scholarly journals Cosmopolitan pleasures and affects; or why are we still talking about yellowface in twenty-first-century cinema?

2018 ◽  
pp. 41-60
Author(s):  
Felicia Chan
Keyword(s):  
Identity Politics ◽  
Diversity Management ◽  
Management Training ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
First Century ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Artistic Theory ◽  
Academic Discourses ◽  
Cameron Crowe

It is now widely acknowledged that the postracial fantasies ushered in by Barack Obama’s two-term election success are now in tatters. Yet debates on yellowface casting practices in contemporary Hollywood (also said to have evolved into “whitewashing” practices), in such films as The Last Airbender (M. Night Shyamalan, 2010), Aloha (Cameron Crowe, 2015), Doctor Strange (Scott Derrickson, 2016), Birth of the Dragon (George Nolfi, 2016), and Ghost in the Shell (Rupert Sanders, 2017), have resurfaced in recent times. These press controversies seem almost anachronistic after a generation of “intercultural” artistic theory and practice, “diversity” management training, and numerous academic discourses on otherness and difference, including those on cosmopolitan theory and practice. This article reviews yellowface practices and debates in contemporary times and puts them in dialogue with cosmopolitan aspirations of being “open to difference”, and argues that the latter cannot be taken as self-evident. It offers a way of thinking about yellowface practice via cosmopolitan pleasures evoked largely through modes of consumption, which “hollow out” the subjectivity of the character being depicted. On the site of the intersection between representation and subjectivity is where the identity politics occurs, yet, rather than universalising the issue, the article argues that a cosmopolitan approach should take on board localised conditions and contexts of production and reception in ways that acknowledge the multilayered complexity of the issues at hand.

Gothic Comedy

2019 ◽  
pp. 189-202
Author(s):  
Catherine Spooner
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
First Century ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Romantic Comedy ◽  
Significant Function ◽  
Politics Of Difference ◽  
The Family ◽  
Twenty First Century

Comedy has become an increasingly prevalent feature of Gothic in the twenty-first century, and thus Gothic comedy can be found across a multitude of media. This chapter surveys the kinds of comedy that appear in contemporary Gothic (such as sitcom, stand-up, romantic comedy, mock-documentary) and argues that, in the twenty-first century, Gothic comedy often functions to travesty culturally significant concepts of family, domesticity and childhood in the light of a liberal identity politics. Beginning with twentieth-century precedents such as television sitcom The Addams Family (1964–6) and Edward Gorey’s illustrations, the chapter analyses a range of contemporary texts including The League of Gentlemen (1999–2017), Corpse Bride (2005), Ruby Gloom (2006–8),Hotel Transylvania (2012) and What We Do in the Shadows (2014). It concludes that far from being frivolous or disposable, contemporary Gothic comedy forms a politically significant function in its tendency to undermine right-wing ideologies of the family and promote a celebratory politics of difference and inclusion.

Toward an Algorithmic Rhetoric

2014 ◽  
pp. 62-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Ingraham
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
First Century ◽  
Everyday Lives ◽  
Material Reality ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Digital Rhetorics

Insofar as algorithms are digital problem-solving operations that follow a set of rules or processes to arrive at a result, they are constrained by the rules that determine their parameters for operating. While an algorithm can only operate according to its instructions, however, the potential rules that might govern an algorithm are inexhaustible. An algorithm's design thus makes rhetorical choices that privilege the importance of some information or desired outcomes over others. This chapter argues for a way of thinking about algorithmic rhetoric as macro-, meso-, and micro-rhetorical. Along these lines, it would be beneficial to think more about algorithms as digital rhetorics with terrific power to sway what counts as knowledge, truth, and material reality in the everyday lives of people across an astonishing range of global communities in the twenty-first century.

Die Bedeutung von Tradition und Geheimnis für praktizierende Magier des 21. Jahrhunderts: Ergebnisse einer Interviewstudie The Meaning of Tradition and Secrecy for Magical Practitioners in the 21st Century: Results of an Interview Study

Aries ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 117-138
Author(s):  
Gerhard Mayer
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Contemporary Literature ◽  
Interview Study ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
First Century ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
The Social ◽  
Esoteric Knowledge ◽  
Twenty First Century

AbstractThis article addresses the question of the significance of tradition and secrecy for magical practitioners from various occult groups of the twenty-first century. The observations are based upon the results of an interview study alongside an analysis of contemporary literature concerning the practice of magic. The significance which is attached to the “occult” tradition, the transmission of esoteric knowledge and the figure of the person teaching this knowledge correlates very strongly with the spiritual alignment of the magical practice. This is especially pronounced among mystery schools which are oriented towards “white magic”. These concepts, however, play only a relatively marginal role. The same is not true with regard to aspects of secrets and secrecy. Although the distinct influence of a postmodern relativisation can be ascertained here, secrecy nevertheless remains significant in both theory and practice. The social functionality of secrecy such as was characteristic of the secret societies of the Enlightenment can, however, no longer be taken for granted. In this regard, the cultural situation of the twenty-first century has changed too much.

scholarly journals Impact of Scholarship on Contemporary “Gnosticism(s)”

2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 57-81
Author(s):  
Matthew Dillon
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Academic Discourse ◽  
First Century ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Academic Discourses ◽  
Ritual Practices

This article examines the impact of academic discourses on Neo-Gnosticism. The identities and ritual practices of Neo-Gnostics are constructed with reference to Gnostic Studies. Analysis of two case studies (the Apostolic Johannite Church and Jeremy Puma) shows how academic discourse legitimizes, challenges, or reforms Gnostic identity in the twenty-first century.

scholarly journals Preoccupations of Some Asian Australian Women’s Fiction at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Ferrier
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Identity Politics ◽  
First Century ◽  
Women's Fiction ◽  
Cultural Critique ◽  
Border Crossings ◽  
Yellow Peril ◽  
Late Twentieth ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Mind

This paper offers a look back over the rise of the visibility, and the rise as a category, of Asian Australian fiction from the beginning of the 1990s, and especially in the twenty-first century, and some of the main questions that have been asked of it by its producers, and its readers, critics, commentators and the awarders of prizes. It focuses upon women writers. The trope of “border crossings”—both actual and in the mind, was central in the late-twentieth century to much feminist, Marxist, postcolonial and race-cognisant cultural commentary and critique, and the concepts of hybridity, diaspora, whiteness, the exotic, postcolonising and (gendered) cultural identities were examined and deployed. In the “paranoid nation” of the twenty-first century, there is a new orientation on the part of governments towards ideas of—if not quite an imminent Yellow Peril—a “fortress Australia,” that turns back to where they came from all boats that are not cruise liners, containerships or warships (of allies). In the sphere of cultural critique, notions of a post-multiculturality that smugly declares that anything resembling identity politics is “so twentieth-century,” are challenged by a rising creative output in Australia of diverse literary representations of and by people with Asian connections and backgrounds. The paper discusses aspects of some works by many of the most prominent of these writers. In its mediation, through similar-but-different travelling women’s eyes, of the past and present histories of different national contexts, Asian Australian fictional writing is a significant and challenging component of the “national” culture, and is continuing to extend its audiences within, and beyond Australia. 

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