Post-9/11 Power and Responsibility in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Muller
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
World View ◽  
Comic Book ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Marvel Cinematic Universe ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
American Film Industry

Moving to the science fiction genre, but remaining within the field of allegory, Chapter Thirteen sees Christine Muller scrutinise one of the most economically successful and culturally impactful genre variations to emerge from the American film industry in the last two decades, the renaissance of the superhero film. While it is an emergence which has been criticised by many (see Alan Moore's criticism of it as a "cultural catastrophe" in Flood, 2014), its impact has been so profound that to dismiss it seems imprudent, and, as Richard Gray and Betty Kaklamanidou observed in their The 21st Century Superhero Essays on Gender, Genre and Globalization in Film (2011), in many ways the 2000s were the 'decade of the superhero' (Gray and Kaklamanidou 1). Indeed, one can deal a great deal about a culture by its heroic mythology. Just as the ancient Greeks had tales of Hercules and Achilles, late nineteenth century America turned to mythologised stories of Wyatt Earp and Davy Crockett, in the twentieth century and into twenty-first, western culture found its heroic ideals embodied in comic-book heroes like Superman, Batman and Spider-Man. In Muller's chapter, "Post-9/11 Power and Responsibility in the Marvel Cinematic Universe", she considers the relationship between the superhero film and the tumultuous post-9/11 era, exploring the ideological function of superhero narratives. Muller looks at how the Marvel Cinematic Universe often returned to trauma in a variety of forms in their films which frequently emerge not as bloated blockbusters empty of resonance, but texts which engage with the decade in deeply revealing ways (see DiPaolo and McSweeney). Far removed from the cartoonish fantasyscapes of Salkind era Superman (1977) or the increasingly extravagant excesses of Tim Burton and Joel Schumacher's Batman years, the real world set Marvel Cinematic Universe films, beginning with Iron Man (2008), are deeply immersed in what we might call the ongoing 'War on Terror' narrative. While some writers have dismissed the genre as perpetuating hegemonic ideological systems (see Hassler-Forrest) Muller argues that they are able to, at times, offer more than the conservative world view they are primarily associated with. The defining events of the 'War on Terror' era thus become replayed in the MCU through the melodramatic spectacle of the superhero genre.

Pater's Parerga: Framing the Imaginary Portraits

2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 119-135
Author(s):  
Giles Whiteley
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Formal Structure ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Liminal Space ◽  
Critical Attention ◽  
Similar Operation ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
The Relationship

Walter Pater's late-nineteenth-century literary genre of the imaginary portrait has received relatively little critical attention. Conceived of as something of a continuum between his role as an art critic and his fictional pursuits, this essay probes the liminal space of the imaginary portraits, focusing on the role of the parergon, or frame, in his portraits. Guided by Pater's reading of Kant, who distinguishes between the work (ergon) and that which lies outside of the work (the parergon), between inside and outside, and contextualised alongside the analysis of Derrida, who shows how such distinctions have always already deconstructed themselves, I demonstrate a similar operation at work in the portraits. By closely analysing the parerga of two of Pater's portraits, ‘Duke Carl of Rosenmold’ (1887) and ‘Apollo in Picardy’ (1893), focusing on his partial quotation of Goethe in the former, and his playful autocitation and impersonation of Heine in the latter, I argue that Pater's parerga seek to destabilise the relationship between text and context so that the parerga do not lie outside the text but are implicated throughout in their reading, changing the portraits constitutively. As such, the formal structure of the parergon in Pater's portraits is also a theoretical fulcrum in his aesthetic criticism and marks that space where the limits of, and distinctions between, art and life become blurred.

Police Records

2019 ◽  
pp. 797-819
Author(s):  
Cristina Vatulescu
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Detective Fiction ◽  
Media History ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Police Records ◽  
History Of ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

This chapter approaches police records as a genre that gains from being considered in its relationships with other genres of writing. In particular, we will follow its long-standing relationship to detective fiction, the novel, and biography. Going further, the chapter emphasizes the intermedia character of police records not just in our time but also throughout their existence, indeed from their very origins. This approach opens to a more inclusive media history of police files. We will start with an analysis of the seminal late nineteenth-century French manuals prescribing the writing of a police file, the famous Bertillon-method manuals. We will then track their influence following their adoption nationally and internationally, with particular attention to the politics of their adoption in the colonies. We will also touch briefly on the relationship of early policing to other disciplines, such as anthropology and statistics, before moving to a closer look at its intersections with photography and literature.

Murderous Mumbo-Jumbo: The Significance of Fraternity to Three Criminal Organizations in Late Nineteenth-Century America

2015 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 1067-1088
Author(s):  
KRISTOFER ALLERFELDT
Keyword(s):  
Race And Ethnicity ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Turn Of The Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
The West ◽  
Nineteenth Century America ◽  
The Past ◽  
Criminal Organizations ◽  
Mumbo Jumbo ◽  
Late Nineteenth

Over the past thirty years or so the study of American fraternity has been used to explore a variety of phenomena in the nation's evolution, especially around the turn of the twentieth century. Fraternities have been used to understand the exploration, taming and exploitation of the West. They have been shown to represent proof of the various turn-of-the century crises of gender, race and ethnicity. They have been seen as the very embodiment of bygone caring, sharing, communities. However, among the aspects to have escaped attention is the importance of fraternity in criminal organizations. Given that crime, then as now, was seen as one of the most pressing of social issues, and given that over these years there was a deep suspicion that there were a variety of ultra-secret fraternities organizing, facilitating and manipulating wide-ranging criminal activities, this may be considered a little odd. This article investigates the idea that there was really such a thing as a genuine criminal “fraternity.” Looking at three of the most famous of such organizations – the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the Molly Maguires and the Mafia – it demonstrates that not only were ideas of fraternity central to their very existence, but they are also crucial to our understanding both of them and of the period in which they were situated.

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