“Look Closer”: The Life Behind American Beauty
“Death is the mother of beauty.” – Wallace Stevens “I choose the ugly as well as the beautiful, knowing it will all be beautiful soon enough.” – Marvin Bell *[…]
Category: Essays
On Electrocuting an Elephant and Animal Death in Film
The death of the animal allows for an altering of the visual dynamic that is often inaccessible through traditional mechanisms of film, and, through harnessing and disrupting the tenuous balance[…]
Directors · Essays · Experimental & Underground · French Cinema
Forever Alex: Leos Carax’s It’s Not Me (C’est pas moi, 2024)
Carax suggests that the constant availability of images as immaterial streams – reduced to binary code and accessible through handheld devices – has diminished their impact. One of the film’s[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Essays
In Magnolia, Tom Cruise Far Outperformed Real-Life Andrew Tate
Cruise’s performance as Mackey offers a unique opportunity to make sense of a Tate, and to see what all really lies right under the surface of this ongoing phenomenon. *[…]
Essays · Movies · Philosophy
Sacred Time, Profane Screen: The Persistence of Mystical Contemplation in Cinema
Before any immediate plot, the viewer is invited to experience time, allowing images to speak before words, establishing a dialogue between the contemplative time on the screen and the subjective[…]
Activist & Political · Class System · Crime · Essays · Franchises & Series · Myth and Archetype · Outsiders · Politics · SF & Fantasy · Societal Trends · Superheroes
Don’t Be Weird: Heroes, Villains, and the Reinforcement of Class Distinctions in Modern Blockbusters
If you want to make a popular blockbuster, it better be about the right kind of person – and the right kind of person isn’t a loser. A decade ago,[…]
Actors & Personalities · Drama · Essays · Romance
Gazing at Gary Cooper: Sex, Power, Gender, and the Body in Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), Ball of Fire (1941), and Love in the Afternoon (1957)
As with Monroe, his seemingly all-but-transparent method has proven remarkably difficult to emulate, much less duplicate. (Toles, 2003: 34) Whatever happened to Gary Cooper? The strong, silent type? That was[…]
Essays · Exploitation & Erotica · LGBT & Queer
Glen or Glenda: Psychiatry, Sexuality, and the Silver Screen
Normalizing “deviant” genders and bodies is just one of many tropes in Wood’s complex camp classic.
African · African American · Drama · Essays · Exile and Displacement · Family · Historical & Epic · Race · SF & Fantasy
Black Face Cinema: Historical Grief and the Angry Black (Wo)Man
A think piece discussing the movies Antebellum, Black Panther, Django Unchained, Get Out, and Us. It compares their reception and portrayal of anti-black racism and black suffering, via the lens[…]
Animation · Essays · Fairy Tale · Franchises & Series · SF & Fantasy
To Infinity, and Beyond! Radical Self-Reorientation in the Toy Story Series
Looking back to the original Toy Story series, it seems obvious that one of the things that really helps Buzz accept his child’s toy nature is that he is good[…]
Directors · Essays · Genres · Horror
Sexual Violence and Female Experience in Roman Polanski’s Apartment Trilogy: Repulsion, Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant
Roman Polanski was born August 18, 1933, making him 89 years old on this day in 2023. We mark the occasion – we won’t say celebrate – by republishing Elise[…]
The Demiurge in the American Eyesore: Night Tide
If Curtis Harrington had not had the ruined mall of hell unveiled to the world in 1905 as Venice of America as a setting for his occult fable, he might[…]
Drama · Dreams · Essays · French Cinema
False Positive: Talking Betty Blues
to Lyssa You either go mad, or you learn about metaphors. – Allie Light * * * fou (masculine): crazy, mad, madman; see l’amour fou folle (feminine): crazy, mad, madwoman;[…]
Absurdism · Drama · Essays · Media · Philosophy · SF & Fantasy
Leaving the World of “The Truman Show”
“Where’s the TV Guide?” – last line of the film * * * Introduction Truman Burbank exits the only world he knows. We – the television audience in the film,[…]
Some Like It Not: The Key to Successful Relationships in the Films of Billy Wilder
Billy Wilder (1906-2002) died on March 27, age 95. We honor him by reposting Jason Carpenter’s fine analysis of the master’s work, first published in Bright Lights in 2016. *[…]
Drama · Eco · Eco-horror · Essays
Scars and Their Stories: Exploring a Scene from Jaws
What does a scar tell us about a person? Where they’ve been, what they’ve been through, the style in which they conduct their lives. A scar is a reminder, an[…]
Human Sacrifice in Brigadoon: The Fate of Harry Beaton
Brigadoon is a quasi-origin story that is closely associated with the way stories transform the reality of the recent past. Communities, societies, and nations survive by means of having sacrificial[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Essays · Franchises & Series · Race · SF & Fantasy · SF/Fantasy · Societal Trends
Star Trek: Voyager – “Tuvix” and the Warped Humanities
If Deep Space 9 demonstrates how the casting of African American commanders in chief – and their election – may constitute or create a backlash disguised as “progress,” it has[…]
Directors · Drama · Essays · Writers & Critics
He’s Thinking of Ending Things: Charlie Kaufman’s Breakup Letter to an Entire Age
Where Reid spends pages and pages absentmindedly ruminating on the many very painful, and very human, distinctions between Self and Other before losing himself in a tonal mess of relationship[…]
Activist & Political · African American · Essays · Societal Trends
The Many Shades of Blackface
Editor’s Note: As part of Bright Lights’ ongoing campaign to challenge dogmatic viewpoints and advocate for nuanced analysis of cultural controversies, we present Graham Daseler’s powerful discussion of one of[…]
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