The Spectacle of Politics and Religion in the Contemporary Turkish Cinema

The Spectacle of Politics and Religion in the Contemporary Turkish Cinema
Author: Ebru Thwaites Diken
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2018-03-09
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3319717006

This book explores how politics, religion and cinema encounter and re-invent each other in contemporary Turkish cinema. It investigates their common origin—the spectacle, which each field views as an instrument of governmentality. The book analyses six recent, some of which are internationally known Turkish films: The Messenger (Ulak), A Man’s Fear of God (Takva), Let’s Sin (İtirazım Var), SixtyOne Days (İftarlık Gazoz), The Imam and The Shadowless (Gölgesizler). Thwaites discusses how the cinematic nature of politics and religion unfold amidst the increasing media visibility of religion in contemporary Turkey. The chapters explore the relationship between art and religion, and compare religion and philosophy in their relation to truth, belief, and economy. Through close examination of these films, the author highlights the role of cinema in contemporary Turkey and at the heart of the religious paradigm.

Female Agencies and Subjectivities in Film and Television

Female Agencies and Subjectivities in Film and Television
Author: Diğdem Sezen
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 298
Release: 2020-10-29
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3030561003

This volume provides an overview of the landscape of mediated female agencies and subjectivities in the last decade. In three sections, the book covers the films of women directors, television shows featuring women in lead roles, and the representational struggles of women in cultural context, with a special focus on changes in the transformative power of narratives and images across genres and platforms. This collection derives from the editors’ multi-year experiences as scholars and practitioners in the field of film and television. It is an effort that aims to describe and understand female agencies and subjectivities across screen narratives, gather scholars from around the world to generate timely discussions, and inspire fellow researchers and practitioners of film and television.

Encounters with the Posthuman and the Environment

Encounters with the Posthuman and the Environment
Author: Inci Bilgin Tekin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 203
Release: 2024-10-29
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 166697188X

With the advent of posthumanism, many scholars in the humanities have started to explore a transforming conception of the “human,” recognizing the limits of “anthropocentricism” both within and between disciplines. Posthumanism may be defined in various ways but the emphasis in this volume is on the idea of constitutive alterity, not simply in the relationship between human beings and other human beings, but in that between human beings and other species and life forms, and between human beings, nature and technology. As a result, Encounters with the Posthuman and the Environment is located at a crossover between posthumanism and environmental humanities. Between them they move not only between disciplines but also between levels of abstraction, from the most general reflection to the most everyday empirical detail. At the same time, all the chapters are case studies, whether they address particular aspects of philosophical or scientific posthumanism, analyze particular pieces of film, theatre, art, literature, or recall for us instructive episodes from social history. The aim at any rate is to give a feel for the range and depth of the posthumanist problematic within the wider context of environmental humanities.

Urban Inequalities

Urban Inequalities
Author: Italo Pardo
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2021-01-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030517241

This collection brings together leading thinkers on human beings in urban spaces and inequalities therein. The contributors eschew conceptual confusion between equality — of opportunity, of access, of the right to compete for whatever goal one chooses to pursue — and levelling. The discussions develop in the belief that old and emerging forms of inequality in urban settings need to be understood in depth, as does the machinery that, as masterfully elucidated by Hannah Arendt, operates behind oppression to sustain power and inequality. Anthropologists and fellow ethnographically-committed social scientists examine socio-economic, cultural and political forms of urban inequality in different settings, helping to address comparatively these dynamics.

The Aesthetics of Spectacle in Early Modern Drama and Modern Cinema

The Aesthetics of Spectacle in Early Modern Drama and Modern Cinema
Author: J. Sager
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 313
Release: 2013-09-20
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1137332409

Examining the work of the Elizabethan playwright, Robert Greene, this book argues that Greene's plays are innovative in their use of spectacle. Its most striking feature is the use of the one-to-one analogies between Greene's drama and modern cinema, in order to explore the plays' stage effects.

Screening Religions in Italy

Screening Religions in Italy
Author: Clodagh J. Brook
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Total Pages: 191
Release: 2019-11-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 1487503474

Religion has had been foundational in shaping Italy. Home to the Vatican State, the Italian peninsula is the religious centre for one billion Catholics globally. It is also increasingly home to those of other faiths, especially Islam. Italy's development as a contemporary post-secular and multi-religious society is fraught and fascinating. The recent return of religious discourse from the margins of Western society to a central position is a sign of what German philosopher, J?rgen Habermas, has defined as the post-secular condition. Habermas and others have questioned what most people in the West had, up to a few years ago, taken for granted: the unstoppable forward march of secularization and the subsequent marginalization of religion. Instead, one of the greatest global fault-lines in the contemporary world - the divide between absolutist extremist Islamic faith and liberal, but Christian-inflected, secular values - has religious identity at its core. The first book-length study to examine religion in contemporary Italian cinema and television fiction, Screening Religions in Italy identifies two key issues: how Italian filmmaking constructs the continuing position of religion in the public sphere and why religion persists on Italian screens. It spans genres such as horror, comedy, hagiopics, and TV fiction, and explores both commercial and art-house filmmaking. It treats films and television series that range from Moretti's Habemus Papam to Sorrentino's The Young Pope.

The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion

The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion
Author: Susan M. Felch
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2016-09-12
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 1316757269

Each essay in this Companion examines one or more literary texts and a religious tradition to illustrate how we can understand both literature and religion better by looking at them in tandem. Unlike most literature and religion books, which tend to focus on Christianity and take a highly theoretical approach inappropriate for non-specialists, The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Religion offers an accessible treatment of both Dharmic and Abrahamic traditions. It provides close readings of texts rather than surveys of large topics, making it an ideal resource for undergraduate and graduate students of literature and religion.

Imaginal Politics

Imaginal Politics
Author: Chiara Bottici
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 273
Release: 2014-05-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0231527810

Between the radical, creative capacity of our imagination and the social imaginary we are immersed in is an intermediate space philosophers have termed the imaginal, populated by images or (re)presentations that are presences in themselves. Offering a new, systematic understanding of the imaginal and its nexus with the political, Chiara Bottici brings fresh perspective to the formation of political and power relationships and the paradox of a world rich in imagery yet seemingly devoid of imagination. Bottici begins by defining the difference between the imaginal and the imaginary, locating the imaginal's root meaning in the image and its ability to both characterize a public and establish a set of activities within that public. She identifies the imaginal's critical role in powering representative democracies and its amplification through globalization. She then addresses the troublesome increase in images now mediating politics and the transformation of politics into empty spectacle. The spectacularization of politics has led to its virtualization, Bottici observes, transforming images into processes with an uncertain relationship to reality, and, while new media has democratized the image in a global society of the spectacle, the cloned image no longer mediates politics but does the act for us. Bottici concludes with politics' current search for legitimacy through an invented ideal of tradition, a turn to religion, and the incorporation of human rights language.

World Cinema through Global Genres

World Cinema through Global Genres
Author: William V. Costanzo
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2014-01-28
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1118712927

World Cinema through Global Genres introduces the complex forces of global filmmaking using the popular concept of film genre. The cluster-based organization allows students to acquire a clear understanding of core issues that apply to all films around the world. Innovative pedagogical approach that uses genres to teach the more unfamiliar subject of world cinema A cluster-based organization provides a solid framework for students to acquire a sharper understanding of core issues that apply to all films around the world A “deep focus” section in each chapter gives students information and insights about important regions of filmmaking (India, China, Japan, and Latin America) that tend to be underrepresented in world cinema classes Case studies allow students to focus on important and accessible individual films that exemplify significant traditions and trends A strong foundation chapter reviews key concepts and vocabulary for understanding film as an art form, a technology, a business, an index of culture, a social barometer, and a political force. The engaging style and organization of the book make it a compelling text for both world cinema and film genre courses