva, Chile, 2009) and The Desert Bride (La novia del desierto, Valeria Pivato and Cecilia Atán, Argentina/Chile, 2017), that feature female protagonists who have worked as live-in domestic employees for the same families for over twenty years. Both films eschew traditional depictions of domestic workers as either servile or aggressive to instead present these women as desiring and desirable subjects, thereby questioning how desire and desirability are determined by dominant social norms of femininity predicated on privileges of age, class, and race. Following Rosi Braidotti’s work on nomadism, the article examines desire, as depicted in these films, as a fluid notion that emphasizes transformation and the process of becoming. Ultimately the desires that the protagonists experience in horizontal, affective relationships lead them to embrace newfound independence outside of employment.Metadata only Item type: Item , Foreshadowing the Future of Capitalism: Surveillance Technology and Digital Realism in Xu Bing’s Dragonfly Eyes(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Zhang, LingHow has the development of surveillance technology and its normalized intervention into our social structures and daily lives impact our imagination of the future? Does the “total view” of the intense yet impassive gaze of surveillance cameras, combined with the mediated intimacy of social media videos, foreshadow deeper social alienation or the fulfillment of individual desire? In order to address such questions, I take the Chinese artist Xu Bing and his team’s film Dragonfly Eyes (Qingting zhi yan, 2017) and its surrounding media culture as a case study to demonstrate how surveillance footage and various modes of cinematic ontology, digital realism, and temporality work in a contemporary socio-political-medial context. Composed by Xu and a group of collaborators, Dragonfly Eyes is the only existing feature-length fiction film constructed completely from surveillance footage. As a highly reflexive film, Dragonfly epitomizes and embodies the precarious potentials of the digital future of capitalism, both invigorating and bleak, expressive and corrupt.Metadata only Item type: Item , Loving the AI: Captivity and Ownership in Unbalanced Dystopian Relationships(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Schober, Ida MarieOut of the abundance of recent science fiction works, there is an inherent connection between the films Blade Runner 2049 (Denis Villeneuve, 2017), Her (Spike Jonze, 2013), and Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014). They all have female non-human characters in the lead roles, who have to endure spatial restrictions. All three films star lonely men who find their emotional and romantic needs fulfilled in a relationship with these female AI, which they purchased and had programmed especially for them. This aspect of ownership points to an imbalanced power dynamic from the start of the relationship. I will explore why this has become a trend in late capitalist, dystopian, and science fiction genres, drawing parallels to current discussions about the abhorrent treatment many women endure and pointing to the over-sexualization of women in the media as a distributing factor to such treatment. I will utilize a variety of theories including the works of Laura Mulvey, Judith Butler, and Donna Haraway.Metadata only Item type: Item , Blaming the Poor: The False Allure of the Capitalist Critique in the Age of Postmodernism(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Walderzak, JosephThis article considers The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan, 2012) in order to argue through Fredric Jameson that postmodern aspects of a text are capable of obfuscating, if not altogether obliterating, any Marxist polemics. The first portion engages with Jameson’s The Political Unconscious, particularly his emphasis on class struggle and identification of ideologemes which manifest in the text. The subsequent section considers The Dark Knight Rises as a postmodern text through Jameson’s concepts of pastiche and nostalgia. Moreover, The Dark Knight Rises is contextualizedwithin the recent spate of class-oriented cinema. Collectively, the goal is to identify a trend within such films of establishing a correlation between capitalism and inequality, ideologemes and postmodernism. The final result is an increasingly impressive group of genre-spanning films which address contemporary inequality in its multifarious forms, but which treat these issues more so as narrative devices than tenable critiques of the sites of oppression.Metadata only Item type: Item , Oter, Jorge and Santos Zunzunegui. eds. 2019. Ensayos de poética. Miradas sobre el contacto entre el cine y la poesía.(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Bethencourt Reyes, HimarMetadata only Item type: Item , Schefer, Jean-Louis. 2016. The Ordinary Man of Cinema.(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Erkan, EkinMetadata only Item type: Item , Female Desire in Film : Theories, Methods, Case Studies(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Bou, Núria; Pérez, XavierMetadata only Item type: Item , When Woman Teams Up with Monster : A Metafictional Discourse on Female Desire(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Antón Sánchez, LauraHow has the relationship between women and monsters influenced the cultural construction of femininity? In contemporary Hollywood audiovisuals, where selfawareness of the story takes on a special importance, particular emphasis is given to the examination of the way in which one of the most memorable horror movie scenes is presented: the one in which the woman meets the monster. The classic scream of horror has been replaced by a thrilling empathic relationship, plausible thanks to its imaginary link with the idea of otherness. This rapprochement, marked by language, has developed in tandem with a process of the humanization of the monster and its influence on the archetype of the hero, which has attracted greater attention inthe construction of the history of cinema. The main question posed by this narrative strategy, in which female empowerment derives from an alliance with the monster, is how this updated scene has contributed to the cultural reconstruction of the female identity. We aim to assess the influence of this metafictional discourse, triggered by the rhetorical device of parody, on shaping a true image of women.Metadata only Item type: Item , Perez, Gilberto. 2019. "The Eloquent Screen: A Rhetoric of Film"(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Tedesco-Barlocco, BrunellaMetadata only Item type: Item , Solomon, Stefan. ed. 2017. "Tropicália and Beyond: Dialogues in Brazilian Film History"(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Philippi, Anna-SophieMetadata only Item type: Item , Historia de una habitación : El lenguaje del deseo en el cine de Chantal Akerman(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Vilaró Moncasí, ArnauEl cine de Chantal Akerman aborda una de las cuestiones capitales en la representación del deseo femenino: la discusión en torno a los mecanismos de un lenguaje que, según Laura Mulvey, proviene de una mirada masculina fundada en la escopofilia, el voyerismo o el fetichismo. El siguiente texto parte de La cautiva (Lacaptive, 2000) y del deseo entre ambos protagonistas, Ariane y Simon, para retomar el vínculo que la teoría feminista trazó entre lenguaje, mirada y deseo. La hipótesis del artículo es que la reclusión de la protagonista akermaniana, mediante un doble gesto de sumisión y de intimidad, propone un acercamiento al deseo femenino alternativo a las formas de mirar asociadas a la tradición de la representación masculina. Este acercamiento mantiene un estrecho diálogo con la concepción del deseo de Emmanuel Levinas, cuyo pensamiento tuvo una gran influencia para Akerman al plantear cómo filmar al otro, así como la relación entre la imagen y su observador.Metadata only Item type: Item , When Your Motherboard Replaces the Pearly Gates: Black Mirror and the Technology of Today and Tomorrow(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Peters, Rebecca AnneThis paper considers five episodes from Charlie Brooker’s dystopian science fiction anthology series, Black Mirror (2011–present). The episodes selected are those that—as argued in this text—depict the role of technology as replacing that of religion. To build this claim, they will be compared to one another, to the Christian biblical concepts they mirror, and to historical events related to theological debates within Christianity.Throughout the history of Western civilization, Christian belief has played an important role in shaping cultural ideologies. For that reason, it could be argued that Christian ideas continue to penetrate our cultural narratives today, despite declining self-recognition in the West as religious or spiritual. Concepts of the afterlife, omniscience, vengeance, ostracism and eternal suffering spring up in some of the least expectedplaces within popular culture today. This paper argues that Black Mirror depicts the materialization of these concepts through imagined worlds, thus signaling the modern-day specters of Christianity.Metadata only Item type: Item , Towards a ‘Perverse’ Brechtianism : From Sirk’s "All That Heaven Allows" to Verhoeven’s "Elle"(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Harris, JonathanIn 1990, Thomas Elsaesser wrote that Brechtian aesthetics are toothless in a hyperreal image culture. Thirty years on, this essay reworks the notion of distanciation by asking: what if we cannot decide whether the unnatural behavior of characters on screen is the product of Brechtian alienation or of the character’s own perversion, but rather is caused by both (and therefore neither)? To chart the transition between orthodox and “perverse” Brechtianisms, this essay compares a film by a director whose melodramas are often read as examples of Brechtian cinema, Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955), and a film by a contemporary director whose work is often misread as the very thing it satirizes, Paul Verhoeven’s Elle (2016). This essay argues that, in the absence of a world “out there” to represent, the techniques of Brecht become perverse, a Sadean laboratory for the rehearsal of illicit forms of pleasure.Metadata only Item type: Item , Imagining the Techno-Capitalist Society in Television and Film(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Ungureanu, Camil; Arribas, Sonia; Peters, Rebecca AnneMetadata only Item type: Item , Feminine Desire in Claudia Llosa’s "The Milk of Sorrow" and Shirin Neshat’s "Women Without Men" in Dialogue with Irigaray’s Philosophy of the Caress(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Rifeser, JudithAn exploration of feminine desire through the lens of Luce Irigaray’s caress is afforded here through the feminist film-philosophical analysis of Claudia Llosa’s The Milk of Sorrow (La teta asustada, 2009) and Women Without Men (Zanan-e Bedun-e Mardan, 2009), by Shirin Neshat. Drawing on key scholarship (Watkins 2000; Bainbridge 2008; Bolton [2011] 2015; Quinlivan [2012] 2014), this article offers a novel contribution through its emphasis on the Irigarayan caress. Despite important limitations and silences in Irigaray’s work (Rifeser 2020; Ingram 2008; Bloodsworth-Lugo 2007; Deutscher 2003; Jones, 1981), here the usefulness of Irigaray’s caress is discussed. An exploration of the narrative, formal and aesthetic strategies of Llosa’s and Neshat’s feature films attune the viewer to the embodied, lived experiences of the main women characters, sothat we can envision the Irigarayan caress and the lived experience of feminine desire as woman with oneself, as well as the desire for the other.Metadata only Item type: Item , Hacia el umbral : Erotismo y abyección en el cine de brujas(Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2020) Rugiero Bader, AgustínEl presente es un estudio sobre cómo el poder masculino ha conceptualizado a la bruja desde el “Norte Global” como imagen de la alteridad femenina, informado por los trabajos de Julia Kristeva, Teresa de Lauretis, Hélène Cixous y Barbara Creed. A través de ellos se señala como la bruja desea activamente y utiliza el poder de este deseo para arrastrar al sujeto masculino hacia el “lugar en que el significado colapsa” (Agamben 2007). El estudio se apoya en un análisis previo de los conceptos de brujería, perversión y abyección para, una vez establecido el núcleo conceptual, dividir la muestra en tres tipologías cinematográficas: la bruja en sociedad, la bruja en vías de socialización y la bruja como perversa resistencia. La premisa es que la bruja, como figura femenina e intrínsecamente relacionada con la sexualidad, transita los umbrales del erotismo y la perversión y alberga el poder de desafiar las estructuras binarias desde dentro.