Postfeminist Spectres: What Is Haunting Television Heroines?

Postfeminism is frequently analyzed and conceptualized as a time or sensibility haunted by the ghost of feminism that it wants to (purports to) relegate to the past. It is also a crucial concept in understanding the ways of portraying and constructing female characters prevalent in the American media. The article considers the hauntings (literal but predominantly fgurative) experienced by selected prominent women protagonists of postfeminist American mid-brow television series of the late 1990s, 2000s and early 2010s, from the ghostly child of Ally McBeal to haunting spaces and times of Sex and the City and Any Day Now, to the multiple familial hauntings of Grey’s Anatomy, to compare the spectres narratives assign to these female protagonists, their signifcations and ways of containing them or exorcizing them within the narrative

Choices, affects and trans representation: An analysis of mechanics and gameplay in Tell Me Why

The article discusses selected aspects of the 2020 game Tell Me Why, focusing on particular gameplay mechanics pertaining to player choices and the manner in which they influence player emotions, as well as on the representation of trans experience in the game. The authors draw both on affect theory and on approaches derived from game studies concerning the presence of emotions in gameplay. In the final part of the text, trans representation in Tell Me Why is analysed and juxtaposed with the readings typically found in the game’s reviews.The article discusses selected aspects of the 2020 game Tell Me Why, focusing on particular gameplay mechanics pertaining to player choices and the manner in which they influence player emotions, as well as on the representation of trans experience in the game. The authors draw both on affect theory and on approaches derived from game studies concerning the presence of emotions in gameplay. In the final part of the text, trans representation in Tell Me Why is analysed and juxtaposed with the readings typically found in the game’s reviews

Grievable Lives during the COVID-19 Pandemic: US-American Television, Melodrama and the Work of Mourning

The present article applies Judith Butler’s notion of “grievable life” to reflect on the manner in which selected US-American television series engaged in the work of mourning and memorializing the loss of life in the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the aim of noting which lives were deemed “lose-able or injurable” (Butler, Frames 1), and how precarity of life was reflected by fictional narratives that were conceived and produced during the first waves of the pandemic. The article focuses in particular on the way in which network scripted programming operating within the melodramatic convention, namely This Is Us, Grey’s Anatomy and Station 19, incorporated pandemic storylines and which aspects of pandemic reality were highlighted or, conversely, avoided scrutiny

Between Gazing and Witnessing: Feminism and Watching Women Suffer on Television

The present article discusses ethical aspects of the representations of (sexual) violence and (predominantly women’s) suffering in two recent television series, The Handmaid’s Tale and Dietland. It reflects on the uses and functions of violent imagery they contain and the manner in which this imagery contributes to the series’ perception as feminist shows. The primary question posed is whether this violence occasions engagement or disengagement: whether the role they cast their audiences in consists in gazing or witnessing

Perspectives on Authorship and Authority

This article outlines selected shifts in thinking about authorship and authority that have occurred in literary and cultural studies in the aftermath of Roland Barthes’s proclamation of the death of the author, followed by the author’s many revivals. Reconsidering Barthes’s seminal essay and confronting it with Michel Foucault’s query about the author-function, the article comments on Seán Burke’s polemical stance concerning situated authorship. Against these general considerations, several areas in which authorship and authority have been reconceptualized are briefly discussed, referring to the themes addressed in this volume. These areas embrace the problems of representing and using somebody else’s story in visual arts and testimonial theatre, the challenges of individual and cultural situatedness of writing within one’s own output and in reference to more general cultural hauntings as well as the processes of self-formation in the interactions between a variety of texts forming life-writing

„Thanatomorphose” and „Contracted”: Feminine body and sexuality in horror and the horror of feminine body and sexuality

  Thanatomorphose and Contracted: Feminine body and sexuality in horror and the horror of feminine body and sexualityThe paper juxtaposes two films — Thanatomorphose directed by Éric Falardeau 2012 and Contracted directed by Eric England 2013 — in order to illustrate how both use similar themes of rot, disfigurement and decay of the body to paint different images of the female body and its aesthetic and functional value. Through the use of close reading, the analysis focuses on the manner in which the aforementioned themes in the discussed film texts are expressed within the boundaries of horror discourse to emphasize issues such as abuse, objectification and self-harm.  Thanatomorphose and Contracted: Feminine body and sexuality in horror and the horror of feminine body and sexualityThe paper juxtaposes two films — Thanatomorphose directed by Éric Falardeau 2012 and Contracted directed by Eric England 2013 — in order to illustrate how both use similar themes of rot, disfigurement and decay of the body to paint different images of the female body and its aesthetic and functional value. Through the use of close reading, the analysis focuses on the manner in which the aforementioned themes in the discussed film texts are expressed within the boundaries of horror discourse to emphasize issues such as abuse, objectification and self-harm