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The Videographic Essay: Practice and Pedagogy Main Menu The Videographic Essay Table of Contents Introduction, Acknowledgements, and Further Reading Scholarship in Sound & Image: A Pedagogical Essay Pedagogical essay authored by Christian Keathley and Jason Mittell Dissolves of Passion In Dialogue: Eric Faden and Kevin B. Lee Becoming Videographic Critics: A Roundtable Conversation A conversation among practitioners curated by Jason Mittell But Is Any Of This Legal? Videographic Exercises Gallery of All Exercises Credits

mothers on the line: the [maternal] allure of julianne moore

7543 This audiovisual essay explores Julianne Moore’s on-screen image as an unconventional maternal embodiment. Throughout her filmography, what has considerably marked Moore’s star image is, I contend, not a particularly authentic signature in her acting style but the thematic and erotic investment in her appearances cast as maternal women of grief, ambivalence, transgression and detachment. My exploration in this video capitalizes upon this maternal erotic and treats it as the core component of Moore’s persona. Through expressive use of editing and sound, the video operates within an expository poetic mode that appropriates the tribute/compilation format and tackles different analytical scales of sampling and audiovisual interpretation in star studies. The piece attempts to articulate a performative approach to expose the thematic continuities in Moore’s performances of mothers (or mother-substitutes) and to queer the on-screen operation of her maternal star persona.
This video is published, with an accompanying statement, in [in]Transition: Journal of Videographic Film and Moving Image Studies 3.1, 2016: http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/intransition/