In case you’ve been wondering about my silence, I’ve been toiling away at combining material from a couple of my dissertation chapters into an essay, hopefully for publication, on the transformation of the prestige film from the 1930s to the postwar years. Essentially, the former rely on middlebrow production, with their conspicuous search for highbrow markers (literary sources, historical subjects, etc.) whereas the latter rely on a middlebrow reception built on a binary opposition betwen "serious" or "mature" films and "Hollywood." To my knowledge, this shift has never been fully diagnosed or explained. At least I’m hoping the argument is original.
If you’ve ever thought that the academy was hopelessly fad-ridden, you may be pleased to have your suspicions confirmed. About half (no exaggeration) of the film jobs posted so far this year are in Asian cinema. As my friend Rebecca notes, some of it how the politics of cultural difference plays out in the academy (before it was postcolonial studies, before that queer theory). Add on top of that the suddenness with which East Asian, Southeast Asian and South Asian national cinemas have gained visibility and prominence in both popular cinema and art film markets in the West. Whatever the cause, I expect a large number of institutions will be bidding on a few prize candidates.
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