Latitudes: New Indian Transnational Cinema

This article examines films and video art that speak to conditions of exile and displacement, including the work of Mona Hatoum, Sonali Gulati, and Onir. It proposes the term “latitude” to interrogate the aesthetic and formal properties of these artworks, seeking to understand how lesbian and same-sex eroticism and identities are central to their efficacy.     

Signifyin' Cinema: Rudy Ray Moore and the Quality of Badness

This article engages the limits of both film and race studies in their approach to heterogeneous and “low” forms of African American cultural production through an analysis of the films of Rudy Ray Moore. While Moore’s films have been almost entirely overlooked in both film studies and black studies, they were extremely popular among black youth of the 1970s and have exerted a powerful influence on today’s hardcore hip hop artists (and their understanding of how to turn black market entrepreneurship into global enterprise). The theory of “signifying”, advanced most rigorously by black literary theorist Henry Louis Gates Jr, helps explain how and why Moore has slipped through various critical nets — and grounds a claim for why we should take “bad” black film seriously. Close film and context analysis illustrates how Moore’s low‐budget films “signify” on Hollywood and the system of expectancies that go with putatively “good” filmmaking and reveals the extent to which they constitute a hybrid cultural and multimedia practice. As vehicles designed to elaborate on the badman of black folklore, Moore’s films contribute to the long history and rich language of “toasting” in African American oral culture and music. As such, far from being emblematic of black filmmaking’s impoverished relationship to mainstream cinema (as a cinema manqué), these films constitute vital precursors to the hip hop music video.     

Robert Nisbet and the Problem of Community

The article traces the importance and development of the concept of ‘community’ in Robert Nisbet’s sociological theory. Community and voluntary associations were key components of his view of civil society, because they stood between the individual and the state as bastions of personal liberty against authoritarianism. This idea was taken from Alexis de Tocqueville’s analysis of America democracy and developed by Nisbet as a critique of modern America. The article examines the conservative underpinnings of Nisbet’s sociology and compares his perspective on civil society with the idea of civil religion in J-J Rousseau and Robert Bellah. Nisbet’s perspective is criticised because not all voluntary associations have beneficial effects on civil society. The article considers how far his views on authority and community are still relevant and concludes by making a distinction between ‘sticky societies’ that are hard to join and difficult to leave and ‘elastic societies’ that are easy to join and cost-free to leave, and asks whether community is possible when the Internet has transformed sticky relationships into elastic, thin and dispersed relationships.     

Introduction: Special issue on Global Lesbian Cinema

This article offers a brief introduction to this special issue on Global Lesbian Cinema. This issue particularly highlights the importance of recognizing lesbian discourse as a separate, related piece of the discourse of queer transnational and global cinema. Subsequently, brief summaries of the eight articles of this collection are provided.     

Conversation with Robert McGinley

Dr. Robert McGinley and his wife, Geri, have managed one of the nation's largest swing clubs for the past ten years. During the past several years Bob McGinley has become a social activist and public figure founding the Society for the Study of Alternative Lifestyles, the annual Lifestyles Conventions held on the West Coast, and the North American Swing Club Association. Bob and Geri have also appeared on a number of television programs, such as the Phil Donahue show. Bob has spoken about swinging in numerous university classrooms and on radio talk shows and writes about it in popular media. He has recently acquired a Ph.D. in psychology and does sexual dysfunction counseling.We are indebted to the following persons, who have served as ad hoc reviewers for the current volume: Victor A. Benassi, Barry Dank, Sharon Raphael, Ralph Hupka, Wayne Wooden, Robert Pickett, Vern Bullough.