Tag: Cultural Studies
‘Build That Wall!’: Studies in the 21st-Century Plague Zombie
[10 minute read] In this month’s posts for Metathesis, I have been looking at how the metaphorical deployment of epidemic disease operates, and how we might understand the metaphorical function of plague zombies in contemporary texts. Why is it that the figure of the plague zombie features so prominently in the twenty-first-century imagination? If the plague
Messages of Power: Epidemic Disease and Metaphor
[10 minute read] Culture has been infected. From the largest spheres of government and media to the mundane exchanges of everyday living, a small but resilient particle of an idea has perforated the social fabric of our lives and buried deep in our collective imagination. This noxious notion exists unnoticed in many parts of society, a
“Dumbshows and Noise:” Hamlet and The Problem of Audience
[5-7 minute read] During Act 3 of Hamlet, while preparing the travelling players for the evening’s performance, Hamlet provides the actor’s company with a lengthy speech concerning the proper methods of acting he would like them to employ. During the speech, he makes a note on clowns, saying “and let those that play/ your clowns speak
How We Talk about Trauma: Gaslight and the Importance of Maintaining a Bi-focal Critical View
[7-10 minute read] Recently, my coursework on Hollywood Melodrama engaged me with reading portions of Helen Hanson’s book, Hollywood Heroines: Women in Film Noir and the Female Gothic Film.[1] This text represents an amazing work of scholarship, connecting well-researched critical feminist histories, studies in the formation of literary and filmic genres, and close-readings of the narrative
Scholarship and Affect: Merging Critical and Fan Identities
[7-10 minute read] Take an adventure with me through my affective and critical experiences with a few texts I encountered during my first year and a half of my Ph.D. program: ***** I am sitting in the theatre in the last showing of the night for Star Wars: Rogue One. I have just come from
Seduction and Devastation
[10 minute read] In my final foray into Hannibal, I will examine the final season and its tragedy and seduction. After the violence of “Mizumono,” the season two finale, Hannibal escapes to Italy, his pursuers scattered and recovering from their injuries. Driven by vivid hallucinations and a grisly murder, Will sails the Atlantic to seek
“Remarkable Boy…I Think I’ll Eat Your Heart.”
[7-10 minute read] The exploration of queer representation in Hannibal allows for a greater understanding of the conventions of gender and sexuality within the thriller genre. Highly-fictionalized thrillers such as Hannibal thrive on extreme relationships, but also rely heavily on non-traditional erotic relationships to further depict the extremes of personalities in its central characters. The
The Erotics of Evil
Among the harmful tropes of Hollywood, the figure of the Sissy Villain is one tainting LGBT representation in film and television. Despite the improvements of LGBT rights outside of film, the image of men in women’s clothing is one that pervades the genre of horror in particular. Such figures at Buffalo Bill, Cillian Murphy’s John/Emma
The Queer Response to Trauma in Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal
The representation of queer figures in cinema is politically fraught, with the anxieties of difference manifesting in portrayals of queer figures. These anxieties are particularly keen in the horror genre where the other is demonized. This other represents the danger of the unknown: race, religion, sexual orientation, and gender presentation. Within horror, these characteristics of