Month: June 2018 (Page 2 of 3)

Introduction:

The Campus Theatre is a unique experience that tends to surprise those who enter into its doors for the first time.  As commercial films continue to fill the screens of multiplexes that are ubiquitous to American communities, it becomes tougher and tougher to see anything that was produced outside of a Hollywood studio while  “going out to the movies.”

What the Campus Theatre has offered patrons in recent years is something different.

People who have found themselves overcome by their own curiosity and susceptible to the gravitational pull of the building situated at 413 Market Street will tell you that the first thing that strikes them is the facade of the building. The vintage looking marquee gives the illusion that the theatre is stuck in the era in which it was built but upon stepping inside one can see that it is actually a capsule of modernity. The beautiful images that line the walls and ceiling of the interior of the theatre are only overshadowed by the images projected onto the singular screen in the auditorium.

Over the course of any given week, one may have a chance to see a number of classic, contemporary or even unheard of films. With the curatorial standard of the Campus Theatre being on such a high level, one can always be sure that whatever screens within the Campus Theatre will be quality.

Significance:

These are only a few of the many reasons by which The Campus Theatre has been selected as the subject of research. It may come as no surprise that single-screen art deco theaters across the country are going out of business for a number of reasons with one of the main ones being the emergence of digital film streaming platforms. What the Campus Theatre offers is a space for individuals to congregate, appreciate film exhibition of the highest standard and to socialize. These things that are afforded by the Campus Theatre cannot be found in many other places.

This project aims to raise awareness of and to commemorate the Campus Theatre and its mission to “present programming that includes the screening of art, classic and modern films, live performance, and enhanced film programming experiences, all steeped in the rich atmosphere of the authentic Art Deco, single-screen American theatre experience.” To this end, the project  presents a comprehensive historical context through which one may view the Campus Theatre and gain a better understanding of how it has transformed over the past seven decades.

Media Representation is significant for people’s view of the world and of themselves. Television, movies and social media have become some of the most prevalent ways that people can view events around them. People interact with media daily, but films and television shows seem to be the most viewed platforms. There’s one caveat: most of the content in movies and television are narrative stories. These narrative stories portray different versions of reality or try to emulate actual issues faced in this reality. Some of those issues are extremely serious, like mental illness. Films have a long history of portraying mental illness, but as an artform that can be expressive sometimes the portrayal of illnesses are not completely accurate. In fact, there seems to be a trend “that renditions of mental illness in film represent another type of despair; a malaise, anxiety, post-war trauma sense of difference and otherness” (Packer, Mental Illness in Popular Culture). Many filmmakers use mental illness concepts to have appealing stories, but do these portrayals accurately show and describe the reality of these conditions?

I’m going to challenge that representation of mental illness isn’t always accurately portrayed because of the statistics that surround mental health. There are many portrayals of people that deal with illness and disorders, but most of those portrayals are not accurate, in that they do not agree with the statistics. Mental illness is a diverse concept that can affect people from many different backgrounds, yet most of the portrayals in media “most characters living with it are male, young or middle-aged, Caucasian, and with, at least, a middle-class income” which gives us “fewer opportunities to observe, imagine and question how living in poverty, being a woman, aging, and/or suffering from racial or ethnic prejudice further complicate the already complex universe of mental illness”(Friedrich, The Literary and Linguistic Construction of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: No Ordinary Doubt). I observe films from recent years that have mental illness incorporated into the plot to show that media, specifically films don’t have completely accurate or diverse portrayals of the illness they are trying to simulate.

My project is a very specific project that will handle many topic from Africana Studies, Psychology and Film/Media Studies. For a piece of this project, I was able to conjure up a Project Charter. I believe that there would be no other way of explaining the depth of the project without showing some of the charter itself:

    Representation: Film Portrayal of Mental Illness and Race

“My project will explore the portrayal of mental illness on screen, specifically in films. I want to to do research on Hollywood films to see if there are preferences regarding the way mental illness is portrayed; is it usually romanticized or accurately portrayed? These are the types of questions that I plan to answer with viewing the films and seeing how most of the films that are produced portray these illnesses. However, there is another component because I want to see if there is a preference regarding race on how these mental illnesses are shown. Just from first glance, I can tell that some of the films on the list don’t necessarily have many non-white leads that are portrayed with mental illness. As a result, my project will also provide media influence.  This will show that the media influences a lot that people view and the mindsets that people have. Specifically, on a sensitive topic like this one. Although mental illness is becoming less stigmatized, that doesn’t apply to everyone and the way portrays patients is an indicator of that. Also, it could the result of any even larger point and that is access to help. These films have majority white cast members, and I want to correlate that with the amount of help that white individuals have received regarding mental illness, than non-white. I want to view all of the films from the list I have conjured up of films within the last 10 years of motion pictures distributed by these major studios. I hope that this project can appeal to people from various different disciplines; Africana Studies, Psychology and Film/Media Studies. I also hope that this project can influence others that may suspect that they have mental illnesses, but may not understand that it’s not their fault and they can seek help.

Currently, I haven’t found any projects that relate to mine because of the intersection between these various components. However, there are papers that touch on these different issues as they relate to each other. For example, I have found papers such as “‘One flew over the psychiatric unit’: mental illness and the media” that focuses on the media’s representation of mental illness that could provide me with some crucial information to enhance my project.  Some of the projects that I explored was the Art With Impact project that focuses on tackling the stigmatization of mental health through making films, but not necessarily analyzing them, and even this one doesn’t take race into account when thinking about the stigmatization of mental illness. I believe my project will build upon some of the aspects of other projects by adding that racial component and understanding the sociological approach to race as it relates to mental illness. ”

I am really excited to see where these ideas will go and what discoveries I make within these disciplines!

I did not expect a digital scholarship project to make me cry, but there I was, 7:30 on a Wednesday night wrapped in a blanket crying about a bear I had never met after I watched bear 71. Bear 71 is an interactive short film that uses real data from tracked wild animals in Alaska to tell the tale of one female bear and her interactions with people and society as it slowly infringes on her home. It creates an interactive map where the view can choose to follow the real travels of bear 71, or other wild animals in the area. The story of a bear and how the world around her is interesting as it is, but when combined with online and interesting tools to create an immersive world, the viewer is quickly drawn in.

This anecdote highlights what digital scholarship means to me. It’s the use of data and technology to take something and present it in a more engaging way. Articles and books have been the way of spreading information and ideas in the world of academia for almost as long as it has existed. Digital tools like test encoding, data visualization, interactive maps, timelines and more can present the same information in a way that puts control of it in the hands of the audience. A history of a given person could be written in a book or presented on an interactive timeline where the viewer can choose which events in a persons life they want to explore, and which they want to ignore.

These digital tools create an environment where information is constantly being presented in new ways, and these tools are pushed and expanded to be used in different ways. This creates an environment where sticking to traditionally accepted means of conveying information is no longer important, whats important is representing this information in a way that’s engaging and interesting.