Tag: TV
‘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
Abnormalizing Difference: Sexual Normativity in Asexual Sherlock Fanfic
[7 minute read] (CW: discussion of sexual violence in fanfic.) Can I tell you a secret? I knew the titular character of BBC’s Sherlock had become one of the mascots of the ace community before I even watched the show — and I defended his reputation as such before I watched it, too, as evidenced in
Misrepresenting Difference: Objectifying Asexuality in Journalism
[10 minute read] The media we consume shapes our implicit biases. It is one factor among many, but I saw it at work among my Fox News-watching relatives during the 2016 election. I saw it at work among rosary-praying priests putting my femininity on a pedestal. I saw it at work after 9/11, when I
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
Privileged Positions: House of Cards and Frank Underwood’s Machiavellian Monologues
“Since a ruler, then, must know how to act like a beast, he should imitate both the fox and the lion, for the lion is liable to be trapped, whereas the fox cannot ward off wolves…[b]ut foxiness should be well concealed: one must be a great feigner and dissembler. And men are so naïve…that a
“You win or You Die”: Game of Thrones and Machiavellian Amorality
“However, how men live is so different from how they should live that a ruler who does not do what is generally done, but persists in doing what ought to be done, will undermine his power rather than maintain it.” -Machiavelli Note: Spoilers for the first four seasons of Game of Thrones and for Richard
“The Illusion of Choice”: Forced Freedom in Mr. Robot and Late Capitalist Society
I experience a fleeting feeling of freedom whenever I go to the grocery store. It offers me a reprieve from the stress and anxiety that creeps up on a daily basis as I worry about deadlines approaching or what I’ll do next after I finish graduate school. And then there’s always the peripheral flutter of
A life is made of critical appreciation
The curious thing about the arts is how they flow across geographical limitations like no other stream of study or career. Art has an organic capability to mold itself in the vision of its audience no matter what its origins were. The story of a French boy who finds an extremely spherical balloon that has