Category: Uncategorized
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From MTV Flow to Networked Circulation: Music Video after Television
By Lai Wei 33870474 Music videos have long occupied an unstable position within screen media. Emerging as promotional tools for recorded music, they quickly developed into a hybrid form that combined commercial imperatives with aesthetic experimentation. The MTV era of the 1980s and 1990s marked a crucial moment in this history, establishing music video as…
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When Spectacle Becomes a System: Avatar: Fire and Ash and the Limits of Post-Cinematic Affect
by LAI WEI 33870474 The Avatar series occupies a peculiar position in contemporary cinema. Few franchises can rival its box-office success or technical ambition, yet its cultural presence remains surprisingly faint. Unlike Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Dune, Avatar rarely becomes a shared language for political metaphor, identity formation, or sustained reinterpretation. This paradox—enormous industrial…
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Beyond the Screen: Why Interstellar Hits You in the Gut (Not Just the Heart)
By LAI WEI 33870474 We often talk about movies in terms of plot or character development—did the ending make sense? Did the protagonist grow? But have you ever watched a film where the story seemed secondary to a sheer, vibrating physical intensity? If you’ve seen Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) in IMAX, or Adam McKay’s The…
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When Spectacle Becomes a System: Avatar: Fire and Ash and the Limits of Post-Cinematic Affect
By 33870474 The Avatar series occupies a peculiar position in contemporary cinema. Few franchises can rival its box-office success or technical ambition, yet its cultural presence remains surprisingly faint. Unlike Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Dune, Avatar rarely becomes a shared language for political metaphor, identity formation, or sustained reinterpretation. This paradox—enormous industrial weight with…
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Are You Watching Netflix, or Is Netflix Watching You?
By: Lai Wei 33870474 We have all been there. You sit down for a “quick” 45-minute episode to unwind after work. Three hours later, you are deep in a rabbit hole, bleary-eyed, as the “Next Episode” countdown circle spins on the screen. It feels like a guilty pleasure, but from a media studies perspective, this…
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This Is America and the Viral Logic of the Post-MTV Music Video
By Ridwana Ali Childish Gambino’s This Is America (2018), directed by Hiro Murai, represents a pivotal evolution in the music video’s trajectory from MTV broadcast artefact to digital cultural event. As Arnold et al. argue, music videos today persist not just as promotional tools, but as hybrid, socially engaged artworks adapted for twenty-first-century digital media…
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The Professor’s Perfect Plan: Binge-Viewing and Global Strategy in Money Heist
By Ridwana Ali Money Heist (La Casa de Papel) is a compelling case of how Netflix has redefined television through its platform-specific strategies of binge-viewing, algorithmic recommendation, and global content circulation. Originally broadcast on Spain’s Antena 3 to modest success, the series only achieved global popularity after being distributed by Netflix. This transformation aligns closely…
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Shattered Realities: Post-Continuity in Everything Everywhere All at Once
By Ridwana Ali Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) exemplifies the aesthetics of post-cinematic form. Through a dizzying array of visual styles, tonal shifts, and temporal disjunctions, the film abandons classical cinematic continuity in favour of what Steven Shaviro calls “post-continuity editing” a formal strategy shaped by the chaotic, layered…
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Reclaiming the Past: Affective History in David Olusoga’s “Alt History”
By Ridwana Ali David Olusoga’s Alt History: Black British History We’re Not Taught in Schools (BBC Stories, 2019) is a compelling example of the post-cinematic video essay, blending archival material, historical narrative, and affective pacing to challenge cultural memory. As Olusoga walks through everyday British spaces schools, high streets, and museums, he questions the absence…
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From the Jury Room to Pandora: Cinema’s Leap into the Digital Age
By: Ridwana Ali Cinema has always been shaped by its technological context, but the shift from analogue film to digital cinema represents more than a change in tools it redefines the medium itself. A comparison between 12 Angry Men (1957) and Avatar (2009) demonstrates this dramatic transformation. Sidney Lumet’s 12 Angry Men exemplifies classical, analogue-era…
Digital Audiovisual Media Class Blog 