The Queer Pleasures of Musicals

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bradley Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Musical Theater ◽  
Musical Theatre ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Male Body ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter examines how queer pleasures are sublimated into musicals by analyzing the 1966 play Mame. Through this close reading of Mame and a broader consideration of musical theatre and film, this chapter explores how the show (and the genre, more generally) harnesses the power of the female body to disrupt the heteronormative impulses of narrative; creates a parthenogenetic world that celebrates motherhood; ironically deploys conventional representations of femininity; critiques heterosexual romance; and channels queer desire through the structure of musical theater. It also considers the relationship of musical theatre to camp, lesbian representation, and the spectacular male body. Finally, it provides an account of homosexuality and queerness in musicals that followed Mame—including La Cage aux Folles, A Chorus Line, Rent, and Hedwig and the Angry Inch—identifying moments that transcend the dichotomy between closeted structures and the representations of identity.

Dostoevsky and the Word “Jew”: A Quantitative Analysis of F.M. Dostoevsky’s Greatest Novels

Libri ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yigal Nirenberg ◽  
Gila Prebor
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Digital Humanities ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Distant Reading ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Great Writer ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract The relationship of F.M Dostoevsky with Jews attracted the attention of numerous scholars throughout the years, many of whom attempted to grapple with the views of the great writer and their origin. In this article we will attempt to show this relationship by analyzing six of Dostoevsky’s greatest novels, written through the entirety of his career. We are analyzing these novels using Distant Reading in conjunction with Close Reading, tools that are commonly used in the field of digital humanities, which enabled us to show visually the extent of F.M. Dostoevsky’s engagement with this topic. The study poses two research questions: 1. To what extent did the writer use the more denigrating term “Zhid”? 2. Can we see a correlation between the writer’s portrayal of Jews with the definition of Anti-Semitism as it was known during his era? The obtained results show that there is clearly a correlation between the definition of anti-Semitism as it was understood at the time of Dostoevsky and the “Jew” as depicted in his novels, as the financial motif is paramount in the depiction of Jews as this is the central topic in 49% of the negative sentences in which the word “Jew” appears, with 59% of these sentences classified as stereotypes. The negative financial stereotype constitutes 32% of the entire corpus. In addition, we found the term “Zhid” is commonly used by the writer, a variation of which constitutes 75% of the total terms used to depict Jews.

Staging Sincerity in Renaissance Italy and Early Modern China; or, Why Real Lovers Quarrel

Poetics Today ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 281-299
Author(s):  
Casey Schoenberger
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Musical Theater ◽  
Energy Resources ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Physical Sciences ◽  
Strong Connection ◽  
Renaissance Italy ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Brain

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in China and the West saw a wave of skeptical approaches to metaphysics, ethics, and the physical sciences, including a related interest in “playing devil’s advocate” for seemingly weak propositions. This article analyzes two works of musical theater from these geographically remote traditions to argue that use of historically problematic romances to explore the relationship of ethics, emotion, and reason resulted in novel depictions of attachment emotions as neither purely selfless “gut reactions” nor calculating facades. Scenes depicting lovers’ quarrels and morally flawed characters may paradoxically strike audiences as more authentically romantic because they dramatize an aspect of attachment emotions’ functioning recently elucidated by cognitive science, namely, that of “body budgeting” (allocation of energy resources by the brain). Monteverdi and Busenello’s Coronation of Poppaea and Hóng Shēng’s Palace of Lasting Life use contrastive poetic and musical styles to dramatize the debate-like quality inherent in such negotiations, further revealing a strong connection between the affective “ingredients” that make up socially mediated emotion states and the mechanisms by which music and prosody affect them.

scholarly journals On the Move

2013 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Éva Pataki
Keyword(s):  
Urban Space ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Diaspora Studies ◽  
Pulp Fiction ◽  
Generation Immigrant ◽  
Diasporic Identity ◽  
British Asians ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal’s Tourism (2006), as a contemporary British Asian novel, counts as postcolonial fiction yet adds a post-postcolonial and postmodern twist by presenting itself in the context of tourism. Although generally perceived as pulp fiction for its provocative themes and pornographic scenes, the novel’s portrayal of the second-generation immigrant experience, urban space and tourism invites a close reading from the perspectives of spatiality and movement, as well as an analysis that is interdisciplinary in its approach, its theoretical background situated at the intersection of tourism, cultural, postcolonial and diaspora studies. The present paper investigates Dhaliwal’s novel in terms of the relationship of identity, space and movement, or more specifically what I call mobile subjectivities: the figures of the tourist and the flâneur, and argues that the basic elements of flânerie and tourism are indispensable attributes of British Asians’ diasporic identity and experience, and thus integral to the analysis of movement and subjectivity in British Asian fiction.

Rough Music: Tosca and Verismo Reconsidered

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 228-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arman Schwartz
Keyword(s):  
Close Reading ◽  
Music Listening ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
New Techniques ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Previous Scholarship

Abstract This article offers a new interpretation of the operatic phenomenon known as verismo, and of the relationship of Puccini's Tosca with that movement. In contrast to previous scholarship on verismo, which often treats the relationship between literature and music as transparent, I stress that marrying empiricist aesthetics to traditional operatic values was a highly unnatural process. I suggest that Italian opera in the 1890s was pushed to a sort of crisis point, and that the very act of singing could no longer be taken as self-evident. Composers developed a set of new techniques——offstage song, performer-characters, an extreme reliance on bells——to deal with this sudden untenability of operatic convention. All of these techniques were elaborated most fully in Tosca, and the opera might be read as an allegory of the verismo moment, embodying the conflict between hard-nosed realism and unapologetic singing in its two antagonists: Baron Scarpia and Floria Tosca. The plot clearly endorses Tosca's position, but a close reading of the opera's music suggests a rather different interpretation. By focusing on the role of bells in the opera, I argue that realistic sound often overwhelms the autonomy of the characters, at times seeming to collapse them into the scenery itself. Early critics were disturbed by this aspect of the music. Listening to the opera with their ears may help us realize that——despite its overt celebration of individual freedom, and its much-lauded critique of state-sanctioned violence——Tosca exhibits an antisubjective impulse that has much in common with other ““Fascist”” and ““proto-Fascist”” texts.

Anerkennung und Abhängigkeit

2014 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steffen K. Herrmann
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Second Step ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Binding Force ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Three Stages ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Critical Social

AbstractRecently, a number of critical social theorists have argued that the analysis of social relations of unfreedom should take into account the phenomenon of self-subordination. In my article, I draw on Hegel’s theory of recognition to elucidate this phenomenon and show that recognition can be not only a means of self-realization, but also of subjugation. I develop my argument in three steps: As a first step, I reconstruct the idea of social pathologies in the tradition of Critical Theory. In the course of this reconstruction, it becomes clear that the analysis of social pathologies should focus on the binding force of recognition. As a second step, I reinterpret Hegel and show that a close reading of the relationship of lordship and bondage can help us to understand how a subject can become bound by recognition. As a third step, I make an attempt at reactualizing Hegel’s idea. Following Sartre’s analysis of anti-Semitism, I outline three stages of how subjects can gradually come to subordinate themselves and become entrapped in social relations of unfreedom such as race, class or gender.

scholarly journals Women, Star Trek, and the early development of fannish vidding

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesca Coppa
Keyword(s):  
Star Trek ◽  
Early History ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Visual Texts ◽  
Quantum Leap ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mainstream Culture ◽  
And Control ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This paper argues that the practices and aesthetics of vidding were structured by the relationship of Star Trek’s female fans to that particular televisual text. Star Trek fandom was the crucible within which vidding developed because Star Trek’s narrative impelled female fans to take on two positions often framed as contradictory in mainstream culture: the desiring body, and the controlling voice of technology. To make a vid, to edit footage to subtext-revealing music, is to unite these positions: to put technology at the service of desire. Although the conflict between desire and control was particularly thematized in Star Trek, most famously through the divided character of Spock, the practices of vidding are now applied to other visual texts. This essay examines the early history of vidding and demonstrates, through the close reading of particular vids made for Star Trek and Quantum Leap, how vidding heals the wounds created by the displacement and fragmentation of women on television.

In the Gardens with Ibrahim: An Evaluation of Fī riyāḍ al-tafsīr by Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse, a Contemporary, Traditional Tafsīr

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-46
Author(s):  
Oludamini Ogunnaike
Keyword(s):  
West Africa ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Oral Performance ◽  
Contemporary Work ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Sufi Order ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Excellent Article

The Senegalese Shaykh Ibrahim Niasse (d. 1975) was the founder of the most popular branch of the Ṭarīqa Tijāniyya, the most popular Ṣūfī order in Sub-Saharan Africa. In this paper, I propose to give a brief overview of his recently-published Fī riyāḍ al-Tafsīr, a contemporary work of tafsīr transcribed from Shaykh Ibrahim's annual Ramaḍān tafsīr sessions. The tafsīr is unique for many reasons, not least of which is the fact that it is a transcription of an oral tafsīr performance, raising interesting questions about the relationship of oral performance to textuality and intertextuality, and the relationship between spiritual practice and Qur'anic hermeneutics, and challenging certain received notions about Islam in West Africa, and the place of West Africa in the Islamic world. While this work has previously been discussed in an excellent article by Andrea Brigaglia, this paper builds on and complements Brigaglia's work by conducting a close reading of Shaykh Ibrahim's tafsīr of Q. 6:75–79, the story of Abraham and the setting star, moon, and sun, comparing it with related ideas found in other Ṣūfī texts and with other Sufi tafsirs of the same passage.

scholarly journals Harmonizing with the cosmos : a critical analysis of cosmic symbolism in musical theatre

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Rebecca Hannelore Holley
Keyword(s):  
William Shakespeare ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Musical Theatre ◽  
Arthur Miller ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Thornton Wilder ◽  
Early Humans ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

Humankind has long possessed a fascination with the cosmos and the cosmic bodies they can see from their earthly home. Overtime humans began to associate deities with the cosmic bodies, and religions developed to explain the cosmos and humans' place within it. Early humans created artifacts, using the imagery of cosmic bodies to mark the passage of time and to symbolize their relationship to the cosmos. When they began writing, this use of the cosmic bodies appeared in their literary works and in the works of Ancient Greek and Roman playwrights, William Shakespeare, Arthur Miller, and Thornton Wilder, among many others. Musical theatre, integrated into a unique theatre genre in the mid-twentieth century, similarly followed this impulse to use cosmic bodies to elucidate character and themes. The relationship of these instances, however, to the long traditional symbolic use of cosmic symbolism in Western thought and the ways in which the cosmic symbolism reveals character traits has been largely overlooked in musical theatre scholarship. This analysis contributes the first book-length study investigating cosmic symbolism in selected, representative musicals that span the time period from the American Golden Age through the present. Aided by available scholarship from the fields of astrology, anthropology, psychology, semiotics, religious studies, and philosophy this study aims to increase understanding of how cosmic symbolism functions within representative musical theatre works and what that symbolism reveals about humans' interactions with the cosmos.

scholarly journals The Physician and His Servant in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament

Early Theatre ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jillian Linster
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Medical Practitioner ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

The Croxton Play of the Sacrament features a physician who has regularly been characterized as a quack and buffoon. This paper combines the play’s historical and cultural context with a close reading of the text to argue that the doctor himself is a legitimate medical practitioner; the combined clowning of his servant and the foolishness of his patient make the physician appear comical. By considering possible performance choices and the relationship of the audience to the play’s action, I suggest a more complex reading of a scene and character that have previously been too readily dismissed.

The relationship of the scleractinian corals to the rugose corals

Paleobiology ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 6 (02) ◽  
pp. 146-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
William A. Oliver
Keyword(s):  
Critical Points ◽  
Scleractinian Corals ◽  
Convincing Evidence ◽  
Early Triassic ◽  
Rugose Corals ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Biologic Factors

The Mesozoic-Cenozoic coral Order Scleractinia has been suggested to have originated or evolved (1) by direct descent from the Paleozoic Order Rugosa or (2) by the development of a skeleton in members of one of the anemone groups that probably have existed throughout Phanerozoic time. In spite of much work on the subject, advocates of the direct descent hypothesis have failed to find convincing evidence of this relationship. Critical points are:(1) Rugosan septal insertion is serial; Scleractinian insertion is cyclic; no intermediate stages have been demonstrated. Apparent intermediates are Scleractinia having bilateral cyclic insertion or teratological Rugosa.(2) There is convincing evidence that the skeletons of many Rugosa were calcitic and none are known to be or to have been aragonitic. In contrast, the skeletons of all living Scleractinia are aragonitic and there is evidence that fossil Scleractinia were aragonitic also. The mineralogic difference is almost certainly due to intrinsic biologic factors.(3) No early Triassic corals of either group are known. This fact is not compelling (by itself) but is important in connection with points 1 and 2, because, given direct descent, both changes took place during this only stage in the history of the two groups in which there are no known corals.

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