Dr Gregory Frame
Lecturer in Film
Position: Lecturer in Film Studies
Email: g.frame@bangor.ac.uk
Phone: +44 (0) 1248-388591
Location: 1st floor, John Phillips Building
Overview
Research interests
My research interests focus primarily on contemporary film and television from the United States from a political and ideological perspective. I am currently developing a project that looks at American film and television since the 2008 financial crisis and the ways in which the effects of economic collapse have been explored in popular audiovisual media.
Teaching and supervision
I teach or co-teach the following modules: Film Criticism, American Television Drama, Film Theory, Race and Gender, Political Cinema and Television.
I am supervising or co-supervising PhD theses in the following areas: Welsh national cinema, character in screenwriting, Jeffrey Katzenberg and DreamWorks animation.
Administration
My current administrative responsibilities are: Director of Undergraduate Studies (Media) and Subject Lead for Film Studies.
Postgraduate Project Opportunities
My primary areas of expertise are contemporary American film and television, with a particular emphasis on politics and ideology. I am keen to supervise PhD research projects in these areas of Film and Television Studies.
Publications
2019
- PublishedThe odds are never in your favor: the form and function of American cinema's neoliberal dystopias
Frame, G., 30 Sep 2019, In : New Review of Film and Television Studies. 17, 3, p. 379-397
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article
2018
- Accepted/In pressThe Cultural Politics of Jennifer Lawrence as Star, Actor, Celebrity
Frame, G., 28 Dec 2018, (Accepted/In press) In : New Review of Film and Television Studies.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article - Published‘You’ve got to decide how you want history to remember you’: The Legacy of Lyndon B. Johnson in Film and Television
Frame, G., 2018, Constructing Presidential Legacy: How We Remember the American President. Cullinane, M. P. & Ellis, S. (eds.). Edinburgh University Press, p. 133-57 (New Perspectives on the American Presidency).
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
2017
- PublishedThe American President in Film and Television: Myth, Politics and Representation
Frame, G., 29 Dec 2017, Revised 2nd ed. Peter Lang Publishing.
Research output: Book/Report › Book - Published"The Lincoln Memorial Was Too Crowded": Interpreting the United States' memorial landscape through film and television
Frame, G., 8 Dec 2017, In : Journal of Popular Film and Television. 45, 4, p. 190-201
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article - PublishedHappy 100th birthday, Mr President: how JFK’s image and legacy have endured
Frame, G., 26 May 2017, The Conversation.
Research output: Contribution to specialist publication › Article
2016
- PublishedThe Myth of John F. Kennedy in Film and Television
Frame, G., 22 Dec 2016, In : Film & History. 46, 2, p. 21-34
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article - PublishedThe Leader of the Free World? Representing the declining presidency in television drama
Frame, G., 18 Oct 2016, Politics and Politicians in Contemporary US Television: Washington as fiction. Kaklamanidou, B. & Tally, M. (eds.). Routledge, p. 61 74 p. (Routledge Advances in Television Studies).
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter - Published“The Real Thing”: Election Campaigns and The Question of Authenticity in American Film and Television
Frame, G., Aug 2016, In : Journal of American Studies. 50, 03, p. 755-777 23 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article - PublishedBetween 'Information' and 'Inspiration': the Office of War Information, Frank Capra's Why We Fight series, and US World War II propaganda
Frame, G., 30 Jun 2016, The Routledge Companion to Cinema and Politics. Tzioumakis, Y. & Molloy, C. (eds.). Abingdon, p. 151-160 10 p.
Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter
2014
- PublishedThe American President in Film and Television: Myth, Politics and Representation
Frame, G., 8 Sep 2014, Oxford: Peter Lang Publishing. 326 p.
Research output: Book/Report › Book
Activities
2019
- 40 Years of Alien
Alien has left an indelible mark on popular culture. Conceived primarily to cash in on the popularity of science-fiction films in the late 1970s, directed by a person known for making adverts (Ridley Scott) and starring an unknown actor in the lead role (Sigourney Weaver), it transcended its humble origins to frighten and disturb audiences on its initial release. Its success has led to three direct sequels, two prequels, one ‘mashup’ franchise, a series of comic books, graphic novels, novelisations and games, and has an enormous and devoted fanbase. For forty years, Alien (and its progeny) has animated debate and discussion among critics and academics from a wide variety of disciplines and methodological perspectives.
Hosted by the Centre for Film, Television and Screen Studies at Bangor University, this symposium proposes to bring together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to explore Alien forty years since its release, debate its legacy and consider its position within visual culture.
23 May 2019 – 24 May 2019
Links:
Activity: Participation in conference (Organiser) - Make America Great Again?: The Style and Politics of the New Vigilante
This paper will explore how stories of (mostly) white male vengeance attempt to provide a fillip to traditional masculinity that perceives itself to be under siege. In films such as Taken and its sequels, Death Wish, Seeking Justice, Stolen, Vengeance, I Am Wrath and Code of Honor, the white male vigilante begins obsolete, often unemployed or retired. Inspired by the desire to avenge or protect loved ones, the vigilante’s violence is thus an attempt to reassert his position as a breadwinner and patriarch. Indeed, the use of fading stars of the 1980s and 1990s (Liam Neeson, Bruce Willis, Nicolas Cage, John Travolta, Steven Seagal) appears to be an attempt to shore up a sense of traditional masculinity at the precise moment when such a construct seems to be in inevitable, permanent decline.
This paper will explore the politics of this particular cycle in the genre, arguing that its resurgence is concomitant with discourses of ‘white male economic anxiety’ that have accompanied the aftermath of the Great Recession, and were given particular and prominent expression by Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign (and subsequent victory). Despite changing times, the vigilante film clings steadfastly to its misogyny and racism, and its uncomplicated embrace of violence as a solution. Whereas figures like Harry Callahan (Dirty Harry) and Paul Kersey (Death Wish) inspired controversial anti-hero worship, today’s white male vigilantes seem out of place, and out of time. This paper will consider the politics of this generational shift and displacement.
26 Apr 2019
Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
2018
- Life at the margins: The white working-class in contemporary American independent cinema
Popular discourse has decreed that Donald Trump’s shock election victory in November 2016 was a triumph for the ‘left behind’ white working-class. Suffering at the hands of deindustrialisation, globalisation, automation, voting for Trump was akin to a cultural revolt. The problematic tendency to assert that this rebellion came from nowhere belies the fact that there is, and has been, in American visual culture a concerted attempt to take them seriously. American independent cinema has in the past decade challenged prevailing tendencies in mainstream film and television to denigrate, undermine or demonise the white working-class as unsophisticated rednecks or bloodthirsty psychopaths.
Independent filmmakers such as Kelly Reichardt, Jeff Nichols, Andrea Arnold, Courtney Hunt, Debra Granik and Taylor Sheridan have shone a light on the disenfranchised people of white America, their struggles and their disenchantment. Set in what are often uncharitably described as the ‘flyover states’ (Wyoming, Oklahoma, Montana, Arkansas, Ohio), films such as Wendy and Lucy (2008), Certain Women (2016), Shotgun Stories (2007), Mud (2012), American Honey (2016), Frozen River (2008), Winter’s Bone (2010), Hell or High Water (2016) and Wind River (2017) expose the desolation at the margins of American society. This paper will demonstrate, through close analysis of narrative structure, visual style and characterisation, how these films represent ‘The Real America’ in ways that depart from the caricatured image of the ‘Trump voter’ to locate the origins of white working-class America’s angst.
5 Apr 2018
Activity: Oral presentation (Speaker)
2017
- Happy 100th Birthday, Mr President: how JFK's image and legacy have endured
This article considers the impact and legacy of JFK's media image on the 100th anniversary of his birth. It explores his use of television, and the way in which this medium has become such a significant part of his memorialisation. It also explores the extent to which the election of Donald Trump was contingent upon the kind of media manipulation employed by Kennedy.
26 May 2017
Links:
Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Media article or participation (Contributor) - British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies
The Western is considered a quintessentially American artform, reflecting many facets of the nation's mythology and self-image: the conquest of the frontier was indicative of the 'manifest destiny' of the United States, that the nation was an exceptional one, and that the settling of the land by means of genocide and theft was natural and morally right. By and large, the classical Western celebrated this process through tales of settlers warding of the threat of bloodthirsty natives, before films began to look more sceptically, questioning the morality of this process through the 1960s and 1970s (Little Big Man, McCabe and Mrs Miller, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid). More recently, Westerns have begun to investigate the nation's past and present in highly critical and challenging ways, and since 2008, films such as Meek's Cutoff (2011), Slow West (2015) and Hell or High Water (2016) have offered increasingly grim visions of the nation, challenging the frontier narrative as one of uncomplicated progress, and looking more clearly at the corrosion and breakdown of the American economy and society. This paper will argue that recent Westerns, which are characterised by an austere aesthetic and 'slow' narrative pacing, are reflective of the nation's material, moral and spiritual decline since the collapse of the economy in 2008. It will demonstrate how the genre continues to play a vital role in the national imaginary, in recent years reflecting the shifting nature of America's power, and questioning clearly its foundations on traditional, authoritarian masculinity and rampant capitalism.
21 Apr 2017
Activity: Participation in conference (Speaker) - British Association for American Studies
Since the financial crash of 2008 and the painfully slow recovery of most of the American economy, the ‘precariat’ has emerged: often young and college-educated, this group is a nascent class of workers who subsist on low-income, short-term, low-status jobs, crippled by anxiety and uncertainty. After some failed attempts to arrest control from the neoliberal establishment, the precariat feels increasingly ‘locked out’ of achieving the American Dream they once imagined was their birthright. This paper will argue that, in the absence of tangible political process, the anger, anxiety and hope of the precariat has come to be embodied in the star image of Jennifer Lawrence, whose emergence charts almost precisely the various stages of the aftermath of the financial crisis. Rising to prominence in the depths of the Great Recession through indie hit Winter’s Bone (2010), where Lawrence played Ree Dolly, an impoverished young girl from the Ozarks trying to save her family from destitution, through her zeitgeist-capturing turns as reluctant revolutionary Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games (2012-15) series, to wildly successful entrepreneur and single mom Joy Mangano in Joy (2015), Lawrence’s stardom has mapped the contours of America’s decline and potential recovery. Through the exploration of these films and Lawrence’s star persona, this paper will demonstrate how her image has provided a salve for the precariat’s feelings of powerlessness, offering hope that the American Dream can be restored.
7 Apr 2017
Activity: Participation in conference (Speaker) - The Televisual Presidency from Clinton to Trump
I was invited to present my research into the presidency on television in light of the recent election of Donald Trump by Professor Diane Negra, an eminent scholar in Film and Television Studies, whom I met at a conference in Innsbruck, Austria.
22 Feb 2017
Activity: Types of External academic engagement - Invited talk (Speaker)
2016
- Out of touch, out of ideas?: The American Presidency in film and television
18 Nov 2016
Links:
Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Media article or participation (Contributor) - Austrian Association of American Studies 2016
12 Nov 2016
Activity: Participation in conference (Speaker) - Can Kiefer Sutherland be US president, please?
26 Oct 2016
Links:
Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Media article or participation (Contributor) - Can Kiefer Sutherland be US president, please?
24 Oct 2016
Links:
Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Media article or participation (Contributor) - The American Presidency on Screen
10 Oct 2016
Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Festival/Exhibition (Speaker) - Journal of American Studies (Journal)
Reviewed an article exploring the representation of President Franklin D. Roosevelt in film and television. Was published as 'Ratifying Greatness: Franklin D. Roosevelt in Film and Television' in April 2017.
Aug 2016 – Jan 2017
Activity: Editorial activity (Peer reviewer) - The American New Wave: A Retrospective
An international event to bring together scholars to discuss new perspectives on The American New Wave fifty years since it began. We have been awarded £2300 from the British Association for American Studies to contribute to expenses for our keynote speaker from the United States, as well as funding postgraduate participation in the conference.
Aug 2016 – 6 Jul 2017
Links:
Activity: Participation in conference (Organiser) - PRESIDENT DES ETATS-UNIS, ATOURS DE RÔLES
15 Jul 2016
Links:
Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Media article or participation (Interviewee) - Independence Day: What alien invasions tell us about current global politics
24 Jun 2016
Links:
Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Media article or participation (Contributor) - British Association for American Studies 2016
The Odds are Never in Your Favour: The Precariat in Contemporary Science Fiction
9 Apr 2016
Activity: Participation in conference (Speaker) - The American Memorial in Film and Television
16 Mar 2016
Activity: Types of External academic engagement - Invited talk (Speaker)
2015
- British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies 2015
18 Apr 2015
Activity: Participation in conference (Speaker) - British Association for American Studies 2015
The Leader of the Free World?: Representing the declining presidency in film and television
11 Apr 2015
Activity: Participation in conference (Speaker) - Imagining a Female President: Commander in Chief and the Unfinished Business of Presidential Fiction
23 Mar 2015
Links:
Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Media article or participation (Contributor)
2014
- The War Memorial in Visual Culture: Triumphalism and Repression in The West Wing and The X-Files
25 Aug 2014
Links:
Activity: Types of Public engagement and outreach - Media article or participation (Contributor) - British Association for American Studies 2014
The War Memorial in US Television Drama
12 Apr 2014
Activity: Participation in conference (Speaker)