Our stories, our selves: Star Wars fanfictions as feminist counterpublic discourses in digital imaginaria

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Marshall
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
The Body ◽  
Audience Participation ◽  
Film Genre ◽  
Critical Data ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
Picture Show ◽  
Rocky Horror Picture Show

Fanfiction has a long and varied history in the Star Wars franchise since it began in 1977 with the debut of the first film, Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. The decade of the 1970s created new possibilities for science fiction multiverses and metanarratives; science fiction became an adaptive film genre that could be reimagined with seemingly infinite narrational results. The myriad of genre films that were released in the mid-to-late 1970s revealed dynamic syntheses with horror (e.g. Alien, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Close Encounters of the Third Kind), franchises that previously had existed solely on television (Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and musical theatre (The Rocky Horror Picture Show). Cinematic audiences became increasingly accustomed to science fiction tropes and themes in film; audience participation in the theatre (e.g. The Rocky Horror Picture Show) expanded to print zines (often with fanfiction) for multiple franchises as well as fan conventions. Fanfiction’s beginnings as an analogue culture dramatically changed with the advent of the internet and the evolution of fandoms as digital cultures. Web-based platforms such as FanFiction.net and Archive of Our Own (AO3) host sundry fan communities’ creative outputs including podcasts, art and, most frequently, fanfiction stories. The release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015 immediately captured the fandom’s imagination; the animosity and tension between the new villain Kylo Ren (Ben Solo) and protagonist Rey of Jakku particularly fascinated the young adult fans who were lately converted to the Star Wars fandom due to this pairing (known as Reylo within the fandom and within cinematic circles). The newest generations of fans were acclimated to audience participation and paratextual interactions due to their positions as digital natives. The Reylo fan phenomenon particularly erupted into fanfictions as critical data artefacts, even predicting Reylo as a romantic pairing years before the second and third films in the franchise trilogy Star Wars: The Last Jedi and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The Reylo pairing is just one example of how online Star Wars fanfiction communities expand audience participation to autonomous collective identity formation. This article examines feminist fanfictions in the Star Wars fandom as gendered critical data artefacts, as collaborative communities of practice, and as counterpublic discourses that apply feminist critiques to conventional gender roles within the most recent film trilogy and the fandom itself.

scholarly journals Human-Alien Encounters in Science Fiction: A Postcolonial Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 189-203
Author(s):  
Borbála Bökös
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Cultural Differences ◽  
The Body ◽  
Two Cultures ◽  
James Cameron ◽  
The Two Cultures ◽  
Science Fiction Films ◽  
Abel Ferrara ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract An (un)conventional encounter between humans and alien beings has long been one of the main thematic preoccupations of the genre of science fiction. Such stories would thus include typical invasion narratives, as in the case of the three science fiction films I will discuss in the present paper: the Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Don Siegel, 1956; Philip Kaufman, 1978; Abel Ferrara, 1993), The Host (Andrew Niccol, 2013), and Avatar (James Cameron, 2009). I will examine the films in relation to postcolonial theories, while attempting to look at the ways of revisiting one’s history and culture (both alien and human) in the films’ worlds that takes place in order to uncover and heal the violent effects of colonization. In my reading of the films I will shed light on the specific processes of identity formation (of an individual or a group), and the possibilities of individual and communal recuperation through memories, rites of passages, as well as hybridization. I will argue that the colonized human or alien body can serve either as a mediator between the two cultures, or as an agent which fundamentally distances two separate civilizations, thus irrevocably bringing about the loss of identity, as well as the lack of comprehension of cultural differences.

Can I Be Frank with You?

2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-252
Author(s):  
Cameron Crookston
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
Gothic Literature ◽  
Public Response ◽  
Hollywood Film ◽  
Queer Culture ◽  
Picture Show ◽  
Rocky Horror Picture Show

When Fox 21 Television Studios announced that Laverne Cox would play the role of Frank N. Furter in their 2016 The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again, most public response circled around how Cox’s visible political identity as a trans woman spoke to the problematic nature of Rocky Horror’s language and dated identity politics. Released in 1975, Richard O’Brien and Jim Sharman’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show has been a touchstone of queer popular culture for more than forty years. Rocky Horror is constructed as a self- conscious pastiche of multiple cultural moments and queer coded pieces of popular culture; Gothic literature, classic Hollywood film, science fiction B movies, Glam Rock, and drag all mingle in the queer cultural collage that makes up the show’s dramaturgy. As such, the scope of Rocky Horror serves as a kind of performative queer archive, collecting and performing generations of queer culture. However, in addition to offering a dense collection of queer cultural artifacts, Rocky Horror has also inherited many of the complicated representational aspects of its sources, such as the racist coding and simultaneous racial erasure of Gothic and horror conventions as well as rapidly changing and often conflicted trans identity politics of the mid- twentieth century. These problematic appropriations and omissions become all the more salient in light of Cox’s 2016 performance. In this article, Crookston examines how Rocky Horror has functioned as a performative queer cultural archive and how Danny Ortega’s remake, starring Cox, challenges, complicates, and excavates O’Brien’s original historiographic dramaturgy.

Speculative Realism and Science Fiction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Willems
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Cormac Mccarthy ◽  
Doris Lessing ◽  
Speculative Realism ◽  
Neil Gaiman ◽  
The World ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Quentin Meillassoux

A human-centred approach to the environment is leading to ecological collapse. One of the ways that speculative realism challenges anthropomorphism is by taking non-human things to be as valid objects of investivation as humans, allowing a more responsible and truthful view of the world to take place. Brian Willems uses a range of science fiction literature that questions anthropomorphism both to develop and challenge this philosophical position. He looks at how nonsense and sense exist together in science fiction, the way in which language is not a guarantee of personhood, the role of vision in relation to identity formation, the difference between metamorphosis and modulation, representations of non-human deaths and the function of plasticity within the Anthropocene. Willems considers the works of Cormac McCarthy, Paolo Bacigalupi, Neil Gaiman, China Miéville, Doris Lessing and Kim Stanley Robinson are considered alongside some of the main figures of speculative materialism including Graham Harman, Quentin Meillassoux and Jane Bennett.

The European identity formation in Ukraine

2017 ◽  
pp. 102-109
Author(s):  
Larysa Kovryk-Tokar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Cultural Heritage ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
European Integration ◽  
European Community ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Political Integration ◽  
European Identity ◽  
European Values

Every nation is quite diverse in terms of his historical destiny, spiritual priorities, and cultural heritage. However, voluntary European integration, which is the final aim of political integration that began in the second half of the twentieth century from Western Europe, provided for an availability of large number of characteristics in common in political cultures of their societies. Therefore, Ukraine needs to find some common determinants that can create inextricable relationship between the European Community and Ukraine. Although Ukrainian culture is an intercultural weave of two East macrocivilizations, according to the author, Ukraine tends to Western-style society with its openness, democracy, tolerance, which constitute the basic values of Europeans. Keywords: Identity, collective identity, European values, European integration

scholarly journals Influence of Parenting Styles and Developmental Stages on Identity Formation among Adolescents

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ahmad Rezvan ◽  
H. M. Ramakrishne Gowda ◽  
Lancy D’Souza
Keyword(s):  
Identity Formation ◽  
Parenting Styles ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Rural Areas ◽  
Developmental Stages ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Personality Development ◽  
Late Adolescents ◽  
Authoritarian Parenting ◽  
Significant Difference

Paternal attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that appear as family pattern or parenting styles play a key role in personality development and stabilizing the identity of adolescents. The present study assesses parenting styles and identity formation status of adolescents studying in and around Mysore city. A total of 400 adolescents (200 early and 200 late adolescents) were randomly selected covering Mysore city and nearby rural areas, of which equal number among were male and female adolescents and also equal number of them were from urban and rural areas. They were provided with Parental authority questionnaire (PAQ) developed by Buri (1991) and Aspects of Identity Questionnaire – IV (AIQ – IV) developed by Sampson (1978). PAQ measured perceived parenting styles. The AIQ scale measured personal, Relational Social and Collective areas of identity formation. The collected data were, coded and analyzed using SPSS software. The data was analyzed by Two-way ANOVA to find significant difference if any, in the developmental stages, area of living as well as gender of the participants. Results revealed that, adolescents with authoritarian Parenting styles had higher personal identity formation than adolescents with permissive and authoritarian parenting styles. Developmental stage showed significant influence on all components of identity-Personal, Relational, Social and Collective, where in early stage adolescents had higher identity than adolescents at later stage. In general, this study showed that the developmental stages had considerable effect on the collective identity formation in both early and late adolescents.

scholarly journals Do Androids Dream of Electric Shocks?  Utilitarian Machine Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Brendan Vize
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Machine Ethics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
Electric Shocks ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
The One

<p>Consider Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, the droid C3PO from Star Wars, or the Replicants that appear in Bladerunner: They can use language (or many languages), they are rational, they form relationships, they use language that suggests that they have a concept of self, and even language that suggests that they have “feelings” or emotional experience. In the films and TV shows that they appear, they are depicted as having frequent social interaction with human beings; but would we have any moral obligations to such a being if they really existed? What would we be permitted to do or not to do to them? On the one hand, a robot like Data has many of the attributes that we currently associate with a person. On the other hand, he has many of the attributes of the machines that we currently use as tools. He (and other science-fiction machines like him) closely resembles one of the things we value the most (a person), and at the same time, one of the things we value the least (an artefact), leading to an apparent ethical paradox. What is its solution?</p>

scholarly journals Do Androids Dream of Electric Shocks?  Utilitarian Machine Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Brendan Vize
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
The Other ◽  
Machine Ethics ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Star Wars ◽  
Electric Shocks ◽  
Tv Shows ◽  
The One

<p>Consider Lt. Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, the droid C3PO from Star Wars, or the Replicants that appear in Bladerunner: They can use language (or many languages), they are rational, they form relationships, they use language that suggests that they have a concept of self, and even language that suggests that they have “feelings” or emotional experience. In the films and TV shows that they appear, they are depicted as having frequent social interaction with human beings; but would we have any moral obligations to such a being if they really existed? What would we be permitted to do or not to do to them? On the one hand, a robot like Data has many of the attributes that we currently associate with a person. On the other hand, he has many of the attributes of the machines that we currently use as tools. He (and other science-fiction machines like him) closely resembles one of the things we value the most (a person), and at the same time, one of the things we value the least (an artefact), leading to an apparent ethical paradox. What is its solution?</p>

Eugenic Nostalgia: Self-Narration and Internalized Ableism in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Kanyusik
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Genetically Engineered ◽  
The Body ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Cultural Narratives ◽  
Person Perspective ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Disability Identity

Rosemarie Garland-Thomson has recently argued that Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go deconstructs ableism’s binary structure by postulating the existence of clone characters who occupy an abject position in a eugenic dystopia precisely because their genetically engineered, idealized able bodies exist to be used to “cure” the disabilities of others. The article builds on Garland-Thomson’s work, discussing the role of science fiction in Ishiguro’s book as a means to explore how ableist narratives contribute to cultural norms that enable an overt disciplining of disabled bodies that still occurs, despite it no longer being socially acceptable, and posits protagonist Kathy H.’s story as a narrative of disability identity that exposes the contradictory nature of a belief in the able body and its opposition to disability. Putatively able-bodied, Kathy narrates her experience of the world from a subject position that undermines a stable construction of the body within an ableist framework, ultimately showing these distinctions to be untenable. By discussing the role of first-person perspective in Ishiguro’s novel as a means to interrogate internalized cultural narratives that perpetuate ableist practices, the article examines how cultural notions of ability and disability function as terms that define through exclusion the citizen-subject in liberal democratic societies.

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