Camera ObscuraVol. 3 Iss. 3 (2006)
Suffrage Stars
Amy Shore
Describing the formation of a "national imaginary" through the analysis of activists Jane Addams and Anna Howard Shaw's celebrity and their appearance in a 1912 feature cum political tract, Shore redresses historical tensions between feminism and film. The author is most convincing when discussing the social effects of changing notions of the audience, both as filmgoers and political subjects.
Knocking Off Nationalism in Hong Kong Cinema: Women and the Chinese "Thing" in Tsui Hark's Films
Kwai Cheung-Lo
The author admiringly parses the visual spectacle of Hark's popular historical fiction as a manifestation of anxieties regarding nationhood, modernity and capitalism. In doing so he paints a compelling picture of the symbolic power of imagery and gender in constructing historical narratives, particularly for a nation in flux.
Subject to Change: The Monstrosity of Media in Shelly Jackson's Patchwork Girl; or, A Modern Monster and Other Posthumanist Critiques of the Instrumental
Laura Shackelford
A reading of a digital hypertext re-imagining of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein as a rich, if limited, subversion of gender and power implications in framings of the self. Densely theoretical, this article demands that new media be understood as a potential site for a feminist dissolution of binary oppositions and boundaries between meaning and medium.
Picture This: Lillian Gilbreth's Industrial Cinema for the Home
Nicholas Sammond
In different applications of cinematic recording techniques, we have a fascinating exploration of gendered discourse in articulations of scientific objectivity and the construction of subjectivity. Sammond also presents an alternative vision of the husband-and-wife team whose biography is the basis for the film Cheaper by the Dozen, which popularized the use of filming in the home to promote efficiency and greater satisfaction.
Closet Archives
Lynne Joyrich
Television, despite numerous queer representations, continues to reiterate the cultural, political and epistemological bases for oppression. In a spirited confrontation of the supposed "death of the closet," Joyrich crafts a stirring argument for its persistent presence in contemporary media and the archive, as a shaping tool of both form and content.
The Last Days of Women's Cinema
Patricia White
An unusual entry into the archive, this piece makes a plea for the fulfillment of the goals of "women's cinema" beyond the means of production and into the recognition of untapped feminist potential in modes of distribution and market relations.
Rescuing the Fragmentary Evidence of Women's Experimental Film
Robin Blaetz
Impassioned yet wistful, Blaetz makes a brief case for the archival inclusion of women filmmakers' work outside the conventional film industry, recasting these movies as an avant-garde struggle with the boundaries of cinematic aesthetics and narrative as well as gender in the art world.
A Brief History of the Ms in SCMS
Ramona Curry
Functioning mostly as an expression of admiration for the Society for Cinema and Media Studies, this article highlights the changing presence of women in an academic film institution.
Mulvey's Legacy
Yvonne Rainer
Rainer uses the faded resonance of an influential film critique as a jumping point for a highly personal, and limited, expression of disappointment in the current apathetic feminist media presence.
REVIEWED BY
Jamil V. Moen
If you have questions or comments, or if you would like to submit a review of a journal, please send an email to Ben Wright at bgw2108@columbia.edu.