scholarly journals Home and Hell

2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 68-90
Author(s):  
Anna Bark Persson
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Female Masculinity ◽  
Literature Reading ◽  
Typical Action ◽  
Starting Point

The aim of this article is to examine the representation of female masculinity in genre literature. Reading female masculinity as queer embodiment, I put two science fictional texts driven by a typical action narrative in dialogue with earlier research on representations of female masculinity in literature and popular culture to demonstrate the importance of bringing the genre of the text into the analysis when examining female masculinity. In the article, I use the connection between female masculinity and tragedy as my starting point to exemplify how the genre of a text shapes the depiction and reading of female masculinity. In the action-driven science fiction texts I study, this link is very much present, but tragedy is given another role to play. Instead of being an element in the constitution of gender non-conforming as an unlivable experience, the representation of these masculine female heroes as oriented away from heteronormative constructions of a good life (Ahmed 2006) makes possible the depiction of these women as masculine, as well as the glorification of their gender non-conformity within the framework of the action-based SF narrative.

scholarly journals Film Costume as a Visual Narrative Element

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-100
Author(s):  
Jelena Vojković
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Walter Benjamin ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
Psychological Test ◽  
Visual Narrative ◽  
Ridley Scott ◽  
Invasive Approach ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Narrative Element

This research is an attempt to try to define the semiotic elements of film costumes that result with certain final feelings of the viewer. Looking through the semiotic theory of both Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin and the specifics of (theatre and) film costume as a means of influencing the viewer and his/her thoughts, feelings and overall catharsis, the identity of a certain film has been set through an analysis of various elements. Furthermore, it has been noticed that psychological results by one observing a film can be various and lean more on known philosophical and psychological tendencies i.e. Freud’s theories or the ones of M. Merleau-Ponty or Lacan. To make it less verbatim, the example for the analysis that has been chosen is the 1982 science fiction film Bladerunner directed by Ridley Scott. With surreal messages and multi-layered meanings of its visual and audio presentation, it seemed like a perfect starting point for the research of the subconscious mind of the viewer. Finding a non-invasive approach to viewer’s impression, the costume itself could be observed both independently and in correlation with other film elements. By combining the results of all film levels via a visual psychological test by Robert Plutchik, known as Plutchik’s wheel of emotions, it is plain to see that a final impression still lies in a personal analysis. We find a prevalence of certain thoughts that lead the viewer to change his/her perception and, ultimately, to catharsis.

scholarly journals Repackaging Popular Culture: Commentary and Critique in Community

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tully Barnett ◽  
Ben Kooyman
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Pop Culture ◽  
Big Bang ◽  
Fan Culture ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
History Of ◽  
Nerd Culture ◽  
The Big Bang

Contemporaneous with the collision of Science Fiction/Fantasy with the mainstream evident in the success of nerd culture show The Big Bang Theory (2007- ), Joss Whedon’s The Avengers (2012), the growth of Comic Con audiences and so on, Dan Harmon developed Community (2009- ), a sitcom depicting a study group at a second-rate community college. The show exemplifies a recent gravitation away from the multi-camera, laugh-track driven sitcom formula, alternating between “straight” episodes dealing with traditional sitcom premises, though always inflected with self-aware acumen, and more ambitious, unconventional episodes featuring outlandish premises, often infused with the trappings of genre and geek fandom. The show presents apocalyptic action- and Western-style paintball wars, epidemics that evoke zombie cinema, a Yahtzee game that spirals into alternate timelines, and a high-stakes Dungeons and Dragons game that blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy.  Both the straight and the unconventional episodes ultimately serve the same purpose, examining the intersection between nerd culture and everyday life. This essay discusses a number of episodes which exemplify Community’s intersections between everyday life and popular culture, charting the show’s evolving preoccupation with pop culture and intertwining of reality and fantasy. It discusses Community’s self-referentiality as a sitcom, its ambitious and elaborate recreations of and homages to pop culture artefacts, and its explicit gravitation towards Science Fiction and Telefantasy in its third season. Through its various homages to popular culture and ongoing depiction of fan culture, we posit that the show is both a work of fandom and a work about fandom, advocating for the pivotal role of fandom in everyday life and for popular culture as a tool for interpreting, comprehending and navigating life. In this respect, the show contributes to the long history of both the sitcom and Telefantasy as vehicles for cultural commentary.

Od kultury popularnej do geopolityki popularnej

1970 ◽  
Vol 22 (297) ◽  
pp. 53-66
Author(s):  
Jarosław Macała
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Stages Of Development ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Cultural Order ◽  
Popular Geopolitics

A large portion of geopolitical research of the last decades, especially geopolitical criticism, undertakes the concept of the importance of culture, value and identity in explaining the relation between the space and politics, which was an aspect underappreciated by classical and neoclassical geopolitics. It might be assumed that the currently growing role of popculture and mass-media in our lives lead to the establishment of a kind of a “cultural order”, a particular filter that decides on the perception of the world and, consequently, geopolitics. This article relates to this issue as it deals with the meaning of popular culture in contemporary geopolitical research, mostly accentuated by popular geopolitics. This review briefly analyses what popular geopolitics is, how to sketch its research area, stages of development, applied definitions and research methods. The starting point is the assumption that the hegemonic structure of geographical/geopolitical thinking that the elites are trying to impose on the society by using popcultural artifacts may, in fact, be reconstructed thanks to popular geopolitics studies. It shows the scale and reach of resistance towards such imaginations as displayed by the non-elites, who also reach for symbols, texts and images from popular culture. Such circumstances allow to observe either legitimizing or debunking a particular view of the world and geopolitics.

Excavating the Future

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shawn Malley
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Cultural Study ◽  
Homeland Security ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Adaptive Responses ◽  
Film And Television ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
The U.S

Well-known in popular culture for tomb-raiding and mummy-wrangling, the archaeologist is also a rich though often unacknowledged figure for constructing ‘strange new worlds’ from ‘strange old worlds’ in science fiction. But more than a well-spring for scenarios, SF’s archaeological imaginary is also a hermeneutic tool for excavating the ideological motivations of digging up the past buried in the future. A cultural study of an array of popular though critically neglected North American SF film and television texts–spanning the gamut of telefilms, pseudo-documentaries, teen serial drama and Hollywood blockbusters–Excavating the Future treats archaeology as a trope for exploring the popular archaeological imagination and the uses to which it is being put by the U.S. state and its adversaries. By treating SF texts as documents of archaeological experience circulating within and between scientific and popular culture communities and media, Excavating the Future develops critical strategies for analyzing SF film and television’s critical and adaptive responses to contemporary geopolitical concerns about the war on terror, homeland security, the invasion and reconstruction of Iraq, and the ongoing fight against ISIS.

The Future of Epic in Cinema

2018 ◽  
pp. 119-132
Author(s):  
Pantelis Michelakis
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
First Century ◽  
Genre Criticism ◽  
Early Twenty ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century

This chapter explores the ways in which the generic label of ‘epic’ might be deemed relevant for Ridley Scott’s film Prometheus (2012), and more broadly for the ways in which a discussion about the meanings of epic in early twenty-first-century cinema might be undertaken outside the genre of ‘historical epic’. It argues for the need to explore how ‘epic science fiction’ operates in Scott’s Prometheus in ways that both relate and transcend common definitions of the term ‘epic’ in contemporary popular culture. It also focuses on the unorthodox models of biological evolution of the film’s narrative, suggesting ways in which they can help with genre criticism. When it comes to cinematic intertextuality, a discussion about generic taxonomies and transformations cannot be conducted at the beginning of the twenty-first century without reflecting on the tropes that cinema animates and the fears it enacts at the heart of our genetic imaginary.

Inside/Out

2017 ◽  
pp. 15-39
Author(s):  
Maria Manuela Lopes
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Ethical Dilemmas ◽  
Public Awareness ◽  
Science Research ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Memory Functioning ◽  
Research Institutes ◽  
Fast Pace ◽  
Inside Out

Technologies, for memory preservation and enhancement of our humane bodies, are developing at a fast pace, and the corresponding dystopic and utopic future scenarios are presented in speculative news reports, science research studies and popular culture such as science fiction films. Lopes' artistic/research projects explore ways of expanding concepts of memory, body, and representation/mediation, using art as a tool to enhance public awareness of several anxieties and technologies, raising ethical dilemmas and questioning norms of behavior and normality. This chapter is an exploration of the issues raised on the development of several artwork projects during the course of the author's PhD and present Postdoc research, when in residency at several Medical and Scientific Research Institutes, dealing with distinct studies on memory (functioning, loss and enhancement).

Epistemology, social inquiry and quantum theory

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-242
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Monk-Turner
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Popular Culture ◽  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Qualitative Methodology ◽  
Social World ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Social ◽  
Modern Physics

PurposeThis work examines assumptions of positivism and the traditional scientific method.Design/methodology/approachInsights from quantum mechanics are explored especially as they relate to method, measurement and what is knowable. An argument is made that how social scientists, particularly sociologists, understand the nature of “reality out there” and describe the social world may be challenged by quantum ideas. The benefits of utilized mixed methods, considering quantum insights, cannot be overstated.FindingsIt is the proposition of this work that insights from modern physics alter the understanding of the world “out there.” Wheeler suggested that the most profound implication from modern physics is that “there is no out there” (1982; see also Baggott, 1992). Grappling with how modern physics may alter understanding in the social sciences will be difficult; however, that does not mean the task should not be undertaken (see Goswami, 1993). A starting point for the social sciences may be relinquishing an old mechanistic science that depends on the establishment of an objective, empirically based, verifiable reality. Mechanistic science demands “one true reality – a clear-cut reality on which everyone can agree…. Mechanistic science is by definition reductionistic…it has had to try to reduce complexity to oversimplification and process to statis. This creates an illusionary world…that has little or nothing to do with the complexity of the process of the reality of creation as we know, experience, and participate in it” (Goswami, 1993, pp. 64, 66).Research limitations/implicationsMany physicists have popularized quantum ideas for others interested in contemplating the implications of modern physics. Because of the difficulty in conceiving of quantum ideas, the meaning of the quantum in popular culture is far removed from the parent discipline. Thus, the culture has been shaped by the rhetoric and ideas surrounding the basic quantum mathematical formulas. And, over time, as quantum ideas have come to be part of the popular culture, even the link to the popularized literature in physics is lost. Rather, quantum ideas may be viewed as cultural formations that take on a life of their own.Practical implicationsThe work allows a critique of positivist method and provides insight on how to frame qualitative methodology in a new way.Social implicationsThe work utilizes popularized ideas in quantum theory: the preeminent theory that describes all matter. Little work in sociology utilizes this perspective in understanding research methods.Originality/valueQuantum insights have rarely been explored in highlighting limitations in positivism. The current work aims to build on quantum insights and how these may help us better understand the social world around us.

Anecdotal Evidence

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sean Cubitt
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Image Databases ◽  
Streaming Video ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Good Life ◽  
Anecdotal Evidence ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Twenty First Century

Ecocritique is a practice of radical questioning, as essential to the critical armoury as feminism and postcolonialism have become. Anecdotes are ecocritical because they focus on encounters, concentrated moments of crisis when social ordering and ecological forces clash. Bringing ecological criticism to bear on case studies of popular culture in the twenty-first century, Anecdotal Evidence argues that the humanities have a vital role to play in rethinking politics today. Treating contemporary Hollywood movies, streaming video media, and mass image databases as anecdotes about waste, debt, and obligation reveals the deep intertwining of history and ecology in culture. An original take on Anthropocene anxieties and technological paranoia, the book proposes that the digital humanities still need the traditional skills of close reading to understand our contemporary condition. Only because the environment has a history is it possible to intervene environmentally. Because we continually misrecognise the historical production of environments, the first task of ecocritique is to bring our formative concept of ecology into crisis. Its final task will be to achieve the good life for everything connected by the historical implication of humans in ecology, and ecology in humans. No politics can be undertaken in our times except through media: ecocritical humanities have a key role in rethinking ecopolitics in the twenty-first century.

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