Evolving Representations
University of San Jorge (Venue in the city centre) Calle San Voto, 6-8 50003 Zaragoza, Spain
Non-aseptic Images: The Representation of Poor Health Services in the Brazilian Television Series Under Pressure View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mariana Schwartz
Most of the time, the aesthetics of medical drama television series are compatible with the hospital environment where the stories take place. The series usually show aseptic images, both in terms of cinematography, as well as production design, and character characterization. Although the environments portrayed are often hospital emergency rooms, it is clear that, in North American medical series, there is a tendency for “classic” cinematography, for presenting meticulously clean settings and characterizing characters in such a way as to lose any sign of “imperfection”. The acclaimed Brazilian medical drama Under Pressure, released in 2017, with general direction by Andrucha Waddington, goes against this trend of almost-advertising-like images. The series, aired and produced by TV Globo in a co-production with Conspiração Filmes, follows the daily lives of public hospital employees in Rio de Janeiro. Creative cinematography shows the tension of hospital work, production design highlights the precariousness of the place, and costuming, hair, and makeup evidence the stress of the characters. This research seeks to qualitatively analyze the images of Under Pressure’s first season and verify how the series' aesthetics stand out among so many similar contemporary medical dramas. Therefore, authors such as Giuliana Bruno, C. S. Tashiro, Jacques Aumont, and Martine Joly are used as a basis for the study. By presenting images with an aesthetic rawness that are similar to the reality of Brazilian public hospitals, Under Pressure reveals itself as a commendable medical drama that exposes the systemic corruption in Brazilian institutions.
Olfactory Interpolations: The Politics of Representation and the Ecstacy of the Industrial Domestic
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Mark Harrison
A basic contention in the politics of identity is that minority identities are underrepresented in mass culture. This paper examines the move toward inclusivity in the context of television ads for Febreeze and Gain laundry detergent which have, in the past year, especially focused on presenting Black performers sniffing laundry or ambient air with evidence of deep pleasure, pleasure bordering on the ecstatic. One concern is the ways that products that aim at “deodorizing” domestic space do so in a way that directly interfaces with human organs of olfaction. They do not merely “freshen” an environment, but directly interfere with the human capacity to smell. Aside from the potential long-term physiological impacts of this process, such products, working in domestic, and through attachment to our clothing, public spaces, arguably short circuit the functioning of one of the oldest regions of the human brain, a region deeply attached to long term memory. What is covered over are the scents of the world as marked by the passage of the human organism and its quotidian processes and activities. The presence of Black bodies in these ads likewise carries out a labor of effacement. While the humans present in the advertisements are in-arguably non-white, they are assuming postures and attitudes dictated by the norms of a bourgeois mass culture. The advertisements’ claim to diversity is throttled by their invocation of a middle class domesticity that resides outside of an organic world, entirely embedded in and co-opted by industrial interests.
Featured Representation of Adivasis in Indian Cinema and the Rise of Indigenous Filmmakers in the Chotanagpur Region of India
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sneha Mundari
This paper brings forth an intersection between Indian Cinema, Indigenous studies and decolonising anthropology. It presents an overview about various films made about indigenous/ adivasi/ tribal communities in India in the Hindi, Bengali and Telugu film industries. It describes the normality of mis-representation of the indigenous communities in Hindi Cinema and also emphasises on the appropriation of the culture and traditions of various indigenous communities. The paper engages with the significant need for the indigenous/ adivasi/ tribal voices from the communities in the film-making. The study engages with the work of emerging indigenous filmmakers of the Chotanagpur area in the Eastern part of India, which is geographically located across the States of Jharkhand, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar and Chhattisgarh. In doing so, the paper analyses their films and uses personal interviews with filmmakers to inquire further into the methodologies used by filmmakers to make their respective films. It underscores the change and shift in indigenous films, where the films are questioning and addressing the important social issues of their communities. The study ultimately helps understand how these ethnographic films support the decolonising of anthropology in the field of filmmaking by reimagining the future of adivasi filmmaking.
The Allure of Visual Mash-ups : An Art Historical Framing for the Use of Incongruous Styles within Single Artworks or Narratives and a Rationale for What Makes the Spider-verse So Exciting
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jesse Thompson
The recent success of the Spider-Verse franchise has brought attention to a unique artistic approach known as a mashup, a term popularized in the early 2000s with the rise of digital technology and remixing in musical culture, most notably In Danger Mouse’s Grey Album (2004) which layered The Beatles White Album over Jay-Z's Black Album, making an exciting new sound. In this paper, the definition of mashup extends past music and refers to the stylistic layering, blending and juxtaposition of aesthetics within artworks or images when it plays a central role in the narrative or concept. While the Spider-Verse is the result of collaboration among a team of artists and draws inspiration from a rich history of comics, its ultimate result will be discussed as a kind of mashup. This paper presents an art historical trajectory that explores how not only the Spider-verse, but many other artists, animators, and illustrators across different media and genres, instead of striving for consistency, focus on diversity by combining two or more aesthetic languages within a single image or artwork, sometimes making it their signature to mix and match styles. The objective of this paper is to broaden the conversation around visual mash-ups and to position the works of comics artists like Bill Sienkiecz, David Mazzuchelli, Sonny Liew, Dave Sim and Gerhard alongside Fine artists such as Kathe Kallowicz, Kiki Smith, George Segal, Gerhard Demetz, in order to create a lineage of artists working this way across the artistic spectrum.
