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Browsing 2024 | 1 by Subject "ddc:791"
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- Article"Are There Any Questions?": Fiction, Religion and Politics in The Handmaid's Tale. EditorialPezzoli-Olgiati, Daria; Fritz, Natalie (2024) , S. 7-24Editorial to the issue on Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale that highlights how the cross-media distribution of the novel since 1985 has helped the dystopian narrative to become a global phenomenon, and refers to its impact on socio-political discussions – not only on a visual level.
- Journal IssueFiction, Religion and Politics in The Handmaid’s Tale(2024)Since its publication in 1985, The Handmaid’s Tale, a novel by Margaret Atwood, has had an enormous impact on different media productions, from opera to graphic novel to a much-acclaimed TV series. The novel develops a disturbing vision of the theocratic, totalitarian state Gilead. The narrator records fragments of her everyday life as a “handmaid”, one of the women assigned as slaves to the elite’s families for reproductive purposes. Atwood’s novel points out how religious and political fanaticism fuel social violence, inequality, and the abolishment of individual rights. With its clear articulation of widespread fears concerning contemporary democracy and its future – dystopian – developments, The Handmaid’s Tale has become a global cultural phenomenon. The articles gathered in this issue approach the complex interdependence of fiction, religion and politics in The Handmaid’s Tale in light of the novel of 1985 and the Hulu series that started in 2017. The articles by Friedhelm Hartenstein, Ann Jeffers, and Bina Nir offer a close reading of the use of biblical references in the novel, analysing the ambivalent role of religion in the (de-)legitimation of a destructive political power. Simon Spiegel focuses on the TV series and explores the transformation of the dystopian novel into a serial drama, and the paradoxical challenges of the serie’s success. The articles of the thematic section are introduced by the editors’ contribution that describes the processes of the narrative’s diffusion across media and contexts, and the hermeneutical power of this dystopian universe to address the interplay of religion and politics.
- ArticleFraming the War: THE CALVARY OF SERBIA (YU 1932/1940): Innovation, Faith, History in the Early Documentary FilmRadovic, Milja (2024) , S. 109-134This article examines the early documentary film of the Yugoslav space, assessing the innovative deployment of film language to communicate faith and history in the context of the First World War. The pioneering work involved in developing war cinema in the Yugoslav space has been largely overlooked by scholars. The research introduces readers to the rich heritage of such documentary film and encourages new approaches to researching history and religion through this medium. The article is a case study of the documentary film THE CALVARY OF SERBIA (GOLGOTA SRBIJE, Stanislav Krakov, Kingdom of Yugoslavia, 1932/1940), which was assembled from various forms of footage and is regarded as the best documentary made in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia prior to the Second World War. Incorporating different modes and codes of representation, THE CALVARY OF SERBIA is a milestone in the development of film language. How the author(s) saw and framed faith and history within the context of the war resulted in a unique cinematic space, in which on-screen and off-screen spaces are (re)negotiated. To examine the language of film is to study film as a historical document, and in this sense this article approaches film as a primary source. Its overarching goal is to advance and enrich scholarly inquiry into early cinema and to introduce novel avenues for accessing documentary film.
- ReviewJury Review. 50 Years of the Ecumenical Jury at the Film Festival in Locarno : Adaptions and TransformationsMäder, Marie-Therese (2024) , S. 150-152
- ArticleThe Restrictions of Genre: The Television Series THE HANDMAID’S TALE as a Classic DystopiaSpiegel, Simon (2024) , S. 89-106While there is a long tradition of literary utopias, there are hardly any positive utopias in film. Cinematic dystopias, by contrast, abound. The typical dystopia usually features a protagonist who is in opposition to the ruling regime, a built-in dramatic conflict that makes dystopias particularly well-suited for films. Although the huge success of Hulu’s THE HANDMAID'S TALE seems to confirm the affinity between film and dystopias, the show also highlights that a series spanning multiple seasons has very different dramaturgical demands than a feature film. Those demands are at odds with the narrative structure of a typical dystopia. While the standard rebellion plot provides the needed tension, it cannot be prolonged endlessly. Sooner or later the rebellion either succeeds or fails, at which point literary dystopias normally end. A series like The Handmaid’s Tale needs to be able to continue that plot, which is the primary reason why the protagonist Offred never leaves Gilead despite having several opportunities to do so.
- ReviewSeries Review. AFRICAN FOLKTALES REIMAGINED: (6 Episodes, Various Directors, Netflix/UNESCO 2023)Knauss, Stefanie (2024) , S. 141-144