The reception to 2020's The Last of Us Part II was a maelstrom of misleading marketing, unpre... more The reception to 2020's The Last of Us Part II was a maelstrom of misleading marketing, unprecedented leaks, and a vicious fallout characterized by prejudiced online harassment and sprawling conspiracies. Through an in-depth analysis of Part II's reception, this article seeks to apprehend the increasing frequency of such controversies in popular culture as a distinct transformation of online fandom, which is defined by the agendas of the alt-right. The “anti-woke” campaigns emblematic of these communities are best understood through what this article defines as alt-fandom, where conspiracy theories are fabricated in order to defy the supposed ideological and narrative transgressions of a new text. In the case of The Last of Us franchise, the challenges posed by its corrosive alt-fandom are endemic to a new reception climate confronting the production of media texts.
The reception to 2020's The Last of Us Part II was a maelstrom of misleading marketing, unprecede... more The reception to 2020's The Last of Us Part II was a maelstrom of misleading marketing, unprecedented leaks, and a vicious fallout characterized by prejudiced online harassment and sprawling conspiracies. Through an in-depth analysis of Part II's reception, this article seeks to apprehend the increasing frequency of such controversies in popular culture as a distinct transformation of online fandom, which is defined by the agendas of the alt-right. The “anti-woke” campaigns emblematic of these communities are best understood through what this article defines as alt-fandom, where conspiracy theories are fabricated in order to defy the supposed ideological and narrative transgressions of a new text. In the case of The Last of Us franchise, the challenges posed by its corrosive alt-fandom are endemic to a new reception climate confronting the production of media texts.
Methodologies for teaching audiovisual essays often map the discipline-specific objectives of the... more Methodologies for teaching audiovisual essays often map the discipline-specific objectives of the form and the practical and philosophical advantages it offers as a mode of assessment. However, a particular division has emerged between the kind of work created by students and the professional audiovisual criticism circulated by critics and scholars that is considered exemplary of contemporary practice. In this context, the role of the author as a self-reflexive agent can be seen as a link not only between students' expectations of traditional written assessment and the fundamentally different imperatives of the audiovisual essay as a subjective mode of creative research, but also between audiovisual essay criticism and historical iterations of the essay form. This article explores the extensive redevelopment of a capstone undergraduate subject on audiovisual film criticism, undertaken via a fellowship awarded to develop teaching innovation and enhance curriculum design. We detail major pedagogical interventions, including a return to writing, examine key motivations in the development of course content, and establish the critical significance of encouraging students to think of themselves as authors-that is, to consider their own agency in the ways they encounter, interpret, and utilise images. Reflecting on some outcomes of the redeveloped subject, we pose it as a test case for a pedagogy that encourages students to think ambitiously with images, dissolving divisions between professional audiovisual criticism and audiovisual essays as a method of assessment. We argue that when thinking with images in this manner is embraced as a component of pedagogical methodology, students' competencies with images can be leveraged to enable work that is academically rigorous, critically sophisticated, and evinces highly subjective authorial agency. Welles' film F for Fake (1972) presents students and teachers of film and media studies with a complex commentary on the ways that media texts can cultivate dominant or transgressive narratives. In the context of contemporary experiences of politics and culture it looms large as an analogy to the 'fake news ecology'1 that shapes certain negotiations of media, and Welles appears as a sagacious figure. Presenting viewers with the stories of Elmyr de Hory, the forger, and Clifford Irving, the faker, he guides us through issues of truth and untruth, trust and mistrust, that we face as members of the digital generation. The film's largely fabricated meta-narrative about authenticity and forgery offers a pathway to a critical understanding of Welles as a filmmaker that raises questions about authorial intent and argumentative strategy. As such, F for Fake serves as an ideal starting point for a discussion of the interlinking practices of film criticism and the audiovisual essay. Positioned as the leading film text in a final-year undergraduate Film and Screen Studies subject at Monash University titled The Audio Visual Essay, Welles' film initiates a sustained exploration of a set of connected concepts and concerns: the impulses of historical and contemporary forms of moving image criticism, the notion that images can function as a thinking tool, and the deployment of cinematic images to craft arguments about the self and the world.
The reception to 2020's The Last of Us Part II was a maelstrom of misleading marketing, unpre... more The reception to 2020's The Last of Us Part II was a maelstrom of misleading marketing, unprecedented leaks, and a vicious fallout characterized by prejudiced online harassment and sprawling conspiracies. Through an in-depth analysis of Part II's reception, this article seeks to apprehend the increasing frequency of such controversies in popular culture as a distinct transformation of online fandom, which is defined by the agendas of the alt-right. The “anti-woke” campaigns emblematic of these communities are best understood through what this article defines as alt-fandom, where conspiracy theories are fabricated in order to defy the supposed ideological and narrative transgressions of a new text. In the case of The Last of Us franchise, the challenges posed by its corrosive alt-fandom are endemic to a new reception climate confronting the production of media texts.
The reception to 2020's The Last of Us Part II was a maelstrom of misleading marketing, unprecede... more The reception to 2020's The Last of Us Part II was a maelstrom of misleading marketing, unprecedented leaks, and a vicious fallout characterized by prejudiced online harassment and sprawling conspiracies. Through an in-depth analysis of Part II's reception, this article seeks to apprehend the increasing frequency of such controversies in popular culture as a distinct transformation of online fandom, which is defined by the agendas of the alt-right. The “anti-woke” campaigns emblematic of these communities are best understood through what this article defines as alt-fandom, where conspiracy theories are fabricated in order to defy the supposed ideological and narrative transgressions of a new text. In the case of The Last of Us franchise, the challenges posed by its corrosive alt-fandom are endemic to a new reception climate confronting the production of media texts.
Methodologies for teaching audiovisual essays often map the discipline-specific objectives of the... more Methodologies for teaching audiovisual essays often map the discipline-specific objectives of the form and the practical and philosophical advantages it offers as a mode of assessment. However, a particular division has emerged between the kind of work created by students and the professional audiovisual criticism circulated by critics and scholars that is considered exemplary of contemporary practice. In this context, the role of the author as a self-reflexive agent can be seen as a link not only between students' expectations of traditional written assessment and the fundamentally different imperatives of the audiovisual essay as a subjective mode of creative research, but also between audiovisual essay criticism and historical iterations of the essay form. This article explores the extensive redevelopment of a capstone undergraduate subject on audiovisual film criticism, undertaken via a fellowship awarded to develop teaching innovation and enhance curriculum design. We detail major pedagogical interventions, including a return to writing, examine key motivations in the development of course content, and establish the critical significance of encouraging students to think of themselves as authors-that is, to consider their own agency in the ways they encounter, interpret, and utilise images. Reflecting on some outcomes of the redeveloped subject, we pose it as a test case for a pedagogy that encourages students to think ambitiously with images, dissolving divisions between professional audiovisual criticism and audiovisual essays as a method of assessment. We argue that when thinking with images in this manner is embraced as a component of pedagogical methodology, students' competencies with images can be leveraged to enable work that is academically rigorous, critically sophisticated, and evinces highly subjective authorial agency. Welles' film F for Fake (1972) presents students and teachers of film and media studies with a complex commentary on the ways that media texts can cultivate dominant or transgressive narratives. In the context of contemporary experiences of politics and culture it looms large as an analogy to the 'fake news ecology'1 that shapes certain negotiations of media, and Welles appears as a sagacious figure. Presenting viewers with the stories of Elmyr de Hory, the forger, and Clifford Irving, the faker, he guides us through issues of truth and untruth, trust and mistrust, that we face as members of the digital generation. The film's largely fabricated meta-narrative about authenticity and forgery offers a pathway to a critical understanding of Welles as a filmmaker that raises questions about authorial intent and argumentative strategy. As such, F for Fake serves as an ideal starting point for a discussion of the interlinking practices of film criticism and the audiovisual essay. Positioned as the leading film text in a final-year undergraduate Film and Screen Studies subject at Monash University titled The Audio Visual Essay, Welles' film initiates a sustained exploration of a set of connected concepts and concerns: the impulses of historical and contemporary forms of moving image criticism, the notion that images can function as a thinking tool, and the deployment of cinematic images to craft arguments about the self and the world.
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