Alphaville: Journal of Film and Screen Media. Issue 14: For a Cosmopolitan Cinema

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https://hdl.handle.net/10468/5582

Edited by James Mulvey, Laura Rascaroli, and Humberto Saldanha, University College Cork.

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Now showing 1 - 5 of 15

From Self-fulfilment to Survival of the Fittest: Work in European Cinema from the 1960s to the Present, by Ewa Mazierska
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2017) Hodgin, Nick; Saldanha, Humberto
Making Time in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon: Art History and Empire, by Maria Pramaggiore
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2017) McIver, Gillian; Saldanha, Humberto
Imperial and critical cosmopolitans: screening the multicultural city on Sherlock and Elementary
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2017) Kustritz, Anne
This article argues that two modern reinterpretations of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, that is the BBC’s Sherlock (2010–) and CBS’s Elementary (2012–), differ in their representations of the city in ways that bear significant political ramifications. In particular, Sherlock repeats many of the social structures of Conan Doyle’s stories that construct an imperial cosmopolitan vision of life in London, while Elementary offers an interpretation of Holmes’s life in modern New York with a critical cosmopolitan ethos. Building on the works of Craig Calhoun, Ann Stoler, Paul Gilroy, and Walter Mignolo, this article argues that imperial cosmopolitanism refers to a colonial node wherein the global circulation of goods and people leads to increases in segregation, social differentiation, and ethnocentrism, whereas critical cosmopolitanism refers to circumstances under which the arrangement of the global city creates increased contact between various kinds of people as well as decreased social differentiation, which may lead to mutual understanding, solidarity, and what Lauren Berlant calls political empathy. This article demonstrates these two divergent approaches by analysing the programmes’ aesthetic choices, depictions of social contact between Holmes and the diverse inhabitants of the city, and the representations of women, particularly with regard to the casting of Watson. As a result, the article finds that Sherlock depicts London from above as a space that must be strategically traversed to maintain social distance, while Elementary depicts New York from street level as a space wherein Holmes learns to encounter diverse others as co-equal citizens and the audience is invited to experience multiple perspectives. Consequently, Sherlock reiterates an imperial cosmopolitan view of urban globalisation, while Elementary includes key preconditions for the emergence of critical cosmopolitan mentalities.
Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-Sized Media, edited by Pepita Hesselberth and Maria Poulaki
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2017) McLaurin, Virginia; Saldanha, Humberto
The films of Ciro Guerra and the making of cosmopolitan spaces in Colombian cinema
(Film and Screen Media, University College Cork, 2017) Luna, Maria; Meers, Philippe
This article proposes to use the concept of “cosmopolitan cinematic margins” to analyse the paradoxical meeting of the cosmopolitan meaning and discourses of Ciro Guerra’s Colombian films and the spatial restrictions and immobility of the rural and remote places in which they are set. Such areas as seen on screen are usually interpreted by urban audiences as exotic locations, independently of their actual distance from cities. The article explores how films that, at first sight, show images of marginal and remote places like the Colombian Amazonian Jungle, when inserted into a global context—such as the hierarchical system of international film festivals—become symbols of cosmopolitan cinematic margins, and represent a country in the global spaces that legitimise the importance of that country’s film production. The cosmopolitan cinematic margins in the films of Guerra are then strategically situated in environments of global mobility and international prestige.

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