Category: Film History
How Moral Panic Hijacks Individual Autonomy
[A] human being is endowed with free will. He can use this to choose between good
and evil. If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork
orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and
juice, but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil or (since
this is increasingly replacing both) the Almighty State. (Burgess)
How White Elitism Trash-Talks Hollywood Diversity
Once upon a time, I lived on the cusp of the film industry. My family resided a mere forty-five minutes outside of Hollywood. Weekend trips to Universal Studios weren’t unusual. My dad shared stories of a family friend’s exploits as lead cameraman for a famous director. When I left the state of California and moved to North Idaho, I learned that my childhood wasn’t a “normal” American experience. Like any discourse community—a term defined by Kevin Davis in his “Does Coming to College Mean Becoming Someone New?” essay as “groups of people who share patterns and strategies of communication” (Davis)—Hollywood movie-making culture carries its own definition of reality that’s not easily accessible to people living outside that space. But in spite of the exclusivity of my background, there is one element of the movies that most people are familiar with: The Academy Awards, or the “Oscars.”