Events
Conferences, talks & workshops for PGRs
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BCMCR Seminar: Marginal Groups and Screen Controversies
September 27, 2018 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
BCMCR Research Seminar – Screen Cultures – Marginal Groups and Screen Controversies
1600-1730 Wednesday 3 October 2018
C284, Curzon B, Birmingham City University
Free registration at this link
C284, Curzon B, Birmingham City University
Free registration at this link
Professor Jason Lee (De Monfort University)-Transgression, Politics & Fear: Nazis and Neo-Nazis in Film and Media
In this talk Jason Lee (CJP Lee) explores Nazism and neo-Nazism in film and media, drawing on the research for his book ‘Nazism and Neo-Nazism in Film and Media’ (Amsterdam University Press, 2018) and his work published on Nazis and comedy. This research examines current trends in contemporary film and media, globally, and engages with debates that go to the heart of our understanding of knowledge: history, memory, meaning, and truth.
Dr Fran Pheasant-Kelly (Wolverhampton University) –Promoting Terrorism, Desecrating Celebrity: The Case of ‘Jihadi John’
This paper, a collaboration with Dr Glen Donnar at RMIT Australia, is part of a larger project on representations of extremism and radicalisation on screen, explores the concept of celebrity terrorism, and will use celebrity theory and studies of mediated terrorism to produce quantitative and qualitative analyses of British media representations of Emwazi. Rather than celebrating the elite or ordinary people, as Turner observes of the increasing turn to celebrity culture (2014: 92), the representation of Mohammed Emwazi in the British press complicates typical processes of celebrification, including media rituals of recruitment and degradation. In dubbing him ‘Jihadi John’, the British news media first celebrified Emwazi, then enacted a degradation ceremony, mocking his perceived desire for celebrity. In removing celebrity from a place of value in ways markedly different to typical forms of celebrity desecration, the portrayal of ‘Jihadi John’ and other foreign fighters not only stages a complex ritual of degradation, but degraded notions of celebrity itself.
This paper, a collaboration with Dr Glen Donnar at RMIT Australia, is part of a larger project on representations of extremism and radicalisation on screen, explores the concept of celebrity terrorism, and will use celebrity theory and studies of mediated terrorism to produce quantitative and qualitative analyses of British media representations of Emwazi. Rather than celebrating the elite or ordinary people, as Turner observes of the increasing turn to celebrity culture (2014: 92), the representation of Mohammed Emwazi in the British press complicates typical processes of celebrification, including media rituals of recruitment and degradation. In dubbing him ‘Jihadi John’, the British news media first celebrified Emwazi, then enacted a degradation ceremony, mocking his perceived desire for celebrity. In removing celebrity from a place of value in ways markedly different to typical forms of celebrity desecration, the portrayal of ‘Jihadi John’ and other foreign fighters not only stages a complex ritual of degradation, but degraded notions of celebrity itself.
About the speakers:
Jason Lee [DPhil MBPsS SFHEA FRSA] is Professor of Film, Media and Culture at De Montfort University (DMU) and Director of Partnerships for Leicester Media School (LMS). The author/editor of 20 books with work translated into 16 languages his website https://cjplee.com has links to some of his work. He is the editor of the new book series Transgressive Media Culture, Amsterdam University Press, and welcomes proposals to jason.lee@dmu.ac.uk
Fran Pheasant-Kelly is MA Film Studies Course Leader and Reader in Screen Studies at the University of Wolverhampton, UK. Her research spans fantasy, science fiction, terrorism, space, science and abjection in film and television. She is the author of numerous publications including two monographs, Abject Spaces in American Cinema: Institutions, Identity and Psychoanalysis in Film (IB Tauris 2013) and Fantasy Film Post 9/11 (Palgrave 2013), and the co-editor of Spaces of the Cinematic Home: Behind the Screen Door (Routledge 2015). She is currently working on a third monograph entitled The Bodily Turn in Film and Television.