Gertjan Willems

Bio: Gertjan Willems is an academic researcher from Ghent University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Flemish & Archival research. The author has an hindex of 6, co-authored 32 publications receiving 95 citations. Previous affiliations of Gertjan Willems include Purdue University & University of Antwerp.

The role of film production policy in stimulating a Flemish identity (1964–2002)

Abstract: The role of the official film production policy in stimulating a Flemish identity forms the central research question of this study. This research project examines the period that starts in 1964, when a selective and culturally inspired support mechanism for feature films was introduced in Flanders. Subsequently, the support system ran until 2002, when it was structurally renewed. This study makes use of original archival research, policy documents analysis, expert interviews, qualitative press documents analysis, and a quantitative content and qualitative textual analysis of films. The research shows that throughout the course of the second half of the 20th century, there was an evolution in Flemish film policy towards more pluralistic and less essentialist and explicit national discourses, in which national elements, nevertheless, retained an important place.

Remaking identities and stereotypes : how film remakes transform and reinforce nationality, disability, and gender

Abstract: When films are being remade, they undergo several transformations, including changes related to (the representation of) national, disability, and gender identities. By drawing on the case of the Fl...

Local flavors and regional markers : The Low Countries and their commercially driven and proximity-focused film remake practice

Abstract: The practice of Dutch-Flemish film remaking that came into existence in the new millennium quickly appeared to be of great importance in the film industries of Flanders and The Netherlands – and consequently of Europe. Inspired by methods used in television (format) studies, this article conducts a systematic comparative film analysis of nine Dutch-Flemish remakes together with their nine source films. Considering the remake as a prism that aids in dissecting different formal, transtextual, and cultural codes, and subsequently embedding the practice in its specific socio-cultural and industrial context, we found several similarities and differences between the Dutch and Flemish film versions and showed how these can be made sense of. More generally, we distilled two encompassing principles that administer the remake practice: even though a great deal of the remake process can be explained through the concept of localization – or, more precisely, through the concepts of ‘manufacturing proximity’ and ‘banal aboutness’ – we found that it should certainly not be limited to these processes – as both (trans)textual, such as the mechanism of ‘filling in the gaps’, and contextual elements were found.

Reframing the remake : Dutch-Flemish monolingual remakes and their theoretical and conceptual implications

Abstract: In this article, we explicitly take distance from what we would call the ‘anti-remake debates’, or a normative standpoint towards remakes. We instead aim for a more nuanced reading of the remake practice. Our argument is based upon an examination of Dutch-Flemish remakes, which from an international viewpoint entail a unique practice that concerns temporally immediate and geographically adjoining remakes that make use of the same Dutch language. This case of monolingual remakes proves to be an original contribution to the field of remake studies, as well as an excellent exemplar in the context of the deconstruction and reframing of discourses about the global remake practice. As a first step, we claim that the non-commercial aura of the European remake should be revisited because the Dutch-Flemish monolingual remakes clearly disclose a similar incentive to the one that often inspires Hollywood remakes: financial gains. Furthermore, our case underlines the need for a more nuanced understanding of intercultural media practices, including the proximity theory. Lastly, we reveal a remarkable discrepancy between the essentialist conception of cultural identity—that is put forward by remake directors—and the constructionist conception, which is dominant in scholarly discussions.

Film policy, national identity and period adaptations in Flanders during the 1970s and 1980s

Abstract: During the 1970s and 1980s, ‘period adaptations,’ or period films based on the Flemish literary patrimony, were the most prominent and prestigious genre of film production in Flanders, the northern, Dutch-speaking region of Belgium. Connecting the observation that official film policy largely determines Flemish film production with the dominant interpretation of period adaptations in Flemish cultural and national terms, these films are often seen as the product of an official Flemish film policy strategy. Drawing on original archival research and interviews with policy actors and film-makers, this article offers a detailed historical account of the Flemish film support process behind the allocation of official film funds for period adaptations and how the national question was involved. Contrary to common assumptions, this film support process was a very complex and often ambiguous one, whereby Flemish cultural nationalist concerns could work both to the advantage and to the disadvantage of period adaptat...

Nations and Nationalism

Abstract: Series Editor's Preface. Introduction by John Breuilly. Acknowledgements. 1. Definitions. State and nation. The nation. 2. Culture in Agrarian Society. Power and culture in the agro-literature society. The varieties of agrarian rulers. 3. Industrial Society. The society of perpetual growth. Social genetics. The age of universal high culture. 4. The Transition to an Age of Nationalism. A note on the weakness of nationalism. Wild and garden culture. 5. What is a Nation. The course of true nationalism never did run smooth. 6. Social Entropy and Equality in Industrial Society. Obstacles to entropy. Fissures and barriers. A diversity of focus. 7. A Typology of Nationalisms. The varieties of nationalist experience. Diaspora nationalism. 8. The Future of Nationalism. Industrial culture - one or many?. 9. Nationalism and Ideology. Who is for Nuremberg?. One nation, one state. 10. Conclusion. What is not being said. Summary. Select bibliography. Bilbliography of Ernest Gellner's writing: Ian Jarvie. Index

of National Identity

Abstract: Recent years have witnessed a great deal of attention to the emergence of nationalism in late-eighteenth-century Europe, and critics such as Seamus Deane have drawn particular attention to the way in which the new nationalist narratives tended to displace the older cosmopolitan narrative of universal subjects and universal reason. As Deane points out, Enlightenment forms of narrative (like the philosophical tale) were threatened by a "newly assertive nationalism, predicated on notions of national character."'1 The kind of national thinking-and narrative-that he has in mind is represented by a figure like Edmund Burke and his well-known argument anchoring national identity in attachment to one's "little platoon."2 But the same Anglo-Irish milieu that produced Burke also produced Maria Edgeworth, who offered a rather different reading of national identity in the same period. Her writing on Ireland, especially her early Irish tales, offers an important rearticulation of Burkean local attachment and philosophical cosmopolitanism to produce an understanding of the nation as neither tightly bordered (like nations based on historical premises such as blood or inheritance) nor borderless (like those based on rational notions of universal inclusion). This effort to rethink nationness makes Edgeworth more than the colonial writer who figures in current criticism.3 Having herself been both immersed in Continental Enlightenment thought and personally affected by the nationalist upsurge of the 1798 Rebellion, she used herwriting to reconsider the meaning of the denomination "AngloIrish."4 And through her interrogation she reinterpreted both cosmopolitan and national definitions of belonging so as to reconstitute "Anglo-Irish" less as a category than as an ongoing mediation between borders.

Play It Again

Abstract: Play It Again is a section of the journal where we republish quotes, gaVes, and immortal lines from friends and foes of tobacco control. It is compiled by Gene Borio, the webmaster of Tobacco BBS, which is the premier tobacco newsgathering site on the internet. Send contributions (including an original version or photocopy of the sourced item) to him at Tobacco BBS, PO Box 359, Village Station, New York 100140359; fax 001 212 260 6825. Send quotes from online stories (including the full article) or scanned documents (in GIF or JPEG format), to gborio@mindspring.com

Frankenfiction : monstrous adaptations and Gothic histories in twenty-first-century remix culture

Abstract: In the twenty-first century, the remix, the mashup, and the reboot have come to dominate Western popular culture. Consumed by popular audiences on an unprecedented scale, but often derided by critics and academics, these texts are the ‘monsters’ of our age—hybrid creations that lurk at the limits of responsible consumption and acceptable appropriation. Like monsters, they offer audiences the thrill of transgression in a safe and familiar format, mainstreaming the self-reflexive irony and cultural iconoclasm of postmodern art. Like other popular texts before them, remixes, mashups, and reboots are often read by critics as a sign of the artistic and moral degeneration of contemporary culture. This is especially true within the institutions such remixes seem to attack most directly: the heritage industry, high art, adaptation studies, and copyright law. With this context in mind, in this thesis I explore the boundaries and connections between remix culture and its ‘others’ (adaptation, parody, the Gothic, Romanticism, postmodernism), asking how strong or tenuous they are in practice. I do so by examining remix culture’s most ‘monstrous’ texts: Frankenfictions, or commercial narratives that insert fantastical monsters (zombies, vampires, werewolves, etc.) into classic literature and popular historical contexts. Frankenfiction is monstrous not only because of the fantastical monsters it contains, but because of its place at the margins of both remix and more established modes of appropriation. Too engaged with tradition for some, and not traditional enough for others, Frankenfiction is a bestselling genre that nevertheless remains peripheral to academic discussion. This thesis aims to address that gap in scholarship, analysing Frankenfiction’s engagement with monstrosity (chapter one), parody (chapter two), popular historiography (chapter three), and models of authorial originality (chapter four). Throughout this analysis, Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein remains a touchstone, serving as an ideal metaphor for the nature of contemporary remix culture.