scholarly journals Never Grow Up: The Queerness Of Immaturity In American Film

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren R. Davine
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Film ◽  
Immature Male ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
A Site ◽  
Queer Temporality ◽  
Male Homosociality ◽  
Female Counterpart

This dissertation examines the contradictory status of immaturity in our culture. While immaturity’s otherness to heteronormative adulthood is a source of fear and anxiety, this otherness is also what makes it desirable–that is, immaturity represents an escape from the pressures and standards of adulthood, signifying an oppositional subjectivity reminiscent of youthful rebellion. Indeed, the oppositional nature of immaturity is ultimately what gives it power as a source of political agency. Rather than seeing immaturity as something to be ashamed of, or as something to be avoided or defeated, this dissertation, following Judith/Jack Halberstam, views immaturity as a powerful form of resistance as well as a queer “way of being.” In fact, these two latter elements–resistance and queerness–go hand-in-hand; queerness within this project is primarily understood as an uncompromising “resistance to regimes of the normal,” specifically those pertaining to maturity and success. Beginning with a focus on male immaturity, I establish the fear/desire dynamic characterizing the immature male through close readings of the 1950s male-centered melodrama, combined with an historically-oriented analysis of postwar American culture. Next, I examine how comedy and dramedy films about childish men from the 1980s to the present day are also structured by this contradictory dynamic, as they both resist and reinforce heteronormative adulthood. My textual analysis of these films are grounded in theories of queer temporality. Finally, I focus on the female counterpart to the immature male, examining various constructions of female immaturity in recent cinema. Here, I utilize a broader range of queer temporal theories to demonstrate the political potential of immature womanhood, where “immature” gains agency through its queer and feminist resistance to the tyranny of heteronormative adulthood. While this dissertation ultimately seeks to demonstrate how immaturity functions as a site of resistance to (hetero)normativity, it also acknowledges how it can (specifically in the context of male homosociality), reinforce and reproduce oppressive structures, further underlining immaturity’s incongruous status.

scholarly journals Never Grow Up: The Queerness Of Immaturity In American Film

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauren R. Davine
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Film ◽  
Immature Male ◽  
Fear And Anxiety ◽  
A Site ◽  
Queer Temporality ◽  
Male Homosociality ◽  
Female Counterpart

This dissertation examines the contradictory status of immaturity in our culture. While immaturity’s otherness to heteronormative adulthood is a source of fear and anxiety, this otherness is also what makes it desirable–that is, immaturity represents an escape from the pressures and standards of adulthood, signifying an oppositional subjectivity reminiscent of youthful rebellion. Indeed, the oppositional nature of immaturity is ultimately what gives it power as a source of political agency. Rather than seeing immaturity as something to be ashamed of, or as something to be avoided or defeated, this dissertation, following Judith/Jack Halberstam, views immaturity as a powerful form of resistance as well as a queer “way of being.” In fact, these two latter elements–resistance and queerness–go hand-in-hand; queerness within this project is primarily understood as an uncompromising “resistance to regimes of the normal,” specifically those pertaining to maturity and success. Beginning with a focus on male immaturity, I establish the fear/desire dynamic characterizing the immature male through close readings of the 1950s male-centered melodrama, combined with an historically-oriented analysis of postwar American culture. Next, I examine how comedy and dramedy films about childish men from the 1980s to the present day are also structured by this contradictory dynamic, as they both resist and reinforce heteronormative adulthood. My textual analysis of these films are grounded in theories of queer temporality. Finally, I focus on the female counterpart to the immature male, examining various constructions of female immaturity in recent cinema. Here, I utilize a broader range of queer temporal theories to demonstrate the political potential of immature womanhood, where “immature” gains agency through its queer and feminist resistance to the tyranny of heteronormative adulthood. While this dissertation ultimately seeks to demonstrate how immaturity functions as a site of resistance to (hetero)normativity, it also acknowledges how it can (specifically in the context of male homosociality), reinforce and reproduce oppressive structures, further underlining immaturity’s incongruous status.

MYTH IN SAM SHEPARD’S “THE GOD OF HELL” AND ITS POLITICAL IMPLICATION

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-38
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Political Implication ◽  
Major Work ◽  
Sam Shepard ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Political Myth ◽  
The World

The article introduces the creative work of the famous American playwright Sam Shepard, whose works are almost unknown to our Uzbek reader. His plays are well known throughout the world; they influenced the formation of the worldview of readers of different nations and show the peculiarities of American culture. Despite the worldwide fame of Sam Shepard’s works, they are not studied well by literary critics. In America and Europe his works have been studied in details for a long period, and even several monographs in English have been written. However, neither in the Russian speaking, nor in the domestic literary criticism there is yet no major work on Shepard's works. The article also deals with the artistic features of the political myth of the “American dream” in one of the most scandalous plays, “The God of Hell,” dedicated to the protest against the war in Iraq. Thus, this study, which touches upon some issues of Shepard's creative work in connection with his innovative artistic originality, to a certain extent, seeks to fill this gap.

The Positive Image of Public Servants in Editorial Cartoons (1999 - 2003)

Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Tony Carrizales
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
September 11 ◽  
The Political ◽  
Postal Service ◽  
Public Servants ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Positive Image ◽  
Editorial Cartoons ◽  
Positive Images ◽  
Selection Of

The editorial cartoon has been a part of American culture since the beginning of the nation’s founding. The following review of editorial cartoons takes a specific look at public servants who are not in the political spotlight, such as teachers, police, fire and postal service men and women. Through a review of editorial cartoons from 1999-2003, it becomes apparent that there are positive images of public servants amid the numerous negative ones published daily. The selection of cartoons, most notably those following the attacks of September 11, 2001, highlights that heroism and service can be transcended through cartoons as with any other form of art.

Modernism and American Ballet

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Harris
Keyword(s):  
Mass Culture ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Modern Dance ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Political Economic

This chapter explores the international and interdisciplinary backdrop of Lincoln Kirstein’s efforts to form an American ballet in the early 1930s. The political, economic, and cultural conditions of the Depression reinvigorated the search for an “American” culture. In this context, new openings for a modernist theory of ballet were created as intellectuals and artists from a wide range of disciplines endeavored to define the role of the arts in protecting against the dangerous effects of mass culture. Chapter 1 sheds new light on well-known critical debates in dance history between Kirstein and John Martin over whether ballet, with its European roots, could truly become “American” in contrast to modern dance. Was American dance going to be conceived in nationalist or transnationalist terms? That was the deeper conflict that underlay the ballet vs. modern dance debates of the early 1930s.

scholarly journals VIRTUAL TOUR ENVIRONMENT OF CUBA’S NATIONAL SCHOOL OF ART

2017 ◽  
Vol XLII-2/W5 ◽  
pp. 547-551 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. K. Napolitano ◽  
I. P. Douglas ◽  
M. E. Garlock ◽  
B. Glisic
Keyword(s):  
The Political ◽  
Political Climate ◽  
Virtual Tour ◽  
Heritage Sites ◽  
National School ◽  
Imaging Camera ◽  
Pertinent Information ◽  
Information Image ◽  
A Site ◽  
Art Schools

Innovative technologies have enabled new opportunities for collecting, analyzing, and sharing information about cultural heritage sites. Through a combination of two of these technologies, spherical imaging and virtual tour environment, we preliminarily documented one of Cuba’s National Schools of Art, the National Ballet School.The Ballet School is one of the five National Art Schools built in Havana, Cuba after the revolution. Due to changes in the political climate, construction was halted on the schools before completion. The Ballet School in particular was partially completed but never used for the intended purpose. Over the years, the surrounding vegetation and environment have started to overtake the buildings; damages such as missing bricks, corroded rebar, and broken tie bars can be seen. We created a virtual tour through the Ballet School which highlights key satellite classrooms and the main domed performance spaces. Scenes of the virtual tour were captured utilizing the Ricoh Theta S spherical imaging camera and processed with Kolor Panotour virtual environment software. Different forms of data can be included in this environment in order to provide a user with pertinent information. Image galleries, hyperlinks to websites, videos, PDFs, and links to databases can be embedded within the scene and interacted with by a user. By including this information within the virtual tour, a user can better understand how the site was constructed as well as the existing types of damage. The results of this work are recommendations for how a site can be preliminarily documented and information can be initially organized and shared.

scholarly journals Features of Sense-Bearing Structure of Political Pre-Election PR Publications

2019 ◽  
pp. 326-334
Author(s):  
Elina Bulatova
Keyword(s):  
Textual Analysis ◽  
Comprehensive Approach ◽  
The Political ◽  
Direct Communication ◽  
Number Of Components ◽  
Substantial Growth ◽  
Subsequent Research ◽  
Bearing Structure ◽  
Logical Links

An election period involves a substantial growth in the flow of messages addressed to voters. News PR publications constitute a significant share of these messages; they have a number of structural and content features whose description with a comprehensive approach using linguo-stylistic and discursive textual analysis seems necessary to assess the political discourse’s impact potential. Pre-election PR publications modeling messages within non-direct communication include a dyadic sense-bearing structure evidenced by the presence of two main thoughts and two analytical estimates of the presented situations in the text’s logical pattern, corresponding to two addresser’s intentions – the explicit and the implicit one. Explicit elements have to do with the presentation of the publication’s newsworthy event; the implicit ones create a favorable image of the basic PR subject and contain recommendations of electoral nature. Such dual construction of media text’s sense-bearing structure is considered to be defective in the practice of literary editing but it is a certain pragmatic norm for political pre-election PR texts. Another feature of the abovementioned materials’ sense-bearing structure is the semantic uncertainty of a number of components and/or uncertainty of the logical links between them. Abandoning H. P. Grice’s premises – producing implicit meanings and semantically uncertain elements – has the purpose of creating an impacting effect whose assessment determines the prospects of subsequent research of news PR texts within the pre-election discourse.

scholarly journals Accuracy, veracity, and theological truth in the 16th century atlas <i>Theatrum Terrae Sanctae</i>

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Ioana Zamfir
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Textual Analysis ◽  
16Th Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Critical Cartography ◽  
Political Role ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Theological Understanding

Abstract. The characteristics and appearance of an authentic map (in conformity with reality), together with the convention about how authenticity should be obtained in a map, continued to change since the beginning of modern cartography along the centuries. As Critical Cartography has emphasised, the authenticity of a map was in many cases just a convincing appearance, hiding intricate ideologies. However, the political role of maps is just one aspect of their significance, which does not exclude the existence of genuine beliefs and ideals which were guiding cartographers and map authors in the creation process.With a long tradition of understanding maps as illustration devices, Renaissance geography blended intimately with the assumptions and debates of the artistic domain of painting. Among these, veracity was a much praised ideal, signifying the ability of the art work to make present the absent things or giving a new life to people or events gone long ago, a perspective which allowed for rich metaphysical implications. In his theological atlas Theatrum Terrae Sanctae, Christian Adrichom used a variety of formula through which he expressed his view on the evocative power of maps, deriving from contemporary theories concerning truth, vision and representation. In this article we will employ the textual analysis of Adrichom’s affirmations, approaching them through the filter of the Intellectual History methodology. This method allows us to discover that the author explored the metaphysical implications of painting realism in order to present and use his maps as Christian devices, equating the veracity of the cartographic medium with the authenticity of Christ’s life and with the theological understanding of truth.

scholarly journals Distributing productive play: a materialist analysis of Steam

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Joseph
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Interaction Design ◽  
Capital Accumulation ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
The Political ◽  
Sales Promotions ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
New Space ◽  
A Site

Valve Corporation’s digital game distribution platform, Steam, is the largest distributor of games on personal computers, analyzed here as a site where control over the production, design and use of digital games is established. Steam creates and exercises processes and techniques such as monopolization and enclosure over creative products, online labour, and exchange among game designers. Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding framework places communication at the centre of the political economy, here of digital commodities distributed and produced by online platforms like Steam. James Gibson’s affordance theory allows the market Steam’s owners create for its users to be cast in terms of visuality and interaction design. These theories are largely neglected in the existing literature in game studies, platform studies, and political economy, but they allow intervention in an ongoing debate concerning the ontological status of work and play as distinct, separate human activities by offering a specific focus on the political economy of visual or algorithmic communication. Three case studies then analyze Steam as a site where the slippage between game-play and work is constant and deepening. The first isolates three sales promotions on Steam as forms of work disguised as online shopping. The second is a discourse analysis of a crisis within the community of mod creators for the game Skyrim, triggered by changes implemented on Steam. The third case study critiques Valve Corporation’s positioning of Steam as a new space to extract value from play by demonstrating historical continuity with consumer monopolies. A concluding discussion argues Steam is a platform that evolves to meet distinct crises and problems in the production and circulation of its digital commodities as contradictions arise. Ultimately, Steam shows how the cycle of capital accumulation encourages monopolization and centralization.

Reform in fragments: Sovereignty, colonialism, and the Sikh tradition

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Rajbir Singh Judge
Keyword(s):  
Reference Point ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Reform Movement ◽  
The Political ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Colonial State ◽  
Religious Reform ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
A Site

Abstract This article rethinks how we understand religious reform under colonial rule by examining Maharaja Duleep Singh, the deposed ruler of the Sikh empire, and how the Singh Sabha, a Sikh reform movement, debated, deployed, and organized around him in the late nineteenth century. I demonstrate how religious reform was a site of intense conflict that reveals the processes of argumentation within the contours of a tradition, even as the colonial state sought to continually mediate the terms. Embedded within a frame of inquiry provided by the Sikh tradition, the contestations that constituted reform within the tradition remained intimately tied in with the question of sovereignty. Ranjit Singh's empire in Panjab had only been annexed 30 years earlier in 1849 and remained a central reference point for thinking about the political at the turn of the century. These debates surrounding Duleep Singh, therefore, disclose the contentious engagements within a tradition that cannot be reduced to binary designations such as colonial construct/indigenous inheritance or religious/political.

The Mystery of American Identity

2019 ◽  
pp. 148-175
Author(s):  
Cheryl A. Wall
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
African Americans ◽  
American Culture ◽  
James Baldwin ◽  
American Identity ◽  
The Political ◽  
American Fiction ◽  
Invisible Man ◽  
Theory And Criticism ◽  
The Individual

Although best known for his novel Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s essays, and the array of cultural and political agendas which prompt their conception, are integral to American literary theory and criticism. His essays defined the terms for ongoing debates around nineteenth and twentieth century American fiction, modernist aesthetics, and American culture. This chapter charts the various cultural, literary, and political interventions made by Ellison’s essays. Like James Baldwin (chapter 4), Ellison confronts the question of American identity, but he recasts it in terms of culture rather than of the individual. Through Ellison’s use of the vernacular process, which blends high and low styles, he maps cultural concerns onto the political stage. By emphasizing the cultural contributions made by African Americans, Ellison’s work complicates, reworks, and redefines our understanding of American culture.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document