Precarious Subjectivities and Neoliberal Reconstruction of Modern Family - Sunny YoonParasite (Bong Joonho, 2019) attracted global viewers by addressing the intensifying class stratification and Neo-liberal reconstruction of global economy in the contemporary world. Parasite uniquely features class issues and social criticism instead of depicting typical class struggles between the rich and the poor. Parasite addresses the class structure in transition and highlights the precarious class on the margin. By personalizing class relations into family relations, Parasite features the changing family system along with the breakup of the conventional family. Parasite picks up the very point of this social change and the transformation of family types.
In Search of Statistics for the Monster: Piracy and the Precarity of the Nigerian Film Industry - Iwuh et al.The study investigates piracy from three categories of stakeholders outside the 3% elite population that patronizes the mega stores. The youth represent a high population of movie viewers found in the suburban areas of selected cities. It also took account of those in the universities that constitute major patronage but do not actually pay the right price for the films. There was the need to study the unique and peculiarity of Nigerian piracy, the level of awareness of consumers of pirated products, the level of involvement of the youths, and if operates uniquely, and exhibits different dynamics from foreign examples, as well as the effectiveness of the antipiracy bodies. This study selected 16 low-budget filmmakers and sampled the opinions of 500 online-dependent university students including TV/DVD-playback suburban youth population. Findings reveal that those who advertently or inadvertently patronize pirated movies account for 88%, with 93% proliferation of low-quality pic¬tures. 100% of university students sampled depend wholly on online downloads, except if compelled to stream online. Mu¬tual suspicion characterizes Nigeria’s film industry, and the study identified six categories that unfortunately make the list of collaborators of Nigerian pirates with unregistered marketers accounting for 93.8%, unscrupulous practitioners outside the registered unions (75%), while 53.3% implicated the regulators. Nigerian film piracy exhibits a special peculiarity of illegally copying, printing, and publicly selling these counterfeits with impunity. And sadly, to the chagrin of creative artists. The study concludes that Nigerian pirates and their patrons enjoy the unhindered liberty of operating publicly, and the law enforcement agents do not yet have the magic wand to end it. Getting listed by Netflix has become a major breakthrough, while the re¬turn of cinema viewing centres presently serves as another avenue of direct negotiation and control for Nollywood filmmakers.
Rust, Mold, and Cracks: Post-Dualist Approaches on Spaces and Images - Lucas Rossi GervillaUsing the piece of video art “Rust, Mold, and Cracks”, created by the author, this paper addresses questions related to space, ruins, and different temporalities. Calling upon the authors Georg Simmel and Milton Santos, the text proposes an approach to ruins that goes further than dualist concepts such as abandoned/not abandoned, or modern/outdated. It also discusses the role of Nature in this scenario. In light of this situation, space and time are under mutable reorganisation, as pointed out by David Harvey. Different arrangements between them shall produce diverse modernities. Considering images as objects resulting from this spatiotemporal modification, this article comments on their accumulation.
Haunting Lost Futures: The Crises of Space and Time under Neoliberalism in Support The Girls - Victoria FlemingAndrew Bujalski’s film, Support the Girls, offers insight into the frayed social bonds shaped by neoliberalist ethos over the last forty years. These frayed bonds are indicative of the spatial-temporal suspension that have come to shape our lives under neoliberalism. Trapped in the precarious yet perpetual present, haunted by the stabilizing dreams of the past, we concurrently mourn for our lost futures. Despite feeling anchored within our ostensibly immovable present, we nonetheless remain affectively bound to the belief that, perhaps, things will change this time as we continue engaging with the very objects and systems perpetuating our malaise, alienation, and precarity. In this article, I argue that Support the Girls represents the temporal and spatial disjuncture characterizing post-modernism and the age of neoliberalism. Support the Girls reflects the impasse marred by affective relations of cruel optimism as conceptualized by theorist Lauren Berlant that marks our temporal present, while the characters continue occupying the non-places defining Mark Fisher’s notion of hauntology and the slow cancellation of the future. As illustrated in Support the Girls, this temporal and spatial dispossession defining late capitalism has stripped Lisa (played by Regina Hall), the general manager of a local Hootersesque restaurant and sports bar called Double Whammies, and the cabal of young women she manages, of any material relations of collective solidarity, replacing these collective bonds with empathy as a form of conflict resolution.
