Film

by Concrete - the official student newspaper of UEA.

Books

24 FILM Hot and Heavy vs Cringe and Crude – The Best and Worst cinematic sex-scenes By Louise Collins

We all know the feeling of watching a film with our family only to be ambushed by a sex scene. We hide behind our hands, avoiding eye contact with everyone until it passes. I’ve had my fair share of wanting to disappear into the abyss whilst watching a movie with my mam. However, sometimes, you’ve got to recognise them for what they are, and sometimes, they’re bad. Other times, well, they know how to get an audience engaged.

Honourable mentions: Dylan O’Brien in The First Time had me going feral when I saw it. Atonement 100% belongs in the hot and heavy category, with the iconic green dress, and the rising tension between Robbie and Cecilia. However, it’s interrupted in the worst possible way, making it very awkward. Easy A’s fake-sex scene also belongs here.

Worst: 365 Days was one, painfully long sex montage with uncomfortable facial expressions, and a plot eroticising a terrifying kidnapping situation. 50 Shades of Grey is horrific with its power dynamic issues and abusive portrayal of BDSM. The After series. This fanfiction turned film series also romanticises a toxic relationship and the sex scenes are shocking. The facial expressions are laughable, the moans are forced, and it’s unbelievable that Tessa is having that much fun two seconds after Hardin sticks it in.

Now, the good bit: Always Be My Maybe has the pair making out and feverishly stripping off their clothes as they move upstairs to the bedroom. The Notebook’s iconic rain-kiss scene precedes the frenzied removal of clothes, before panning to Rachel McAdams in nothing but her pearls. I definitely simp. Lastly, Two Night Stand. What starts off as painfully embarrassing turns into some breath-taking shots – literally. It encourages a healthy dialogue between sexual partners, before turning into a top tier sex montage. The shots of hands gripping the headboard? Hot damn.

It’s safe to say there’s a fair share of awful sex scenes out there, and I’ve barely scratched the surface. But it’s also clear that there are some magnificent scenes that absolutely know how to get the audience feeling a little somethingsomething. You’ve just got to come out from behind your hands.

How portrayals of East Asian women in film have shaped real life social perceptions

by Adelaide Cannell

It’s no revelation that our digitalising world plays an ever-increasing role in how we perceive and understand society and the relationships within it.

We have been reminded of this influence in recent years, sparked by movements such as Black Lives Matter, which drew our attention to Western news biases in depicting interactions between white and non-white citizens across the globe, often in favour of systematic, racist narratives and white hegemony. Likewise, you haven’t got to look far before realising the ridiculous media bias in demonising depictions of Hispanic citizens within right wing orientated, Republican news outlets in America, specifically under the Trump presidency.

I want to draw the conversation towards portrayals of a less-commonly dissected discussion: how Western, often American Hollywood, on-screen portrayals and stereotyping of East Asian women through the decades have been tied up with wider social politics and cultural stigmas.

From the left-behind lover to the sexualised, seductive temptress, many film depictions reduce the female East Asian identity into a narrow vacuum: one that often benefits a western and fetishized male fantasy of innocence and passivity or of a sexual, deviant figure – deviant, of course, without being too deviant. Examples of the former can be noted in early American operas and films, such as the character of Cio Cio San in the 1904 opera Madame Butterfly, a Japanese woman who commits suicide after she is abandoned by her white lover. Meanwhile, Lucy Liu’s 2000’s Charlie’s Angels depiction of Alex Munday, a hyper-competent secret agent who teases men with her sexual power.

These depictions fall into two recognised archetypes: the ‘Lotus Blossom’, denoting the quiet passivity of a ‘desirable’ figure, and the ‘Dragon Lady’ – an Asian spin-off of the traditional femme fatale, if you will. While the Dragon Lady can easily hide behind an image of progression from the Lotus Blossom; depicting the independent, kick-ass ‘strong, deceitful and domineering’ woman, the hyper-sexualisation of these characters mean their portrayals remain problematic.

A recent example that proves that stereotypes of East Asian women do not exist in an isolated, impact-less vacuum is the Atlanta Spa shootings in March 2021, which left six Asian American women dead, followed by a testimony from the gunman confessing to an ‘Asian fetish’ related sex addiction, denoting his actions to ‘eliminating temptation’. Sociology professor at Loyola Marymount University, Nadia Kim, recently wrote in a recent public seminar that the fact that six of his victims were East Asian American women fits into a sad

pattern of sexually objectifying such women and stereotyping them as meek. In a report by Stop AAPI Hate in 2021, there were about 3,800 reports of hate incidents across the country since March 2020, with women reporting hate incidents 2.3 times more than men.

Much anti-Asian violence is also rooted in part in U.S. millenarianism. While wars wreaked havoc in Korea, Japan and Vietnam over the past decades, local women were forced to go into prostitution as a means of survival. Subsequently, we see this depicted on-screen: such as in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket (1987), where a Vietnamese sex worker solicits soldiers with the infamous lines ‘Me so horny’ and ‘Me love you long time’. As a result, these generalizations can lead to fetishization or “Yellow Fever”, denoting how men sexually objectify Asian women. It is these racist and misogynistic depictions which often lead to violence against Asian women.

Portrayals in more recent depictions suggest a determined development in American East Asian storytelling, especially concerning female characters. These women are now the protagonists, not the side characters. More contemporary examples include Saving Faces which portrays the Asian American experience while exploring issues mother-daughter culture clashes with closeted lesbian love. Meanwhile The Farewell (2019) also depicts cross-cultural contentions between American-Chinese raised Gen-Z and traditional Chinese values of stoicism and ‘saving face’, while portraying the clash between traditional Asian collectivist values with Western American Individualistic values. Such films, most impactfully, offer its international audiences a more enlightened, human insight into the complex human experiences shared by East Asian individuals.

Meanwhile, the 2019 rom-com Always be my Maybe attempts to dissolve stereotypes of Asian American characters traditionally limited to academic achievement, portraying complex contemporary family and romantic relations, depicting Sasha as creating success working in the arts industry (as opposed to the STEM field stereotypically associated with Asian Americans), while Marcus, depicted as not making it past high school, dedicates time to becoming his father’s caregiver. This develops from the birthplace of East Asian on-screen presence which not only reinforced harmful and dehumanising stereotypes and stigmas, but even where the limited exposure often saw characters played by western actors through ‘Yellow-facing’, or East Asian actors having to buy into Western-constructed stereotypes within their own portrayals.

We remain on a developing trajectory still today, with portrayals in no way free of historically built-in stigmas and stereotypes, but where we catch glimpses of an ever-increasing effort at recognising and changing these harmful portrayals. May these mediums continue to grant East Asian characters ever-more realistic depictions of the complexities of the true human experience.

Photo: Unsplash

Robert Pattinson’s Filmography

By Lily Boag

Strolling down the magical hallways of Hogwarts as handsome Hufflepuff Cedric Digory, to sparkling in the sunlight as heart-throb vampire Edward Cullen, Robert Pattinson has successfully leaped between big budget blockbuster productions. These have included Harry Potter and Twilight, alongside notable art-house indie films. Spotlighted for his incredible acting capabilities, taking on versatile roles and collaborating with visionary directors that have led him towards building a fascinating career in film, Robert Pattinson has been ranked as one of the highest-paid actors in the world, unafraid to take on a new challenge.

Whether or not you were on Team Edward in the time of fantasy love triangles, everybody who’s anybody in 2022 is on Team Pattinson. Becoming the newest superhit superhero, now is the perfect time for us to celebrate and reflect on some of Pattinson’s astonishing performances and film credentials from indie-brilliance to Hollywood-hits. 1. The Batman (2022) Brandishing the bat suit for the big screen and stalking the dark streets of Gotham City, Pattinson has undoubtedly entered a new era within his acting career playing billionaire-orphan Bruce Wayne in Matt Reeves’ dark and edgy DC flick The Batman as he physically embodies Nirvana’s Something in the Way.

2. The Lighthouse (2019) Starring alongside Willem Dafoe in Robert Eggers’ disorienting black and white psychological thriller The Lighthouse, which follows two lighthouse keepers who descend into madness after being stranded alone on an island during a storm, Pattinson delivers one of his best dramatic performances in this production which premiered at the 72nd Cannes Film Festival. 3. Tenet (2020) A time-bending sci-fi action-thriller directed and written by Christopher Nolan, Pattinson plays a British spy who assists a CIA operative in saving the world by preventing objects that can be manipulated by the inversion of time from being used as war weapons in the future. 4. Good Time (2017) A multi-award nominated crime thriller directed and written by the Safdie brothers, Good Time features Pattinson as a con artist and bank robber who is anxiously determined to get his mentally handicapped brother out of prison. 5. The King (2019) A Shakespearean drama Netflix adaptation, The King stars Pattinson sporting a blonde wig and a French accent while playing the Dauphin of France as a sociopathic madman determined to defeat Timothee Chalamet’s Henry V.

themselves, with the ability to capture magnificence, from Marty McFly driving the DeLorean, the great white shark approaching in Jaws, to the incredible dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. While the directors and actors who stand in the spotlight of these blockbuster Hollywood hits have become household names, it’s time to reveal the names behind the music, exploring the top composers and conductors in film history.

Beginning with John Williams, a winner of five Oscars having composed for some of the most popular films of all time, his notable works include Jaws (1975), Star Wars (1977), Indiana Jones (1981), E.T. (1982), Schindler’s List (1993), Jurassic Park (1993), and the magical theme that was first introduced in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001). Dominating twentyfirst century Hollywood film music is Hans Zimmer, whose dramatical music style can be found in The Lion King (1995), Pirates of the Caribbean (2003), Inception (2010), The Dark Knight (2008), 12 Years a Slave (2013), and Kung Fu Panda (2008).

However, my personal favourites include Thomas Newman, who composed the heart-wrenching Main Title piano motif for Finding Nemo (2003), and the magical melody ‘Define Dancing’ from his dreamlike score for Pixar masterpiece WALL-E (2008), and Michael Giacchino, the mastermind behind the instrumental composition of ‘Married Life’ which brings audiences to tears as part of the opening Carl and Ellie montage in Up (2009). Meanwhile, Howard Shore’s iconic work on The Lord of the Rings (2001) through his composition of ‘The Shire’ always inspires adventure, alongside Alan Silvestri’s euphoric and electrifying Main Title for Back to the Future (1985).

Music can encourage you to sit on the edge of your seat, gasp in shock-horror, and cry into your popcorn. It can make your heart race. It can make it impossible to look away.

Music in Films By Lily Boag

The effect of music in film can be both powerful and subtle. Close your eyes and the story can continue. From originally composed orchestral scores to carefully selected soundtracks, music shapes the cinematic visuals that play across our film screens.

Music can create a rhythm to a scene or direct our emotional responses - channelling excitement, fear, or a thrill. It has the ability to change our interpretation of events as we witness them unfold. It guides the audience, manipulates our perception, and drives us closer to the plot and characters by eliciting emotions deep from within us. It plays an essential role in the storytelling, commenting on the action, illustrating movement, establishing the setting, depicting the passing of time, or creating a sense of fantasy or the unreal.

From terrifying build ups to masterpieces of colour, for decades music composition has been essential to cinematic success. Massively contributing to film pop culture, music scores and soundtracks have become as iconic as the films