Brady Corbet's Vox Lux (2018) depicts school shooting survivor Celeste's transformation into a singing superstar, connecting the trauma of a terrorist attack to the phenomenon of musical celebrity. In so doing, the film narrativises the relationship between the pop singer and neoliberal resilience discourse that has been explored by music philosopher Robin James. Mobilising Jacques Rancière's definition of political art, this article suggests that, rather than endorsing the resilience that it depicts, the film formally critiques the neoliberal function of pop stardom by disrupting the pleasurable affect associated with pop music and celebrity. Whilst Raffey Cassidy's performance of the soundtrack was praised in many reviews, the performance of Natalie Portman (playing the older Celeste) was criticised for its inauthentic delivery. Far from being a weakness of the film, my reading suggests that it is in the formal discord between the pleasurably resilient affect of the music and Portman's laboured performance that the film's political-philosophical critique of neoliberal resilience discourse comes to the fore. Taking an interdisciplinary approach grounded in the perspectives of political philosophy, girlhood studies, and celebrity studies, this article proposes that Vox Lux interrogates the neoliberal function of celebrity through a formal disruption of the pleasurable affect associated with the resilient pop star's musical performance.
In this article, I examine Peter Morgan's TV series The Crown (2016–present) through the lens of Sartrean and Beauvoirian existentialism. I argue that the character of Queen Elizabeth II holds a special place in the royal family, as the monarch who demonstrates the compatibility of duty and tradition with existential freedom and authenticity. I also demonstrate the series’ commitment to breaking the illusion of inhumanity that the royal family tries to maintain, by showing that the royals are not out-of-reach ideals, but humans who struggle to transcend their exceptionally binding facticity. As portrayed in The Crown, Queen Elizabeth's lucidity on her situation leads to honest introspection, which dispels any attempt at self-deception, and therefore prevents her from slipping into bad faith.
Noor Saeed Khan, Unai Fernandez-Gamiz, Muhammad Sohail Khan
et al.
Homogeneous–heterogeneous chemical reactions for second-grade nanofluid and gyrotactic microorganisms in a rotating system with the effects of magnetic fields and thermal radiation are examined. The boundary layer equations of the problem in a non-dimensional form are evaluated by a strong technique, namely, the homotopy analysis method (HAM). The rates of flow, heat, mass, and gyrotactic microorganism motion are obtained for the augmentations in the pertinent parameters. The graphical pictures of the results are described by the physical significance. The Hall current effect decreases the azimuthal velocity, the axial velocity increases with the injection of mass, the Biot number leads to enhanced heat transfer and gyrotactic microorganisms, the concentration diffusion rate decreases with the Peclet number, and the concentration of the chemical reaction reduces with the Schmidt number. Excellent agreement of the present work is found with the previously published work. The present study has applications in the hydromagnetic lubrication, semiconductor crystal growth control, austrophysical plasmas, magnetic storage disks, computer storage devices, care and maintenance of turbine engines, aeronautical, mechanical, and architectural engineering, metallurgy, polymer industry, hydromagnetic flows in porous media, and food processing and preservation processes.
Eiji Watanabe, Eiji Watanabe, Akiyoshi Kitaoka
et al.
The cerebral cortex predicts visual motion to adapt human behavior to surrounding objects moving in real time. Although the underlying mechanisms are still unknown, predictive coding is one of the leading theories. Predictive coding assumes that the brain's internal models (which are acquired through learning) predict the visual world at all times and that errors between the prediction and the actual sensory input further refine the internal models. In the past year, deep neural networks based on predictive coding were reported for a video prediction machine called PredNet. If the theory substantially reproduces the visual information processing of the cerebral cortex, then PredNet can be expected to represent the human visual perception of motion. In this study, PredNet was trained with natural scene videos of the self-motion of the viewer, and the motion prediction ability of the obtained computer model was verified using unlearned videos. We found that the computer model accurately predicted the magnitude and direction of motion of a rotating propeller in unlearned videos. Surprisingly, it also represented the rotational motion for illusion images that were not moving physically, much like human visual perception. While the trained network accurately reproduced the direction of illusory rotation, it did not detect motion components in negative control pictures wherein people do not perceive illusory motion. This research supports the exciting idea that the mechanism assumed by the predictive coding theory is one of basis of motion illusion generation. Using sensory illusions as indicators of human perception, deep neural networks are expected to contribute significantly to the development of brain research.
The Nordic Noir has been applied by many countries as a slightly distorting mirror of tendencies in their own societies. On the background of its international appeal, the article analyses the prevalent genre of The Killing political drama and melodrama. The elements of the noir design in the introductory sequences – their common traits and the differences that match prevalent plots in each season – are highlighted. The developments taking place in the dominant points of view are traced, from the combination between the local politics and the domestic levels in the first season of the series, to the focus on foreign politics with domestic dimensions in the second season, and the reversion to domestic politics, this time combined to a global dimension, in the last season. Similarities and differences in the plots, and their relationship to (and interpretation of) events and phenomena in the modern Danish welfare state and in the Western sphere, are also investigated.