B for BAD Cinema - Plenary Speakers

Adrian Martin (Monash University)

My Bad (Part One) – The Risible, or: On With the Adventure!

Critics, theorists, reviewers and moviegoers are always dismissing certain films as silly, implausible, risible… sometimes, these days, with the twist that risible is no longer bad, but fun (and therefore good). In my time as a writer on film, I have often rebelled – compelled as much by a sensibility that reaches far into my film-watching childhood, as of a present-day, rationalised, intellectual conviction – against the very bad assumption that underlies all damnation or celebration of the risible: that there is a norm (implicit or explicit) which defines good cinema, the well-made film, the solidly crafted script, plausible narrative, three-dimensional characterisation, subtle acting, an appropriate musical score, telling dialogue, etc, etc. In particular, such a norm (usually recycled without any argument or reflection whatsoever) shortchanges the entire international history of B cinema, from the best-known names like Samuel Fuller, José Mojica Marins and Edgar G. Ulmer all the way through to the least-known gems. And, intriguingly, it leaves us just as unable to appreciate many works of experimental and/or art cinema. In this presentation (part of a larger project titled My Bad), I want to tackle some aspects of what is deemed risible in contemporary cinema, with particular reference (illustrated with clips) to some explosive films by the French writer-director Jean-Claude Brisseau.

Adrian Martin is Senior Research Fellow in Film and Television Studies at Monash University.

He is author of numerous articles and book chapters, and co-editor of Rouge magazine. His books include: Phantasms, Once Upon a Time in America, The Mad Max Movies and (in Spanish) Sublimes Obsesiones and ¿Qué es el cine moderno? He is also co-editor (with Jonathan Rosenbaum) of Movie Mutations: The Changing Face of World Cinephilia.

Ernest Mathijs (University of British Columbia)

Discontinuity and Lack of Progress: Time in Bad Cinema

“And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future” (Plan Nine From Outer Space)

An exploration of how inabilities or refusals to adhere to the logical progression of time accidentally equip bad cinema with the revolutionary potential of challenging one of the key ways of organizing representations of reality. The paper will juxtapose analyses of the essence of time as an organizing principle in modern society with observations that one needs to look for the gaps, breaks and lapses in representations in order to find their essential rhetorical make-up, and argues that ‘bad cinema’ provokes a ‘different’ experience of time.

Ernest Mathijs is Professor in Theatre and Film at University of British Columbia.

He has most recently edited The Cult Film Reader (with Xavier Mendik), and three books on The Lord of the Rings: The Lord of the Rings: Popular Culture in Global Context, From Hobbits to Hollywood (with Murray Pomerance), and Watching the Lord of the Rings (with Martin Barker). He has also edited books on European exploitation cinema, Big Brother, and Belgian and Dutch cinema, and recently completed a monograph on David Cronenberg. He is editor, with Jamie Sexton, of Wallflower’s Cultographies series.

Angela Ndalianis (University of Melbourne)

Corpse Contagion and Aesthetics of Disgust

The living dead as originally conceived by George Romero in his film Night of the Living Dead (1968) went on to influence a spate of imitators. The film medium witnessed Romero’s own Dawn and Day sequels and the recent remakes and retellings; European and Latin American variations directed by Lamberto Bava, Lucio Fulci, Jorge Olguin, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo and Yorgos Noussias; and parodies such as Return of the Living Dead (1985) and Shaun of the Dead (2004). Living dead hijinx also extended into comic book series like Living with the Dead (2007), Escape of the Living Dead (2006) and Marvel Zombies (2006), and the hugely popular Resident Evil computer games. In these migrations and reimaginings the narrative rationale given the emergence of the ‘zombies’, the means to their destruction, the hero-types who hunt and destroy them, and the social context that provides the backdrop to their adventures and misdoings may undergo transformations. One thing, however, remains stable: the consumption of human flesh by animated corpses. This paper explores the nature of this consumption — the bite that punctures fragile skin, the hands that tear open an abdomen to reveal slippery internal organs, the same hands that rip limbs from pulsating bodies — and asks the question: How do we begin to articulate the aesthetics of disgust that washes over our senses when confronted by these images?

Angela Ndalianis is Associate Professor in Cinema and Cultural Studies at Melbourne University.

Her publications include Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment (2004), The Contemporary Comic Book Superhero (editor, 2009), Stars in Our Eyes: The Star Phenomenon in the Contemporary Era (editor, 2002) and essays in the anthologies Screen Consciousness: Technology, Cinema, Mind and World (2006), Hop on Pop: the Politics and Pleasures of Popular Cultures (2003), and Rethinking Media Change: The Aesthetics Of Transition (2003). She is currently completing the book Spectopolis: Theme Park Cultures.

Murray Pomerance (Ryerson University)

The Villain We Love: Notes on the Dramaturgy of Screen Evil

The trope of the cinematic hero terminating and dispensing with the nefarious villain in an apotheosis of passion, technique, and moral purpose is examined dramaturgically with reference to such screen types as Hannibal Lecter and Darth Vader and with a view to illuminating some interesting problems of staging for camera. The engrossment of the audience in a narrative, for example, and the audience’s capacity to identify and condemn negative characters—a paramount concern of filmmakers—requires the simultaneous production of potentially (extremely) offensive displays and the villain’s survival; if he caught and punished too early, the story must end, yet if he is not thoroughly reprehensible, audiences do not come to agreement that he should be caught. Particularly interesting are certain limiting cases, where the representation of screen evil is based on historical records the darkness of which cannot be matched in film; and also the relationship between cinematic “punishment” as a ceremony designed for vastly amplified audiences, and public executions. The paper will reflect, among other theoretical positions, Harold Garfinkel’s analysis of degradation ceremonies.

Murray Pomerance is Professor in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University.

Author of The Horse Who Drank the Sky: Film Experience Beyond Narrative and Theory (2008), Johnny Depp Starts Here (2005), An Eye for Hitchcock (2004), Savage Time (2005), and Magia D’Amore (1999), he has edited or co-edited numerous volumes, including A Family Affair: Cinema Calls Home (2008), City That Never Sleeps: New York and the Filmic Imagination _(2007), _Cinema and Modernity (2006), From Hobbits to Hollywood: Essays on Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings (2006), American Cinema of the 1950s: Themes and Variations (2005), Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth (2005), BAD: Infamy, Darkness, Evil, and Slime on Screen (2004), and Enfant Terrible! Jerry Lewis in American Film (2002). He is at work on a book about the color films of Michelangelo Antonioni. He is editor of the Horizons of Cinema series at State University of New York Press and, with Lester D. Friedman and Adrienne L. McLean respectively, co-editor of both the Screen Decades and Star Decades series at Rutgers University Press.

Jeffrey Sconce (Northwestern University)

Explosive Boredom

One of the most prominent signs of the Hollywood cinema’s ongoing decay is its hypertrophic obsession with the explosion. Once a narrative potentiality that might structure or punctuate an entire film, the explosion is now the premiere emblem of a cinema seeking ascension to a logic of pure obscenity, fascination, and awesomeness. This paper considers the stock conventions that have emerged for staging the multiple CGI explosions now propelling blockbuster cinema. Particular attention is devoted to the industrial, cultural, and spectacular implications of what I term “explosive boredom:” the now ubiquitous convention of a protagonist calmly walking toward the camera, wholly unconcerned and disinterested as a massive explosion ignites in the background.

Jeffrey Sconce is Professor in the Department of Radio/Television/Film at Northwestern University.

His publications include Sleaze Artists: Cinema at the Margins of Taste, Style, and Politics (editor, 2007) and Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television (2000). His essay “’Trashing’ the Academy: Taste, Excess, and an Emerging Politics of Cinematic Style” (first published in a 1995 issue of Screen) is an ongoing point of reference for discussions of paracinema and questions of taste and cultural value in film studies.

Jamie Sexton (University of Aberystwyth, Wales)

Cult Film: From Bad to Good and Back to ‘Bad’ Again?

The notion of ‘cult’ has undergone several evaluative changes when applied to film culture. From sporadic use in the first half of the twentieth century as a largely negative term applied to ‘herd-like’ groups (a bad category), to an increasingly employed, often positively-tinged, concept referring to a particular type of film (a good or, at least, ‘bad’ category). In this paper, I would like to begin a process of _tracking _the shifts of ‘cult’ as a conceptual tool within film culture, a kind of archaeological investigation of its shifting uses. This would neatly mirror the processes in which cult films are often identified as such: through the ways that they travel, and gain meanings, within particular cultural contexts. I do not envisage at this stage a thorough investigation of cult film; rather, I would like to place this pursuit on the film studies agenda so that it can be investigated further with more rigour. With the proliferation of ‘cult’ as a sometimes slippery term used within communicative discourse in the digital age, this pursuit is timely. It will not only contribute to a broader understanding of the historical/contextual variations of generic terms (following on from Altman’s important work, for example), but will also enrich understanding of a concept that is unique. ‘Cult’, for example, while often functioning as a generic term, is nevertheless unlike a number of other generic categories, chiefly through its primarily reception-based identity.

I would like to begin this pursuit, then, by outlining some broad semantic shifts that the concept of cult has undergone within film culture, and attempt to provide some explanations for some of these semantic transformations. This will entail, amongst other things, a consideration of the broader ways in which film has been valued within particular cultural contexts; the relation of ‘cult’ to other terms and their shifting statuses (such as fans and subcultures), and the impact of technologies upon leisure habits and communications.

Jamie Sexton is Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at University of Aberystwyth, Wales.

He is author of Alternative Film Culture in Inter-War Britain (Exeter UP, 2008), and editor (with Laura Mulvey) of Experimental British Television (Manchester UP, 2007) and Music, Sound and Multimedia: From the Live to the Virtual (Edinburgh UP, 2007). His forthcoming publications include (with Ernest Mathijs) Cult Cinema: an Introduction (Blackwell) and Stranger than Paradise (Wallflower). He is also co-editor (with Ernest Mathijs) of the Wallflower book series, Cultographies.

Respondent to Plenaries

To Be Confirmed