Signs and Meaning in the Cinema

[Editors Note: On March 19, 2008, the eminent inventor, futurist, and science fiction writer, Sir Arthur C. Clarke, died at his home in Colombo, Sri Lanka, at age 91. Clarke s clear-eyed view of human nature figured large at the beginning of his most well-known work, the popular 2001 : A Space Odyssey. This excerpt originally appeared, with permission, in the Winter 2000-2001 ETC, Vol 57, Issue 4 .]

From 2001: A Space Odyssey

Plot Summary Vicious delinquent Alex (Malcolm McDowell), incarcerated for his crimes, undergoes a form of aversion therapy so that he is incapable of doing evil. Violence of any kind produces nausea and distress. After he is released he tries to kill himself and the government is forced to ‘cure’ him and cover up the whole experiment. Can be used to discuss Kantian ethics and the connection Kant makes between morality and freedom.

A Clockwork Orangeにおける閉鎖性からの解放

‘샤이닝’(The Shining)

In the context of recent critiques of urban ethnography, Young’s deliberate representation of poor black men as social thinkers, along with his call for a new cultural analysis, is quite provocative. In his effort to make his case for a paradigm shift, however, Young tends toward overgeneralization in his critique of ethnographic representations of poor black men (as he qualifies in several footnotes throughout the text). In fact, it is just the sort of complexity that Young desires that the most rigorous ethnographic projects aim to represent through the direct engagement with everyday life. These types of ethnographic projects, including Anderson’s 1999 Code of the Street, which Young critiques in the first part of the book, highlight how individuals define, consider, and respond to a variety of social situations as well as the structural settings in which individuals act. It is through their extensive engagement with/in the field that ethnographers are able to render truthful representations of what is really going on. Young’s representation of poor black men would only be strengthened by an ethnographic engagement with the variety of social actors (spouses, friends, business owners) and social spaces (the corner, the block, stores, etc.) that make up the social life of Westside residents. Ultimately, The Minds of Marginalized Black Men is a call for all sociologists to do better in our examination of the “crisis of the black male”: “The quest for a new cultural framework concerning the crisis of poor black men is ultimately a plea for a more complex understanding of their plight” (p. 20). That Young has successfully adopted such an approach in his own work is evidence that poor black men can be represented as complex human beings in a way that illuminates not only the culture of Chicago’s Westside but also American culture. W. E. B. DuBois made a similar plea in his examination of “the Negro problem” during the early part of the twentieth century (DuBois [1899] 1996). That any part of Young’s call is “new” then, is a statement on a discipline that bears both the burden and the privilege of detailing the problems facing Americans in general, and African Americans in particular, at the turn of the twenty-first century. Reference DuBois, W. E. B. [1899] 1996. The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study. Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Global CitiesGlobal Cities, by AbrahamsonMark. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. 179 pp. $24.95 paper. 0-195-14204-7.

This special issue of Cinergie on the American director Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999) was inspired by a threeday conference, Stanley Kubrick: A Retrospective, held at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK in May 2016. The conference, convened by I.Q. Hunter and James Fenwick, brought together some of the leading Kubrick scholars to reflect on the methodological approaches taken towards Kubrick since the opening in 2007 of the Stanley Kubrick Archive at the University of Arts London.

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Stanley Kubrick: A Retrospective. Introduction

Ten years ago those immersed in researching the life and work of Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999) were gifted a unique opportunity for fresh insights into his films and production methods. In March 2007...

The Stanley Kubrick Archive: A Dossier of New Research

This article presents a case study of the formation and growth of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival (SIDF) – later renamed Sheffield Doc/Fest – in the 1990s. It uses archival sources and interviews with figures central to the festival’s formation to understand a crucial question: why was the festival located in a post-industrial city like Sheffield? By the end of the 1980s, the city was undergoing economic transformation, from ‘steel city’ to ‘post-steel city’, in the process suffering an identity crisis given its decades of dependence on its former steel industry. With a focus on the motivations of the political, industrial, cultural, and academic stakeholders that were central to the festival’s formation and growth, the article demonstrates how an exploration of festival formation in a post-industrial city reveals wider implications about urban regeneration in the 1990s. The article examines the role of the Sheffield City Council’s Department of Employment and Economic Development and its endeavour to initiate a catalytic effect between private and public organisations, showing how the cultural and media industries were viewed as vital to the economic diversification of the city in the 1990s. The article demonstrates the importance of stakeholder dynamics and their intervention in the cultural management policies of local councils, suggesting that SIDF’s fate rested on the cultural networks of local and national figures and the political tensions in their respective motivations. It demonstrates how a political economic approach to the study of festivals allows for a fuller understanding of the formation, growth, and maintenance of festivals in a post-industrial context.

Urban Regeneration and Stakeholder Dynamics in the Formation, Growth and Maintenance of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival in the 1990s

The Eady Levy, “the envy of most other European nations”: runaway productions and the British Film Fund in the early 1960s

An exploration of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that combines ‘new’ empirical approaches with ‘old’ formalist approaches. This provides a broader understanding of how Kubrick’s methods as a director and auteur were developed to produce a unique aesthetic creation that is still years ahead in its design, vision and philosophical structure.

James Fenwick

Papers

Stanley Kubrick: A Retrospective. Introduction

The Stanley Kubrick Archive: A Dossier of New Research

Urban Regeneration and Stakeholder Dynamics in the Formation, Growth and Maintenance of the Sheffield International Documentary Festival in the 1990s

The Eady Levy, “the envy of most other European nations”: runaway productions and the British Film Fund in the early 1960s

Understanding Kubrick's 2001: a space odyssey : representation and interpretation