Apartheid,Jim Crow,and Comparative Literature

This article examines John Greyson’s film, Proteus, for the way it figures queer masculinity and race in South Africa’s national historical narrative. The film offers an esthetic rendering of an eighteenth century interracial sodomy trial set on Robben Island. Drawing on contemporary queer theory and recent South African narratives of masculinity that privilege heternormativity and nationalism, this paper argues that the film carves out a space for queer identity within national history where it had previously been denied. The paper traces the way that the film interjects queer narratives into South Africa’s national identity, disrupts the heteronormalization of various sites of national iconography on South Africa’s historical terrain (such as Robben Island), and offers a queer masculinity that resists racial segregation. Moreover, this paper traces the ways that the film has implications for contemporary queer communities within South Africa.     

丽藻穷雕饰：论唐初诗歌对藻饰之美的追求

在初唐前期诗坛,传统儒家"雅"、"颂"的诗歌观念的复归并没有影响到当时诗人在诗歌艺术领域里的探求,"丽藻穷雕饰"成为诗人们的共同创作观念和努力目标;与此同时,"清辞巧制"也为诗人普遍接受.这使得在艺术风貌上,此一时期的诗歌表现出追求辞藻的雕琢、体制的精巧和诗风的清雅等鲜明特征.     

The arc and the zip: Deleuze and lyotard on art

Lyotard and Deleuze made extensive use of modern art to mount a critique of representation as part of their attack on the enlightenment subject. Art breaks out of received rules, conventions, forms, and cliches and is an instance of ethical if not revolutionary activity. Lyotard first developed these ideas through the concept of the Figure, which Deleuze later adopted. Figure is the desire or force that transgresses and deforms the good form of mimetic representation. Using Cezanne and Francis Bacon as paradigmatic examples, they argue that art creates new feelings and desires (Lyotard) or intensities and sensations (Deleuze). For Deleuze this is the model of ethical behavior -- the creation of new, productive forms of life free from the negativity of judgment. While Lyotard and Deleuze started from a common point, Lyotard changed his position in his later work on the sublime. Rather than positing a subject of purely affirmative desire and ideally free of the limitations of judgment, he posited a subject seized by and limited by the law. The subject is by nature divided: always already seized by and hostage to an Other, an unrepresentable excess or remainder. He is under an obligation to recollect and respond to the Other by bearing witness to it. The sublime experience of seizure by the law is exemplified in the paintings of Barnett Newman. While Deleuze would have done with judgment, Lyotard can never have done with it.     

Film noir’s ‘gal producers’ and the female market

ABSTRACT

This article surveys publicity surrounding the work of three female producers active in Hollywood in the 1940s and early 1950s: Joan Harrison, Virginia Van Upp, and Harriet Parsons. All three produced key titles in the cycle of film noir that emerged during this period. Publicity that emphasized their work behind the scenes on these productions was part of broader attempts to cultivate a female audience for film noir. Marketing campaigns suggested that ‘gal producers’ catered to unconventional feminine appetites for criminality and violence, all the while celebrating their ascendance in the traditionally male-dominated profession of producer. Such profiles would have been particularly appealing to female moviegoers during the Second World War, when many women held jobs previously dominated by men, and in the immediate postwar period when they sought to retain those lucrative positions.     

‘The film gone male’: women and the transition to sound in the British film industry 1929–1932

ABSTRACT

Taking its cue from Dorothy Richardson’s essay, ‘The Film Gone Male’ written for the critical, Left-wing British film publication Close Up in 1932, this article looks at women working in the British film industry during the transition from silent to sound cinema between 1929 and 1932. It considers the effects of new sound technology on women’s roles in front of and behind the camera from production to reception and critique. It also questions whether sound technology further marginalised women as producers of cinema and interrogates whether synchronised sound masculinised film as Richardson asserted.     

无道之德: 黑色电影的艺术伦理

艺术与伦理的关系是历代美学聚讼已久的话题,这在黑色电影中显得尤为突出。问题的关键在于,不能在理论层面上进行永无休止、坐而论道的争论,而得落实到具体作品中展开分析。如果说缺乏起码的游戏元素会损害作品的接受性,那么拥有必要的伦理性则是优秀作品的共同品质。黑色电影之所以“黑”,在于其主角行为处事往往显得离经叛“道”,但这类电影之所以也能产生一些脍炙人口的艺术杰作,则在于其有一种特殊的“德”性,满足了审美实践对于艺术伦理的基本诉求。     

转变期青花瓷艺术空前繁荣的原因

明末清初[明万历三十六年（1608）至康熙二十年（1681）]的青花瓷艺术没有因御窑停烧和战乱而衰败,相反,出现了空前繁荣的局面,展现了独特的时代特征和风貌.陶瓷学界称这个时期为中国瓷器发展的转变期.由于晚明商品经济的发展,思想观念的解放,御窑与民窑的融合和互动,以及科技的发展,使瓷器在构图风格、造型技法、纹饰绘画、审美观念等方面都有极可贵的创新和发展.