Death, diners & dancing, sounds like the ideal choice of elective for a girl like me

So the arrival of Semester B marks the beginning of a new MH&C module. Its hard t believe we're over halfway through the first year...did I really lose that much of Semester A to drink, or is the year truly passing at tremendous speed?

Either way I can say with great conviction that the contextual lectures we received last semester were fantastic and in my opinion a great influence on our developing practise. I know some fellow SFX-ers may say otherwise as the task of essays and research was enough to induce a nosebleed. But then I guess I'm abnormal amongst the masses in the sense that I enjoy the written aspects of our degree in equal measures to the practical projects.

Anyway, I was fortunate enough to secure a place onto the elective which was in fact my top choice - hooray!
'Death, Dancing and Diners' is the full title and the basic structure of the module is to explore the role of death, sex and food within cinema (sounds pretty awesome already, right?).

Kicking off after the introductory lecture was a session exploring the death of the gangster. We considered the development of the gangster genre since its early establishment in the 1930s, through to more recent examples from the '90s. To support the discussion we looked at a diversity of case studies including the original Sarface (1932), The Godfather (1972), Goodfellas (1990) and Pulp Fiction (1994).
I could speak extensively about these case studies alone, but instead I would like to comment on some other points raised in the lecture which I found particularly interesting.

an genuine example of the media hype surrounding criminal activity from The Herald Examiner, dated 24/1/1935

The first of which relates to the earliest examples of gangster cinema, and how the genre came to being in the first place. Circa 1930 there was a developing public curiosity for publicised crime and as a result of media hype many criminals were granted an almost celebrity status. An example of this is shown in the image above which depicts a genuine newspaper headline about the notorious Al Capone.
The character of Tony Camonte in the original Scarface (1932) was in fact losely based on Capone, thus further evidence of the influence that criminal activity had upon cinema during that era. The film was such a success that it spurred the development and popularity of the gangster genre within the film industry.

To progress onto another interesting topic of the lecture, we explored the idea of 'blaxploitation' which is a concept I was not previously familiar with. 'Blaxploitation' was apparent within cinema during the 1970s and referrs to the influx of films featuring an African-American protagonist who was commonly hostile towards the 'white majority' and rebelled against convention. Films of this nature were a social response to the development of black rights and black culture within western societies during the '70s.
Although the genre hails some decent movies such as Shaft (1971), there were some terrible attempts at 'black adaptations' of existing movies, such as Blacula (1972).

(left) Movie poster for Blacula 1972

(right) Movie Poster for Shaft 1971