Based on a comparative reading of the officially released version and the director’s cut of Francis Lawrence’s movie I Am Legend (2007a; 2007b), the present contribution interrogates possible connections between the political economy of film production and aesthetic form. Drawing upon theoretical frameworks such as Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model and Artz’ critical study of global entertainment industries, and combining these with an analysis of Lawrence’s two versions, I argue that profit-oriented adaptations to implied market pressures are not neutral endeavours, but inherently political acts that shape aesthetic form to, often-tacitly, reiterate a received hegemonic status quo.
{"title":"A Tale of Two Versions—I Am Legend (2007) and the Political Economy of Cultural Production","authors":"H. Pötzsch","doi":"10.7557/13.5011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5011","url":null,"abstract":"Based on a comparative reading of the officially released version and the director’s cut of Francis Lawrence’s movie I Am Legend (2007a; 2007b), the present contribution interrogates possible connections between the political economy of film production and aesthetic form. Drawing upon theoretical frameworks such as Herman and Chomsky’s propaganda model and Artz’ critical study of global entertainment industries, and combining these with an analysis of Lawrence’s two versions, I argue that profit-oriented adaptations to implied market pressures are not neutral endeavours, but inherently political acts that shape aesthetic form to, often-tacitly, reiterate a received hegemonic status quo.","PeriodicalId":53235,"journal":{"name":"Nordlit Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83806207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
C. Beyer, Juliane C. Bockwoldt, E. Hammar, H. Pötzsch
We believe that the representation, construction, manufacture, and exclusion of monsters across genres and media is an increasingly pressing issue for individuals and civil societies on a global scale. The widespread use of exaggerated frames presenting a variety of others as mere threats has deadly consequences for many people—worldwide. And, ‘Western’ liberal democratic elites urgently need to acknowledge their own role in such processes as the current construction of ‘Monster Assad’ as a Hitler-esque tyrant intending to ‘gas his own people’ or the continuing framing of Iran as ‘a nuclear threat to world peace’ lead by ‘nuke-building, apocalyptic mullahs’ are equally irresponsible and dangerous acts as the presentation of ‘non-normative’ persons as a menace to cultural and societal stability or the assumption that certain people are simply born as terrorists. We believe that as researchers, students, employees, workers, pupils, retirees, and others—in sum: as citizens—, we must be aware of such discursive moves of othering and exclusion and learn to identify these, connect them to underlying interests, and then resist and subvert them to avoid more killings in our or others’ names. This is our responsibility especially as contemporary global crises intensify bringing with them the need for ever new scapegoats to explain away the real contradictions underlying these relentless challenges.
{"title":"Seeing (With, Through, and As) Monsters—An Introduction to the Special Issue","authors":"C. Beyer, Juliane C. Bockwoldt, E. Hammar, H. Pötzsch","doi":"10.7557/13.5001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5001","url":null,"abstract":"We believe that the representation, construction, manufacture, and exclusion of monsters across genres and media is an increasingly pressing issue for individuals and civil societies on a global scale. The widespread use of exaggerated frames presenting a variety of others as mere threats has deadly consequences for many people—worldwide. And, ‘Western’ liberal democratic elites urgently need to acknowledge their own role in such processes as the current construction of ‘Monster Assad’ as a Hitler-esque tyrant intending to ‘gas his own people’ or the continuing framing of Iran as ‘a nuclear threat to world peace’ lead by ‘nuke-building, apocalyptic mullahs’ are equally irresponsible and dangerous acts as the presentation of ‘non-normative’ persons as a menace to cultural and societal stability or the assumption that certain people are simply born as terrorists. We believe that as researchers, students, employees, workers, pupils, retirees, and others—in sum: as citizens—, we must be aware of such discursive moves of othering and exclusion and learn to identify these, connect them to underlying interests, and then resist and subvert them to avoid more killings in our or others’ names. This is our responsibility especially as contemporary global crises intensify bringing with them the need for ever new scapegoats to explain away the real contradictions underlying these relentless challenges.","PeriodicalId":53235,"journal":{"name":"Nordlit Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88066924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Danish film A Horrible Woman (orig. En frygtelig kvinde, 2017) marked a pattern that can be identified throughout several decades of Danish filmmaking. Examples are found in contemporary films like Antichrist (2009), as well as in earlier Danish films like The Abyss (1910) and Red Horses (1950). In these and other examples, women characters exhibit monstrous behavior that can be construed as a form of othering. Furthermore, othering women and mothers by presenting them as terrible, abnormal, or monstrous in Danish (popular) culture goes well beyond the silver screen. In this article, ‘mother–daughter scholars’ Mira Chandhok Skadegård and Tess Sophie Skadegård Thorsen explore how monstrosity functions as a tool for othering in film and other media, offering both a (generational) and historical view, and a discussion of current constructions of monstrosity, on and off screen, in Denmark. The article argues that monstrosity, as a symbol of power and violence, becomes a particularly oppressive gendered gesture. The authors examine this in a correspondence with one another. In letter form, with shifting analytical positions between mother and daughter, a dialogue emerges between generations on questions of ‘(m)otherhood’ in Danish film and other Danish contexts, transitions of female film characters from passive to aggressive, and the role of monstrosity in othering non-white immigrant ‘(m)others’ in public discourse. Finally, the article argues for a different approach to ‘monstrous othering’. Through a reparative reading, it discusses whether there is empowerment and agency connected to being ascribed monstrosity.
丹麦电影《恐怖女人》En frygtelig kvinde, 2017)标志着一种可以在几十年的丹麦电影制作中识别的模式。在当代电影如《反基督者》(2009)，以及早期的丹麦电影如《深渊》(1910)和《红马》(1950)中都可以找到这样的例子。在这些和其他例子中，女性角色表现出可怕的行为，可以被解释为一种形式的他者。此外，在丹麦(流行)文化中，其他女性和母亲将她们描绘成可怕的、不正常的或怪物的形象，远远超出了银幕的范畴。在这篇文章中，“母女学者”Mira Chandhok skadeg和Tess Sophie skadeg Thorsen探讨了怪物如何在电影和其他媒体中作为他人的工具发挥作用，提供了(代际)和历史的观点，并讨论了丹麦目前在银幕内外对怪物的建构。文章认为，怪物作为权力和暴力的象征，成为一种特别压迫性的性别姿态。作者们在彼此的通信中对此进行了检验。以书信的形式，随着母亲和女儿之间分析立场的转变，几代人之间就丹麦电影和其他丹麦语境中的“(m)他者”问题展开了对话，女性电影角色从被动到积极的转变，以及其他非白人移民“(m)他者”在公共话语中的怪物角色。最后，文章提出了一种不同的“怪物他者”方法。通过一种修复性的阅读，它讨论了是否存在与被认为是怪物有关的授权和代理。
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This paper aims at describing the self-reflexive functions of the vampire through the lens of remediation. First, I will describe remediation as the central form of representation used in the novel Dracula (1897). Its epistolary form remediates various contemporary high-tech media that are compiled as typewritten pages: It uses a hypermedia strategy. Dracula, the creature, mirrors this technique, since he and his abilities are an amalgamation of the characteristics of contemporary media. Dracula tries to remediate itself (that is to rehabilitate) in the shifting media-landscape of the outgoing 19th century and self-reflexively addresses this through the vampire’s connection to media. Second, Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens (dir. Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922) deviates from this hypermedia strategy and argues for film’s immediacy. However, it also self-consciously addresses its state as an adaptation of Dracula and clearly acknowledges its medium when vampirism is involved within the film itself. Nosferatu connects vampirism with cinema and its techniques and, consequently, presents its vampire, ‘Count Orlok’, as a personification of film instead of an amalgamation of different media. Shadow of the Vampire (dir. Edmund Elias Merhige, 2000), then, is a refashioning within the medium: it is Nosferatu’s fictional making-of. Here, the borders between cinema and vampirism and between medium and reality collapse, as Shadow of the Vampire not only borrows the style and story of Nosferatu, but also incorporates the history and the myths surrounding the production of this seminal vampire movie. Consequently, it argues for film’s failure as a medium of immediacy facing the new hypermedia-landscape of the beginning 21st century. These three iterations of the vampire and remediation demonstrate how the vampire has been functionalized as a self-reflexive technique to speak about the medium it is depicted in, be it on the brink of a changing media-landscape, at the beginning of movies as the medium of immediacy, or its existence as an established art form at the emerging digital age.
本文旨在通过补救的视角来描述吸血鬼的自反功能。首先，我将描述补救作为小说《德古拉》(1897)中使用的主要表现形式。它的书信体形式纠正了各种当代高科技媒体，这些媒体被编译为打字页面:它使用了超媒体策略。德古拉这个生物反映了这种技术，因为他和他的能力是当代媒体特征的融合。德古拉试图在即将离开的19世纪不断变化的媒体环境中自我修复(即恢复)，并通过吸血鬼与媒体的联系自我反思地解决了这个问题。第二部，《诺斯菲拉图:草地交响曲》(导演)。Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922)偏离了这种超媒体策略，主张电影的即时性。然而，它也自觉地将其定位为《德古拉》的改编，并明确承认电影本身涉及吸血鬼的媒介。Nosferatu将吸血鬼主义与电影及其技术联系起来，因此，将吸血鬼“Count Orlok”呈现为电影的人格化，而不是不同媒体的融合。吸血鬼的影子(导演)埃德蒙·埃利亚斯·默希格(Edmund Elias Merhige, 2000)的作品则是媒介内部的一种重塑:它是诺斯费拉图的虚构创作。在这里，电影和吸血鬼之间、媒介和现实之间的界限崩溃了，因为《吸血鬼的影子》不仅借鉴了诺斯费拉图的风格和故事，还融入了这部影响深远的吸血鬼电影的历史和神话。因此，本文认为，面对21世纪初新的超媒体景观，电影作为一种即时媒介的失败。吸血鬼和补救的这三次迭代展示了吸血鬼是如何被功能性化为一种自我反思的技术来谈论它所描绘的媒介的，无论是在不断变化的媒体景观的边缘，在电影作为直接媒介的开始，还是在新兴的数字时代作为一种成熟的艺术形式存在。
{"title":"Vampiric Remediation—The Vampire as a Self-Reflexive Technique in Dracula (1897), Nosferatu (1922) and Shadow of the Vampire (2000)","authors":"Alexander Lehner","doi":"10.7557/13.5008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5008","url":null,"abstract":"This paper aims at describing the self-reflexive functions of the vampire through the lens of remediation. First, I will describe remediation as the central form of representation used in the novel Dracula (1897). Its epistolary form remediates various contemporary high-tech media that are compiled as typewritten pages: It uses a hypermedia strategy. Dracula, the creature, mirrors this technique, since he and his abilities are an amalgamation of the characteristics of contemporary media. Dracula tries to remediate itself (that is to rehabilitate) in the shifting media-landscape of the outgoing 19th century and self-reflexively addresses this through the vampire’s connection to media. Second, Nosferatu: Eine Symphonie des Grauens (dir. Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, 1922) deviates from this hypermedia strategy and argues for film’s immediacy. However, it also self-consciously addresses its state as an adaptation of Dracula and clearly acknowledges its medium when vampirism is involved within the film itself. Nosferatu connects vampirism with cinema and its techniques and, consequently, presents its vampire, ‘Count Orlok’, as a personification of film instead of an amalgamation of different media. Shadow of the Vampire (dir. Edmund Elias Merhige, 2000), then, is a refashioning within the medium: it is Nosferatu’s fictional making-of. Here, the borders between cinema and vampirism and between medium and reality collapse, as Shadow of the Vampire not only borrows the style and story of Nosferatu, but also incorporates the history and the myths surrounding the production of this seminal vampire movie. Consequently, it argues for film’s failure as a medium of immediacy facing the new hypermedia-landscape of the beginning 21st century. These three iterations of the vampire and remediation demonstrate how the vampire has been functionalized as a self-reflexive technique to speak about the medium it is depicted in, be it on the brink of a changing media-landscape, at the beginning of movies as the medium of immediacy, or its existence as an established art form at the emerging digital age.","PeriodicalId":53235,"journal":{"name":"Nordlit Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur","volume":"10 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"77263795","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The theme setting and particular relevance of artificial or man-made famines seems to come up in intervals, when tensions re-arise between ‘Western’ powers and Russia and seems to be useful for the purposes of ‘demonizing’ ‘Putin’—the current President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin (2000–2008; 2012–)—, ‘the Kremlin’, the Russian government; or simply ‘Russia’ in the eyes of ‘the West’. In recent years, the famine of 1932–1933 has reached new heights as a politicized event to be instrumentalized in a ‘memory war’ on many discursive levels (history, mass media, memorialization, etc.) between key-representatives of the current countries Ukraine and Russia (Hordijk 2018). This should, symptomatically, remind us of the sheer power that media narratives have in shaping public imaginations. The reviewed book: Anne Elizabeth Applebaum. Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. ISBN-13: 978–0–241–00380–0. London: Allen Lane, September 2017. Hardcover; 512 pages; recommended retail price: £25.00.
{"title":"Book Review—Anne Applebaum’s Red Famine (2017)","authors":"F. Hordijk","doi":"10.7557/13.5021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5021","url":null,"abstract":"The theme setting and particular relevance of artificial or man-made famines seems to come up in intervals, when tensions re-arise between ‘Western’ powers and Russia and seems to be useful for the purposes of ‘demonizing’ ‘Putin’—the current President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin (2000–2008; 2012–)—, ‘the Kremlin’, the Russian government; or simply ‘Russia’ in the eyes of ‘the West’. In recent years, the famine of 1932–1933 has reached new heights as a politicized event to be instrumentalized in a ‘memory war’ on many discursive levels (history, mass media, memorialization, etc.) between key-representatives of the current countries Ukraine and Russia (Hordijk 2018). This should, symptomatically, remind us of the sheer power that media narratives have in shaping public imaginations. \u0000The reviewed book: Anne Elizabeth Applebaum. Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine. ISBN-13: 978–0–241–00380–0. London: Allen Lane, September 2017. Hardcover; 512 pages; recommended retail price: £25.00.","PeriodicalId":53235,"journal":{"name":"Nordlit Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur","volume":"78 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76710778","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article focuses on the figure of an aging and powerful witch pitted against younger women in three contemporary fairy-tale movie adaptations: Snow White and the Huntsman (dir. Rupert Sanders, 2012), Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (dir. Tommy Wirkola, 2013), and Maleficent (dir. Robert Stromberg, 2014). Each film transforms the aging witch from stock villain to a more nuanced character. This revision is intriguing for its concern with power and gender and for a reflection of contemporary debates about age and power within so-called wave feminism. The article uses two frames. The first is feminism and ageism, focusing on wave feminism and aging, and the second is the trope of the witch, drawing from fairy-tale studies, social history, and social anthropology. The article reads conflict between an aging witch and a young woman as a clash of feminist waves, and the witch’s ‘monstrosity’ as her refusal to be sidelined in a world obsessed with youth.
{"title":"“How Lucky You Are Never to Know What It Is to Grow Old”—Witch as Fourth-Wave Feminist Monster in Contemporary Fantasy Film","authors":"Rikke Schubart","doi":"10.7557/13.5012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5012","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on the figure of an aging and powerful witch pitted against younger women in three contemporary fairy-tale movie adaptations: Snow White and the Huntsman (dir. Rupert Sanders, 2012), Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (dir. Tommy Wirkola, 2013), and Maleficent (dir. Robert Stromberg, 2014). Each film transforms the aging witch from stock villain to a more nuanced character. This revision is intriguing for its concern with power and gender and for a reflection of contemporary debates about age and power within so-called wave feminism. The article uses two frames. The first is feminism and ageism, focusing on wave feminism and aging, and the second is the trope of the witch, drawing from fairy-tale studies, social history, and social anthropology. The article reads conflict between an aging witch and a young woman as a clash of feminist waves, and the witch’s ‘monstrosity’ as her refusal to be sidelined in a world obsessed with youth.","PeriodicalId":53235,"journal":{"name":"Nordlit Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur","volume":"67 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"76401176","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
›Gerücht‹.—Ein Begriff, unter dem sich jeder etwas vorstellen kann und eine Form der Botschaft, die in geradezu unerhörter Weise zu affektieren vermag. Denn wer schätzt nicht eine gute Geschichte, besonders wenn sie vermeintliche Wahrheiten enthüllt, die einen Wissensvorteil, also einen zumindest winzigen Machtvorsprung erlauben? Geschichten sind Macht, wer Vergangenheit und Gegenwart in eine gute Erzählung zu verkleiden weiß, hält das Geschick der Menschheit in den Händen. Zugegebenermaßen ist dies eine kühne Behauptung. Stark vom Finale der achten Staffel Game of Thrones’ motiviert, macht die Verfasserin dieser Zeilen doch darin eine ganz simple Wahrheit aus: Menschen lieben Unterhaltung, ganz besonders, wenn es sich dabei um sie selbst dreht, wenn sie durch die Einbettung in eine Narration ein Stück Ewigkeit für sich beanspruchen können. Somit leitet dieses Essay auch eine an diesen Gedankengang geknüpfte Überlegung ein: Ist das Gerücht nicht zunächst einfach nur eine unterhaltsame Erzählung, in der wir uns selbst und unsere weltbewegenden Fragen erkennen? Über einen primär emotionalen Zugang soll versucht werden, zu verstehen, warum das Gerücht sich sowohl im Interessensspektrum der Psychoanalyse, als auch in dem der Politik wiederfindet. Wann wird die Geschichte zur Waffe; wann zum ›Monster‹, das sich von unseren Sehnsüchten und Ängsten nährt? Ist das Gerücht ein Medium ›potenziell monströser Machenschaften‹? Ist es ein Werkzeug, das ebenso gut im, wie gegen den Sinn der Demokratie eingesetzt werden kann? Oder ist es vielmehr so, dass jede Waffe letztlich beides ist—je nachdem, wer sie führt? Welche Rolle spielt dabei die gemeinsame Wahrheit als verbindender Faktor, gegen die scheinbare Unwissenheit der Ausgeschlossenen? Zu diesem Zweck soll sich im Folgenden die Betrachtung des Gerüchts aus dem Umkreis von Kunst und Literatur nach und nach ins Zentrum aktueller Mediennutzung vorarbeiten, wobei die emotionale Verbindung zum Rezipienten stets im Blick behalten werden soll. Sowohl Aufbau als auch Inhalt der Untersuchung wollen zeigen, wie sich diese besondere Form der Narrative zunächst auf einer rein ästhetischen, lustvollen Ebene erspüren, dann nach und nach als konkreter Gegenstand der Medienwahrnehmung fassen und schlussendlich bezüglich seiner öffentlichen Wirksamkeit kritisch hinterfragen lässt. Bewusst ist dabei der zeitliche Rahmen, innerhalb dessen das Phänomen betrachtet werden soll, weit gefasst. Es wird versucht, dort in die gegenwärtige Wahrnehmung des Gerüchts einzudringen, wo es sich als ›monströse Entität‹ für oder gegen die Demokratie bemerkbar macht.
{"title":"Macht, Manipulation und Miteinander—Medienräume des Gerüchts","authors":"K. Sturm","doi":"10.7557/13.5019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5019","url":null,"abstract":"›Gerücht‹.—Ein Begriff, unter dem sich jeder etwas vorstellen kann und eine Form der Botschaft, die in geradezu unerhörter Weise zu affektieren vermag. Denn wer schätzt nicht eine gute Geschichte, besonders wenn sie vermeintliche Wahrheiten enthüllt, die einen Wissensvorteil, also einen zumindest winzigen Machtvorsprung erlauben? \u0000Geschichten sind Macht, wer Vergangenheit und Gegenwart in eine gute Erzählung zu verkleiden weiß, hält das Geschick der Menschheit in den Händen. Zugegebenermaßen ist dies eine kühne Behauptung. Stark vom Finale der achten Staffel Game of Thrones’ motiviert, macht die Verfasserin dieser Zeilen doch darin eine ganz simple Wahrheit aus: Menschen lieben Unterhaltung, ganz besonders, wenn es sich dabei um sie selbst dreht, wenn sie durch die Einbettung in eine Narration ein Stück Ewigkeit für sich beanspruchen können. Somit leitet dieses Essay auch eine an diesen Gedankengang geknüpfte Überlegung ein: Ist das Gerücht nicht zunächst einfach nur eine unterhaltsame Erzählung, in der wir uns selbst und unsere weltbewegenden Fragen erkennen? Über einen primär emotionalen Zugang soll versucht werden, zu verstehen, warum das Gerücht sich sowohl im Interessensspektrum der Psychoanalyse, als auch in dem der Politik wiederfindet. Wann wird die Geschichte zur Waffe; wann zum ›Monster‹, das sich von unseren Sehnsüchten und Ängsten nährt? Ist das Gerücht ein Medium ›potenziell monströser Machenschaften‹? Ist es ein Werkzeug, das ebenso gut im, wie gegen den Sinn der Demokratie eingesetzt werden kann? Oder ist es vielmehr so, dass jede Waffe letztlich beides ist—je nachdem, wer sie führt? Welche Rolle spielt dabei die gemeinsame Wahrheit als verbindender Faktor, gegen die scheinbare Unwissenheit der Ausgeschlossenen? Zu diesem Zweck soll sich im Folgenden die Betrachtung des Gerüchts aus dem Umkreis von Kunst und Literatur nach und nach ins Zentrum aktueller Mediennutzung vorarbeiten, wobei die emotionale Verbindung zum Rezipienten stets im Blick behalten werden soll. Sowohl Aufbau als auch Inhalt der Untersuchung wollen zeigen, wie sich diese besondere Form der Narrative zunächst auf einer rein ästhetischen, lustvollen Ebene erspüren, dann nach und nach als konkreter Gegenstand der Medienwahrnehmung fassen und schlussendlich bezüglich seiner öffentlichen Wirksamkeit kritisch hinterfragen lässt. Bewusst ist dabei der zeitliche Rahmen, innerhalb dessen das Phänomen betrachtet werden soll, weit gefasst. Es wird versucht, dort in die gegenwärtige Wahrnehmung des Gerüchts einzudringen, wo es sich als ›monströse Entität‹ für oder gegen die Demokratie bemerkbar macht.","PeriodicalId":53235,"journal":{"name":"Nordlit Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur","volume":"11 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"74251664","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article offers an analysis of Kon Satoshi’s use of monsters in his 2004 animated television series Paranoia Agent (Mōsō Dairinin). Focussing on the bat-wielding figure of Shōnen Batto and a cuddly pink doll called Maromi, it is shown how Kon Satoshi uses these figures to critique a range of fatalistic discourses on Japan’s decline that have emerged since the bursting of Japan’s economic bubble in the early 1990s. I argue Kon repackages the ‘vague sense of anxiety’ prevalent in post-bubble Japan as monster in order to access the psychic realities of Japan, and as a tool for developing a critique of Japan’s fear of and fascination with social monsters. Through analysis of key scenes, the article shows how Kon develops a rich dialectical understanding of Japan’s on-going search for monsters, while also forwarding his own humanist view of social responsibility as method of navigating the ever-changing social environment of late-modern Japan.
{"title":"Kon Satoshi and Japan’s Monsters in the City","authors":"C. Perkins","doi":"10.7557/13.5009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5009","url":null,"abstract":"This article offers an analysis of Kon Satoshi’s use of monsters in his 2004 animated television series Paranoia Agent (Mōsō Dairinin). Focussing on the bat-wielding figure of Shōnen Batto and a cuddly pink doll called Maromi, it is shown how Kon Satoshi uses these figures to critique a range of fatalistic discourses on Japan’s decline that have emerged since the bursting of Japan’s economic bubble in the early 1990s. I argue Kon repackages the ‘vague sense of anxiety’ prevalent in post-bubble Japan as monster in order to access the psychic realities of Japan, and as a tool for developing a critique of Japan’s fear of and fascination with social monsters. Through analysis of key scenes, the article shows how Kon develops a rich dialectical understanding of Japan’s on-going search for monsters, while also forwarding his own humanist view of social responsibility as method of navigating the ever-changing social environment of late-modern Japan.","PeriodicalId":53235,"journal":{"name":"Nordlit Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89456190","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article contributes to postcolonial cultural criticism by analyzing how since the 1920s, Lapland and its residents have been portrayed as exotic Others in Finnish feature films that are set in Lapland. The roots of the othering of Lapland go back to the nationalist aspirations of the Finns. The geographical distance of the northern region has bred mental distance, because of which Lapland has remained a source of exoticism for filmmakers, who almost invariably come from the South. Lapland can be seen as Finland’s spatial and cultural Other, an “internal Other” (Jansson 2003). This article asks what kind of strategies of othering are used in Rauni Mollberg’s film The Earth Is a Sinful Song (1973), which is the extreme example of othering among films that are set in Lapland. The film is based on Timo K. Mukka’s novel of the same name and it caused a sensation to contemporary audiences because of its harsh and naturalistic way of depicting life in a poor northern village in the late 1940s. The article analyzes the cinematic techniques and style that are used to represent the characters as primitive, over-sexed and uncivilized. It also places The Earth Is a Sinful Song in a continuum of ‘Lapland films’, showing that othering has taken many forms both before and after it.
{"title":"Exotic and Primitive Lapland—Othering in The Earth Is a Sinful Song (1973)","authors":"K. Hiltunen","doi":"10.7557/13.5006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5006","url":null,"abstract":"This article contributes to postcolonial cultural criticism by analyzing how since the 1920s, Lapland and its residents have been portrayed as exotic Others in Finnish feature films that are set in Lapland. The roots of the othering of Lapland go back to the nationalist aspirations of the Finns. The geographical distance of the northern region has bred mental distance, because of which Lapland has remained a source of exoticism for filmmakers, who almost invariably come from the South. Lapland can be seen as Finland’s spatial and cultural Other, an “internal Other” (Jansson 2003). This article asks what kind of strategies of othering are used in Rauni Mollberg’s film The Earth Is a Sinful Song (1973), which is the extreme example of othering among films that are set in Lapland. The film is based on Timo K. Mukka’s novel of the same name and it caused a sensation to contemporary audiences because of its harsh and naturalistic way of depicting life in a poor northern village in the late 1940s. The article analyzes the cinematic techniques and style that are used to represent the characters as primitive, over-sexed and uncivilized. It also places The Earth Is a Sinful Song in a continuum of ‘Lapland films’, showing that othering has taken many forms both before and after it.","PeriodicalId":53235,"journal":{"name":"Nordlit Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur","volume":"46 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"82480082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this article I argue that the structural conditions of global capitalism and postcolonialism encourage game developers to rearticulate hegemonic memory politics and suppress subaltern identities. This claim is corroborated via an application of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model to the Japanese-developed video game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. This case study highlights that the hegemonic articulations of colonial histories are not exclusive to Western entertainment products where instead modes of production matter in the ‘manufacturing of mnemonic hegemony’. I also propose that the propaganda model, while instructive, can be improved further by acknowledging a technological filter and the role of the subaltern. Thus, the article furthers the understanding of the relation between production and form in contemporary technological phenomena like video games and how this relation motivates hegemonic articulations of the past in contemporary mass culture.
在本文中，我认为全球资本主义和后殖民主义的结构条件鼓励游戏开发者重新阐明霸权记忆政治并压制次等身份。爱德华·赫尔曼(Edward Herman)和诺姆·乔姆斯基(Noam Chomsky)的宣传模型在日本开发的电子游戏《合金装备5:幻痛》(Metal Gear Solid V: the Phantom Pain)中的应用证实了这一说法。本案例研究强调了殖民历史的霸权表达并不仅限于西方娱乐产品，相反，生产模式在“制造助记霸权”中起着重要作用。我还提出，宣传模式虽然具有指导意义，但可以通过承认技术过滤器和下层社会的作用来进一步改进。因此，本文进一步理解了电子游戏等当代技术现象中生产与形式之间的关系，以及这种关系如何在当代大众文化中激发对过去的霸权表达。
{"title":"Manufacturing Consent in Video Games—The Hegemonic Memory Politics of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (2015)","authors":"E. Hammar","doi":"10.7557/13.5016","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.7557/13.5016","url":null,"abstract":"In this article I argue that the structural conditions of global capitalism and postcolonialism encourage game developers to rearticulate hegemonic memory politics and suppress subaltern identities. This claim is corroborated via an application of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s propaganda model to the Japanese-developed video game Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. This case study highlights that the hegemonic articulations of colonial histories are not exclusive to Western entertainment products where instead modes of production matter in the ‘manufacturing of mnemonic hegemony’. I also propose that the propaganda model, while instructive, can be improved further by acknowledging a technological filter and the role of the subaltern. Thus, the article furthers the understanding of the relation between production and form in contemporary technological phenomena like video games and how this relation motivates hegemonic articulations of the past in contemporary mass culture.","PeriodicalId":53235,"journal":{"name":"Nordlit Tidsskrift i litteratur og kultur","volume":"76 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-11-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"73516809","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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