Return of the 'Angry Woman': authenticating female physical action in contemporary cinema

In 1999, Elizabeth Hills pointed up the challenges that physically active women on film still posed, in cultural terms, and in relation to certain branches of feminist theory . Since then, a remarkable number of emphatically active female heroes have appeared on screen, from 'Charlie’s Angels' to 'Resident Evil', 'Aeon Flux', and the 'Matrix' and 'X-Men' trilogies. Nevertheless, in a contemporary Western culture frequently characterised as postfeminist, these seem to be the ‘acceptable face’ – and body – of female empowerment: predominantly white, heterosexual, often scantily clad, with the traditional hero’s toughness and resolve re-imagined in terms of gender-biased notions of decorum: grace and dignity alongside perfect hair and make-up, and a body that does not display unsightly markers of physical exertion. The homogeneity of these representations is worth investigating in relation to critical claims that valorise such air-brushed, high-kicking 'action babes' for their combination of sexiness and strength, and the feminist and postfeminist discourses that are refracted through such readings. Indeed, this arguably ‘safe’ set of depictions, dovetailing so neatly with certain postfeminist notions of ‘having it all’, suppresses particular kinds of spectacles in relation to the active female body: images of physical stress and extension, biological consequences of violence and dangerous motivations are all absent. I argue that the untidy female exertions refused in popular “action babe” representations are now erupting into view in a number of other contemporaneous movies – 'Kill Bill' Vols 1 & 2, 'Monster', and 'Hard Candy' – that mark the return of that which is repressed in the mainstream vision of female power – that is, a more viscerally realistic physicality, rage and aggression. As such, these films engage directly with the issue of how to represent violent female agency. This chapter explores what is at stake at a representational level and in terms of spectatorial processes of identification in the return of this particularly visceral rendering of the female avenger.

Tricksters, hucksters and suckers: Jonsonian cinema

Woolland, B. Tricksters, Hucksters and Suckers: Jonsonian Cinema. In: Woolland, B. (ed.) Jonsonians: Living Traditions, Aldershot, England and Burlington, USA: Ashgate, 2003, .

The effect of Arabian Sea optical properties on SST biases and the South Asian summer monsoon in a coupled GCM

This study examines the effect of seasonally varying chlorophyll on the climate of the Arabian Sea and South Asian monsoon. The effect of such seasonality on the radiative properties of the upper ocean is often a missing process in coupled general circulation models and its large amplitude in the region makes it a pertinent choice for study to determine any impact on systematic biases in the mean and seasonality of the Arabian Sea. In this study we examine the effects of incorporating a seasonal cycle in chlorophyll due to phytoplankton blooms in the UK Met Office coupled atmosphere-ocean GCM HadCM3. This is achieved by performing experiments in which the optical properties of water in the Arabian Sea - a key signal of the semi-annual cycle of phytoplankton blooms in the region - are calculated from a chlorophyll climatology derived from Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-View Sensor (SeaWiFS) data. The SeaWiFS chlorophyll is prescribed in annual mean and seasonally-varying experiments. In response to the chlorophyll bloom in late spring, biases in mixed layer depth are reduced by up to 50% and the surface is warmed, leading to increases in monsoon rainfall during the onset period. However when the monsoons are fully established in boreal winter and summer and there are strong surface winds and a deep mixed layer, biases in the mixed layer depth are reduced but the surface undergoes cooling. The seasonality of the response of SST to chlorophyll is found to depend on the relative depth of the mixed layer to that of the anomalous penetration depth of solar fluxes. Thus the inclusion of the effects of chlorophyll on radiative properties of the upper ocean acts to reduce biases in mixed layer depth and increase seasonality in SST.

Will the South Asian monsoon overturning circulation stabilize any further?

Understanding the response of the South Asian monsoon (SAM) system to global climate change is an interesting scientific problem that has enormous implications from the societal viewpoint. While the CMIP3 projections of future changes in monsoon precipitation used in the IPCC AR4 show major uncertainties, there is a growing recognition that the rapid increase of moisture in a warming climate can potentially enhance the stability of the large-scale tropical circulations. In this work, the authors have examined the stability of the SAM circulation based on diagnostic analysis of climate datasets over the past half century; and addressed the issue of likely future changes in the SAM in response to global warming using simulations from an ultrahigh resolution (20 km) global climate model. Additional sensitivity experiments using a simplified atmospheric model have been presented to supplement the overall findings. The results here suggest that the intensity of the boreal summer monsoon overturning circulation and the associated southwesterly monsoon flow have significantly weakened during the past 50-years. The weakening trend of the monsoon circulation is further corroborated by a significant decrease in the frequency of moderate-to-heavy monsoon rainfall days and upward vertical velocities particularly over the narrow mountain ranges of the Western Ghats. Based on simulations from the 20-km ultra high-resolution model, it is argued that a stabilization (weakening) of the summer monsoon Hadley-type circulation in response to global warming can potentially lead to a weakened large-scale monsoon flow thereby resulting in weaker vertical velocities and reduced orographic precipitation over the narrow Western Ghat mountains by the end of the twenty-first century. Supplementary experiments using a simplified atmospheric model indicate a high sensitivity of the large-scale monsoon circulation to atmospheric stability in comparison with the effects of condensational heating.

The regional focus of Asian multinational enterprises

In recent issues of this Journal a debate has raged concerning the appropriate nature of academic research in the Asia Pacific region. While we support the desire for both rigor and regional relevance in this research, we wish to demonstrate a strong commonality between the performance of large Asian firms and others from Europe and North America. This prompts us to question the need for a new theory of the MNE based on the experience of Asian firms. Like their counterparts elsewhere, the large Asian firms mostly operate on an intra-regional basis. While in the literature it has been assumed that the path to success for Asian firms is globalization, we show that the data supporting this is confined to a handful of unrepresentative case studies. We also present a bibliometric analysis which shows an overwhelming case study sample selection bias in academic studies towards this small number of unrepresentative cases

The risks of investing in the real estate markets of the asian region

The Asian region has become a focus of attention for investors in recent years. Due to the strong economic performance of the region, the higher expected returns in the area compared with Europe and the USA and the additional diversification benefits investment in the region would offer. Nonetheless many investors have doubts about the prudence of investing in such areas. In particular it may be felt that the expected returns offered in the countries of the Asian region are not sufficient to compensate investors for the increased risks of investing in such markets. These risks can be categorised into under four headings: investment risk, currency risk, political risk, and institutional risk. This paper analyses each of these risks in turn to see if they are sufficiently large to deter real estate investment in the region in general or in a particular country.

Digital imaging in popular cinema

This book investigates the challenges that the presence of digital imaging within the cinematic frame can pose for the task of interpretation. Applying close textual analysis to a series of case studies, the book demystifies the relationship of digital imaging to processes of watching and reading films, and develops a methodology for approaching the digital in popular cinema. In doing so, the study places contemporary digital imaging practice in relation to historical traditions of filmmaking and special effects practice, and proposes a fresh, flexible approach the the close reading of film that can take appropriate account of the presence of the digital.

Dynamic analysis of house price diffusion across Asian financial centres

The aim of this paper is to explore effects of macroeconomic variables on house prices and also, the lead-lag relationships of real estate markets to examine house price diffusion across Asian financial centres. The analysis is based on the Global Vector Auto-Regression (GVAR) model estimated using quarterly data for six Asian financial centres (Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei and Bangkok) from 1991Q1 to 2011Q2. The empirical results indicate that the global economic conditions play significant roles in shaping house price movements across Asian financial centres. In particular, a small open economy that heavily relies on international trade such as – Singapore and Tokyo - shows positive correlations between economy’s openness and house prices, consistent with the Balassa-Samuelson hypothesis in international trade. However, region-specific conditions do play important roles as determinants of house prices, partly due to restrictive housing policies and demand-supply imbalances, as found in Singapore and Bangkok.