All Around Monstrous: Monster Media in Their Historical Contexts

All Around Monstrous: Monster Media in Their Historical Contexts

Author: Verena Bernardi

Publisher: Vernon Press

Published: 2019-10-31

Total Pages: 298

ISBN-13: 1622737946

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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.


Duelling, the Russian Cultural Imagination, and Masculinity in Crisis

Duelling, the Russian Cultural Imagination, and Masculinity in Crisis

Author: Amanda DiGioia

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-12

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1000203727

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This book, written from a feminist perspective, uses the focus of duelling to discuss the nature of masculinity in Russia. It traces the development of duelling and masculinity historically from the time of Peter the Great onwards, considers how duelling and masculinity have been represented in both literature and film and assesses the high emphasis given in Soviet times to gender equality, arguing that this was a failed experiment that ran counter to Russian tradition. It examines how duelling continues to be a feature of life in contemporary Russia and relates the situation in Russia to wider scholarship on the nature of masculinity more generally. Overall, the book contends that Russia’s valuing of a strong, militaristic form of masculinity is a major problem.


The Vampire in Folklore, History, Literature, Film and Television

The Vampire in Folklore, History, Literature, Film and Television

Author:

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2015-09-18

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 1476620830

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This comprehensive bibliography covers writings about vampires and related creatures from the 19th century to the present. More than 6,000 entries document the vampire's penetration of Western culture, from scholarly discourse, to popular culture, politics and cook books. Sections by topic list works covering various aspects, including general sources, folklore and history, vampires in literature, music and art, metaphorical vampires and the contemporary vampire community. Vampires from film and television--from Bela Lugosi's Dracula to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, True Blood and the Twilight Saga--are well represented.


Hospitality, Rape and Consent in Vampire Popular Culture

Hospitality, Rape and Consent in Vampire Popular Culture

Author: David Baker

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-11-14

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 3319627821

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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 Media and Austerity

The Media and Austerity

Author: Laura Basu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-04-27

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1351714783

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The Media and Austerity examines the role of the news media in communicating and critiquing economic and social austerity measures in Europe since 2010. From an array of comparative, historical and interdisciplinary vantage points, this edited collection seeks to understand how and why austerity came to be perceived as the only legitimate policy response to the financial crisis for nearly a decade after it began. Drawing on an international range of contributors with backgrounds in journalism, politics, history and economics, the book presents chapters exploring differing media representations of austerity from UK, US and European perspectives. It also investigates practices in financial journalism and highlights the role of social media in reporting public responses to government austerity measures. They reveal that, without a credible and coherent alternative to austerity from the political opposition, what had been an initial response to the consequences of the financial crisis, became entrenched between 2010 and 2015 in political discourse. The Media and Austerity is a clear and concise introduction for students of journalism, media, politics and finance to the connections between the media, politics and society in relation to the public perception of austerity after the 2008 global financial crash.


The “Greek Crisis” in Europe

The “Greek Crisis” in Europe

Author: Yiannis Mylonas

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-07-22

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 9004409181

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The “Greek Crisis” in Europe: Race, Class and Politics, critically analyses the publicity of the Greek debt crisis, by studying Greek, Danish and German mainstream media during the crisis’ early years (2009-2015). Mass media everywhere reproduced a sensualistic “Greek crisis” spectacle, while iterating neoliberal and occidentalist ideological myths. Overall, the Greek people were deemed guilty of a systemic crisis, supposedly enjoying lavish lifestyles on the EU’s expense. Using concrete examples, the study foregrounds neoorientalist, neoracist and classist stereotypes deployed in the construction and media coverage of the Greek crisis. These media practices are connected to the “soft politics” of the crisis, which produce public consensus over neoliberal reforms such as austerity and privatizations, and secure debt repayment from democratic interventions.


Interdisciplinary Essays on Monsters and the Monstrous

Interdisciplinary Essays on Monsters and the Monstrous

Author: M. Susanne Schotanus

Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing

Published: 2022-10-20

Total Pages: 217

ISBN-13: 1801170274

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Interdisciplinary Essays on Monsters and the Monstrous analyses and explores the enduring influence and imagery of monsters and the monstrous on human societies, and from a unique interdisciplinary scope tackles the critical question: when faced with an existential threat, what can we do?


Monstrous Imaginaries

Monstrous Imaginaries

Author: Maaheen Ahmed

Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi

Published: 2019-11-29

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 1496825306

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Monsters seem inevitably linked to humans and not always as mere opposites. Maaheen Ahmed examines good monsters in comics to show how Romantic themes from the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries persist in today’s popular culture. Comics monsters, questioning the distinction between human and monster, self and other, are valuable conduits of Romantic inclinations. Engaging with Romanticism and the many monsters created by Romantic writers and artists such as Mary Shelley, Victor Hugo, and Goya, Ahmed maps the heritage, functions, and effects of monsters in contemporary comics and graphic novels. She highlights the persistence of recurrent Romantic features through monstrous protagonists in English- and French-language comics and draws out their implications. Aspects covered include the dark Romantic predilection for ruins and the sordid, the solitary protagonist and his quest, nostalgia, the prominence of the spectacle as well as excessive emotions, and above all, the monster’s ambiguity and rebelliousness. Ahmed highlights each Romantic theme through close readings of well-known but often overlooked comics, including Enki Bilal's Monstre tetralogy, Jim O'Barr's The Crow, and Emil Ferris’s My Favorite Thing Is Monsters, as well as the iconic comics series Alan Moore's Swamp Thing and Mike Mignola's Hellboy. In blurring the otherness of the monster, these protagonists retain the exaggeration and uncontrollability of all monsters while incorporating Romantic characteristics.


Gendered Politics in Sophocles’ Trachiniae

Gendered Politics in Sophocles’ Trachiniae

Author: Gesthimani Seferiadi

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Published: 2022-04-07

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1350260320

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This is the first book-length examination of the notion of gendered politics in Sophocles' Trachiniae. Making use of feminist theory and tackling the political nature of the categories of identity, culture and sexuality, Seferiadi brings the interpretation of Sophocles' play up-to-date with the most recent scholarly developments. She discusses the play in the light of its Amazonian and monstrous background and touches upon topics such as marriage and the exchange of women; reciprocity within a corroded system of gift-exchanges; and the dynamics of female silence and the 'impaired' hegemonic masculinity. Contributing to the topic of rape in the ancient world, this book focuses on sexual violence and the intertwinement of marriage and rape from the perspective of tragedy. With an Amazon being placed within the civilized arrangement of an oikos, the play negotiates the position of the female and advocates the need to expel the monstrous sexualities from the polis. Differing from previous analyses, this study is a reminder that female subjectivity was less foreclosed than is often tacitly assumed.