The New Reflexivity: Puzzle Films, Found Footage, and Cinematic Narration in the Digital Age

“The New Reflexivity” tracks two narrative styles of contemporary Hollywood production that have yet to be studied in tandem: the puzzle film and the found footage horror film. In early August 1999, near the end of what D.N. Rodowick refers to as “the summer of digital paranoia,” two films entered the wide-release U.S. theatrical marketplace and enjoyed surprisingly massive financial success, just as news of the “death of film” circulated widely. Though each might typically be classified as belonging to the horror genre, both the unreliable “puzzle film” The Sixth Sense and the fake-documentary “found footage film” The Blair Witch Project stood as harbingers of new narrative currents in global cinema. This dissertation looks closely at these two films, reading them as illustrative of two decidedly millennial narrative styles, styles that stepped out strikingly from the computer-generated shadows cast by big-budget Hollywood. The industrial shift to digital media that coincides with the rise of these films in the late 90s reframed the cinematic image as inherently manipulable, no longer a necessary index of physical reality. Directors become image-writers, constructing photorealistic imagery from scratch. Meanwhile, DVDs and online paratexts encourage cinephiles to digitize, to attain and interact with cinema in novel ways. “The New Reflexivity” reads The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project as reflexive allegories of cinema’s and society’s encounters with new digital media. The most basic narrative tricks and conceits of puzzle films and found footage films produce an unusually intense and ludic engagement with narrative boundaries and limits, thus undermining the naturalized practices of classical Hollywood narration. Writers and directors of these films treat recorded events and narrative worlds as reviewable, remixable, and upgradeable, just as Hollywood digitizes and tries to keep up with new media. Though a great deal of critical attention has been paid to both puzzle and found footage films separately, no lengthy critical survey has yet been undertaken that considers these movies in terms of their shared formal and thematic concerns. Rewriting the rules of popular cinematic narration, these films encourage viewers to be suspicious of what they see onscreen, to be aware of the possibility of unreliable narration, or CGI and the “Photoshopped.” Urgent to film and cultural studies, “The New Reflexivity” suggests that these genres’ complicitous critique of new media is decidedly instructive for a networked society struggling with what it means to be digital

A many-analysts approach to the relation between religiosity and well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N=10,535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β=0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β=0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates

The Seventeenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys: Complete Release of MaNGA, MaStar and APOGEE-2 Data

This paper documents the seventeenth data release (DR17) from the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys; the fifth and final release from the fourth phase (SDSS-IV). DR17 contains the complete release of the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey, which reached its goal of surveying over 10,000 nearby galaxies. The complete release of the MaNGA Stellar Library (MaStar) accompanies this data, providing observations of almost 30,000 stars through the MaNGA instrument during bright time. DR17 also contains the complete release of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2) survey which publicly releases infra-red spectra of over 650,000 stars. The main sample from the Extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS), as well as the sub-survey Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS) data were fully released in DR16. New single-fiber optical spectroscopy released in DR17 is from the SPectroscipic IDentification of ERosita Survey (SPIDERS) sub-survey and the eBOSS-RM program. Along with the primary data sets, DR17 includes 25 new or updated Value Added Catalogs (VACs). This paper concludes the release of SDSS-IV survey data. SDSS continues into its fifth phase with observations already underway for the Milky Way Mapper (MWM), Local Volume Mapper (LVM) and Black Hole Mapper (BHM) surveys

A Many-analysts Approach to the Relation Between Religiosity and Well-being

The relation between religiosity and well-being is one of the most researched topics in the psychology of religion, yet the directionality and robustness of the effect remains debated. Here, we adopted a many-analysts approach to assess the robustness of this relation based on a new cross-cultural dataset (N = 10, 535 participants from 24 countries). We recruited 120 analysis teams to investigate (1) whether religious people self-report higher well-being, and (2) whether the relation between religiosity and self-reported well-being depends on perceived cultural norms of religion (i.e., whether it is considered normal and desirable to be religious in a given country). In a two-stage procedure, the teams first created an analysis plan and then executed their planned analysis on the data. For the first research question, all but 3 teams reported positive effect sizes with credible/confidence intervals excluding zero (median reported β = 0.120). For the second research question, this was the case for 65% of the teams (median reported β = 0.039). While most teams applied (multilevel) linear regression models, there was considerable variability in the choice of items used to construct the independent variables, the dependent variable, and the included covariates

Peaks of Identity in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains

The glaciated ranges of southwestern Colorado constituting the San Juan Mountains are culturally significant to residents and visitors. As certain mountains are imbued with meaning, they become "peaks of identity," tangible and towering symbolic landscapes representing a distinctive set of community and cultural ideals. This paper explores the symbols and themes of San Juan peaks of identity, with a focus on the mountain amenity town of Lake City and nearby Uncompahgre Peak. Uncompahgre's icon dominates mountain representations in Lake City and instantly identifies the community; its symbolism embodies aesthetics of form and elevation and the sanctity of hallowed ground. Mountain symbolism in the San Juans is mainly projected through land use and the display of icons and names on signs and government seals. Although the San Juans are sacred to the Utes and Navajos and represent a rich mining heritage, they also symbolize idealized natural scenery, landmarks of home, recreation opportunities, and spiritual renewal. Many San Juan communities identify with mountains in a generic sense, but this article focuses on the traits, variability, and depth of meaning of the mountains that are landscape signatures of community identity