Microsoft Word - 250-1433-1-LE.docx Editorial Murat Akser m.akser@ulster.ac.uk Ulster University Abstract Volume 7.2 (2019) includes six articles by Lauren Rohrs, Iqbal Shailo, Alexander S. Rose, Syed Zulkifil Haider Shah, Elijah Cory, Chantal Poch, and Ricardo Henrique Almeida Dias; and three book reviews by Engin Akdas, Joshua Louis Moss, and Diksha Mittal. Keywords: male gaze, heteronormativity, Hollywood, Bollywood, Soviet movies, Ultra-nationalism, Masculinity, Violence, Identity, marketing; branding; psychoanalysis; Star Wars, Item songs, psychoanalytic feminism, feminine subjectivities, Werner Herzog, German cinema, Ecstatic Truth, documentary film, discourse analysis, narratology. New articles in this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 United States License. This journal is published by the University Library System of the University of Pittsburgh as part of its D-Scribe Digital Publishing Program and is cosponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Press. Volume 7.2 (2019) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2019.250 | http://cinej.pitt.edu CINEJ Cinema Journal: Editorial Volume 7.2 (2019) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2019.250 | http://cinej.pitt.edu 2 Editorial Murat Akser The volume 7.2 is comprised of six articles and three book reviews. Lauren Rohrs in "The Homosexual Male Gaze: Normalizing Homosexuality through the Use of Heteronormative Narrative Techniques in Film" is an examination of the use of Mulvey’s “male gaze” by a homosexual character in the 2017 adaptation of Beauty and the Beast. Explores the potential of the use of this heteronormative narrative technique in the normalization of homosexuality in film and society. Iqbal Shailo surveys in his "Bollywood in the Hollywood Era: Narratives of Ultra- nationalism, Terrorism and Violence". Shailo examines how some renowned Hollywood and Bollywood movies deal with geopolitical representations of empire and regional politics through the construction of discourses centered on the building of “empire” and “nation”. These movies reflect how government machineries evaluate the political situation and strategic policies of the country in managing geopolitical environments through the construction of security narratives, political rhetoric and geopolitical discourses. In “Star Wars: The Force Awakens [the Western Pleasure Principle]” Alexander Rose proposes the use of psychoanalysis to analyze market- and cultural-level collectives. To demonstrate, the author analyzes a recent installment in the popular film franchise Star Wars in order to demonstrate how extant product preferences can be used as subjects of analysis much like dream images in traditional psychoanalysis. In “Reclaiming Subjectivities: A Psychoanalytic-Feminist Perspective on Item Songs in Contemporary Indian Cinema”, Syed Zulkifil Haider Shah, Elijah Cory draw upon more recent studies in psychoanalytic feminist scholarship, depart from this conventional understanding and argue that item songs in Indian cinema can be interpreted as a means of liberation for women, and as devices for reclaiming the narrative on female sexuality, and a woman’s right to her body. More CINEJ Cinema Journal: Murat Akser Volume 7.2 (2019) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2019.250 | http://cinej.pitt.edu 3 broadly, using Judith Butler’s concept of gender performativity in the feminist phenomenological tradition, they argue that item songs can be construed as performative acts that subvert the male gaze and viewed as constitutive of new feminine subjectivities in the contemporary Indian society. In 'Inner and deeper: Motifs of fiction in Werner Herzog's films' Chantal Poch opens an alternative path of analysis to Werner Herzog's philosophy of filmmaking, one that works through the detection of visual and narrative motifs in his films, thus searching the impact of Herzog’s idea of fiction into his poetics. In "Samsara documentary: narrative and discourse analysis and a possible interpretation" Ricardo Henrique Almeida Dias aims to present an analysis of Samsara's documentary produced by Ron Fricke and Mark Magidson. This analysis is based using aspects of discourse analysis and the concepts about time and narrative elaborated by the French philosopher Paul Ricoeur. From the narrative construction of the film he aims to establish a possible reading through the assembling of a hypothetical narrative chain of the scenes and the search of a narrator, which is hidden in the film. Through the analysis he is able to claim how the producers intended to demonstrate contradictory aspects of human existence and its relationship with the environment. We hope that you will appreciate these articles; and the elaborate book reviews by Ergin Akdas (Life in Art), Joshua Louis Moss (Comic Venus: Women and Comedy in American Silent Film), and Diksha Mittal (Changemakers: Twenty Women Transforming Bollywood Behind the Scenes). CINEJ also received around one hundred books in 2019 for review from a variety of academic publishers including BFI, Bloomsbury, Columbia University Press, Rowman and Littlefield, Routledge, Wallflower Press, and Wayne State University press among many others. Among these some stand out as pioneer texts to define the next decade in film studies scholarship such as Thomas Elsaasser's (2018) European Cinema and Continental Philosophy: CINEJ Cinema Journal: Editorial Volume 7.2 (2019) | ISSN 2158-8724 (online) | DOI 10.5195/cinej.2019.250 | http://cinej.pitt.edu 4 Film as Thought Experiment and Christine Gerhardt's (2018) Screening the Red Army Faction. There are new paradigms being offered in horror cinema, serial television and alternative media research such as Victoria McCollum's (2019) Make America Hate Again: Trump-Era Horror and the Politics of Fear and Akser and McCollum's (2019) Alternative Media in Contemporary Turkey: Sustainability, Activism and Resistance. Streaming horror serial shows like American Horror Story (AHS) especially seasons 6 (Roanoke), 7 (cult) and 8 (apocalypse) are attracting more scholarly attention. Video streaming media is also taking the lead and allowing more and more women filmmakers to enter the previous inaccessible male dominated film industry. As more women filmmakers emerge, there are more studies on their films. There are new volumes coming from McFarland on horror genre's new women filmmakers like Ana Lily Amirpour, Aisling Clarke, Jen Soska, Jennifer Kent, Karyn Kusama, Julia Ducournau, Tricia Lee, Amy Hesketh, Ceylan Ozcelik and Besi Adut. On the digital distribution and streaming side, Bloomsbury's new edited volume titled World Cinema On Demand: Global Film Cultures in the Era of Online Distribution would be a welcome study in this area. REFERENCES: Akser, M. and McCollum, V. (Eds.) (2019). Alternative media in contemporary turkey: sustainability, activism and resistance. London: Rowman and Littlefield. Elsaasser, T. (2018) European cinema and continental philosophy: Film as thought experiment. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Gerhardt, C. (2018). Screening the red army faction. London: Bloomsbury. McCollum, V. (2019) Make america hate again: trump-era horror and the politics of fear. London: Routledge.