Table of contents for No. 95 in Screen Education

YEAR 8 AVAILABLE NOW Depth Study 1: The Western and Islamic World » Medieval Europe » The Ottoman Empire » Renaissance Italy » The Vikings Depth Study 2: The Asia-Pacific World » Japan Under the » The Polynesian Shoguns Expansion Across » Angkor/Khmer Empire the Pacific Depth Study 3: Expanding Contacts » Mongol Expansion » The Spanish » The Black Death in Conquest of the Asia, Europe and Africa Americas Depth Study 6D (NSW: Expanding Contacts) » Aboriginal and Indigenous Peoples, Colonisation and Contact History (Covers Australian Aborigines, North American Indians, New Zealand Maori) AVAILABLE NOW 2019 (INCLUDES TITLES FOR DEPTH STUDY 1 AND 3 . Depth Study 1: Making a Better World? » The Industrial Revolution Depth Study 2: Australia and Asia » Making a Nation (Forthcoming in 2019)…

‘Can God forgive us for what we’ve done to this world?’ So asks Michael (Philip Ettinger), an environmental activist battling debilitating depression, in the opening act of First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2017). He’s putting the question to a local pastor, Reverend Ernst Toller (Ethan Hawke), who’s there at the behest of Michael’s wife, Mary (Amanda Seyfried). She’s pregnant, and the thought of bringing life into a dying world, in full knowledge of the imminent climate cataclysm, has filled Michael with guilt. His question about God’s forgiveness is a provocation: issued to the film’s protagonist, but also by Schrader to its audience. Schrader has long been a provocateur, having penned the screenplay to Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976), that antisocial classic steeped in the urban decay and post-Vietnam loathing of 1970s…

1 Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre, Signet Classics, New York, 2008 [1847], pp. 257–8. 2 Em Baker, FaceTime interview with author, 30 May 2019. 3 ibid. 4 ibid. 5 Christina Scott, ‘In Brief: Gossip’, Agenda: Empowering Women for Gender Equity, 1 January 1992, vol. 9, no. 17, p. 5. 6 ibid., p. 7. 7 See Dov Kornits, ‘Em Baker: I Am No Bird’, FilmInk, 27 May 2019, <https://www.filmink.com.au/em-baker-wants-kiss -bride/>, accessed 11 July 2019. 8 Patricia White, ‘Feminism and Film’, in John Hill & Pamela Church Gibson (eds), The Oxford Guide to Film Studies, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1998, p. 117. 9 Hannah Anderson & Matt Daniels, ‘Film Dialogue from 2,000 Screenplays, Broken Down by Gender and Age’, The Pudding, April 2016, <https://pudding.cool/2017/03/film-dialogue/>,accessed 11 July 2019. 10 The Bechdel test is a…

1 See Dave Crewe, ‘Cinema Science: The Dangerous Biology of Annihilation’, Screen Education, no. 91, 2018, pp. 30–5. 2 See Dave Crewe, ‘Cinema Science: Pi and the Rapture of Complex Mathematics’, Screen Education, no. 93, 2019, pp. 30–5. 3 ‘Worldwide Grosses’, Box Office Mojo, <https://www. boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/>, accessed 18 June 2019. 4 See Dave Crewe, ‘Cinema Science: The Small Wonders of Ant-Man and the Wasp’, Screen Education, no. 92, 2018, pp. 22–9. 5 Natalie Wolchover, ‘Quantum Gravity’s Time Problem’, ‘Abstractions’, Quanta Magazine, 1 December 2016, <https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-gravitys -time-problem-20161201/>, accessed 18 June 2019. 6 Brian Swingle, quoted in ibid. 7 David Deutsch, quoted in Ben Lindbergh, ‘We Spoke to a Quantum Physicist About the Time Travel in Endgame’, The Ringer, 3 May 2019, <https://www.theringer.com/ movies/2019/5/3/18527776/marvel-avengers-endgame-time-travel-david-deutsch-proposition-scott-aaronson>, accessed 18 June 2019. 8 See Adam Becker,…

1 As Varda puts it, ‘People love [the film], they feel like there is suddenly a community they are sharing.’ See Varda, quoted in Rhonda Richford, ‘Agnes Varda on Being “a Star of the Margins”’, The Hollywood Reporter, 25 February 2018, <https:// www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/agnes-varda-being-a-star -margins-1087634 >, accessed 1 July 2019. 2 Agnès Varda, quoted in Kiva Reardon, ‘“Curiosity Is a Good Thing”: An Interview with Agnès Varda’, Cléo, vol. 6, issue 1, Spring 2018, <http://cleojournal.com/2018/04/11/curiosity-is-a -good-thing-an-interview-with-agnes-varda/>, accessed 1 July 2019. 3 ‘About the Inside Out Project’, Inside Out website, <https:// www.insideoutproject.net/en/about>, accessed 1 July 2019. 4 McKenzie Wark, The Spectacle of Disintegration: Situationist Passages out of the 20th Century, Verso, London & New York, 2013, p. 102. 5 Peter Goldberg, ‘Interview: Agnès Varda and JR on Finding the Art in Life…

1 Stephen Colbert, quoted in Nate Anderson, ‘Wikipedia Mocked by Stephen Colbert, The Onion’, Ars Technica, 2 August 2006, <https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/08/7396/>,accessed 8 July 2019. 2 See Adora Svitak, ‘Does School Prepare Students for the Real World? This Teen Speaker Says No’, TED-Ed Blog, 25 August 2015, <https://blog.ed.ted.com/2015/08/25/does-school -prepare-students-for-the-real-world-this-teen-speaker-says -no/>, accessed 8 July 2019. 3 Ken Robinson, ‘Do Schools Kill Creativity?’, presented at the TED2006 conference, Monterey, CA, February 2006, video recording available at <https://www.ted.com/talks/ken_ robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity>, accessed 8 July 2019. 4 For more on this, see Ralph Ryback, ‘The Science of Accomplishing Your Goals’, Psychology Today, 3 October 2016, <https://www.psychologytoday.com/au/blog/the -truisms-wellness/201610/the-science-accomplishing-your-goals>, accessed 8 July 2019.…

Right from its opening moments, Bridesmaids (Paul Feig, 2011) signals its intention to disrespect the familiar tropes and structural rules of the ‘chick flick’. As the camera slowly moves through a luxurious mansion, we hear a man and woman having sex; but the glamorous, erotic mood is quickly punctured when we see the troubled face of the film’s protagonist, Annie (Kristen Wiig), and realise we’re watching her have terrible, unsatisfying sex with a selfish partner, Ted (Jon Hamm). The scene is deliberately ridiculous, veering from the tasteful representational codes of typical Hollywood ‘love scenes’. These are carefully choreographed sequences intended to transmute the physicality of real-life sex into sleek, concise montages that communicate emotional closeness between lovers. Love scenes conventionally feature silhouetted kisses, ecstatic faces, rumpled sheets and hands caressing…

1 Paul Schrader, quoted in Brad Gullickson, ‘Paul Schrader Details the Journey of God’s Lonely Man from Taxi Driver to First Reformed’, Film School Rejects, 20 May 2018, <https://filmschoolrejects.com/paul-schrader-first -reformed/>, accessed 20 June 2019. 2 Paul Schrader, quoted in Paul Risker, ‘Cinema Is Anti-spiritual: Interview with First Reformed Director Paul Schrader’, Pop Matters, 13 July 2018, <https://www. popmatters.com/paul-schrader-interview-2586097121.html>, accessed 20 June 2019. 3 See Nathan Rabin, ‘Paul Schrader’, The A.V. Club, 16 October 2002, <https://www.avclub.com/paul-schrader-1798208245>,accessed 18 June 2019. 4 Paul Schrader, quoted in Harry Haun, ‘From Taxi Driver to First Reformed, an Interview with Paul Schrader’, America: The Jesuit Review, 5 January 2019, <https://www. americamagazine.org/arts-culture/2019/01/05/taxi-driver-first-reformed-interview-paul-schrader>, accessed 20 June 2019. 5 Paul Schrader, quoted in Trevor Johnston, ‘Paul Schrader on First Reformed and the Age of Hopelessness: “Is My Work Here…

1 See Hanna Schenkel, ‘Haunted by Questions Unanswered: Rosie Jones’ The Family’, Metro, no. 191, Summer 2017, pp. 84–9. 2 See Josh Modell, ‘From Making a Murderer to Evil Genius: Netflix’s Golden Age of True-crime Docos’, Rolling Stone, 18 May 2018, <https://www.rollingstone.com/tv/tv-news/from-making -a-murderer-to-evil-genius-netflixs-golden-age-of-true-crime -docs-630614/>, accessed 25 June 2019. 3 The crimes of Read, Travers and Bunting served as source material for the films Chopper, The Boys and Snowtown (Justin Kurzel, 2011), respectively. 4 See Christian Read, ‘Mark “Chopper” Read, Ned Kelly and Our Fascination with Dangerous Outcasts’, The Guardian, 10 October 2013, <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/ oct/10/mark-chopper-ned-kelly>, accessed 26 June 2019. 5 See, for example, Manisha Krishnan, ‘Ma Anand Sheena Poisoned a Town, but I Am Still Obsessed with Her’, VICE, 5 April 2018, <https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/kzx3p9/ma -anand-sheela-poisoned-a-town-but-i-am-still-obsessed-with-her>; and Tanaïs, ‘The Rage and Relatability of…

Long before they were the respective writer/star and director of Brigsby Bear (2017), comedian Kyle Mooney and filmmaker Dave McCary grew up on the same street in San Diego. Mooney was a little geekier, and McCary, sportier, but from the fifth grade on they were tight friends, united by their pop-cultural obsessions. There were comic books and baseball cards, TV shows and figurines – their early childhood defined by Star Wars, He-Man and the Masters of the Universe, ThunderCats, Transformers. ‘I grew up in a household that encouraged fandom,’ recounts Mooney. ‘My mother is a Trekkie, and we’re from San Diego, so I was going to Comic-Con when I was like 7 years old.’1 As Mooney grew older, his fandom only broadened, deepened. He grew particularly obsessed with old VHS…

1 See Lauren Goldbeck & Alex Pew, ‘Violent Video Games and Aggression’, National Center for Health Research, <http://www. center4research.org/violent-video-games-can-increase-aggression/>; and ‘Do Violent Video Games Make Kids More Violent?’, Psychology Today, 17 July 2018, <https://www. psychologytoday.com/au/blog/evidence-based-living/201807/do-violent-video-games-make-kids-more-violent>, both accessed 8 July 2019. 2 See Mike Nizza, ‘Tying Columbine to Video Games’, ‘The Lede’, The New York Times, 5 July 2007, <https://thelede.blogs.nytimes. com/2007/07/05/tieing-columbine-to-video-games/>, accessed 8 July 2019. 3 See Christopher J Ferguson, ‘It’s Time to End the Debate About Video Games and Violence’, The Conversation, 16 February 2018, <http://theconversation.com/its-time-to-end-the-debate-about -video-games-and-violence-91607>, accessed 8 July 2019. 4 ‘The Gaming of Violence’, The New York Times, 30 April 1999, <https://www.nytimes.com/1999/04/30/opinion/the-gaming-of -violence.html>, accessed 8 July 2019. 5 Dave Mosher, ‘Defeated Videogame-violence Experts: Science Was on Our Side’, WIRED, 28 June 2011, <https://www.wired. com/2011/06/supreme-court-video-games/>, accessed 11 July 2019.…

The story of Australia is, to a significant extent, an ongoing chronicle concerning notions of isolation, of becoming lost and of the fear of becoming lost. Of the sense of displacement among the first convicts dispatched from England, art critic Robert Hughes notes that their homeland, 12,000 miles away by sea, must have felt ‘further away than the moon, because at least you could see the moon’.1 In the nineteenth century, as the early European settlers clung mostly to the coastal fringes, explorers like Ludwig Leichhardt, Robert Burke and William Wills entered the centre of the country, never to be seen alive again. Frederick McCubbin’s renowned 1886 painting Lost, in which a child is depicted isolated in rugged bushland, further epitomises this burgeoning sense of Australia as a place in…

1 Michael White, ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, The Guardian, 19 February 2005, <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2005/ feb/19/featuresreviews.guardianreview12>, accessed 15 July 2019. 2 ‘Diana Death a “Tragic Accident”’, BBC News, 14 December 2006, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/6179275.stm>, accessed 15 July 2019. 3 ‘1981: Charles and Diana Marry’, ‘On This Day: 1950–2005’, BBC website, 29 July 2008, <http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/ hi/dates/stories/july/29/newsid_2494000/2494949.stm>,accessed 15 July 2019. 4 See ‘The Panorama Interview’, BBC website, <http://www. bbc.co.uk/news/special/politics97/diana/panorama.html>,accessed 15 July 2019. 5 The Queen, DVD, Icon Film Distribution, 2006.…

1 See Sara Delgado, ‘The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina Spellman Mortuary Has a Very Real US Area Code’, Teen Vogue, 16 November 2018, <https://www.teenvogue.com/ story/chilling-adventures-sabrina-spellman-mortuary-real-us-area-code>, accessed 9 July 2019. 2 Ted Sarandos, quoted in Todd Spangler, ‘Netflix Content Chief Says 85% of New Spending Is on Originals’, Variety, 14 May 2018, <https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/ netflix-original-spending-85-percent-1202809623/>,accessed 9 July 2019. 3 Sidneyeve Matrix, ‘The Netflix Effect: Teens, Binge Watching, and On-demand Digital Media Trends’, Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, vol. 6, no. 1, Summer 2014, pp. 119–38. 4 Sandra Weber & Claudia Mitchell, ‘That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Like a Teacher’: Interrogating Images and Identity in Popular Culture, The Falmer Press, London & Washington, DC, 1995. 5 Nancy Lesko, Act Your Age! A Cultural Construction of Adolescence, 2nd edn, Routledge, New York, 2012; and…

1 Francesca Babb, ‘Bridesmaids Shows There’s More to Jon Hamm than Being Don Draper’, The Guardian, 18 June 2011, <https://www.theguardian.com/film/2011/jun/18/john-hamm -mad-men-bridesmaids>, accessed 11 July 2019. 2 See Peter Mitchell, ‘Bridesmaids Breaks Hollywood Tradition with All-girl Gross-out’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 31 May 2011, <https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/ bridesmaids-breaks-hollywood-tradition-with-allgirl-grossout -20110531-1fdrd.html>; and Rhys Blakely, ‘Gross-out Chick Flick Bridesmaids Rewrites Hollywood Rules’, The Australian, 13 June 2011, <https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/film/ gross-out-chick-flick-bridesmaids-rewrites-hollywood-rules/news-story/ae4566d4c0ede0dd2c6d9780fbc5acac>, both accessed 12 July 2019. 3 Judd Apatow, quoted in Chris Lee, ‘Could Judd Apatow and Kristen Wiig’s Bridesmaids Nab an Oscar?’ The Daily Beast, 13 December 2011, <https://www.thedailybeast.com/could -judd-apatow-and-kristen-wiigs-bridesmaids-nab-an-oscar>, accessed 12 July 2019. 4 Paul Feig, quoted in Jennie Yabroff, ‘Judd Apatow’s Bridesmaids Is a Bawdy Bromance’, The Daily Beast, 11 May 2011, <https://www.thedailybeast.com/judd-apatows -bridesmaids-is-a-bawdy-bromance>, accessed 12 July 2019. 5 Pam Cook, Screening the Past: Memory…

Zhang Yimou’s Hero (2002) heralded a new era of Chinese commercial blockbusters that were characterised by a desire to appeal to both a local and a global audience.1 Demonstrating a superlative handle of place-based mise en scène, Zhang transports the viewer back to a time and location that is distinctly Chinese. With its blockbuster elements, somewhat unconventional take on the wuxia genre and complex narrative structure, the film confronts the audience through its symbolic tension between political power and culture. Media theorist Graeme Turner suggests that screen narratives can be understood by placing ‘film communication within a wider system for generating meaning – that of the culture itself’;2 adopting this approach, we are able to interpret Hero as Zhang’s solution to the challenge of navigating China’s participatory role in globalisation.…

1 The Favourite is Lanthimos’ third consecutive film made in English and featuring an international cast after The Lobster (2015) and The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017). 2 Yorgos Lanthimos, quoted in Ian Freer, ‘Five Reasons to Watch The Favourite’, The Telegraph, 20 December 2018, <https://www.telegraph.co.uk/films/the-favourite/reasons -to-watch/>, accessed 20 June 2019. 3 Molly Haskell, ‘Review: The Favourite’, Film Comment, November–December 2018, <https://www.filmcomment.com/ article/review-the-favourite/>, accessed 20 June 2019. 4 See, for instance, Andrew Higson, ‘English Heritage, English Literature, English Cinema: Selling Jane Austen to Movie Audiences in the 1990s’, in Eckart Voigts-Virchow (ed.), Janespotting and Beyond: British Heritage Revisions Since the Mid-1990s, Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany, 2004, pp. 35–50. 5 As Guardian columnist Ellen E Jones explains, The Favourite takes its place among these films and other recent…

The first of the Paddington films,1 directed by Paul King and based on the series of acclaimed children’s books written by Michael Bond, was released in 2014 to critical acclaim. The big-screen adventures of the titular bear from ‘Darkest Peru’ (voiced by Ben Whishaw), who makes his way to busy London and finds a home with a family there, achieved a specific combination of charming, eccentric and engaging that younger (and older) audiences responded to in droves.2 That film’s nostalgic whimsy is something that’s often missing from the more mainstream children’s titles that pepper the box office, but it’s a quality that is only strengthened in Paddington 2 (King, 2017). As such, the more recent film is arguably the better of the two – a rarity when it comes to…

1 Kyle Mooney, quoted in Tasha Robinson, ‘Brigsby Bear’s Creators on What Inspired Their Film’s Weird, Critter-filled Retro-future’, The Verge, 5 August 2017, <https://www.theverge. com/2017/8/5/16100066/brigsby-bear-interview-kyle-mooney-dave-mccary-mark-hamill>, accessed 1 July 2019. 2 Sandra Gonzalez, ‘Inside SNL Actor Kyle Mooney’s Impressive VHS Collection’, Mashable, 13 December 2015, <https:// mashable.com/2015/12/12/snl-kyle-mooney-vhs/>, accessed 13 June 2019. 3 Mooney, quoted in Robinson, op. cit. 4 Dave McCary, quoted in Robinson, ibid. 5 Mooney, quoted in Robinson, ibid. 6 Andrew Parker, ‘Dave McCary Discusses the Weird World of Brigsby Bear’, The Gate, 3 August 2017, <https://www.thegate.ca/ film/029683/dave-mccary-discusses-weird-world-brigsby-bear/>,accessed 1 July 2019. 7 ibid. 8 Dave McCary, quoted in Stephen Saito, ‘Interview: Dave McCary on Articulating the Joy of Making Movies in Brigsby Bear’, The Moveable Fest, 28 July 2017, <http://moveablefest.com/dave -mccary-brigsby-bear/>, accessed 1 July 2019. 9 Kyle Mooney, quoted…

1 The director’s full birth name is Manoj Nelliyattu Shyamalan. 2 Joshua Meyer, ‘The Films of M. Night Shyamalan Revisited: The Twists, the Triumphs, and the Turkeys’, /Film, 16 January 2019, <https://www.slashfilm.com/films-of-m-night-shyamalan -revisited/>, accessed 4 July 2019. 3 So named for the train line that plays host to the inciting incident of Unbreakable, but you’d be forgiven for describing the trilogy with the more memorable – if admittedly less creative – moniker ‘the Unbreakable trilogy’. 4 Here’s an example from 2016, but, honestly, there are countless examples: Matt Zoller Seitz, ‘Spoiler Alert: This Is a Post About Spoiler Etiquette’, Vulture, 4 May 2016, <https://www.vulture. com/2016/05/spoiler-alert-this-post-is-on-spoiler-etiquette.html>,accessed 29 June 2019. 5 Catherine Shoard, ‘Spoiler Alert: The Sixth Sense Voted Film with Best Twist’, The Guardian, 26 July 2010, <https://www. theguardian.com/film/2010/jul/26/sixth-sense-film-twists>,accessed 29 June…

1 See <https://www.makersempire.com>, accessed 17 July 2019. 2 See <https://apps.apple.com/au/app/adobe-illustrator-draw/ id911156590>, accessed 17 July 2019. 3 See <https://education.minecraft.net/>, accessed 17 July 2019. 4 See <https://pixologic.com/sculptris/>, accessed 17 July 2019. 5 See <https://www.microsoft.com/en-au/p/3d-builder/ 9wzdncrfj3t6>, accessed 17 July 2019. 6 Makers Empire’s printer-only bundles start from A$1499 + GST, and its subscription-only bundle costs A$1999 + GST per annum, whereas the complete bundles start from A$2999 + GST per annum. See <https://www.makersempire.com/ compare-and-buy/>, accessed 17 July 2019. 7 ‘About Makers Empire’, Makers Empire website, <https://www. makersempire.com/makers-empire/>, accessed 12 July 2019.…

1 See Jenny Kwok Wah Lau, ‘Hero: China’s Response to Hollywood Globalization’, Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, no. 49, Spring 2007, <https://www. ejumpcut.org/archive/jc49.2007/Lau-Hero/text.html>;and Ping Zhu, ‘Virtuality, Nationalism, and Globalization in Zhang’s Hero’, CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, vol. 15, no. 2, 2013, available at <https://docs.lib. purdue.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2227&context=clcweb>, both accessed 3 July 2019. 2 Graeme Turner, ‘Film Languages’, in Film as Social Practice, 3rd edn, Routledge, London & New York, 1999, p. 52. 3 Lau, op. cit. 4 Zhu, op. cit., p. 7. 5 Tingyang Zhao, ‘Rethinking Empire from a Chinese Concept “All-under-Heaven” (Tian-xia)’, Social Identities, vol. 12, no. 1, January 2006, p. 34. 6 See Zhu, op. cit. 7 Wendy Larson, ‘Zhang Yimou’s Hero: Dismantling the Myth of Cultural Power’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas, vol. 2, no. 3, 2008,…