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This article examines the architectural tropes used in designs which are concurrently branded as sustainable and futuristic, offering a critique of techno‐solutionist architectures that have been promoted by the European Union, World Expos, and forward‐looking design pedagogy. Through an analysis of the designs of Belgian architect Vincent Callebaut, I observe that such “eco‐futurist” images symbolically communicate an association with sustainability through the visible use of “green” technologies and the adoption of highly contextual encounters with greenery, rhetorically prefaced on the ability of techno‐science to mediate human–nature relationships, and visually bound within the design tropes of luxury tourist destinations. By intertwining the aspirational futures of sustainable design with the aesthetic sensibilities of the wealthy, I argue that eco‐futurism primarily aligns itself with the interests of neoliberal property development and the spatial and social logics of colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Cold War-era representations of WWII, observing the visible influence that sixties' espionage media had on retrospective images of WWII. Representations of bunkers in the postwar were influenced by advent of atomic warfare, with images of Normandy's brutalist pillboxes replaced by fantasies of Nordhausen's subterranean rocket factories. While wartime propaganda had platformed film reels of vast public armies fuelling the Allied fight against fascism, cinema of the 1960s replaced total war with the image of the singular spy, operating covertly behind enemy lines in Nazi uniforms, and allegedly unmarred by ideology. Examining the visual rhetoric at play in these scenarios, this paper argues that it is not fascism which these films claim must be stopped. Rather, it is the Cold War-era fear of global insecurity, caused by the misuse or mishandling of advanced weaponry by nations which are not America or Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the beginnings of the popular Japanese crime genre coincided with the end of American occupation, this genre offers a space of historically visible transnationality. Through formal analysis, this research identifies a cultural plurality embedded within crime cinema. Examining the adoption of film noir aesthetics in Japan alongside the development of the nationalistic ninkyō eiga (chivalry film), I argue the crime genre formed as a culturally hybrid genre in tension between these conflicting identities. The crime film demonstrates a dialectical tension between local and international cultural signifiers and cinematic styles, which result in a set of hybrid symbols that repeat on-end the dialectic tension embedded in their formation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research seeks to add to recent critical reevaluations of Alexander Galloway's seminal "Social Realism in Gaming" through a closer analysis of the texts by Andre Bazin and Gilles Deleuze which inform Galloway's initial conceptions of social realism. The present work emphasizes social criticism in this esthetic movement and finds the medium specificity of games limits applicability of cinematic terms like neorealism. Procedural rhetoric and effective Brechtian alienation tactics emphasizing player-character subjectivity, can be used to effectively convey the philosophical and ideological tenants of neorealism and broader social realism. This is expanded upon using the World War Two (WWII) game Red Orchestra 2 as a case study. Ultimately this work argues against Galloway's "congruence requirement" between players real-world contexts and game interactions, rather finding social realism in games as dependent on convergence between a game's functional and visual rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Seeing Henry Jenkins's digital-age concept of transmedia convergence as the late-capitalist assembly of 1960s psychedelic intermedia practices, this article adds to a discussion of pre-digital convergence through an examination of the Beatles' countercultural media production and distribution practices. This research examines how these practices are indicative of their cultural ideologies, and how and why these seemingly countercultural beliefs were vulnerable to (and actively complicit in) the formation of neoliberal movements of the digital age. This work finds the psychedelic values held by members of the Beatles to have shaped their song lyrics, distribution, business model and branding in ways that function effectively similar to Jenkins's notion of 'transmedia storytelling'. The result primes audiences for the consumer practices and subjectivity of the postmodern condition. This is accomplished by dispersing narratives and iconography across Beatles' content such that all texts contribute to an oceanic network while lacking any 'core' texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]