Pauline Kael and the Western genre as critical displacement of self & nation: metaphorics and affects of 'taste' in American film criticism

Pauline Kael (1919–2001) is one of the most influential American film critics of the second half of the twentieth century. Many people are writing on her presently, with at least half an eye to her future cultural, political and historical importance. Certainly the full impact of Kael’s work, both within and beyond the borders of cinema (however defined), has not yet been established. This article unpacks the mechanisms and operations of ‘taste’ in Kael’s writings by using two notions drawn from Roland Barthes’ observations about another key figure of current cultural critique: Julia Kristeva. The comparison of Kael with Kristeva is not dwelt upon; instead, the article focuses on how Kael used the concepts of ‘taste’ and ‘dis-taste’ to draw her readership into a field of what might be termed ‘permanent dissent’. This article concludes by sketching out why Jewish-American Kael’s taste might endure, through the dual transition she occupies from a Cold War to a post-Cold War period, and from an era when cinema was the supreme, undisputed, screen artform, to the rise of the myriad screen technologies of the networked, Internet age.

Mothering siblings: Diaspora, desire and identity in American born confused Desi

In this essay we consider the construction of cultural identity, motherhood and the family in ABCD, a film of the Indian diaspora that had its world premiere at the 2001 London Film Festival. This film reads family, apparently within familiar narrative structures such as the U.S.-immigrant story, as portrayed in films like Goodbye, Columbus and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and the "leaving home" story, as classically portrayed in Pride and Prejudice, where a young person needs to escape from her clueless family. The irritating presence of the mother in the film, and the quickness with which her two children appear to make life-determining decisions following her death, seem to invite discussions of plot and character organized around ideas of individual development, self-improvement and understanding. This is the territory of the desire plot, an account of family history captured for the twentieth century by Freudian-Lacanian readings which position sexual desire within the unconscious history of familial fantasies, understood as vertical and Oedipal. In this territory, mothers and old ladies become, as Mary Jacobus memorably phrased it, little more than "the waste products" of a system in which marriageable women are objects of exchange between men (142) and a mother's death would be expected to grease the wheels of narrative. Identity and narrative are inextricably linked here: a certain understanding of narrative as developmental and teleological paves the way for an understanding of identity as either/or. There are problems, however, in trying to read ABCD as a bildüngsroman structured by what Susan Freidman calls "the temporal plots of the family romance, its repetitions and discontents" (137), rendering the "Indian" characteristics of the plot unreadable, and the apparently self-defeating nature of the characters' choices and behavior, rather pointless. A central [End Page 16] difficulty is that the film both responds to and resists readings based on the Oedipal model of the bildüngsroman with its focus on linear development through time.

American exceptionalism: population trends and flight initiation distances in birds from three continents.

All organisms may be affected by humans' increasing impact on Earth, but there are many potential drivers of population trends and the relative importance of each remains largely unknown. The causes of spatial patterns in population trends and their relationship with animal responses to human proximity are even less known.

The relationships between insomnia, sleep apnoea and depression: findings from the American National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2005-2008.

Objective: To determine the association between insomnia, obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA), and comorbid insomnia- OSA and depression, while controlling for relevant lifestyle and health factors, among a large population-based sample of US adults. Method: We examined a sample of 11,329 adults (≥18 years) who participated in the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) during the years 2005-2008. Insomnia was classified via a combination of self-reported positive physician diagnosis and high-frequency 'trouble falling asleep', 'waking during the night', 'waking too early', and 'feeling unrested during the day'. OSA was classified as a combination of a positive response to a physician-diagnosed condition, in addition to a high frequency of self-reported nocturnal 'snoring', 'snorting/stopping breathing' and 'feeling overly sleepy during the day'. Comorbid insomnia-OSA was further assessed by combining a positive response to either insomnia (all), or sleep apnoea (all), as classified above. Depressive symptomology was assessed by the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), with scores of >9 used to indicate depression. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for sleep disorders and depression were attained from logistic regression modelling adjusted for sex, age, poverty level, smoking status and body mass index (BMI). Results: Those who reported insomnia, OSA or comorbid insomnia-OSA symptoms reported higher rates of depression (33.6%, 22.2%, 27.1%, respectively), and consistently reported poorer physical health outcomes than those who did not report sleep disorders. After adjusting for sex, age, poverty level, smoking status and BMI (kg/m2), insomnia (OR 6.57, 95% CI 3.89-11.11), OSA (OR 5.14, 95% CI 3.14-8.41) and comorbid insomnia-OSA (OR 6.67, 95% CI 4.44-10.00) were associated with an increased likelihood of reporting depression. © The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists 2014.