Our Cinema and Media Studies Masters student, Andrew Kirby, will give his presentation on “A Cinema of Extreme Wealth: Parallax Empathy in Neoliberal Cinema” at the annual conference of the Film Studies Association of Canada. Registration is free.
Through a reading of The Wolf of Wall Street, Andrew explains how a variety of biopics portray wealthy characters as being simultaneously reprehensible and sympathetic. These biopics encourage the audience to both support and condemn these characters through a process called parallax empathy. Andrew argues that parallax empathy is the key to helping audiences better understand these characters who are fully shaped by the modern-day neoliberal ideology.
Andrew Kirby‘s research focuses on representations of the natural world and how agency is represented in non-human entities. His undergraduate honours thesis focused on questions of neoliberalism and representations of wealthy characters.
If you are interested in other presentations by our students at Film Studies Association of Canada, check out Harrison Wade’s presentation on the art of non-photorealistic CGI.
