“There Is More to Me Than Just Hunger”: Female Monsters and Liminal Spaces in Monstress and Pretty Deadly

2020 ◽  
pp. 51-66
Author(s):  
Ayanni C. H. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Boundary Crossing ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Liminal Spaces ◽  
Female Monsters

This chapter analyzes the power of liminality that forces readers to identify with the transgressive ‘other.’ For the important female characters in the two comic books Monstress and Pretty Deadly, liminality and the abject are paradoxically sources of their power as revealed in their relationship to profanity, blood, and boundary crossing. While these female characters are undoubtedly situated as monsters because their liminal, abject natures, they are also the protagonists, and so the reader is compelled to identify with monstrosity. Because the celebrated creators of these comics, Marjorie Liu and Kelly Sue DeConnick, have voices in the wider U.S. cultural context, there is powerful potential in their choices to call readers to examine their own relationship to the abject and thus to challenge assumptions of social normalcy.

Gender Differences in Clothing Worn in Current Popular Comic Books

2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Landon Jossy
Keyword(s):  
Gender Differences ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Book Industry ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Lower Body ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
Males And Females

This study looked at how males and females were portrayed, based on the amount of skin shown in the clothing worn.  A Content analysis was performed on a sample of 20 randomly selected popular comics from the last 3 years.  Both male and female characters were rated on how much skin they showed in three clothing categories; neck line, sleeve length, and lower body.  Results showed that in all 3 categories, women consistently wore more revealing clothing.  The findings demonstraetd that the comic book industry is comparable to other forms of media, in the sexualization of female characters, by having them wear more revealing clothing.

Introduction : Ephemeral Exhibition Spaces and the Dynamic of Historical Liminalities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominique Bauer
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Spatial Concepts ◽  
Liminal Spaces

The following study addresses ephemeral exhibition spaces between 1750 and 1918. The focus is placed upon the private home, the nation, and the empire as distinctive spaces or spatial concepts. These either function themselves as ephemeral exhibition settings, or they are exhibited and made discernable in settings that are fundamentally ephemeral, and sometimes literally mobile, from the more traditional museum, a variety of smaller and larger scale exhibits, to the foldable paper peepshow or text-image sources which also function as spaces. Firstly, all of these simultaneously challenge and communicate elusiveness, fragmentation, disappearance, and otherness within their cultural context. Secondly, as liminal spaces, they all testify to the ambiguous connections between identification and projection vis-a-vis objectification and otherness.

scholarly journals Cultures of Protest in Transnational Contexts: Indian Seamen Abroad, 1885-1945

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gopalan Balachandran
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
State Agencies ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
World War ◽  
Liminal Spaces ◽  
Collective Resistance ◽  
Sustained Effort ◽  
Engagement And Disengagement

This paper offers a preliminary exploration of contexts and forms of protest and defiance of authority by Indian seafarers employed on ocean-going steam vessels over six decades to the end of World War II. Though relatively small in numbers and apparently untypical in many respects of a ‘modern’ industrial workforce, the study of Indian seafarers can shed interesting light on several wider aspects of Indian labour history. The transnational and trans-cultural context of employment of Indian seamen also helps illuminate their subjectivities, knowledges, and agencies in ways that are obscured in more insular histories, while their encounters with bosses and others in authority invite us to re-examine pervasive notions of cultural difference–‘owned’ as well as attributed. This paper is not about union-led protests, nor about ‘everyday’ forms of resistance. It dwells instead on a potentially vast and apparently uncharted middle ground of collective resistance by ships’ crews. Such resistance, perhaps simmering for weeks at sea, came to head at key moments, usually upon arrival at a foreign port, close to sailing, or when seamen were being transferred from one vessel to another. It could involve, besides the seamen themselves and their ships’ officers, a swathe of state agencies including local authorities, the police, and the judiciary, though rarely if ever, unions of local seamen. On the evidence here, the culture of work and protest of Indian seamen appears to have been informed by a certain rationality–a certain careful weighing of costs, benefits, and opportunities for engagement and disengagement, including through protest–that is altogether at odds with characteristic representations of Calcutta jute workers and British maritime workers enduring similar circumstances or facing similar ‘choices’. At the same time this culture was open to modern, secular, and transnational solidarities grounded in universalist values. Paradoxes of this nature demand a sustained effort to recover and re-interpret the complex but immensely creative subjectivities that Indian workers and seafarers (and needless to add other Asian, African, and Caribbean workers and seamen) developed and articulated within the fluid and liminal spaces they inhabited.

scholarly journals The Theme of Misogyny: A Study of the Select Plays of Vijay Tendulkar

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (S1-i2-Dec) ◽  
pp. 40-46
Author(s):  
R Panguni Malar
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Normal Life ◽  
Class Society ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Forms Of Violence ◽  
Female Counterpart

This study is an investigation of the theme of misogyny as represented by the female characters in the select plays of Vijay Tendulkar. The study argues that the Indian cultural context leaves space for man to be superior and woman to be inferior. The term misogyny denotes hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women, manifested in various forms such as physical intimidation and abuse, sexual harassment and rape, social shunning and ostracism, etc. In most of the plays of Vijay Tendulkar women stand to be the objects of subjugation in the hands of their male counterparts with whom they happen to connect with in the hope of leading their normal life. Tendulkar’s plays display a wide range of complex behaviours those constitute different forms of violence – physical attacks and verbal abuses. A thorough analysis of the situations and circumstances related to women in Vijay Tendulkar’s plays reveal that the domestic, personal, political and social ambience in which the characters live in contribute them much violence physically, sexually, psychologically and verbally. As Tendulkar’s plays stand for the middle class society, the man in his plays quite often is brutal towards his female counterpart with his deep rooted ideologies. The paper’s finding speaks on how the woman characters evolve to be strong individuals amidst their adverse ambience.

The Spring Man of Prague

Fabula ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 61 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 223-239
Author(s):  
Petr Janeček
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Comic Books ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe paper discusses the phenomenon of a well-known Czech folkloric character, the Spring Man, in its broader historical, social and pop-cultural context. This fictional hero appears in contemporary legends and anecdotes popular mostly during the Second World War; the narratives about the Spring Man represent a regional version (ecotype) of an international migratory legend about the originally English jumping urban phantom Spring-heeled Jack. Similarly to his English predecessor, the Czech Spring Man became a hero of popular culture, which, after 2002, rebranded this originally ambivalent urban apparition into the “first Czech superhero” of cartoons, comic books and movies.

scholarly journals The Feminine Other: Monsters and Magic in Beowulf and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 55
Author(s):  
Hana Ghani
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
Sir Gawain ◽  
Monster Theory ◽  
Courtly Romance ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Female Monsters

Monsters are perceived as humanity’s enemy that should be eradicated. However, based on Jeffrey Cohen’s Monster Theory (1997), monsters play an important role in understanding humanity’s fears and anxieties. Monstrosity hinges upon the binary opposition of the Self and the Other, in which the Other is seen as a threat to the Self. With this in mind, this article addresses the female monsters of two medieval texts: Beowulf and Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. This paper aims to examine the female monsters, Grendel’s mother and Morgan the Fay, as a cultural reference to unravel the patriarchal anxieties of the time. Grendel’s mother represents a threat to the homosocial hierarchal bonds of Medieval society. Meanwhile, Morgan the Fay signifies danger to knighthood, chivalry, and courtly romance. At the same time, this paper also aims to continue the critical analysis and literature of the female characters in both texts with a heavy emphasis on their Otherness.

scholarly journals Victim-Warriors and Restorers—Heroines in the Post-Apocalyptic World of Mad Max: Fury Road

Text Matters ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 106-118
Author(s):  
Anna Reglińska-Jemioł
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Gender Discourse ◽  
Action Films ◽  
Feminist Film ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Previous Series ◽  
Female Solidarity

The article discusses the evolving image of female characters in the Mad Max saga directed by George Miller, focusing on Furiosa’s rebellion in the last film—Mad Max: Fury Road. Interestingly, studying Miller’s post-apocalyptic action films, we can observe the evolution of this post-apocalyptic vision from the male-dominated world with civilization collapsing into chaotic violence visualized in the previous series to a more hopeful future created by women in the last part of the saga: Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). We observe female heroes: the vengeful Furiosa, the protector of oppressed girls and sex slaves, the women of the separatist clan, and the wives of the warlord, who bring down the tyranny and create a new “green place.” It is worth emphasizing that the plot casts female solidarity in the central heroic role. In fact, the Mad Max saga emerges as a piece of socially engaged cinema preoccupied with the cultural context of gender discourse. Noticeably, media commentators, scholars and activists have suggested that Fury Road is a feminist film.

scholarly journals A Reconsideration of Feminine Sensuality in Twilight in Delhi: Indian Women in Fiction

2020 ◽  
Vol V (II) ◽  
pp. 551-557
Author(s):  
Kanwal Zahra ◽  
Aisha Jadoon
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Female Gender ◽  
Cultural Bias ◽  
Indian Society ◽  
Female Characters ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
Liberal Feminism ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Shame And Guilt ◽  
Normative Constraints

Modernist discourses centralize feminine sensuality as an indicator of a female’s autonomy; generally, they denounce religious or traditional constraints related to its expression. In particular, liberal feminism rejects normative constraints on female sensuousness, which are argued to enforce gendered restrictions. Amid these popular considerations, there has been a remarkable increase in interest in postcolonial women’s approach to sensuality. Being perceived as sensually submissive by their faith, the question which continually surfaces is: is the sensual ethics of postcolonial women shaped by their religion? Or are they shaped by the societal considerations and values of the society they are born into? This paper addresses this question by considering the varied choices of sensual behaviour adopted by female characters in the postcolonial text, Twilight in Delhi, written by Ahmad Ali. By approaching the decadent culture of Delhi in this novel from a feminist perspective, this paper analyses the feminine sensuality of the Indian women and considers their assumptions about what counts as an appropriate choice for them within the cultural context of Indian society. This paper concludes that the sensual inhibition of these women is conditioned by the cultural bias towards the female gender that connects shame and guilt with their sensual desires in a traditional Indian society.

Culture and the plasticity of perception

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Lifshitz ◽  
T. M. Luhrmann
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Context ◽  
Sensory Experience ◽  
Cultural Learning ◽  
The World

Abstract Culture shapes our basic sensory experience of the world. This is particularly striking in the study of religion and psychosis, where we and others have shown that cultural context determines both the structure and content of hallucination-like events. The cultural shaping of hallucinations may provide a rich case-study for linking cultural learning with emerging prediction-based models of perception.

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