Stephen Atkins 

One way to think about tropes in general is as a game that has forgotten it is a game. A game has rules. It has roles. It has things you are allowed to do and things that are seen as breaking the frame. Everyone in it seems to know how to play, but working outside of the frame can make those following the rules feel betrayed, even angry. Family dinner can be a game. Academic life, religious ceremony, dating, theatre, hospitality, politeness, masculinity, femininity, loyalty,

When I say narrative cinema is declining, I don't mean that stories no longer matter. Although I wouldn't blame you if you think I'm contradicting my earlier post titled "Why do we keep returning to stories?" Stories still matter. Or maybe what I mean is story worlds. We still follow people, conflicts, desires, losses, reversals, and unfinished questions. What seems less alive is the assumption that cinema works best when it explains itself through a clean sequence of causes

Why do we connect to stories? And why do we connect to them differently when we grow older, or meet them again after some major shift in life? The answer has to with something that sits underneath good writing and character development. Metaphors are what guide us to find meaning, and ultimately ourselves, in a good yarn. Strong stories rarely carry only one myth. They convey several myths at once, moving through different symbolic patterns like exile, initiation, sacrifice,

Another summer is in the air. Pride is around the corner. A Summer of Bravery, Summer of Bedazzlement, a Summer of Belonging. In the 1980s and 90s, many of us lived in a strange double exposure. Like many other groups of people, we existed, but not in the stories our own culture told about itself. Mainstream film and television rarely reflected our lives unless we were jokes, victims, cautionary tales, or coded shadows at the edge of the frame. Meanwhile, outside the screen,