Digital Audiovisual Media Class Blog

BY LAI WEI 33870474 One of the most striking aspects of The Substance (2024), directed by Coralie Fargeat, is the extent to which its critique of female body anxiety extends beyond the screen and feeds back into the conditions of its own production. While the film presents itself as a satirical body-horror allegory about women…

By Lai Wei 33870474 Music videos have long occupied an unstable position within screen media. Emerging as promotional tools for recorded music, they quickly developed into a hybrid form that combined commercial imperatives with aesthetic experimentation. The MTV era of the 1980s and 1990s marked a crucial moment in this history, establishing music video as…

by LAI WEI 33870474 The Avatar series occupies a peculiar position in contemporary cinema. Few franchises can rival its box-office success or technical ambition, yet its cultural presence remains surprisingly faint. Unlike Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Dune, Avatar rarely becomes a shared language for political metaphor, identity formation, or sustained reinterpretation. This paradox—enormous industrial…

By LAI WEI 33870474 We often talk about movies in terms of plot or character development—did the ending make sense? Did the protagonist grow? But have you ever watched a film where the story seemed secondary to a sheer, vibrating physical intensity? If you’ve seen Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014) in IMAX, or Adam McKay’s The…

By 33870474 The Avatar series occupies a peculiar position in contemporary cinema. Few franchises can rival its box-office success or technical ambition, yet its cultural presence remains surprisingly faint. Unlike Star Wars, Harry Potter, or Dune, Avatar rarely becomes a shared language for political metaphor, identity formation, or sustained reinterpretation. This paradox—enormous industrial weight with…

By: Lai Wei 33870474 We have all been there. You sit down for a “quick” 45-minute episode to unwind after work. Three hours later, you are deep in a rabbit hole, bleary-eyed, as the “Next Episode” countdown circle spins on the screen. It feels like a guilty pleasure, but from a media studies perspective, this…

By Ridwana Ali Childish Gambino’s This Is America (2018), directed by Hiro Murai, represents a pivotal evolution in the music video’s trajectory from MTV broadcast artefact to digital cultural event. As Arnold et al. argue, music videos today persist not just as promotional tools, but as hybrid, socially engaged artworks adapted for twenty-first-century digital media…

By Ridwana Ali Money Heist (La Casa de Papel) is a compelling case of how Netflix has redefined television through its platform-specific strategies of binge-viewing, algorithmic recommendation, and global content circulation. Originally broadcast on Spain’s Antena 3 to modest success, the series only achieved global popularity after being distributed by Netflix. This transformation aligns closely…

By Ridwana Ali Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) exemplifies the aesthetics of post-cinematic form. Through a dizzying array of visual styles, tonal shifts, and temporal disjunctions, the film abandons classical cinematic continuity in favour of what Steven Shaviro calls “post-continuity editing” a formal strategy shaped by the chaotic, layered…

By Ridwana Ali David Olusoga’s Alt History: Black British History We’re Not Taught in Schools (BBC Stories, 2019) is a compelling example of the post-cinematic video essay, blending archival material, historical narrative, and affective pacing to challenge cultural memory. As Olusoga walks through everyday British spaces schools, high streets, and museums, he questions the absence…