Atelier 17 : Etudes Filmiques (SERCIA)
Responsables de l’atelier
Vincent Jaunas
Université Jean Monnet Saint-Etienne
vincent.jaunas@hotmail.com
Emilie Cheyroux
Institut National Universitaire Champollion
emilie.cheyroux@univ-jfc.fr
Gaëtan Cognard
Université de Franche-Comté
gaetan.cognard@univ-fcomte.fr
Once Upon a Time in the British West: Thomas Shelby’s Success Story or the Redrafting of the Social Geography of the ‘Gypsy’ and Traveller Figures.
The ‘Gypsy’ and Traveller figures seems to have always inhabited what Michel Foucault called heterotopias: alternative spaces or « espaces autres1 », areas at the same time real and unreal, legendary yet familiar. Those located utopias, from which they only escaped when summoned by Gadjos, were once islands (home of Shakespeare’s Caliban), or fairs (the moveable heterotopian space of Ben Jonson’s “metamorphosed gipsies”); later on ‘Gypsy’ and Traveller figures could be found in the somewhat occult and supernatural moorland which served as their natural habitat (Scott’s Meg Merrilies, Carr’s Hester Swane). They were also often associated with a mythical West (Synge’s “Tinkers”, Tito and Ossie Reilly in Mike Newell’s film Into the West). The ‘Gypsy‘ and Traveller figures have thus been everlastingly assigned fetishized beyonds, invariably becoming citizens of the national borderlands. But Thomas Shelby, gang leader of the Peaky Blinders in the eponymous Netflix series (2013-2023, BBC) is an ambitious frontiersman with seemingly “no limitations”, ceaselessly conquering new territories – and forbidden women. Using at will the necessary opening and closing mechanisms of heterotopias, he “infiltrate[s]” (social) spaces meant for his enemies, from illegal betting grounds to Westminster. This paper will look into Thomas Shelby’s rise at once from rags to riches and from the periphery to the cultural center.
Biographie
Gaëtan Cognard is a member of the C.R.I.T lab and a 5th-year PhD student from BesançonUniversity, France (U.F.C) where he has taught English linguistics, translation, and civilization. He is holder of the CAPES and the agrégation in English. His doctoral research focuses on the ‘Gypsy’ and Traveller figures in British, Irish, and American cultures. He has conducted interviews with GRT communities in the UK and Ireland, has been published in peer-reviewed journals and has had the opportunity of speaking at national and international seminars and conferences in France, Hungary, and Romania.
Margaux Collin
Université de Rennes
collinmargaux7@gmail.com
La reconquête de l’histoire par l’exploitation et le détournement du mythe de la Frontière dans Django Unchained de Quentin Tarantino (2012)
Claude Lévi-Strauss définit le mythe comme étant « une grille de déchiffrement, une matrice de rapports qui filtre et organise l’expérience vécue, se substitue à elle et procure l’illusion bienfaisante que des contradictions peuvent être surmontées et des difficultés résolues »(Lévi-Strauss, 2009) et souligne alors une autre facette du mythe, qui n’a pas pour seul but de représenter le monde mais qui vise aussi à modifier le monde réel selon cette représentation. Nous proposons donc, au regard de cette citation, d’étudier la façon dont l’exploitation et le détournement du mythe de la Frontière dans Django Unchained de Quentin Tarantino permettent de renégocier l’histoire de l’esclavage sur un mode fictif, ouvrant alors un espace imaginaire et fantasmé permettant de surmonter l’oppression systémique de l’esclavage par le déplacement des imaginaires qui se construit à travers le mythe de la Frontière. Nous verrons alors comment par le réinvestissement du mythe, à la fois entre prolongement et redéfinition, Django parvient à se défaire de ses chaînes et à retrouver sa liberté ; puisque c’est en effet ce déplacement des imaginaires qui permet d’ouvrir le champ des possibles et d’aller au-delà de l’idée de reconstitution de l’histoire pour plutôt aller vers son exploration, voire son expérimentation. Nous verrons donc comment le concept de Frontière, dans toute son élasticité, est réinvesti, redéfini et subverti afin de permettre la reconstruction et l’affranchissement de Django ; ce qui nous permettra par ailleurs de nous interroger sur la dimension évolutive du mythe par l’étude de la relation que ce dernier entretient avec le présent.
Biographie
Margaux Collin est en troisième année de thèse sous la direction de Christine Chollier à l’Université de Reims. Margaux travaille sur les réécritures cinématographiques de l’esclavage sorties pendant les années Obama. En parallèle, elle travaille comme enseignante contractuelle à l’Université de Reims.
Andra Drăghiciu
Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany
andra.draghiciu@vdsr-rlp.de
Where Three Worlds Collide: Negotiating Modernity and Morality over the ‘Gypsy’ Female Body
Streaming services allow people from all over the world access to movies and series in a multitude of languages – whether they master them or not. In the Netflix-era, audiences can choose to listen to Cilian Murphy’s charming accent in the original version of Peaky Blinders or have him dubbed in Japanese with Greek subtitles just as they can watch the Polish series Infamia in English (or Turkish with Indonesian subtitles, for that matter). As soon as they are available on a global streaming platform, cinematic productions lose their linguistic specificity and become universally decipherable.
Since the new season of the Italian series Suburra (which by the way, can be enjoyed in English, but also in Hungarian with Arabic subtitles) expanded its stock of ‘gypsy’ characters, it is almost as if Netflix is betting on universally decipherable figures to match this linguistic globalization. And the figure of the ‘gypsy’ is without doubt the cultural trope able to transcend geographic, linguistic, cultural, symbolic, and moral frontiers.
Gita (Infamia) finds herself at the border of not two, but three worlds: ‘the West’, ‘the East’, and ‘the East’ within. Forced to leave Wales for Poland, she is as the same time victim and agent of her own physical, emotional, linguistic, and cultural displacement. She navigates ‘the East’ as a heterotopia to ‘the West’, and ‘the East within’, as a heterotopia to the white mask, as she speaks and raps in English, Polish and Romanes.
Building on the framework of the ‘gypsy’ mask as a versatile figure which allows for the imposition of symbolic borders on female sexuality (Mladenova) and the analysis of ‘gypsy’ inhabited spaces as heterotopias (Cognard), this paper looks at how in Infamia, Gita serves as a border in the sense of “porous space of hybridization”, where three worlds collide and matters of morality and modernity are negotiated.
Biographie
Dr. Andra Drăghiciu works in the field of Antigypsyism monitoring at the Antigypsyism Reporting Centre Rhineland-Palatinate, a project of the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs and is a member of the German Society for Antigypsyism Research. She holds a PhD in Contemporary History and her areas of expertise are Central and Eastern European History of the 20th century with a focus on subcultures, oral history and culture of remembrance. In 2020, her book on youth subcultures in the Romanian Socialist Republic was awarded the Richard G. Plaschka-Award of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for scholars under 40 years of age who have produced extraordinary achievements in the field of Eastern, East Central and Southeastern European history.
Daniel Koechlin
Sorbonne Université
daniel.koechlin@univ-lemans.fr
Breaching Containment Barriers in Occupy-era Film Dystopias (2011-2013)
In the wake of the Occupy movement, a group of dystopian films were released that, despite many differences, share a unique series of characteristics. In the Hunger Games trilogy, Elysium and Snowpiercer, class war emerges as the main theme. The 99% are physically shut out from the world of the 1% by impressive barriers. The main characters are from the ranks of the dispossessed and must make their bloody way through a series of obstacles until they reach the world of the elite, and in that world a nodal point that controls the entire system. Refusing to be coopted as in previous rebellions, they bring about the total collapse of the regime of exploitation. The aftermath of the revolution is not explored, it is enough to have opened up new horizons, utopian or otherwise.
The paper will use a critical approach, mainly Jamesonian and Žižekian, to examine historical, political, psychological and interpretative issues in this constellation of occupy-era films, and how they testify to the huge impact on the American psyche of the 2007 financial crisis and ensuing long depression, and the feeling of frustration that fostered Occupy.
These are critical dystopian narratives as defined by Sargent and Moylan, for hopes and doubts beset the revolutionaries. The ideology of “Ressentiment” that Jameson sees as permeating depictions of the discontents in a class-ridden society (and which intersect with Lacanian ideas of the hysterical enjoyment of the Other as Master) is a key factor when interpreting these films and forms the “containment strategy” of President Snow or Mr. Wilford. But the likes of Katniss Everdeen grimly persevere. This « keeping faith » with the barrier-breaching impulse of the masses and the unequivocal downfall of the haughty elite is what really sets apart this group of critical dystopias, for which we tentatively suggest the term of « eripsipylaic” dystopias – ”gate-toppling” dystopias.
Biographie
Daniel Koechlin est professeur agrégé d’anglais à Le Mans Université-ENSIM et doctorant au sein de l’HDEA (Sorbonne Université). Sa thèse porte sur le cinéma dystopique étasunien au XXIe siècle, et il est l’auteur de plusieurs articles (tous en cours de parution) et d’un chapitre d’ouvrage collectif (chez Vrin, coll. “Philoséries”) sur ce sujet.
Radmila Mladenova
University of Heidelberg, Germany
radmila.mladenova@zegk.uni-heidelberg.de
On the Role of Antigypsy Tropes in the Construction and Maintenance of Identity Borders: The Case of Anglophone Cinema
The ‘gypsy’ figure is a global phenomenon in the arts. It crosses borders erected by national narratives as effortlessly as it migrates from one medium to another, so that we can find it in most art forms: from literature through theatre, opera and film to comics and video games, from Latin America, through Europe to Asia. An indispensable part of Europe’s imaginary, this fictional figure is one of Europe’s most recognisable creations worldwide and has played a vital role in the conception of film, as the British short film A Camp of Zingaree Gypsies (1897) or D.W. Griffith’s debut The Adventures of Dollie (1908) testify. The ‘gypsy’ figure oscillates between an ethnotype (conceived as ‘black’ within Europe, Othered and authenticated simultaneously through a tableau of (nomadic) rites and rituals), a sociotype (signifying the social bottom, the urban periphery) and mythic-magical creature (inhabiting a parallel (supernatural) universe which mirrors obversely the dominant social norm). Narratively, the ‘gypsy’ figure thus has been shaped into a pliable tool fit for the imposition of borders on a number of levels – ethno-‘racial’, national, class, gender and sexuality, as we can see in the British silent film Betta the Gipsy (1918) or in the British melodrama The Gypsy and the Gentleman (1958). Filmmakers often turn to the ‘gypsy’ mask to dramatize and buttress hierarchies between social classes, as in the hit show My Fat Gypsy Wedding, or between the West and the East, as in the Netflix series Infamia (2023). This phantasm has been used, though far less often, also for the transmutation of these same hierarchical borders, as in the BBC TV series Peaky Blinders (2013-2022). Madonna of the Seven Moons (1944) is cited by Pam Cook as an example for the Europeanisation of British cinema; the film’s central ‘gypsy’ figure is deployed so as to expand the borders of the national imaginary, widening the scope of Britishness to include also the European component, communicating the idea that “national identity could be dual identity” (1996:61). So, after outlining the identity regulative functions of the ‘gypsy’ mask, this presentation will direct the spotlight on one narrative borderline which filmmakers rarely focus on: marriage across ethno-‘racial’ divides.
Biographie
Dr. Radmila Mladenova is a literature and film scholar working at the Research Centre on Antigypsyism at Heidelberg University’s Historical Department. Currently, she co-coordinates the Collaborative Project “Media Antigypsyisms – from Interdisciplinary Analysis to Critical Media Competence”. With her 2018 project “The Stigma ‘Gypsy’. Visual Dimensions of Antigypsyism”, she has propelled the establishment of the peer-reviewed, open-access series of books Interdisciplinary Studies of Antigypsyism and has authored and edited several foundational publications on visualantigypsyism: Counterstrategies to the Antigypsy Gaze (heiUP 2024), The ‘White’ Mask and the ‘Gypsy’ Mask in Film (heiUP 2022), Visuelle Dimensionen des Antiziganismus (heiUP 2021), Antigypsyism and Film (heiUP 2020), Patterns of Symbolic Violence (heiUP 2019). Before moving to Germany, she had worked for leading NGOs in Bulgaria dedicated to promoting grass-root democracy and human rights. Her education includes an M.A. in Culture in the Process of Modernity at Mannheim University (2014) and a B.A. in English and American Studies at Sofia University (2001).
Isabelle Schmitt-Pitiot
Université de Bourgogne
ischmitt6556@gmail.com
Of Army Wives and Invasive Blooms: revisiting Fordian ambiguities
Quite of while ago, in a study of Ford’s Cavalry film Rio Grande,* we described how the deceptive and disappointing crisscrossing of the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo’ shallow waters was revelatory of the ambiguities of John Ford’s films regarding the colonization of the West and the part the Cavalry played in the epoch of the Frontier as well as, in that case, the defense of the Mexico/US border and the confrontation with Native Americans.
This time, we propose to revisit the Cavalry as a figure of displacement as well as colonization, through the study of a few Cavalry wives and an affirmation of their importance in Ford’s vision. The iconic cyclamen flowers Nathan Brittles (John Wayne) grows on his wife’s tomb in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) stand out as an emblem of what we consider Ford’s mixed feelings regarding the presence in the West of the Cavalry. Hence, we shall structure our research around the metaphor of invasive plants, their seduction and possible destructive power and inevitability. Following the Trilogy’s chronology, we’ll focus first on future Cavalry brides Philadelphia Thursday (Shirley Temple) in Fort Apache (1948) and Olivia Dandridge (Joanne Dru) in She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, then on the reluctant Cavalry wife/mother figure of Katleen Yorke (Maureen O’Hara) in Rio Grande (1950), asking ourselves what these transplanted women characters can tell us of Ford’s vision of the colonization of the West as enforced by the US Cavalry.
Biographie
Isabelle Schmitt-Pitiot is Assistant Professor (Retired) in English Studies at the University of Burgundy in Dijon, France. After a PhD thesis on Spectatorship in Woody Allen’s films (2007), she has worked on English-speaking films and television series, (especially medical shows), on film genres (musicals, westerns, comedies) and film spectatorship and reception. Sercia’s Secretary between 2015 and 2021, she has published articles and/or made presentations on films by Woody Allen, John Ford, Milos Forman, John Huston, Yórgos Lánthimos, Terence Malick, Billy Wilder, and on television series (Desperate Housewives, E.R., Justified, Hit and Miss, M.A.S.H., Sopranos). She is co-editor of Intimacy in Cinema (Mc Farland, 2014) and of De l’intime dans le cinéma anglophone (CinémAction, Corlet, 2015) with David Roche, as well as Comics and Adaptation (University Press of Mississippi, 2018) with Benoît Mitaine and David Roche and Sur la Route (Editions Universitaires de Dijon, 2018) with Bénédicte Brémard and Julie Michot. She lives near Dijon, France.
Joanne Vrignaud
Université Paris Nanterre
jvrignaud@parisnanterre.fr
« This is the land of the wolves, now » : the Frontier fantasy and the Mexican-American Border in American westerns (2000 – 2015)
The Frontier in American westerns has been established as a myth-building, nation-uniting symbol of the American Conquest since the beginnings of cinema (Mitchell, 2003), especially within Ford’s cinematography. In more contemporary works, we can notice the prominence (but not coherence) of a geographical, political treatment of the Frontier as a national border when centered on the tricky question of the Mexican territory and its impact on the American perception of its own national space and identity. Long before Donald Trump proposed to build his infamous wall in 2016, this Border-Frontier crystallized the mythical, political and historical tensions between both nations. How is the filmic treatment of the Mexican border affected by the legacy of the Frontier and Conquest? In the wake of the escalation of the War on Drugs and the post-9/11 national anxiety regarding territorial security, the diverse filmic depictions of the Mexican-American border have not only become aesthetically and politically revealing of the violent American fantasy of its southern border (Fojas, 2011). They also question the new forms of imperialism upon this supposedly wild, uncivilized and often empty territory, and reflect upon its influence in return on the borderlands or the Frontera (Anzaldúa, 1987). Those aspects are becoming part of the generic fondations of the Neo-western since the beginning of the new millenium (Campbell, 2008). From a conquering gaze that follows the violent legacy of the Conquest (Limerick, 1994) in No Country for Old Men (E.&J. Coen, 2007) and Sicario (D. Villeneuve, 2015); to the pastoral treatment of the Mexican wilderness as an empty, fantasmagorical ‘’Frontera’’ in All the Pretty Horses, (B.B. Thornton, 2001) or The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (T. L. Jones, 2005); to an off-screen fantasy of individual liberation, as in Brokeback Mountain (A. Lee, 2005); we therefore offer to investigate the various cinematographic treatments of this geographical and mythical border in Neo-westerns between 2000 and 2015.
Biographie
Joanne Vrignaud is a 3rd year PhD student at Université de Nanterre. She works in contemporary American film and iconographic studies, from superhero comics to the subject of her thesis: neowesterns. Her communications and articles focus on the films of Chloe Zhao and Taylor Sheridan, the contemporary treatment of the American Frontier and the various influences of the western genre on other film categories. A book chapter on the western codes in the series The Mandalorian will be published at the end of the year.