(Spoiler Alert) The Death of Ianto Jones and How it Saved Earth

It’s Day 5, we’re at the 11th hour, there is no hope in sight, no way out. What can possibly be done? Perhaps you, the leader of the now defunct Torchwood, can’t save the world this time. Perhaps this is the end, perhaps you have finally failed. You are partly responsible for the situation and you so desperately long to right it. But wait; there is a way to stop this, to save the children of Earth young and old, all but one. Now you face an impossible question, an impossible decision that must be made. What is the price of one child? What is the price of one child who happens to be your own grandchild? Sacrifice 10 percent of the world’s children for him? Or Sacrifice him for 10 percent of the world’s children? Oh, by the way, you only have about two minutes.

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Welcome to Torchwood: Children of Earth.

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“In the rare instance when the cinema permits the woman’s look, she not only sees a monster, she sees a monster that offers a distorted reflection of her own image,” Linda Williams writes in her essay on women in horror films entitled “When the Woman Looks.” The question sparked by Williams’ essay is this: Why is the monster a reflection of the woman? Williams suggests that the reason is both represent the “Other,” that is, something distinctly different from the predominant white patriarchy that the West is founded upon. Women, according to Susan Lurie, are often viewed by men as just “a castrated version of man.” Monsters, in a similar instance, represent another type of disfigurement of man. This notion implies that women are inherently linked to the monster as both are born as a monstrosity, an abomination of man. Due to the correlation between female and monster, “the destruction of the monster that concludes many horror films could therefore be interpreted as yet another way of disavowing and mastering the castration her body represents” (Lurie). But what happens when the woman, to a degree, as well as the monster are both man-made? (continue reading…)

Relationships Between Image, Narrative and Music in Brokeback Mountain

Brokeback Mountain opens with the wide country landscape in Wyoming. Eventually we meet Ennis del Mar (Heath Ledger) and, in turn, Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal).  The two former ranch hands meet for the first time as the new herder and returning camp tender up on Brokeback Mountain.  It is only a matter of time, thirty film minutes in, before they drink enough to ease any inhibitions and have sex for the first time, sparking their passionate but extremely limited relationship.  Although fairly violent and quick, it will not be the last time they meet in this way, even once the summer ends.  After four years has separated their lives, now both married with children, from that summer on Brokeback, Jack and Ennis meet again in 1967 and it seems like no time has past at all: Jack tells Ennis “Swear to god I didn’t know we was goin a get into this again—yeah, I did. Why I’m here. I fuckin knew it. Redlined all the way, couldn’t get here fast enough.”  Thus begins their decades-long love affair and the haunting story of Brokeback Mountain. (continue reading…)

Between Consent and Descent

Martin Scorsese creates his films based on the aesthetics of auteur cinema in which he imposes his personality and visual style on the films themselves (D’Acierno 606).  He presents his own genre, that of the “mean streets” variety, where he can express his view of the Italian-American experience.  Although the main character of Goodfellas, Henry Hill, is of both Irish and Sicilian descent, Scorsese nonetheless comments on the generational gaps that appear in Italian-American families.  This “experience” comes to the surface in the DeVito family, demonstrated by the gap between Tommy and Mrs. DeVito.  Although their relationship reveals the cultural and ideological differences between mother and son, the painting by Tommy’s mother—played by none other than Scorsese’s own mother—provides the most symbolic and potent metaphor regarding this subject.  However, the gap also represents Scorsese’s, and through him Tommy’s, struggle with his two identities, Italian and American. (continue reading…)

Winner of eight Academy Awards in 1984, Amadeus presents a fictional account of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s life and death in Vienna.  In order to create tragic suspense and an ill-fated demise unlike his operas, director Milos Forman introduces Signore Salieri, a rival composer in Vienna who believes he contributed to Mozart’s early death.  Apart from the historical details created for the storyline, the film depicts Mozart’s personality in a distorted light.  Shown as an arrogant, eccentric, and a wild child, the life of Mozart in Vienna is full of myth and embellishment from both those who love and hated him.  These myths along with a few facts construct the Mozart of Forman’s Amadeus and create the persona of Mozart the martyr who died for his music. (continue reading…)