Speculative Satire in Contemporary Literature and Film

Speculative Satire in Contemporary Literature and Film PDF Author: Kirk Combe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000289834
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Since 1980, when neoliberal and neoconservative forces began their hostile takeover of western culture, a new type of political satire has emerged that works to unmask and deter those toxic doctrines. Literary and cultural critic Kirk Combe calls this new form of satire the Rant. The Rant is grim, highly imaginative, and complex in its blending of genres. It mixes facets of satire, science fiction, and monster tale to produce widely consumed spectacles—major studio movies, popular television/streaming series, bestselling novels—designed to disturb and to provoke. The Rant targets what Combe calls the Regime. Simply put, the Regime is the sum of the dangerous social, economic, and political orthodoxies spurred on by neoliberal and neoconservative polity. Such practices include free-market capitalism, corporatism, militarism, religiosity, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, and so on. In the Rant, then, we have a unique and wholly contemporary genre of political expression and protest: speculative satire.

Speculative Satire in Contemporary Literature and Film

Speculative Satire in Contemporary Literature and Film PDF Author: Kirk Combe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000289834
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

Get Book

Book Description
Since 1980, when neoliberal and neoconservative forces began their hostile takeover of western culture, a new type of political satire has emerged that works to unmask and deter those toxic doctrines. Literary and cultural critic Kirk Combe calls this new form of satire the Rant. The Rant is grim, highly imaginative, and complex in its blending of genres. It mixes facets of satire, science fiction, and monster tale to produce widely consumed spectacles—major studio movies, popular television/streaming series, bestselling novels—designed to disturb and to provoke. The Rant targets what Combe calls the Regime. Simply put, the Regime is the sum of the dangerous social, economic, and political orthodoxies spurred on by neoliberal and neoconservative polity. Such practices include free-market capitalism, corporatism, militarism, religiosity, imperialism, racism, patriarchy, and so on. In the Rant, then, we have a unique and wholly contemporary genre of political expression and protest: speculative satire.

Posthuman Subjectivity in the Novels of J.G. Ballard

Posthuman Subjectivity in the Novels of J.G. Ballard PDF Author: Carolyn Lau
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000912345
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
This book proposes that Ballard’s novels extrapolate the formation of a posthuman subjectivity that is centred around an affirmative understanding of what a human body can do. This new subjectivity transforms constraints and prescribed desires into creative openings in a hyper-mediated control society that conditions docile bodies through technology and consumerism. Set in surrealist predicaments in postwar affluent Western societies, Ballard’s novels remind us of the fragile veneer of order in the familiar every day. In these moments of crisis, complacent characters are compelled to undergo a process of defamiliarisation and transformation of their understanding of the self and the body. The ability to form new relationships with the unfamiliar is imperative to survival in a hostile environment. Ballard delineates both the possibilities and obstacles of forming these relationships. In particular, the author attributes the failure to do so to the irreconcilable contradictions of late capitalism.

Lovecraft in the 21st Century

Lovecraft in the 21st Century PDF Author: Antonio Alcala Gonzalez
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000531651
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
Lovecraft in the 21st Century assembles reflections from a wide range of perspectives on the significance of Lovecraft’s influence in contemporary times. Building on a focus centered on the Anthropocene, adaptation, and visual media, the chapters in this collection focus on the following topics: Adaptation of Lovecraft’s legacy in theater, television, film, graphic narratives, video games and game artwork The connection between the writer’s legacy and his life Reading Lovecraft in light of contemporary criticism about capitalism, the posthuman, and the Anthropocene How contemporary authors have worked through the implicit racial and sexual politics in Lovecraft’s fiction Reading Lovecraft’s fiction in light of contemporary approaches to gender and sexuality

Motherless Creations

Motherless Creations PDF Author: Wendy C. Nielsen
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000582418
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This book explains the elimination of maternal characters in American, British, French, and German literature before 1890 by examining motherless creations: Pygmalion’s statue, Frankenstein’s creature, homunculi, automata, androids, golems, and steam men. These beings typify what is now called artificial life, living systems made through manufactured means. Fantasies about creating life ex-utero were built upon misconceptions about how life began, sustaining pseudoscientific beliefs about the birthing body. Physicians, inventors, and authors of literature imagined generating life without women to control the process of reproduction and generate perfect progeny. Thus, some speculative fiction before 1890 belongs to the literary genealogy of transhumanism, the belief that technology will someday transform some humans into superior, immortal beings. Female motherless creations tend to operate as sexual companions. Male ones often emerge as subaltern figures analogous to enslaved beings, illustrating that reproductive rights inform readers’ sense of who counts as human in fictions of artificial life.

Literature and Film as Modern Mythology

Literature and Film as Modern Mythology PDF Author: William K. Ferrell
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 031300286X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
Novels and films record and codify the cultural experiences of their people. This book explores the relationship between contemporary literature and film of the past fifty years and the ancient myths of Judeo-Christian, Greek, Celtic, and Eastern origin. Following a detailed description and explanation of both literary and film devices, stories that inform to a mythic tradition are analyzed to identify what they reveal about modern culture. This work explores such diverse subjects as heroism, coming of age, and morality. This approach to literature and film explores how contemporary fiction and film fulfill a continuum in our never-ending search to understand how life ought to be lived. Encompassing a broad spectrum of modern film and fiction, a variety of authors and directors are represented. Included are novels from such writers as Stephen King, Alice Walker, Ken Kesey, Jerzy Kosinski, Robert Penn Warren, and Michael Ondaatje. Film directors include Stephen Spielberg, Hal Ashby, Phil Alden Robinson, George Stevens, Robert Rossen, and Milos Forman. As a valuable resource for film and literature classes alike, this work also provides suggestions for student projects.

The Biopolitics of Gender in Science Fiction

The Biopolitics of Gender in Science Fiction PDF Author: Emily Cox-Palmer-White
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000329704
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 243

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Book Description
Questioning essentialist forms of feminist discourse, this work develops an innovative approach to gender and feminist theory by drawing together the work of key feminist and gender theorists, such as Judith Butler and Donna Haraway, and the biopolitical philosophy of Giorgio Agamben and Gilles Deleuze. By analysing representations of the female cyborg figure, the gynoid, in science fiction literature, television, film and videogames, the work acknowledges its normative and subversive properties while also calling for a new feminist politics of selfhood and autonomy implied by the posthuman qualities of the female machine.

Shades of Violence: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Violence in Literature, Culture and Arts

Shades of Violence: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Violence in Literature, Culture and Arts PDF Author: Sümeyra Buran
Publisher: Transnational Press London
ISBN: 180135149X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
"Shades of Violence: Multidisciplinary Reflections on Violence in Literature, Culture, and Arts" explores the tapestry of violence across diverse forms of artistic expression, expertly edited by Sümeyra Buran, Mahinur Akşehir, Neslihan Köroğlu, and Barış Ağır. From the gripping introduction to the thought-provoking chapters contributed by an array of scholars, this collection navigates the multifaceted dimensions of violence. Muhsin Yanar's exploration of Don DeLillo's work calls for a posthumanist stance against violence, while Begüm Tuğlu Atamer questions the justification of violence in Shakespeare's "Titus Andronicus." The anthology expands its reach, examining slow violence in John Burnside's "Glister" (Derya Biderci Dinç), portraying environmental violence in Bilge Karasu's "Hurt Me Not" (Özlem Akyol), and unraveling psychological violence in Kate Chopin's stories (Senem Üstün Kaya). Contributors delve into theatre violence (Gamze Şentürk Tatar), indigenous struggles against violence in Cheran, Mexico (Kristy L. Masten), and the complex interplay of power in Anthony Burgess's "A Clockwork Orange" (Şebnem Düzgün). The anthology also explores the contested space of the Black queer body (Taylor Ajowele Duckett), Nietzschean aggression (Yunus Tuncel), and various forms of violence in Giovanni Verga's short stories (Simone Pettine). "Shades of Violence" emerges as an indispensable exploration of violence's nuanced manifestations, providing readers with a comprehensive understanding through its diverse and insightful perspectives.

Masculinity and Monstrosity in Contemporary Hollywood Films

Masculinity and Monstrosity in Contemporary Hollywood Films PDF Author: K. Combe
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 113735982X
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 406

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Book Description
In film, Men are good and Monsters are bad. In this book, Combe and Boyle consider the monstrous body as a metaphor for the cultural body and regard gendered behavior as a matter of performativity. Taken together, these two identity positions, manliness and monsterliness, offer a window into the workings of current American society.

Genre and Reception in the Gothic Parody

Genre and Reception in the Gothic Parody PDF Author: Kerstin-Anja Münderlein
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000487776
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
This book brings together an analysis of the theoretical connection of genre, reception, and frame theory and a practical demonstration thereof, using a set of parodies of the first wave of the Gothic novel, ranging from well-known titles such as Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey, to little known and researched titles such as Mary Charlton’s Rosella. Münderlein traces the development of socio-political debates conducted in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries on female roles, behaviour, and subversion from the subtly subversive Gothic novel to the Gothic parody. Combining two major areas of research, literary criticism and Gothic studies, the book provides both a new take on an ongoing debate in literary criticism as well as an in-depth study of a virtually neglected aspect of Gothic studies, the Gothic parody.

Ethnic American Literatures and Critical Race Narratology

Ethnic American Literatures and Critical Race Narratology PDF Author: Alexa Weik von Mossner
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000625192
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 234

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Book Description
Ethnic American Literatures and Critical Race Narratology explores the relationship between narrative, race, and ethnicity in the United States. Situated at the intersection of post-classical narratology and context-oriented approaches in race, ethnic, and cultural studies, the contributions to this edited volume interrogate the complex and varied ways in which ethnic American authors use narrative form to engage readers in issues related to race and ethnicity, along with other important identity markers such as class, religion, gender, and sexuality. Importantly, the book also explores how paying attention to the formal features of ethnic American literatures changes our under-standing of narrative theory and how narrative theories can help us to think about author functions and race. The international and diverse group of contributors includes top scholars in narrative theory and in race and ethnic studies, and the texts they analyze concern a wide variety of topics, from the representation of time and space to the narration of trauma and other deeply emotional memories to the importance of literary paratexts, genre structures, and author functions.