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All Around Monstrous: Monster Media in Their Historical Contexts
We know all kinds of monsters. Vampires who suck human blood, werewolves who harass tourists in London or Paris, zombies who long to feast on our brains, or Godzilla, who is famous in and outside of Japan for destroying whole cities at once. Regardless of their monstrosity, all of these creatures are figments of the human mind and as real as they may seem, monsters are and always have been constructed by human beings. In other words, they are imagined. How they are imagined, however, depends on many different aspects and changes throughout history. The present volume provides an insight into the construction of monstrosity in different kinds of media, including literature, film, and TV series. It will show how and by whom monsters are really created, how time changes the perception of monsters and what characterizes specific monstrosities in their specific historical contexts. The book will provide valuable insights for scholars in different fields, whose interest focuses on either media studies or history.
Covid-19 in Film and Television
This collection explores the impact of Covid-19 on the production and consumption of television and film content in the English-speaking world. Offering in-depth analysis of select on-screen entertainment, the volume addresses entertainment’s changing role during and following the Covid-19 pandemic. It also studies the pandemic’s incorporation into the narrative of numerous series, films, and other televised formats, capturing the moments and contexts in which these developments emerged. Chapters examine the pandemic’s impact both on a micro- and macro level, focusing on the content as well as form of TV shows and films. Bringing together an international team of scholars, the book off...
Hospitality, Rape and Consent in Vampire Popular Culture
This unique study explores the vampire as host and guest, captor and hostage: a perfect lover and force of seductive predation. From Dracula and Carmilla, to True Blood and The Originals, the figure of the vampire embodies taboos and desires about hospitality, rape and consent. The first section welcomes the reader into ominous spaces of home, examining the vampire through concepts of hospitality and power, the metaphor of threshold, and the blurred boundaries between visitation, invasion and confinement. Section two reflects upon the historical development of vampire narratives and the monster as oppressed, alienated Other. Section three discusses cultural anxieties of youth, (im)maturity, childhood agency, abuse and the age of consent. The final section addresses vampire as intimate partner, mapping boundaries between invitation, passion and coercion. With its fresh insight into vampire genre, this book will appeal to academics, students and general public alike.
The Multiverse as Theory in Postmodern Speculative Fictional Narratives
The Multiverse as Theory in Postmodern Speculative Fictional Narratives considers the concept of the multiverse beyond the immediacy of being merely an excuse or scenario for the development of stories, instead positioning the multiverse as a theoretical method in which speculative fiction narratives can explore diverse issues to bridge ideas across cultural, social, and philosophical analysis. Taking a cross-cultural approach, the book centres around the critical engagements that literary and media texts have with the representations of the multiverse, beyond considering this subject as a mere rhetorical flourish or a passing fad. A diverse and international team of authors engage with the ...
Young People, Media, and Nostalgia
This book explores how Latin American young people engage with nostalgia and grasp a sense of nostalgic representations of the 1970s and 1980s through contemporary media. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Costa Rica, this book analyses how young audiences make sense of nostalgic representations of transnational pasts, thus creating a link between media reception practices and the engagement with broader social, cultural, economic, and political structures. It also brings to the fore new insights concerning the role media has in fostering senses of national memory by highlighting the key role of everyday media engagements in comprehending the past. This comprehensive empirical study will be of interest to scholars, researchers and students of media and communications studies, Latin American studies, sociology, digital culture, memory studies, social and cultural anthropology, youth studies, cultural studies, and readers interested in popular culture, television, and cinema.
Sound and Sense in British Romanticism
This unparalleled exploration reveals how understandings of sound shifted and multiplied in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain. Drawing on literary studies, musicology and history, and interrogating how writers of this period thought with and through sound, this book opens up a new chapter in the history of the senses.
Charles Dickens as an Agent of Change
Sixteen scholars from across the globe come together in Charles Dickens as an Agent of Change to show how Dickens was (and still is) the consummate change agent. His works, bursting with restless energy in the Inimitable's protean style, registered and commented on the ongoing changes in the Victorian world while the Victorians' fictional and factional worlds kept (and keep) changing. The essays from notable Dickens scholars—Malcolm Andrews, Matthias Bauer, Joel J. Brattin, Doris Feldmann, Herbert Foltinek, Robert Heaman, Michael Hollington, Bert Hornback, Norbert Lennartz, Chris Louttit, Jerome Meckier, Nancy Aycock Metz, David Paroissien, Christopher Pittard, and Robert Tracy—suggest the many ways in which the notion of change has found entry into and is negotiated in Dickens' works through four aspects: social change, political and ideological change, literary change, and cultural change. An afterword by the late Edgar Rosenberg adds a personal account of how Dickens changed the life of one eminent Dickensian.
The Transmedia Vampire
This book explores vampire narratives that have been expressed across multiple media and new technologies. Stories and characters such as Dracula, Carmilla and even Draculaura from Monster High have been made more "real" through their depictions in narratives produced in and across different platforms. This also allows the consumer to engage on multiple levels with the "vampire world," blurring the boundaries between real and imaginary realms and allowing for different kinds of identity to be created while questioning terms such as "author," "reader," "player" and "consumer." These essays investigate the consequences of such immersion and why the undead world of the transmedia vampire is so well suited to life in the 21st century.
The Yakuza in Popular Media
The yakuza, Japan's traditional gangsters, are famous, especially outside Japan, where the country's criminal underworld ranks next to sushi or Godzilla when it comes to their respective fame and popularity. However, in popular media the images of the Japanese gangster vary, ranging from chivalrous Robin Hood-like characters, to violent mobsters without honor and dignity. The present volume addresses these differences, i.e. the way yakuza are presented in Japanese and Western popular media. Films and autobiographical novels, inspired by historical events or personal experiences, but also by existent and sometimes even expected stereotypes, therefore often already represent a specific image of the Japanese mafia that is more like an artificial construct than actual reality. The contributions in this book consequently intend to discuss the images of the Japanese yakuza in popular media to offer a first insight into a very important yet so far understudied topic related to the history of and existent narratives within Japan's popular culture.
Western Japaneseness: Intercultural Translations of Japan in Western Media
Our images of non-Western cultures are often based on stereotypes that are replicated over the years. These stereotypes often appear in popular media and are responsible for a pre-set image of otherness. The present book investigates these processes and the media representation of otherness, especially as an artificial construct based on stereotypes and their repetition, in the case of Japan. 'Western Japaneseness' thereby illustrates how the Western image of Japan in popular media is rather a construct that, in a way, replicated itself, instead of a more serious encounter with a foreign and different cultural context. This book will be of great value to students and academics who hold interest in media studies, Japanese studies, and cultural studies. It will also appeal to a broader audience with interests in Japan more generally.
