Anti-Othellos and postcolonial Others in Izzat and Aastha

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Archana Jayakumar
Keyword(s):  
Source Text ◽  
Hindi Language ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Scholarly Attention

While Indian cinematic adaptations that attempt to recreate William Shakespeare’s Othello have received scholarly attention, practically no work has been done on films that make fleeting references to the source text while questioning its authority. This article aims to fill the gap by presenting two Hindi-language postcolonial adaptations, namely Izzat (1968) and Aastha (1997), that can be read as anti-Othello films. They challenge Shakespeare’s status as a colonial icon in independent India by terming his works as ‘rotting feudal tales’ and by subverting Othello’s murder of Desdemona. However, although men of ‘low’, mixed or ambiguous origins do not kill their wives in these two adaptations, both films still depict the marginalization of caste, class and gender Others. This article will study the tension between these on-screen Others and the anti-Othello stance.

Judaism

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronit Irshai
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
Positive Attitude ◽  
Jewish Studies ◽  
Jewish Law ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Gender Analysis ◽  
Scholarly Research ◽  
Judaic Studies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Scholarly Attention

This article examines the hitherto unquestioned consensus in Judaic studies that Judaism embraces a positive attitude towards sexuality. Grounded in the new scholarly trends of cultural and gender analysis as well as feminist critique and their impact on Jewish studies, it singles out four focal issues: sexuality in ancient rabbinic thought, to which the most scholarly attention has been directed; and issues in modern Halakhah that have just begun to inform scholarly research: the ethos of modesty and the construction of the female body; homosexuality and lesbianism; and reproduction and sexuality. The discussion reflects the tension between these two scholarly trends, and between the conceptual-theological stratum of Judaism and its reflection in the practical-legal sphere of Jewish law (Halakhah). This examination of Jewish attitudes towards sexuality, in light of the new scholarship, leads to the conclusion that although Judaism affirms sexuality, this cannot be grasped in a simple, superficial, or monolithic fashion.

scholarly journals “At Home Too Everything Is Falling Apart”: Waste, Domestic Disorder, and Gender in Alison Lurie's Early Fiction

2017 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-145
Author(s):  
RACHELE DINI
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Gender Relations ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Alison Lurie ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
At Home

This paper examines the gendered aspects of consumer waste, dirt, and domestic mess in three early novels by Alison Lurie – Love and Friendship (1962), The Nowhere City (1965), and The War between the Tates (1974), set in 1969 – which I argue provide an incisive account of the transformation of gender relations over the course of the 1950s and 1960s. By focussing on the signifying potential of material objects in these texts, I seek to demonstrate Lurie's relevance to the “thingly turn” in literary criticism, to reignite interest in an author whose work has received surprisingly little scholarly attention, and to instigate a wider discussion of waste in her work as a whole, where it in fact proliferates. In broader terms, I hope to complicate existing scholarship on waste in literature (including my own in this area to date), which remains almost exclusively focussed on male authors.

scholarly journals Taking a bite out of Buffy: Carnivalesque play and resistance in fan fiction

2011 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amanda L. Hodges ◽  
Laurel P. Richmond
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Fan Fiction ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Buffy The Vampire Slayer ◽  
American Popular Culture ◽  
The Third ◽  
Point Of Entry ◽  
Sexuality And Gender ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Gender

Popular culture provides a vital point of entry to examine discourses of hegemony and resistance at work within the growing culture of fandom. Drawing from epistemologies of feminism and poststructuralism, we deconstruct how fans read, co-construct, apply, and reenvision texts as they navigate societal notions of gender in their own constructions of subjectivity. We discuss subversive examples of sexuality and gender found in American popular culture, particularly the portrayal of femininity in the character of Faith, the bad girl from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Such examples are important because they impart crucial hegemonic lessons that may then be played out in everyday life. By focusing on the third season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, we examine the discourses of risk at play within the source text, fan sites, and online fan fiction. Bakhtin's ideas of carnival drive much of fan fiction, and Foucault's analysis of power relations as well as Butler's theories of performativity contribute to play that affords dynamic, critical perspectives with which to interrogate social metanarratives and their impact on the subject.

scholarly journals Shane and the Language of Men

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 72-88
Author(s):  
Jesse Gerlach Ulmer
Keyword(s):  
Middle School ◽  
Source Material ◽  
Film Adaptation ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Source ◽  
Language And Gender ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Cultural Hierarchies ◽  
Scholarly Attention

AbstractJane Tompkins has argued that a deeply conflicted relationship exists between men and language in the Western. Deploying too much language emasculates Western heroes, men who privilege action over talk. For support, Tompkins turns to a number of moments in Shane, the 1953 film adaptation of the 1949 novel of the same title by Jack Schaefer. Tompkins argues that the film constructs a model of masculinity that wholly rejects language, a move that is destructive and exploitative to self and others. However, a close reexamination of the novel reveals a model of masculinity that is more positive and flexible towards language and gender than Tompkins’s views on the Western suggest. A close rereading of the novel shows that men in Westerns do not always use talk and silence to subjugate women and others, and that the valuing of language over action does not always end in violence or exploitation. Furthermore, the film adaptation of the novel will be examined, a work that occupies a more cherished place in American culture than the novel, a situation that is the reverse of traditional cultural hierarchies in which the literary source material is privileged over the film adaptation. Ultimately, the novel and film are engaging in different ways, yet Schaefer’s novel, rather than being relegated to middle school literature classrooms, rewards serious critical and scholarly attention, particularly in the context of the film adaptation and critical discourse on the representation of masculinity in the Western.

Gender in Rhetorical Theory

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Faber McAlister
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
External Reality ◽  
Gendered Identities ◽  
Rhetorical Studies ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Scholarly Attention

The phrase gender in rhetorical theory refers to how gendered identities and dynamics have shaped the conceptualizing of rhetorical performances and interactions. Scholars have attended to this dimension of rhetoric by examining problems relating to gendered norms and representations as contexts, conditions, and functions for rhetoric. Despite the different aims and times of these inquiries, they share central concerns about the gendered productions and exclusions of discourses and rhetorical practices. Scholars also contribute to work in both rhetorical scholarship and gender studies by bringing diverse projects into contact to create new insights. Scholarly attention to gender in rhetorical studies has often critiqued conventional theories of rhetoric for importing simplistic accounts of gender or for failing to address its importance at all. Many crucial contributions to rhetorical studies have worked to correct this problem by drawing on interdisciplinary literature—particularly from feminist theory, intersectional analysis, queer theory, trans theory, and masculinity studies—enriching understandings of how rhetoric functions. Such research has enabled rhetorical theory to begin to account for distinct embodied encounters, material conditions, and performative agencies. Scholars have drawn on interdisciplinary literature to advance a more nuanced account of gendered experiences and representations in rhetorical theory. This research has often related sexism and misogyny to a host of other forms of bias and bigotry that are evident in some of the scholarly assumptions and abstractions guiding the discipline of rhetorical studies. These include universal and neutral standards of rhetorical efficacy, individualistic accounts of the rhetorical agent, and definitions of rhetoric as a representation of (or response to) an external reality that appeals to a preexisting audience. Rhetorical theorists have also contributed to broader conversations engaging complexities of gender by highlighting the role of discourse in the production of biological essentialisms; gender binaries; interlocking oppressions; and multiple vectors of marginalization, discrimination, erasure, exclusion, and violence.

Adaptive Dissonance in Wizard of Oz Films

2020 ◽  
pp. 113-142
Author(s):  
Meghann Meeusen
Keyword(s):  
Single Source ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Wizard Of Oz ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Ideological Conflict ◽  
And Gender

Chapter five traces multiple adaptations across many decades, wherein each adaptation interacts not just with the source text, but also with other adaptations. This chapter builds from theorists like Bakhtin to suggest that in the case of multiple adaptations of a single source, one ideological ramification is adaptive dissonance, or an increased ideological conflict within the adaptation as compared to the source. More than simply a divergence from or conflict with the ideologies of a precursor text, adaptive dissonance describes an internal conflict that manifests within each new adaptation. Considering The Wiz: The Super Soul Musical (1978), The Wiz Live! (2015), Muppets’ Wizard of Oz (2005), and Oz the Great and Powerful (2013), this chapter considers the implications of such adaptive dissonance, especially when it comes to depictions of race and gender in contemporary Oz retellings.

Remaking identities and stereotypes: How film remakes transform and reinforce nationality, disability, and gender

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 613-629
Author(s):  
Eduard Cuelenaere ◽  
Gertjan Willems ◽  
Stijn Joye
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Gender Identities ◽  
Road Trip ◽  
Gender Culture ◽  
And Gender

When films are being remade, they undergo several transformations, including changes related to (the representation of) national, disability, and gender identities. By drawing on the case of the Flemish film Hasta La Vista and its Dutch remake Adios Amigos, this article critically investigates the (dis)similarities on these levels through the prism of the film remake. Both films are popular road trip movies dealing with the adventure of three friends with disabilities who overcome boundaries in multiple ways not only by figuratively (and almost literally) escaping their parents and their disabilities but also through traveling, exploring sexuality, and eventually by dying. Although the films deal with almost exactly the same themes, their interpretation and contextualization differ considerably. Our findings show that as a consequence of the localizing processes embedded in film remakes, subtexts which were ‘originally’ ingrained in the source text were ignored or even withheld in the newer version. As the involved filmmakers built on particular stereotypical visions and myths about these specific cultures and national identities, often with the purpose of recreating a socio-cultural context, such narrowed perceptions were occasionally subverted but also reconsolidated. Finally, we argue that, through the remake process, some ableist and patronizing representations of, respectively, disability and gender identities were subverted, while others were kept or even reinforced. Our results show that such transformations point toward specific socio-culturally defined disability and gender identities but also toward a shared and almost universally shaped disability and gender culture.

‘Their song was partial; but the harmony […] suspended hell’: Intertextuality, voice and gender in Milton/Symphony X’s Paradise Lost

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Bolay
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Metal ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Paradise Lost ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Traditional Gender Roles ◽  
Concept Album ◽  
Tone Of Voice ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Good And Evil

I illustrate how Symphony X’s concept album retells Milton’s Paradise Lost and complicates the narrative through its use of voice and creative extrapolation, resulting in an intertextual relationship through which the album and epic influence one another’s readings, particularly with regard to gender and the biblical binary of good/evil. One of the difficulties in interpreting the album is that singer Russell Allen shifts his tone of voice to suit the mood of the song, not to denote a change in speaker. Thus, key passages that blend characters’ voices on the album further emphasize the deconstruction of good and evil introduced through the extrapolated narrative and challenge the traditional gender roles presented in the source text. I conclude that within Symphony X’s writing and performances of Paradise Lost, the combination of performative genders challenges the politics of both the source text and the album’s cultural context, i.e. that of heavy metal.

Who ‘let all this happen’? – Shifts of responsibilities in representing the Cultural Revolution in Jung Chang’s Wild Swans

2020 ◽  
pp. 096394702096029
Author(s):  
Long Li ◽  
Xi Li
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Chinese Translation ◽  
Linguistic Representation ◽  
Unusual Situation ◽  
Scholarly Attention ◽  
Red Guards ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

A number of Chinese migrant writers have achieved success in writing in English, one of the most significant being Jung Chang, with her politically controversial Wild Swans. A key site for controversy is its attribution of historical responsibilities in describing China’s catastrophic Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). However, to date, little scholarly attention has been paid to the Chinese translation of this book, an unusual situation where the source text author partially contributed to the translation decision-making. This article seeks to examine the shifts of responsibilities in this translation with a focus on the linguistic representation of three participants in the event: Mao, Red Guards and general students. It adopts a functional translational stylistics approach to explore the combinational foregrounding patterns in transitivity and clause status. Based on both quantitative and qualitative results, this study has found latent but considerable grammatical patterns in shifting responsibilities from Mao to the youth in the Chinese translation. This implies a weakened influence of an anti-Maoist ideology in translating the book into Chinese.

The politics of love in contemporary China: Cosmopolitanism and competing masculinities in Best Time

2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaohua Guo
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Critical Reading ◽  
Television Series ◽  
Television Industry ◽  
Gender Expectations ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Politics Of Love ◽  
Scholarly Attention

Since the new millennium, the television industry in China has witnessed a flourishing of television series addressing the aspirations, struggles and gender expectations of the urban middle class. Nevertheless, with few exceptions, little scholarly attention has been devoted to the televisual construction of masculine ideals in the contemporary era. Taking as a case study Best Time (最美的时光), one of the most popular idol dramas of 2013, this article fills a lacuna in current scholarship and addresses the televisual construction of cosmopolitan masculinities by focusing on the tension between two prominent social groups: overseas returnees and indigenous talents. Through analysis of the construction of competing masculinities in Best Time, this article argues that this drama is as much about an undertone of national rejuvenation, and the desire for China’s rise and global dominance, as it is about unrequited love. In pursuing this argument, a critical reading of a youth idol drama opens new avenues for understanding cosmopolitanism through the lenses of gender dynamics and nationalism.

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