Cinergie – Il Cinema e le altre Arti

Trasformazioni di un mito tra realtà e finzione. Marco Benoît Carbone, Geographies of Myth and Places of Identity: The Strait of Scylla and Charybdis in the Modern Imagination, Bloomsbury, New York 2022

Anna Chiara Corradino — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Sguardi sul queer cinema del secondo millennio. Andrea Inzerillo (a cura di), Atlante del cinema queer contemporaneo. Europa 2000-2020, Meltemi, Milano 2023

Agnese Cossu — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Il cinema delle attrazioni (turistiche). Andrea Lolli, Cinema e turismo. Dalle Film Commission alle strategie di promozione del territorio, Carocci, Roma 2023

Mirko Lino — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Una ricognizione tra attorialità femminile e scrittura del sé. Federica Piana, Vite di carta e pellicola. La produzione autobiografica delle attrici italiane, ETS, Pisa 2023

Diletta Pavesi — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Storie di robot, media e ambienti. Lorenzo Denicolai (a cura di), Robotmedium. Dispositivi, intelligenze, cinema, Meltemi, Milano 2022

Elio Ugenti — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Shelley avec Sade: Poor Things di Yorgos Lanthimos, Leone d’oro all’80a Mostra internazionale d'arte cinematografica di Venezia

Alberto Brodesco — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

2023: A Sicilia Queer Odissey. La tredicesima edizione del Sicilia Queer filmfest

Enrico Lo Coco — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Converging Trends: The Industrial and Content Dynamics of Contemporary Television

Veronica Innocenti, Guglielmo Pescatore — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This article is focused on the complexities of contemporary media scenario, considering the interplay between industrial frameworks, market dynamics, and resultant content exploitation. The paper seeks to chart the current landscape of serial production and posit potential trajectories for its future development. At its core, the research addresses two principal dimensions: the contemporary industrial structure and the relevance of library content.

Within the industrial context, the article scrutinizes the role of streaming platforms and the rise of Free Ad-supported Streaming TV (FAST) services. The concept of “neo-generalism” is also introduced as a new framework, characterized by diversified offerings within a single platform that cater to an array of consumer preferences and needs.

With regards to the importance of library content, the article underscores how archival materials serve not only as a supplementary feature but also as a strategic asset in competitive positioning. Furthermore, the dynamics between broadcasters and platforms are investigated, highlighting the hybrid strategies that are emerging from this relationship. Lastly, new paradigms of serial content consumption are explored, specifically focusing on the recent behavioral shifts spurred by the on-demand culture.

From View to Gaze: Bela (1913) at the Centre of the Screen

Martina Morabito — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Oriented by visual, gender and ethnographic studies, and broadening the focus from the film itself to the reviews in the cinema press of the period, this article offers a new interpretation of the Russian film Bela, a work that has been largely overlooked by critics, directed by Andrej Gromov and written by Marija Kallaš in 1913. Despite being a cinematic adaptation of a 19th century short story composed by Michail Lermontov bearing the same title, and therefore presenting itself as a paradigmatic example of classic narrative cinema, Bela challenges the typical features and conventions of the genre, reversing the standards and experimenting with the peculiarities of the documentary genre, particularly with the aesthetics of the coeval cinematic travelogues. Additionally, Kallaš’s screenplay puts the female character at the very centre of the narrative, and transforms Bela, an exotic Circassian princess depicted through ethnic and gender stereotypes, from a passive icon into an active and mobile figure, immersed in the landscape, able to observe the world around her.

Franchising Jurassic Park: Introduction

Matthew Melia — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Inheritance: The Legacy of Ellie Sattler in the Jurassic Franchise

Lauren Chochinov — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern), the heroine of Steven Spielberg’s Jurassic Park (1993), has long been considered a feminist icon, notable for her assertion that in the wake of man’s Icarian fall, women will inherit the earth. As the only woman in the film, I suggest that Sattler inhabits multiple archetypes common to female characters in genre films, especially the action heroine and the Final Girl, a popular trope in horror films. Like Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver) from the Alien franchise (1979-1997) and Sarah Connor (Linda Hamilton) from The Terminator films (1984-2019), Sattler’s intelligence, her strength, and her empathy situate her as Jurassic Park’s heroic heart. When the franchise next sees Ellie Sattler in Jurassic Park III (2001), however, she is a mother of two children and married, the centre of a nuclear, heterosexual family – a notable change from her earlier portrayal as a career-focused woman in a male dominated field. This essay examines how the Jurassic Park films and their sequels, Jurassic World (2015), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018), Jurassic Word: Dominion (2022), increasingly move away from Sattler’s feminism in the form of Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard), whose characterization is indicative of the franchise’s celebration of maternal, heteronormative women and villainization of those who do not fit this mold.

From Brains to Brawn: Changing Masculinity in the Jurassic Park Franchise

Gillian Kelly — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Widely celebrated for its ground-breaking CGI and computer-generated dinosaurs, Jurassic Park’s (Spielberg, 1993) human actors have long been relegated to secondary roles. Directly following the popular action films of the 1980s, the “musculinity” of these stars (McDonald, 2019) is far removed from the type of masculinity embodied by actors Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum as Jurassic Park’s scientists Drs. Alan Grant and Ian Malcolm, respectively. This noteworthy paradox provides comment on changes within the film industry and American society, and yet, despite the film’s continued critical attention, a lack of serious consideration of its stars remains.

This paper examines and reassesses the actors’ “normalised” star personas and screen performances, juxtaposing their performance styles, physicality and character development with both the hyper-masculine actors preceding them and Chris Pratt as a Velociraptor wrangler in the new chapter of the franchise, Jurassic World (2015-2022). As Owen Grady, Pratt exemplifies a new generation of twenty-first-century masculine stars: a safer, more “everyday” version of the extreme masculinity of the 1980s action hero and more relatable to audiences. Grady is presented in terms of brawn rather than brains, explicitly positioned as erotic object and the “alpha” male to “beta” Blue, the female leader of the Velociraptor pack he trains; but, as explored, scientists Grant and Malcolm do not fit this type and thrust into the role of dominant male as a necessity for survival.

Boring Lizards: Ludic Management, Affect and Ambivalence

Merlyn Seller — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This chapter utilises Game Studies, Animal Studies and Affect Studies approaches to explore how videogame adaptation Jurassic World: Evolution (Frontier 2018) mediates Jurassic World’s (2015) themes of captivity, anxiety and boredom in a time of routinised risk and perpetual crisis management (Bhattacharyya 2015; Beck 1992). Critically, the game has been denigrated as boring and repetitious (Stapleton 2018; Freeman 2018); dinosaurs sleep more than fight; and players balance variables to meet minimum thresholds of dinosaur contentment and their own enjoyment. If the film’s hybrid dinosaur signals the increasing banality of ‘terrible lizards,’ I argue that Evolution explores boredom systemically through simulations of banal park maintenance where the speculative animal might ‘respond’ to the player through shared affects and constraints. As W.J.T. Mitchell asks of the dinosaur’s ambivalent meanings of power and extinction, “Are we to scream or to yawn?” (1998:69). This is not a break with games of exploitation and manipulation of the animal, but rather an articulation of our complicity and enmeshment in loops of captivity that embrace human and animal but neither completely. Unable to see the animal itself, filled with tantalising contradictions and distance, we instead become-bored-with the animal.

Gamified Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Play: The Jurassic Park Ludo Mix

Justin Wigard — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Over 30 years, the Jurassic Park franchise has spawned myriad games across several mediums, including: video game consoles; arcade cabinets; PC games; standalone handheld games; a tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG); board games; game-versions of LEGO toys; an alternate reality game; games using bar codes. By treating this games portfolio as a ludo mix, a theoretical frame that allows for connecting these disparate game forms to one another and to the larger franchise, it becomes clear that the Jurassic Park franchise historically positions dinosaurs as adversaries, hazards, and commodities to be exploited within their games, and in the process, requires players to be complicit.

John Sayles and the Unmade Jurassic Park IV

Matthew Melia — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This article offers a critical and in-depth analysis of the unmade and ultimately abandoned Jurassic Park IV. Written by script doctor and pioneering Indie director John Sayles (who had previously worked on the unmade sci fi horror Night Skies with Spielberg – a project which would many of the foundations for E.T. The Extra Terrestrial), the script would have taken the series in a very different direction. While it was never made, it did however, open the way for the Jurassic World franchise and this article will later offer a close reading and analysis of the script which was leaked online in the mid-2000s. This article will demonstrate how the script is part of the bedrock on which the Jurassic World franchise was built, but it will also examine the overlooked importance of the role of the Hollywood script doctor, and consider Spielberg’s waning attachment to the franchise. Finally, the article excavates a range of now defunct early internet forums and discussion boards in order show how the film emerged (or rather didn’t) at a time when the internet was proving itself as a new landscape for fans to speculate about cinema and for the leaking and drip feeding of information. It is through these sites that we can piece together a timeline for the unproduction of Jurassic Park IV.

Swallow You Whole: The Jurassic Park Franchise, Eco-Horror and the Devouring Gothic

Catherine Pugh — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The Jurassic Park franchise is primarily thought of as an adventure series, yet the horror genre is invoked through themes of “mad science” and resurrected “monsters” alongside inevitable death and dismemberment. Although displaced genetically-altered dinosaurs are the primary antagonists, they are only agents for bigger threats of toxic Nature and environmental revolt. Much like the monsters of traditional horror films, Nature in Jurassic Park cannot be destroyed or bent to the will of civilisation. It is malicious, insidious and all-consuming; it cannot be denied or contained. Life, as Dr Malcolm infamously puts it, finds a way. This paper explores various ecohorror tropes present throughout the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World films (1993—2022), primarily Jurassic Park (1993), Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018) and Jurassic World: Dominion (2022). It argues that the films’ engagement with the Gothic restores the dinosaurs’ agency, moving them from marginalised Other to a species that humankind must respect and protect in order to survive in a shared world. Furthermore, it suggests that one of the biggest threats to the protagonists stems from the franchises’ portrayal of Nature as a devouring entity, not only in the form of dinosaurs and animal horror, but in indifferent plant-life, hazardous weather and hostile landscapes. Despite its desperate attempts to create, contain and control Nature, humankind must be de-centred and the hierarchy of human and non-human destabilised in order to promote balance and co-existence. The Jurassic films show what happens when humans harmfully interfere with Nature, and Nature—quite literally—bites back.

Dinosaurs and Nazis: The Influence of the Jurassic Park Franchise on Popular and Conspiratorial Versions of History and Historical Culture

Steven Woodbridge — Wed, 20 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The words ‘Dinosaurs’ and ‘Nazis’, when combined in stylistic form or placed in juxtaposition, have exerted both significant textual and powerful visual impact in popular culture since the 1990s, and especially since the creation of the Jurassic Park franchise. The words are also signifiers that can shape and embody the ‘ultimate dream’ or perfect marketing formula for the creative imagination of those engaged in a variety of media platforms within contemporary transmedia production. Utilizing a combination of textual and content analysis, the following discussion investigates and critically reflects upon two rather under-researched aspects of the cultural influence of Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur movie franchise. First of all, there was a curious, but nevertheless important, impact of Spielberg’s first Jurassic Park movie and its sequels on the study by academic historians of the ideology of the German Third Reich concerning science and, in particular, Nazi policy towards nature and the animal world. The language of Jurassic Park was increasingly employed to convey a picture of what Nazi scientists supposedly experimented with when it came to their interference with nature. Secondly, this historical dimension and associated research has, in turn, fed into and influenced wider mass entertainment media since the early 1990s, especially when it comes to ‘alternative’ and conspiratorial versions of popular history and ideas about ‘secret’ experiments, ‘lost’ worlds and the rebirth of extinct animal species. These relatively unexplored topics require further scrutiny and critical analysis.