Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media. Issue 04: Open Theme

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https://cora.ucc.ie/handle/10468/5568

Issue 4 is Alphaville's first Open Theme edition. Despite this issue's open nature, however, thematic consistencies arise, with authors re-evaluating female roles and representations in filmic genres, engaging with issues developing from evolving modes of censorship, working through the complexities of filmic narrative and merging distinct analytic approaches with aesthetic readings of key films. Edited by Stefano Odorico and Aidan Power, University College Cork

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 13

Motion Capture: Drawing and the Moving Image. Curated by Ed Krčma and Matt Packer, Lewis Glucksman Gallery, Cork, 26 July-4 November 2012
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2012) Murphy, Jill; Murphy, Ian
The Society of Cinema and Media Studies Annual Conference, Boston, USA, 21–25 March 2012
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2012) Molloy, Missy; Coman, Anthony; Murphy, Ian
Recording Reality, Desiring the Real, by Elizabeth Cowie
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2012) Parziale, Amy; Ercole, Pierluigi
Film Theory: Rational Reconstructions, by Warren Buckland
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2012) McDonald, Kevin; Ercole, Pierluigi
Anima animus: Jennifer Jason Leigh’s bisexual method in Last Exit to Brooklyn
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2012) Murphy, Ian
This essay explores Jennifer Jason Leigh’s portrayal of the young prostitute Tralala in Last Exit to Brooklyn (Uli Edel, 1989) as a case study in performance style that can be usefully understood as bisexual. Drawing firstly upon Joan Riviere’s concept of womanliness as a masquerade, it examines how Tralala’s feminine performativity masks a confused, neurotic and androgynous gender identity and a raging bid for phallic power. As played by Leigh, Tralala’s snarling speech and undulating swagger evokes the wounded rage, rebellion and alienation of 1950s Method “bad boy” stars such as Marlon Brando, James Dean and Montgomery Clift, and the result is a performance style that oscillates freely between male and female subjectivities. Reading the male Method stars in terms of alternative masculinities that transgress the social order, the article argues that Tralala’s essential masochism is fuelled by a similar disavowal of her biological gender. In this regard, she demonstrates a desire to annihilate the self that has less to do with standard screen representations of female masochism than with the explosive psychic processes of classic Method masculinity.

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