East Greenwich.<\/strong> \u201c[The series] is based around films that feature youth or youth issues in interesting and revealing ways.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cThe Virgin Suicides,\u201d based on the 1993 book by Jeffrey Eugenides, is a fictional story of five sisters who committed suicide in an affluent Michigan neighborhood in 1974. It\u2019s told through remembrances of the now middle-aged men who were smitten with the sisters about 25 years earlier and remain fascinated with the mystery of their deaths.<\/p>\n
The film was the first full-length feature by director Sofia Coppola, daughter of Francis Ford Coppola of \u201cGodfather\u201d fame. Kirsten Dunst stars as one the doomed Lisbon sisters, and James Woods and Kathleen Turner play the sisters\u2019 repressive parents.<\/p>\n
When asked in 2016 to write a book for the Routledge series, Wyatt, author of numerous books on film history and media marketing, went looking for a film that met the series\u2019 objectives. He wanted more than a youth movie. He wanted a film that focused on meaty issues, and one that had a high level of cinematic craftmanship.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat fascinated me about the film was the way it problematized mental illness, mental health and suicidal ideation. I felt it created space to think about these issues and to talk about them and to engage with them in depth.\u201d<\/p>\n
Also, the film is a great example of how cinematic technique can be used to tell a story. \u201cMy book became about really trying to uncover all the different ways the film creates meaning. Without destroying its fascination for me, I wanted to understand why I was hooked on this film.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wyatt\u2019s book examines a half-dozen topics in free-standing chapters \u2013 the wave of female directors in the \u201890s who explored female sexuality at new levels; Sofia Coppola\u2019s backstory and the motivations that drove her to make the film; the blending of \u201870s advertising motif and film craft to reflect the conflicting themes in ads of the day of women as empowered and prepubescent girls as sex objects.<\/p>\n
One technique of the film that interested Wyatt was its absence of traditional structure. \u201cIt\u2019s structured around a mystery that never gets solved,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe middle-aged men [in the film] are going to solve the mystery through recounting these incidents and these anecdotes,\u201d he says. \u201cBut as you get more details, more explanation, it actually becomes fuzzier. It\u2019s not really about explaining psychologically why the girls committed suicide. It\u2019s more about why these middle-aged men are so fascinated with these adolescent girls.\u201d<\/p>\n
Even though it has numerous light moments, the film is very dark, and forces the viewer to consider bigger issues, such as the role of the family and social structures on identity formation and psychological health. \u201cTopics that can be tough to think through and consider otherwise,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s similar to what he tells student in his film classes. Even if they don\u2019t like a film, he says, they have to engage with it, determine what they didn\u2019t like, what left them unsettled, why the film didn\u2019t touch them.<\/p>\n
Wyatt is in his fourth year at äçÐÄvlogÃâ·ÑBÕ¾ after returning to academia following a 15-year career in television, leading market research projects and agendas at companies such as NBCUniversal, Viacom and the ABC TV Network. He also conducted qualitative and quantitative research for a wide variety of TV shows including \u201cLost,\u201d \u201cDesperate Housewives\u201d and \u201cKeeping Up with the Kardashians.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is working on a new book with the University of Texas Press on \u201cCapturing the Phantom Viewer: Market Research & The Evolving Media Ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
KINGSTON, R.I., July 30, 2018 — Justin Wyatt, associate director of the Harrington School of Communication and Media, recalls a \u201cgolden era\u201d of film during the 1970s, before marketing juggernauts like \u201cStar Wars\u201d and \u201cGrease,\u201d when films dealt with weighty subjects. One of his favorites was Robert Altman\u2019s \u201cNashville,\u201d which came out in 1975, when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":74128,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[18],"class_list":["post-74127","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives","tag-harrington-school-of-communication-and-media"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74127","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74127"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74127\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74128"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74127"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74127"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74127"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}