From Social Justice to Metaphor: The Whitening of Othello in the Russian Imagination

Othello was the most often-staged Shakespeare play on early Soviet stages, to a large extent because of its ideological utility. Interpreted with close attention to racial conflict, this play came to symbolize, for Soviet theatres and audiences, the destructive racism of the West in contrast with Soviet egalitarianism. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, however, it is not unusual for Russian theatres to stage Othello as a white character, thus eliminating the theme of race from the productions. To make sense of the change in the Russian tradition of staging Othello, this article traces the interpretations and metatheatrical uses of this character from the early Soviet period to the present day. I argue that the Soviet tradition of staging Othello in blackface effectively prevented the use of the play for exploring the racial tensions within the Soviet Union itself, and gradually transformed the protagonist’s blackness into a generalized metaphor of oppression. As post-collapse Russia embraced whiteness as a category, Othello’s blackness became a prop that was entirely decoupled from race and made available for appropriation by ethnically Slavic actors and characters. The case of Russia demonstrates that staging Othello in blackface, even when the initial stated goals are those of racial equality, can serve a cultural fantasy of blackness as a versatile and disposable mask placed over a white face.

Poems in the World: The Ecopoetics of Anne Waldman’s Life Notes

This essay argues that Anne Waldman’s 1973 selected poems, Life Notes, articulates a vision of the environment that is positively and reparatively enmeshed with language and culture. Embracing the paradox at the heart of the best environmental writing, Life Notes reveals our natural environments to be at once legible and unknowable, and embodies this through experimental forms, language, and typography. This collection of poems, which has yet to be paid significant critical attention (despite Waldman’s renowned status as a poet), artfully mediates the relationship between word and world, giving voice, shape, and form to what we might call the poet’s ‘ecology of knowing’, per Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s formulation. Through a sustained process of imaginative elision of the human and nonhuman, I argue, Waldman illuminates the ways in which the ‘natural’ world is almost always touched by the human, and refutes the widely-held cultural fantasy that nature is self-evidently restorative or redemptive and thereby somehow at a remove from humankind. Life Notes, I suggest, is a ‘dissipative structure’, critically entangled with the everyday environment out of which it emerges and with which it remains ‘involved in a continual exchange of energy’ (Waldman).

Samurai and Southern Belles: Interracial Romance, Southern Morality, and the 1860 Japanese Embassy

The 1860 Japanese Embassy to the United States was the first diplomatic encounter between Japanese and American people on American soil, and sparked a whirlwind of national optimism and cultural fantasy that challenged the linked conceptions of race, masculinity, and power. In a time when interracial relationships were prohibited in much of the United States, seventeen-year-old samurai Tateishi Onojirō, nicknamed “Tommy,” and his rising count of love letters made headlines across America. This article argues that, in 1860, representations of the 1860 Japanese Embassy and Tateishi in daily Southern newspapers were used to further complicate the concept of Japanese masculinity and dramatize the differences between the American North and South. The perceived desirability of American women became a source of pride at the same time interracial encounters between American women and the Japanese embassy threatened American racial hierarchies. Examining how interactions between samurai diplomats and transnational actors challenged antebellum hierarchies of race, masculinity, and power expands the significance of the 1860 embassy to the study of gender and interracial romantic relations, the production of regional identity, and the influence of Tokugawa Japan on antebellum American identity formation.

Theorising the Politics of Yakshi in Malayalam Cinema

The fear of the monstrous feminine, yakshi, may be read as an element of collective political fear, threatening the stability and functioning of established systems of power and normalcy. Films attempted a curious balancing of tradition with modernity. The film representations of female ghosts mark a transformation of Kerala's cultural psyche in its relation with the supernatural. One of the common characteristics of yakshi legends and their film representations in Malayalam is that class/caste identity of the woman plays a significant role in the experiences narrated. The myth of yakshi—a cultural fantasy still popular in Kerala, forming an integral part of Malayalam film industry from 1964 to 2017—is analysed through the subaltern theory popularised by Gayathri Spivak and various other theorists together with the psychological theories of the conscious evolved by Freud and Jung. The refashioning of the image from the voluptuous and monstrous one to a more realistic and relatable image proclaims the politics and the social context of fear evoked through this terrible concept.

“An Appetite to Be Pretty”

This chapter considers a defining moment of the working Parisienne’s day to which early twentieth-century French observers returned again and again: midi. The noon lunch break afforded Parisian artists, writers, and tourists alike a daily glimpse of the “fairies” of the city’s luxury garment workshops as they took to the boulevards and parks for an hour in the sun—an hour imagined to consist of flirtation, window-shopping, laughter, and, I will establish, conspicuous under-eating. Indeed, crucial to the picturesque allure of the lunchtime seductions that filled popular midinette literature was the notion of the female garment worker as a frivolous under-eater cheerfully forfeiting food for fashion and pleasure. No longer the tragically starving workingwoman of nineteenth-century fiction and art, nor her virtuous, anorectic middle-class sister, whose physical wasting increased their moral fortitude, the under-eating midinette of the early twentieth century was envisioned doing so as a means of engaging more fully in the capitalist marketplace, making her body a more appealing advertisement for and object of urban consumption. This cultural fantasy of the midinette’s lunch hour, which fetishized the supposed moral precariousness of her lifestyle as well as the sparseness of her diet, was echoed by social reformers, who, in this same period, sought to carve out spaces for workingwomen’s lunches that kept them from the cafés and parks where they were believed to flirt much and eat little.

ФЭНТЕЗИ ВА ФАНТАСТИК АСАРЛАР МИКРООЛАМИ

Мақолада инсон хаёлоти маҳсули бўлган фэнтезива фантастика феноменига муносабат билдирилган. Бу икки дунёнинг ички кўриниши, ўхшаш ва фарқли жиҳатлари диаграммалар ёрдамида асосланган. Муаллиф фикрлари тадқиқотчи ва ёзувчилар қарашлари асосида илмий далилланган. Фэнтезива фантастика лексик бирликлари ҳақида адабиётшунослик ва таржимага оид луғатларга таянган ҳолда маълумотлар берилган. Ҳарбир феноменнинг таркибий қисми ва уларнинг ўзига хос турлари ажратиб кўрсатилган. Фантастика бўйича турли қарашларнинг мавжудлиги, замонавий адабиётда фантастикани фэнтези йўналиши билан фарқлантириб турувчи жиҳатлари, ўзбек фолклоршунослигида фэнтези тушунчаси таркибида асосий рол ўйнаган мифология ва унинг турли кўринишлари ҳақида маълумотлар келтирилган ва асосланган. Тақдим этилган маълумотлар орасида фэнтези тушунчасини жанр сифатида баҳолаган тадқиқотчиларнинг фикрлари мавжуд, уларга қарши айтилган назарий фикрлар, яъни фэнтези феноменининг жанр, субжанр ёки адабий оқим эканлиги хусусида аниқ хулоса мавжуд эмаслиги таъкидланган. Турли-туман фикрлар, қарашлар ва олимларнинг илмий ёндашувларига изоҳлар келтирилган. Фэнтезининг муаммоли вазиятига қараб: “қаҳрамонлик фэнтези”, “готик фэнтези”, “насронийча фэнтези”, “маданийлашган фэнтези” каби кўринишлари мавжудлиги очиб берилган. Афсоналарда мавжуд мифологик образлар фэнтезининг асосий қуроли эканлигига урғу берилган, мифология тушунчаси ва унинг турларига изоҳ бериб ўтилган. В статье рассмотрены разные тенденции относительно феноменов фэнтези и фантастика как результат человеческого мышления. Внутренняя структура, сходства и различия этих двух миров показаны на схемах. В статьеприводятсяотдельные сведения о лексических единицах фэнтези и фантастики из различных литературоведческих и переводных толковых словарей. Отдельно описаны составная частьи своеобразные типы каждого феномена. Представлены и обоснованы сведения о наличии различных взглядов на фантастику, ее отличительных чертах отфэнтези в современной литературе, а также о мифологии и ее видах, занимающих особое место в структуре фэнтези, из источников узбекской фольклористики. Среди представленных сведений имеются мнения исследователей относительно понятия фэнтези как жанра, даются также противоположные данному мнению теории, то есть сделана попыткаопределить, куда отнестипонятиефэнтези: к жанру, субжанру или литературному течению. Приведены пояснения к различным мнениям, взглядам и научным подходам ученых-исследователей. Также в статье охарактеризовано наличие различных видов фэнтези в зависимости от проблемных ситуаций: «героическое фэнтези», «готическое фэнтези», «фэнтези по-христиански» и «культурное фэнтези». Мифологические образы, созданные в легендах, отмечены как основное орудие фэнтези. The article discusses various trends regarding the phenomena of “fantasy” and “fiction” as a result of human thinking. The internal structure, similarities and differences of these two worlds are given on the basis of several diagrams. The thoughts cited in the article are scientifically based on the opinions of scientists and researchers, there is a correct approach to the text and explanations for them are given. Separate information is also given on the lexical units of fantasy and fantasy from various literary and translated explanatory dictionaries. Separately described are the component and unique types of each phenomenon. Presented and substantiated information about the presence of different views on fiction, its distinctive features from fantasy in modern literature, as well as about mythology and its forms that occupy a special place in the structure of fantasy, from sources of Uzbek folk writers. Among the information presented, there are researchers' opinions on the concept of fantasy as a genre, theories opposite to this opinion, that is, an attempt was made to find out that there are no exact ideas about attributing the concept of fantasy to genre, subgenre or literary movement. Explained to the different opinions, views and scientific approaches of researchers. The article also describes the presence of various types of fantasy depending on the problematic situations: “heroic fantas”, “gothic fantasy”, “Christian fantasy” and “cultural fantasy”. Mythological images created in the legends are marked as the main fantasy tools, the concept of mythology, its types are described.

Hollywood by Hollywood

The backstudio picture, or movie about filmmaking, is a genre as old and as recent as commercial filmmaking itself. This genre’s longevity is due to its function in branding filmmaking with the mystique of Hollywood. As the backstudio picture depicts it, Hollywood is simultaneously (1) an actual locale in the Los Angeles metropolitan area, (2) a business dedicated to the standardized production of motion pictures, and (3) an enduring cultural fantasy about fame, leisure, consuming, sexuality, artistry, and modernity. This overlapping of the literal (the locale) onto the material (the business) and the symbolic (the fantasy) has registered the impact of the film industry’s transformations as an institution even when the genre mystifies these changes in story terms. It is also the means by which the genre authenticates while glamorizing the industry’s representation of labor. Although Hollywood by Hollywood roughly follows the four major cycles of the genre’s development from the 1920s through the present day, it also loops back and forth in this chronology. Individual chapters discuss the genre’s self-reflexivity, its representations of Hollywood as a geographically specific yet imaginary place, narratives about movie-struck girls, narratives about has-been female stars, the masculinization of Hollywood through the focus on white male filmmakers, the genre’s recounting of the industry’s history in stories set in 1929, 1951, and 1962, and, finally, how Hollywood’s filmmaking practices have been moved offscreen, whether to break the fourth wall of the virtual world of film or to supply a cover for covert governmental actions.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet/Hamlet, Shakespeare 3.0, and Tugged Hamlet, The Comic Prince of The Polish Cabaret POTEM

Shakespeare’s dramas are potentialities. Any Hamlet may be understood as the space in which Shakespeare’s thoughts are remembered, as a reproduced copy of the unspecified, unidentified source, the so called original. Simultaneously, it may be conceived of as the space where Shakespeare’s legacy and authority is tested, trifled and transgressed. Nowadays Shakespeare’s dramas are disseminated in multifarious forms such as: printed materials, audio and video recordings, compact audio discs, digital videos and disc recordings. Since I am fond of the cultural phenomenon called Hamlet, not a singe text or performance, but a continuum of human interaction with intermediated and transcoded versions of the drama, in this article I focus on the abovementioned single play. I accentuate the title character’s profound meaning in Shakespeare studies and his iconic status in Western culture in different media. I exploit W.B. Worthen’s concept of “Shakespeare 3.0.” to demonstrate Shakespeare’s presence in digital reality on the example of a comic rendering of Hamlet (Tugged Hamlet, 1992) by the Polish cabaret POTEM. Their cabaret sketch, although it was not created for the Internet audience, is available on-line via YouTube, consituting “Shakespeare 3.0.” Furthermore, I pose several questions and attempt to answer them in the course of my analysis: to what extent does the image of a mournful and contemplative Hamlet pervade different dimensions of culture, especially our collective imagination?; what chances of realization has a cultural fantasy of challenging the myth of a witty and contemplative Hamlet when re-written and presented as a pastiche or satire?; was the Polish cabaret POTEM succesful in their comic performance?

A Prehistory of the Cloud

This book tells two closely-related stories: first, how the digital cloud grew out of much older networks, such as television, the railroad, and the sewer system; and second, how the cloud grafts digital technologies onto older ways of exerting power over a population (such as state violence and torture). With the latest revelations about National Security Agency surveillance, readers are increasingly aware that the cloud represents politically contested terrain. While typical responses to this debate invoke technological and legal solutions, such as do-not-track software or a new law, this book takes an alternate approach. The perspective of media studies, and, more generally, understanding the cloud as a cultural fantasy, situates these vital debates within a wider American political and social context. It allows readers to understand why discussions of threats to the ‘free’ Internet, such as spam and hackers, often invoke the specter of foreignness (e.g. China, Iran, Nigeria); why Cold War rhetoric has increasingly informed digital threats, as in the New York Times’s invention of the phrase “mutually assured cyberdestruction”; and even why the NSA’s facilities for decrypting intercepted messages are often identical to those used by archivists trying to place digital media into cold storage. By locating the materiality of the cloud within the discourses of security and participation in postwar America, A Prehistory of the Cloud offers a set of new tools for rethinking today’s digital environment.