323 research outputs found

    Cinema and commercial space tourism:The politics of escapism

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    Space tourism has been one of the most enduring tropes in the cinema from the early 1900s until the present day, yet there exists no systematic, comprehensive investigation situating these widely diversified depictions of space tourism within a broader historical context of technological innovation and associated social transformation. The contemporary social climate, whereby commercial space tourism is an emergent possibility, calls for the decolonisation of the term ‘tourism’ and its categorical associations, in order to assess how visions of space tourism within cinematic, science-fiction futures project the history of tourism and its detrimental environmental, commercial, and colonial implications. The written portion of the dissertation uses close-textual-analysis and discursive transcoding as the primary methodologies to identify and investigate five unique trends in the thematic representation of cinematic space tourism, each linked to a distinct ‘moment’ of widespread crisis and transformation. Ultimately, this will contribute to a broader understanding concerning how science-fiction explores social constructions of race, class, and gender. As a practice-based accompaniment to these critical discussions, I relay my findings in a space film which compiles knowledge drawn from film and literature scholarship, as well as from the analysis of the selected case studie

    Homer Simpson Marches on Washington: Dissent through American Popular Culture

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    The Simpsons consistently questions what is culturally acceptable, going against the grain of popular culture by showcasing controversial issues like homosexuality, animal rights, the war on terror, and religion. This subtle form of political analysis is entertaining and great for television ratings, but it also can be an effective means of changing opinions and attitudes on a large scale. To consider another example, what does Star Trek teach viewers about feminist politics? Do comedy programs like The Daily Show and Saturday Night Live advance democracy in ways the mainstream news media cannot? Can horror films contribute to a contemporary understanding of environmentalism? Homer Simpson Marches on Washington: Dissent through American Popular Culture explores how popular culture influences political agendas, frames audience perceptions, and changes values and ideals on both the individual and collective level. Editors Timothy M. Dale and Joseph J. Foy have assembled a top-notch team of scholars from the fields of political science, history, women’s and minority studies, film and media studies, communication, music, and philosophy to investigate the full spectrum of popular culture in a democratic society. Homer Simpson Marches on Washington examines television shows such as Star Trek: The Next Generation, The X-Files, All in the Family, The View, and The Colbert Report, as well as movies and popular music, demonstrating how covert political and social messages affect the cultural conversation in America. The contributing authors investigate a wide range of controversial topics, including gender, race, religion, class, the environment, and sexual orientation. Kate Mulgrew, who played Captain Janeway in Star Trek: Voyager, offers her own story in the book’s foreword, describing the societal pressures of being the first female captain in the Star Trek franchise. In today’s fragmented society, audiences are met daily with thousands of messages competing for their attention. Homer Simpson Marches on Washington offers an entertaining and insightful look at how popular culture can break through the clutter and bring about profound changes. Timothy M. Dale, assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, is coauthor of Political Thinking, Political Theory, and Civil Society. Joseph J. Foy, assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin–Waukesha, is the editor of Homer Simpson Goes to Washington: American Politics through Popular Culture. Popular culture is a growing area of interest, especially given its status as a major U.S. export in this rapidly globalizing world. Homer Simpson Marches on Washington is a useful and interesting work. --Margaret Ferguson, Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis Homer Simpson Marches on Washington is essential reading for anyone who believes that mass media can be effective in exposing the oppressive powers the be and inspiring people to resist them. --catapult magazine Both Homer Simpson Goes to Washington and Homer Simpson Marches on Washington look at popular culture as not simply entertainment of the masses. Instead, pop culture can emphasize contemporary societal norms, or introduce new ideas and social constructs....Pop culture reaches a national audience, and as such, is inspiring nationwide conversations about politics, race, marriage, religion, etc. If you want to learn more about the basis for these conversations, these two books are excellent resources. --Annette Aguayo, Voices From the Earthhttps://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_american_popular_culture/1009/thumbnail.jp

    Satire in Postmodern American Narratives : Alienation under Late Capitalism in Kurt Vonnegut’s Novels

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    This thesis examines the theme of alienation under late capitalism in three Kurt Vonnegut novels: Player Piano (1952), Jailbird (1979), and Slapstick, or Lonesome no More! (1976). The three novels discussed in this thesis are examples of post-war American satire writing, and the aim of this thesis is to use these novels to show that postmodern American literature uses satire to portray alienation under late capitalism. This selection of novels exemplifies postmodern satire and its relation to alienation, as it covers both dystopian writing and contemporary political satire. This thesis discusses these three novels against a background of the history of satire in its sociopolitical contexts up to the twentieth century, as well as relates them to theories on postmodernism and postmodern satire. Late capitalism in the postmodern era and its association with alienation is further examined in relation to the novels’ protagonists. Alienation is used mainly as a Marxist term denoting alienation from ones labor, oneself, and one’s relationships. The connection of satire, postmodernism, and late capitalism demonstrates that the postmodern era has seen an abundance of American satirical works about alienation, due to the advent of late capitalism after World War II. Postmodernism and late capitalism as concepts are linked and inseparable in economy and culture, which is why postmodern satirical narratives depict alienation. Alienation in a late capitalist society affects the individual, especially an individual’s connection to their work and their relationship with themselves and others. This thesis connects the phenomenon of alienation to Vonnegut’s three protagonists, who are depicted as apathetic, confused, and passive in their work and personal lives. The role of satire is to criticize the societies created in the novels in order to exemplify the alienated existence of their protagonists as they narrate their struggle with corporations, consumer culture, exaggerated patriotism, and individualism. Satire manifests differently in each novel, but its role is the same – to show that characters in Vonnegut’s work are portrayed as alienated form their work, other people, and their own purpose

    Gothic economies: Global capitalism and the boundaries of identity

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    Since Dickens and Mary Shelley, the Gothic has provided a rubric for literary conceptualizations of modernity. Dickens\u27 depictions of industrial London characterize it as a labyrinth of temptations and horrors, haunted by monstrosity and by personal and social demons; the monster in Mary Shelley\u27s Frankenstein is the disfigured byproduct of science and technology. Bram Stoker\u27s Dracula, perhaps the most effective global narrative to come out of the British fin de siecle, grafted elements of a pre-Enlightenment atavism onto the turn-of-the-century liberal metropolis. In our own era, the literature of the postmodern technopolis---the fiction of William Gibson, for example---has continued to borrow Gothic motifs and devices. This dissertation is a study of literary representations of technology, capitalism and the modern metropolis---representations based in the anxieties and desires that accompany middle-class self-fashioning. The Gothic, in its original guise, depicts the corruption and ruination of the estate, often by economic and cultural forces emanating from the city and associated with capitalism and modernity; thus, to invoke the Gothic is also to reference middle class guilt and doubts about legitimacy. At the same time, Gothic allusions allow the middle class to retell its foundational myth of a struggle for liberation from feudal constraints. Much 19th and 20th literature, both popular and highbrow, entertains an ambiguous and complicated relationship to the city---the site of economic, political and cultural forces which are both liberating and traumatizing. Though capitalism and technology drove its ascendancy, the middle class has traditionally seen the city as a place both of opportunity and danger, of allure and revulsion or horror---a set of mixed emotions which tends to suggest an insecure, unstable or divided subjectivity. This complicated relationship to the city provided much of the impetus for the quest to build a bourgeois utopia ---a refuge located at the fringe of the city in which the equilibrium of a romanticized pre-urban order is recovered. But because the contradictions within middle class identity can never be fully resolved, the utopia always harbors the potential to become a haunted grove, visited by that which has been repressed or abjected in the process of creating modernity

    Intermedial Studies

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    Intermedial Studies provides a concise, hands-on introduction to the analysis of a broad array of texts from a variety of media – including literature, film, music, performance, news and videogames, addressing fiction and non-fiction, mass media and social media. The detailed introduction offers a short history of the field and outlines the main theoretical approaches to the field. Part I explains the approach, examining and exemplifying the dimensions that construct every media product. The following sections offer practical examples and case studies using many examples, which will be familiar to students, from Sherlock Holmes and football, to news, vlogs and videogames. This book is the only textbook taking both a theoretical and practical approach to intermedial studies. The book will be of use to students from a variety of disciplines looking at any form of adaptation, from comparative literature to film adaptations, fan fictions and spoken performances. The book equips students with the language and understanding to confidently and competently apply their own intermedial analysis to any text

    The Comic Counterfactual: Laughter, Affect, and Civic Alternatives

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    This project contributes the comic counterfactual to the critical lexicon of rhetorical studies. Using a range of examples from political comedy, this paper offers six distinguishing features and several temporal functions of this concept. I argue that the comic counterfactual invites audiences to critically reflect upon the political, social, and performative consequences of historical events by bringing affective, sensory weight to alternative visions, moving unaccountable private interests into public culture, targeting the subtle determinisms that can easily creep into communication, and creating plausible ways to reworld the status quo. I discuss the limitations of the comic counterfactual in the political economy of media and offer several conclusions for rhetorical research and practice

    Weaponized Women in Contemporary Visual Culture : Representing Military Women in the ‘War on Terror’

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    This thesis examines representations of military women in contemporary Western visual culture during the ‘War on Terror’ (2001-present). Through the comparison of cultural productions that center on military women (e.g. films, TV series, etc.), I assess the current perpetuation of representational patterns established by a long tradition of the military/war genre. Moreover, I attempt to identify new patterns and tropes, and also categorize any divergences to pre-established patterns. With this study I intend to explore the hypothesis that military women are subjected to systematic stereotyping when featured in fictional narratives as protagonists, which I understand to be a signal of a larger problem, concerning the instrumentalization of military women by military/political forces. Drawing from the works of Cynthia Enloe, Barbara Ehrenreich, Yvonne Tasker, among other critics who theorized on this subject, I attempt to expand on what was already written, adding original material relating exclusively to the period of the ‘War on Terror’. Through the comparison and analysis of intermedia artworks from the US and European countries (UK, and France), I offer a wide cultural study on the fictionalization of military women. By focusing on US and European cultural representations of servicewomen I aim to verify the existence of similarities which may suggest a transatlantic cohesion in regard to not only representational tropes, but also military/political interests. The thesis is divided into three parts, each corresponding to an important stage in military life. Therefore, chronologically, the first part is dedicated to ‘Boot Camp’, the second to ‘Deployment’, and the last to ‘Discharge’. This structure is intended to compartmentalize stages that introduce different sets of challenges to women in the military. Through this approach, I am able to direct my focus towards each segment as a whole, exploring correspondent cultural products that encompass dominant representations in each stage of military life. The final objective of this research is to acknowledge how fictional depictions of military women can help us achieve a clearer image of a collective Western understanding of what it means to be a female and a soldier. Additionally, I aim to identify how those depictions are used to convey specific ideological messages pertaining to (trans)national interests during the ‘War on Terror’. Furthermore, through this cultural analysis I intend to contribute to an expanding field concerned with gender equality in Western armed forces.Esta tese analisa representaçÔes da mulher militar na cultura visual Ocidental contemporĂąnea durante o perĂ­odo da ‘Guerra ao Terror’ (2001-presente). AtravĂ©s da comparação de produtos culturais centrados na mulher militar (e.g. filmes, sĂ©ries de TV, etc.), examino a perpetuação actual de padrĂ”es de representação estabelecidos por uma longa tradição do gĂ©nero militar/guerra. Para alĂ©m deste trabalho de comparação, identifico novos padrĂ”es e estereĂłtipos, ao mesmo tempo categorizando divergĂȘncias dos padrĂ”es previamente estabelecidos. Com este estudo, pretendo explorar a hipĂłtese de que as mulheres militares estĂŁo sujeitas a estereĂłtipos sistemĂĄticos aquando protagonizam narrativas ficcionais, o que problematizo enquanto instrumentalização da mulher militar por forças militares/polĂ­ticas. Apoiando-me nos trabalhos de Cynthia Enlow, Barbara Ehrenreich, Yvonne Tasker, entre outra/os crĂ­tica/os que teorizaram acerca deste tĂłpico, pretendo expandir o trabalho que jĂĄ existe, acrescentando material original relacionado exclusivamente com o perĂ­odo da ‘Guerra ao Terror’. AtravĂ©s da comparação e anĂĄlise de vĂĄrios tipos de obras artĂ­sticas visuais provindas dos Estados Unidos e de paĂ­ses Europeus (Reino Unido e França), dedico-me a um alargado estudo cultural focado na ficcionalização da mulher militar. Ao focar-me em representaçÔes culturais estadunidenses e europeias pretendo verificar a existĂȘncia de semelhanças que possam sugerir uma coesĂŁo transatlĂąntica no que diz respeito nĂŁo sĂł a estereĂłtipos representacionais, mas tambĂ©m a interesses militares/polĂ­ticos. Esta tese estĂĄ dividida em trĂȘs partes, cada uma correspondendo a uma fase importante da vida militar. Desta forma, cronologicamente, a primeira parte intitula-se ‘Boot Camp’ (campo de treino militar), a segunda ‘Deployment’ (projecção das forças militares no terreno), e a Ășltima ‘Discharge’ (dispensa militar). Esta estrutura visa compartimentar perĂ­odos que apresentam conjuntos de dificuldades diferentes para a mulher militar. AtravĂ©s desta abordagem, direcciono o meu foco de atenção para cada segmento como um todo, explorando produçÔes culturais correspondentes que demonstram as representaçÔes dominantes em cada fase da vida militar. O objectivo final deste trabalho de investigação Ă© identificar o que dizem as representaçÔes ficcionais da mulher militar acerca de um entendimento Ocidental colectivo do que significa ser mulher e soldado. Adicionalmente, pretendo tambĂ©m reconhecer como essas representaçÔes sĂŁo utilizadas para transmitir mensagens ideolĂłgicas especĂ­ficas, relativas a interesses (trans)nacionais durante a ‘Guerra ao Terror’. AtravĂ©s desta anĂĄlise cultural pretendo ainda contribuir para os estudos que apoiam a igualdade de gĂ©nero nas forças armadas Ocidentais

    New Game Plus: A Study of Video Game Narratives

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    New Game Plus: A Study of Video Game Narratives is a scholarly thesis that examines three dominant narrative forms in video games, namely, linear, branching, and rhizomatic. These narrative forms help contextualize this study’s consideration of the history of video games which reveals the increasing sophistication of the medium as a form of storytelling. This thesis examines two different video games in each of the three categories and traces how more recent video games tend to use player interactivity to explore and reflect players’ morality. Common threads in the examined video games include moral dilemmas, socio-political issues, remediations of earlier narrative forms, game mechanics, and the effects of player agency on video game narratives
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