Author: chloepope0000

Week 12 Response – Chloe Pope

Can reality tv still be thought of as a genre given the high level of hybridity that exists?

While the roots of reality television stretch back as far as early 20th century documentary making, it is only since around the 1980s and 1990s (particularly for New Zealand) that it has grown into the beast that wider society knows it as today. In her essay Heroic endeavours: flying high in New Zealand reality television, Phillipa Smith writes of the history of reality television, both abroad and within New Zealand, ‘Rupert Murdoch’s launch of the Fox Television Network in the United States in the late 1980s in the newly deregulated and fiercely competitive broadcast environment of television saw the introduction of RTV that was not only cheap to produce, but also attracted attention through dramatic raw footage using newly developed technology such as satellite cameras and mini-cams.’ (Smith, 2013) These early television shows largely focused on true crime, such as shows like Cops that followed around American police forces.

However, in the almost forty years since, there has been much evolution within the stratosphere of reality television that does bring into question whether it can now all be considered one genre, or whether ‘reality television’ as we know it has really become not merely a multi-headed beast but something else entirely. Conventionally, there have been four main ‘types’ of television programming recognized: ‘Fact’, which covers such programming as news and documentaries; ‘Fiction’, covering feature films and fictional drama programming; ‘Entertainment’, which features real people and events but for the purpose of entertainment, such as game shows and talk shows; and ‘Advertisement’, with the aim of selling and increasing the desirability of certain commodities, such as commercials and infomercials. (Wood, 2004)

Reality television has already been identified as a unique hybrid of several, if not all of these modes of television programming. It has also been previously suggested that reality television could then de divided into ‘subgenres’ of theme, ‘everyday dramas of courage, talk about feelings and civic action’. As argued by Brennan Wood, however, ‘these thematic unities do not distinguish hybridized reality from many other sorts of television content’. (Wood, 2004)By it’s nature of blurring reality with fiction, to the point where the difference is unrecognizable to some, a reality television show focused around any of those themes can have a far different impact than a clearly fictional drama about the very same themes, or a news report on them, etcetera. As an example, one could compare the soap opera Coronation Street (1960-) to E! Network’s reality television show Keeping Up With the Kardashians (2007-). From a purely thematic point of view, both shows focus upon similar themes surrounding the drama of various relationships with family and friends, love and heartbreak and parenting. However, they are both wildly different in terms of aesthetics, audience, and, most importantly, reach and influence – Keeping Up With the Kardashians has turned the entire Kardashian-Jenner household into incredibly wealthy and powerful cultural influencers and celebrities, for better or for worse, which no star from Coronation Street, past or present, has come close to touching. This is a clear example of how further hybridized reality television shows are from even the fictional drama shows such as Coronation Street, and why there is a need for more in-depth classification of them.

However, television in general has changed in large amounts since the rise of reality television. More and more, there are television shows that focus on and blend themes and genres otherwise not seen together previously (such as The Good Place (2016-2020), a comedy series with a particular, if subtle focus on philosophies around life and death, and Sense8 (2015-2018), which combined a supernatural/sci-fi concept of interconnected humans with strong queer themes). There is also the problematic existence of ‘fake news’, such as what is seen on the Fox Network, which has heavily influenced world politics with ‘news reports’ heavily sensationalized to the point of being outright false. This then suggests that it is perhaps not just reality TV that has become increasingly hybridized, but television as a whole, and that the system through which we previously categorized and assessed television has become outdated and in need of an overhaul in the new, 24-hour, interconnected digital age.

References

Smith, P. (2013). Heroic endeavours: flying high in New Zealand reality television. In N. Lorenzo-Dus, & P. Garces-Conejos Blitvich, Real Talk: Reality Television and Discourse Analysis in Action (pp. 140-165). Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.

Wood, B. (2004). A World in Retreat: The Reconfiguration of Hybridity in 20th-Century New Zealand Television. Media, Culture & Society, 45-62.

Week 11 Response – Chloe Pope

How real is reality tv?

Studies into reality television and how ‘real’ it truly is have largely come to the conclusion that although it does show aspects of ‘reality’ – people, places, and situations – these are very rarely, if at all shown as they truly are. Instead, they are edited or filmed in certain ways that allow the ‘director’, producer, filmmaker, etcetera to portray what is on screen in a specific way. Therefore, it can be said that the ‘reality’ of reality television varies – but it is never wholly ‘real’.

In ‘’How Real Can You Get?’: Recent Developments In ‘Reality’ Television’, Richard Kilborn writes, ‘There is now a general recognition that all notions of ‘realism’ are historically determined and that the criteria for judging the realism…of a text have just as much to do with the audience expectations and with a set of established conventions…for the viewer the realism of an audio-visual text depends to a large extent on how closely it conforms to the style or mode of presentation he or she has come to accept as ‘realist’’. (Kilborn, 1994) Reality television, from the outset, has drawn on established styles of presenting ‘the real’ on television and film – most notably, the documentary style. However, within reality television, these techniques can – and often are – used to manipulate the audience and change the portrayal of what is happening on screen from how it really happened.

In his essay comparing 1966 British classic ‘docudrama’ ‘Cathy Come Home’ and the 2014 British reality show ‘Benefits Street’, Ben Lamb points out how both television programs make use of the same ‘documentarian’ techniques, but have drastically different effects on the audience and how they view the disadvantaged people on display in the shows. One such technique is the use of captions, often used within documentaries to provide extra context or information that isn’t immediately available to the audience through the filmed content. In Cathy Come Home, these are used at the end of the text, where it informs the audience that the events (unemployment, homeless, child uplifting) in the drama occurred within then-current day Britain, along with statistics on homelessness in the country. This is accompanied by a shot that mirrors the opening shot of the drama, with Cathy on the side of the road hitchhiking, only this time appearing much more dishevelled and beaten down. Lamb writes of the effect of the use of captions along with the image on screen, ‘Such a visual contrast between the opening and conclusion functions to emphasise the stark downfall of her character and the accompaniment of the captions stresses the typicality of her situation…The words on screen are an essential component within these emotional scenes to demonstrate how this harrowing downfall was commonplace for many.’ (Lamb, 2016)

Captions are also used in Benefits Street, as Lamb points out, but to a much different effect from that which is seen in Cathy Come Home. These captions come in the form of subtitles dictating dialogue that has just been said on screen; although often used to make muffled or accented dialogue more coherent for viewers, as Lamb points out, this is not always the case in Benefits Street, where it is instead often used to emphasize ‘controversial’ pieces of dialogue or manipulate them to portray the speaker or situation in a certain way. This takes place in one such scene where a member of the community on the street, after buying essentials from a neighbour who goes door-to-door selling them, says ‘the government cuts are fucking up everyone’. (Lamb, 2016) This captioned dialogue is accompanied by a shot of her young son eating lollies. Otherwise perfectly audible dialogue, the effect of emphasizing this statement with captions set over the shot of her son has the effect, as Lamb writes, of focusing ‘our attention towards Becky’s bad language and lack of personal culpability for the conditions her child lives in’. (Lamb, 2016) Instead of cultivating sympathy for the disadvantaged, as Cathy Comes Home does, it instead ‘others’ the people being portrayed in Benefits Street and positions the audience against them. This is a clear example of how documentarian techniques can be used to both portray the ‘real’ on television and film, but also manipulate the ‘real’ to the point that it can have two entirely different effects on the audience watching and how they react to what they are viewing.

It is also worth noting that while the ‘reality’ of reality television, as laid out previous, is dubious at best, it can be undisputed that reality television can have very real effects. As mentioned in Lamb’s comparison of Cathy Come Home and Benefits Street, the 1966 docudrama led to nationwide support of real-life support networks for homeless people and families; the 2014 drama, on the other hand, worked to garner support for the real life ‘Big Society’ government initiative, which made welfare and benefit cuts. (Lamb, 2016) These real life effects can be seen in other, more recent reality television programs as well – from the spate of suicides effecting the cast of Love Island UK to the suicide of reality star and professional wrestler Hana Kimura after her portrayal in Japanese reality show Terrace House led to relentless cyberbullying. (Codrea-Rado, 2019) (Margolis, 2020) Regardless of how questionable the reality of what is being portrayed on the screen is, it cannot be argued that it has a very real effect on people off the screen, within the real world.

References

Codrea-Rado, A. (2019, June 4). ‘Love Island’ Returns Amid Debate About Contestants’ Mental Health. Retrieved from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/04/arts/television/love-island-mental-health.html

Kilborn, R. (1994). ‘How Real Can You Get?’: Recent Developments in ‘Reality’ Television. European Journal of Communication, 421-439.

Lamb, B. (2016). Cathy Come Off Benefits: A comparative ideological analysis of Cathy Come Home and Benefits Street. Journalism and Discourse Studies.

Margolis, E. (2020, July 17). The Fall of ‘Terrace House’. Retrieved from The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/arts/television/terrace-house-suicide.html

Week 10 Response – Chloe Pope

How does Dick use the I Ching and how did his views on the oracle and its role in the novel shift over time?

Dick uses the I Ching in a multitude of ways in both the construction of the novel, The Man in the High Castle, and in the novel itself. In the novel itself, it is used by the characters – Frank Frink, Nobusuke Tagomi, and Juliana Frink – as a consultation device to receive answers to their pressing questions. This much is abundantly clear upon a surface reading of the novel. The I Ching, however, is also used by Dick to great extent within the the novel’s construction. When posed with pressing questions himself about the direction of the novel – such as the very decisions the characters are making within the novel – so too would Dick consult the I Ching. In this way, the I Ching was what formed and guided the direction of the novel. Dick said of using it to write The Man in the High Castle, ‘I used [the I Ching] in The Man in the High Castle because a number of characters used it. In each case when they asked a question, I threw the coins and wrote the hexagram lines they got. That governed the direction of the book’. (Dick, 1974)

However, Dick did not merely use the I Ching to make individual decisions for his characters in singular moments. Dick uses the I Ching in the craft of the novel to create a sense of connection between the characters – a sense that their decisions, the paths they choose to take, are interconnected in some way, running parallel, touching at points. ‘What these twelve readings reveal, when considered as a whole, is a kind of occluded patterning at the core of the novel,’ writes Mountfort, P. in his essay ‘The I Ching and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle’ (2016), ‘encapsulated in alternating doublets, pairings, and other complementarities between characters, in terms of their questions, the hexagrams they receive, and when they receive them’. (Mountfort, 2018) Alongside this, Dick’s use of the I Ching also inserts key philosophies from the I Ching into the novel – most notably around the passage of time, with the key events or ‘moments’ of the novel flowing in synchronicity, as opposed to in a wholly linear and causal form. This is perhaps most emphasized at the famous – or infamous – conclusion of the novel, where the reader is left with the open-ended question as to what is real and what is fiction – our world, where the Nazis lost World War II, or the world within The Man in The High Castle, where they did not. Jumping off from this, as the I Ching and the synchronous flow of time suggests that any one outcome may be a possibility at any moment, than any number of ‘realities’ could be the ‘real’, as any number of ‘fictionalities’ could be the fiction; as written in Mountfort’s ‘The I Ching and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle’, Dick’s notion of history is certainly synchronic rather than diachronic… both in his evocation of a web of interrelationships and in his sense that the profusion of possible realities could radically undermine our sense of the real.’ (Mountfort, 2018)

The authenticity of Dick’s use of the I Ching in the writing of The Man in the High Castle, along with how steadfast he held on to his belief in the I Ching’s voice in later years, has come into question, however. There have been questions as to whether Dick truly took the I Ching at it’s word – it’s first word, specifically – and did not instead manipulate or ‘re-interpret’ it’s messages to suit the direction he already had in mind. (Mountfort, 2018) Such implicit human bias is hard, nearly impossible to avoid even in clinical settings, and in the environment of a writer such as Dick could easily influence results. This is suggested by such scholars as Emmanuel Carrere in I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey Inside the Mind of Philip K Dick, ‘“[Phil] didn’t need [the I Ching] to help him come up with the exact structure for his novel, he maintained, but it did lead him to see better the organization he was already struggling to build by helping him understand the importance of structure”’ (Carrere, 1993/2005) and even implied within the novel itself, where the fictional novelist – an implied stand-in for Dick in this fictional world – is implied to have done the same when consulting the I Ching. In later years, Dick himself also questioned and even seemed to outright resent the way the I Ching ‘wrote’ the novel, saying, ‘The I Ching failed me at the end of that book, and didn’t help me resolve the ending. That’s why the ending is so unresolved…the I Ching copped out completely, and left me stranded’. (Dick, An Interview with Phillip K. Dick, 1976)

References

Carrere, E. (1993/2005). I Am Alive and You Are Dead: A Journey Inside the Mind of Phillip K Dick. (T. Bent, Trans.) London: Bloomsbury.

Dick, P. K. (1974). Vertex Interview with Phillip K. Dick. (A. B. Cover, Interviewer)

Dick, P. K. (1976). An Interview with Phillip K. Dick. (D. DePerez, Interviewer)

Mountfort, P. (2018). The I Ching and Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle . SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 43 (2016), 287-309.

Week 9 Response – Chloe Pope

What are some of the problematics around cosphotography in terms various (potentially unwelcome) gazes?

The most obvious of problematic gazes in regards to cosplay is the male gaze. That is, the gaze commonly held by men – although sometimes perpetrated by women as well, due to taught misogyny – that views women solely as sexual objects, objects of their desire and for their personal gratification. While an issue in almost every aspect of society, it is particularly notable within cosplay for several reasons.

The first is the larger population of women participating in cosplay culture compared to in other areas, especially within wider fandom. While typically seen as a ‘boy’s club’, fandom, especially for genres such as science fiction and action comics, has always had a relatively large amount of women participating in the art of cosplay, described as being ‘a product of female DIY culture’ (Mountfort, 2018, p. 48). This is evident from the very beginnings of cosplay, with cosplay pioneers such as ‘Morojo’ (Myrtle R. Jones) in the 30s through to famous female cosplayers such as Yaya Han in today’s world (Mountfort, 2018, pp. 51, 63). With a larger than usual group of women participating in this area of fandom, this unfortunately makes instances of unwanted ‘male gaze’ much more likely.

The second is the range of characters available to female cosplayers. While, given the nature and general attitude of cosplay and cosplay communities from the beginning of the movement, effectively any person can cosplay as any character regardless of gender – and there are even recorded instances of drag costuming at early cosplay events (Mountfort, 2018, p. 54) – many prefer to cosplay as their chosen gender identity in every day life (i.e. those who identify as men cosplay as male characters, and women cosplay as female characters). This becomes problematic for women as many female characters – across genres, mediums and time periods – are hypersexualized in both appearance and behaviour. This means that female cosplayers are often forced into highly sexualized, caricature-like female roles in order to participate – to the best of their ability – in cosplay culture. This wouldn’t be a problem if not for the aforementioned ‘male gaze’, which is attracted in a far greater amount by such characters (as these characters were, originally, created for the male gaze by the male gaze). If not, female cosplays must then find ways around this; often through strict ‘rules of engagement’ for both socialization and photography, allowing them at least some form of control if not outright rejection of this ‘gaze’. (Mountfort, 2018, pp. 63-64)

There are other ‘gazes’ which provide issues within the cosplay community, however. One such ‘gaze’ is that of the outsider – someone with no authentic, genuine interest in cosplay or the cosplay community. As recalled by cosplayer Kane Anderson within Planet Cosplay, ‘not all photographers actually want to celebrate cosplayers. Many spectators surreptitiously diminish cosplayers with their gazes even while the costumed performers enjoy the attention.’ (Mountfort, 2018, pp. 63-64) This often leads to another problematic gaze within the cosplay community – the judgemental gaze. These ‘outsiders’ to the cosplay community often post images and videos of cosplayers online and, along with others like them, mock and judge them for perceived ‘flaws’: in weight, in race, in general beauty standards. (Mountfort, 2018, p. 64) This can lead to many cosplayers (especially women, who already face higher standards of beauty due to the aforementioned ‘male gaze’) feeling self-conscious about their cosplay or growing disheartened with the art of cosplaying; with social media growing bigger, more invasive and more toxic by the day, this may become an even greater issue for the cosplay community, as it has become for many others.

References

Mountfort, P. (2018). Cosphotography and Fan Capital. In P. Mountfort, Peirson-Smitth, Anne, & A. Gaczy, Planet Cosplay (pp. 45-74). Bristol: Intellect Books.

Week 8 Response – Chloe Pope

Referring to Mountfort et al. (2018), in what ways is cosplay analogous to citation?

Cosplay is analogous to citation in two key ways. The first being the obvious, in that it makes reference to a specific text. This is argued in the 2018 book, Planet Cosplay, by Mountfort, P, who writes that, when looking at the act of cosplay from the perspective of it being a referential form, ‘cosplay can be regarded as a form of citation, with cosplayers collectively involved in performing myriad ‘citational acts.’ (Mountfort, 2018)

While cosplay takes many forms and can be executed at various levels of professional to casual, generally, cosplayers make an effort to appear as a very specific character from a specific text, or portion within a larger text (for example, a lengthy, on-going series such as comic books or manga), rather than simply bearing a resemblance to the character in general; the difference between merely having green hair, and wearing make-up, a purple suit and wide-brimmed hat, and slicked back green hair to cosplay as Jack Nicholson’s Joker from Batman (1989, dir. Tim Burton).  As put in Planet Cosplay (2018), ‘The thousands of costumes and accoutrements, such as weapons and other props, are, on one level, like trees in a forest of citation that link the cosplay back to the source text’. (Mountfort, 2018)

Alongside the costumes and props, there is also the behaviour and actions of the cosplayers. Many stay ‘in character’ as their chosen character while in cosplay dress; doing various actions, skits, or even playing out certain notable scenes with other cosplayers. This constitutes the ‘act’ portion of Mountfort, P.’s naming of cosplay as a ‘citational act’. (Mountfort, 2018) These ‘acts’, just as with the costuming, are specific to the chosen character, whether it be in direct quotation of dialogue or mimicking speech mannerisms, body language and character-specific tics.

This specificity goes even further in the case of cosplay; to continue the Joker analogy, there is a marked difference between a person cosplaying as Jack Nicholson’s 1989 Joker, and another person cosplaying as Heath Ledger’s 2008 Joker, despite the two being the same character. This is because the cosplayers are specifically referencing the text in which these characters exist, and not just the character themselves – Burton’s 1989 film and Nolan’s 2008 film, respectively. This is pointed out within Planet Cosplay’s section on cosplay as citation, ‘After all, where cosplay differs from dressing up more generally—including fashion subcultures that are sometimes part of the milieu but not strictly cosplay, such as steampunk and Lolita—is in its specific indebtedness to source media on which it is heavily reliant.’ (Mountfort, 2018)

The second key way in which cosplay is a citational act is in how it makes (often new) meaning out of text by making reference to it within a new context. The majority of cosplay takes place at fan meetings, which are most often in the form of conventions such as San Diego’s Comic-Con or New Zealand’s Armageddon Expo. At such meet-ups, there are often many other cosplayers embodying different characters from a range of texts. This can lead to interactions between characters, originally from wildly different franchises and ‘worlds’, who would have otherwise never met; not unlike the fanfiction trend of ‘crossovers’ between texts. These can also occur between characters from the same worlds/texts; the difference between these interactions and the aforementioned skits, etc. is that these interactions are wholly new and improvised by the cosplayers themselves. They are the product of the cosplayers embodying their characters completely (truly ‘playing’ as them) and creating new meaning in the form of their interactions as the characters with others that they encounter within the new context (in this case, conventions). Examples of this can be seen in popular online videos from fan conventions, such as a video of Deadpool and Spiderman (established friends within their shared canonical universe) doing a choreographed dance sequence together. (Star Dragonair, 2018)

It is worth noting that not all instances of this occur within the context of fan conventions, or even with other characters, however. A popular trend within the online ASMR community has been for creators to act out ‘roleplay’ ASMR videos as certain characters. This involves all the aspects of cosplay – in both costuming and acting – and is another instance of fans creating new meaning within the new context of ASMR and an ASMR roleplay, as these are, once again, either improvised or new material written by the cosplayer themselves ‘in character’. An example of this would be ASMR Youtube creator Gibi ASMR’s video in which she cosplays as Linda from Bob’s Burgers. (Gibi ASMR, 2017)

References

Gibi ASMR. (2017, October 27). [ASMR] Eat At Bob’s Burgers! (Linda Roleplay) [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/jS51HkoP2PE

Mountfort, P. (2018). Cosplay as Citation. In P. Mountfort, A. Peirson-Smith, & A. Geczy, Planet Cosplay (pp. 21-24). Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Star Dragonair. (2018, May 28). Deadpool and Spiderman Dance at Anime Convention [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/kDe2J16Zqn8

Week 7 Response – Chloe Pope

Both Hendrix (2018) and King (2010) take us through the horror history of the 60s 70s and 80s. Using references, explain this process in your own words, then think about the current trends of horror movies in your life time. What kinds of social of political changes in the world during these times do you think can be reflected in the horror you’ve read/watched/heard from that particular era?

As put simply by Grady Hendrix in Paperbacks from Hell: ‘More than any other genre, horror fiction is a product of it’s time’, and this trend can be seen clearly when examining horror fiction throughout the 20th century. (Hendrix, 2017) The 30s, a time of intense economical hardship for many, especially Depression-era America, saw a boom in horror, both written and in film. The decade following, however – torn apart and left scarred by WWII – saw interest wane and nearly die off completely. Similar is seen when comparing the sixties, a time of civil and international unrest with a similar disinterest in horror, to the seventies and eighties, which once again experienced a horror boom. ‘These periods almost always seem to coincide with periods of fairly serious economical and/or political strain, and the books and films seem to reflect these free-floating anxieties,’ said Stephen King in describing the cycle in The Danse Macabre, ‘They have done less well in periods when the American people have been faced with outright horror in their lives.’ (King, 1981)

Being a child of the 2000s (2000, to be precise), I have grown up in an era arguably defined by one thing more than anything else: the internet. While the internet existed prior to the new millennium, it is during the two decades since 2000 to now that it has become ubiquitous, ever-present in almost all of our lives, and a force more powerful than perhaps anything else. Accompanying it, from 2010 onwards came the rising force of social media, connecting everyone to everything almost all of the time, for better or for worse.

Aspects from horror media of the past have made reappearances since the millennium – from Warner Brothers’ lacklustre attempts at monster flicks with Dracula Untold (2014)and The Mummy (2017) and the massive resurgence in the popularity of vampires with Twilight, although perhaps the series would be considered horror of a different kind. Internet, however, and it’s presence whether literally or through allegory, seems to be one of the unique aspects of horror in the 21st Century, especially within the latter decade.

There have been a multitude of horror films to have come out that have focused upon internet and social media. 2014 saw the release of Unfriended, which focused on the haunting and torturing of a group of teenage friends through Skype by a classmate who had been cyberbullied into suicide. While the film’s story was generally panned by critics and audiences alike, it was positively commended for it’s innovation in the incorporation of the internet, both in it’s extensive online marketing, the use of various online applications such as Skype and Chatroulette within the film as storytelling devices, and the theme of cyberbullying and reckless internet usage itself. (Debruge, 2013) While the ‘antagonist’ in the film is represented as the ‘ghost’ of their dead classmate communicating to them through Skype and other applications (‘billie227’), it is clear that this ‘monster’ is more of a representation of the internet in general. As said by King, ‘the tale of horror, no matter how primitive, is allegorical by it’s very nature…it is symbolic’. ‘billie227’ knows almost everything about you; she, he, it, has access to information, images, media, that you forgot or didn’t know you had shared, or perhaps thought was safe in the hands of a single other person; it can expose you with these things at any time should you go against what it asks of you and ruin your life; it can follow you from platform, to platform, to platform – just like the internet.

References

Debruge, P. (2013, August 3). Film Review: ‘Unfriended’. Retrieved from Variety: https://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/film-review-cybernatural-1201274261/

Hendrix, G. (2017). Paperbacks from Hell. Philadelphia: Quirk Books.

King, S. (1981). Danse Macabre. New York: Everest House.

Week 6 Response – Chloe Pope

Reyes (2014), describes Body Horror as being a “fictional representation of the body exceeding itself or falling apart, either opening up or being altered past the point where it would be recognised by normative understandings of human corporeality.” How do The Colour out of Space and Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth make use of this definition to explore themes of the unknown?

One example of the use of body horror in ‘The Colour Out of Space’ by H.P. Lovecraft is the deaths of three members of the Gardner family at the center of the story. One by one, Thaddeus, Nabby and Nahun, son, wife and husband, all fall victim to a horrific death brought on by the alien entity that has overtaken the farm following the meteorite’s fall. The nature of their deaths falls firmly into the category of ‘body horror’ – however, the audience is not entirely privy to what this death looks like initially. The first death, Thaddeus’, is given little description, as in the text, Ammi is only told of the death by Thaddeus’ father Nahun. The death and it’s nature is only given a single sentence; ‘The death had come to poor Thaddeus in his attic room, and it had come in a way that could not be told.’ (Lovecraft, The Colour Out of Space, 1927)

While, initially, this line could easily be looked over, upon subsequent readings and analysis, it actually serves to emphasize the body horror aspect of the deaths of the family, which are expanded upon with Nabby and Nahun’s deaths. It does this by introducing, early on, the idea that the nature of death was not comprehensible to the human mind – a key aspect of body horror in the definition provided by Reyes, ‘fictional representation of the body exceeding itself or falling apart, either opening up or being altered past the point where it would be recognised by normative understandings of human corporeality.’ (Reyes, 2014)

In The Colour Out of Space, in the very same sentence that human death is introduced, so too is it’s psychological impact (and incomprehensibility), before the author even begins to dive into the visuals of it. It is this which makes the text not just an effective body horror text (although this is clearly true), but also an effective horror, as it shows an intent to not simply shock the audience with frightening visuals, but to disturb them on a psychological level and disrupt the audience’s knowledge and expectations of the world. While it is a key aspect of body horror, aiming to inspire fear in the audience by targeting the intrinsic human fear of the unknown is a key aspect in horror fiction in general. It was a key aspect for the works of H.P. Lovecraft, as well, who remains famed for the presence of the unknown within his works. Dubbing it the ‘cosmic mystery’ or ‘weirdness’, in the essay, ‘Supernatural Horror in Literature’, Lovecraft writes that, ‘The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown’. (Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature, 1927)

While the psychological aspect of body horror is arguably that which makes it most effective in disturbing the audience and therefore that which should be focused on, the visuals should not be brushed over, either. In ‘The Colour Out of Space’, the audience is finally shown – as any reader can be shown in a written text – the nature of the alien death with Nabby and Nahun. For the first, it is through Ammi’s eyes as he discovers Nabby’s half-dead body. For the first time the reader is given visual clues as Ammi describes Nabby’s body in the corner of the attic, ‘But the terrible thing about this horror was that it very slowly and perceptibly moved as it continued to crumble’. (Lovecraft, The Colour Out of Space, 1927) The movement of the body – incredibly slow – and the single word ‘crumble’ both go against regular, ‘natural’ human behaviour and decay as the reader would know it, falling in line with the already introduced psychological aspect of the unnatural. While this is not expanded much further with Nabby’s death, it doesn’t need to be, as very shortly after comes the death of Nahun. This final death of the Gardner family is a key point in the text as it seems to be the point in which the possession of the farm by the alien entity and it’s horrible effects go from rumour and inference to known by the protagonist who’s eyes the reader sees through, Ammi. Nahun’s death is described extensively (especially in comparison to the previous deaths); ‘collapse, greying and disintegration’, ‘a horrible brittleness…dry fragments were scaling off’, ‘the distorted parody that had been a face’,  and ‘cleft, bulging lips’. (Lovecraft, The Colour Out of Space, 1927)  These descriptions are entirely devoted to producing the image of something inhuman and unnatural in the minds of the reader. Falling in line with the description of the visual aspect of body horror provided by Reyes – ‘the body exceeding itself or falling apart, either opening up or being altered’ (Reyes, 2014) – while not being the only instance of body horror in the text, it stands as an example of the introduction and then realization of body horror within the text, as the seed of fear of the unknown that was planted in the minds of the readers with Thaddeus’ death is completely realized, in horrifying visuality, with Nahun’s death.

References

Lovecraft, H. (1927). Supernatural Horror in Literature.

Lovecraft, H. (1927). The Colour Out of Space. In H. Gernsback, Amazing Stories. New York: Experimenter Publishing.

Reyes, X. A. (2014). Body Horror. In X. A. Reyes, Body Gothic : Corporeal Transgression in Contemporary Literature and Horror (pp. 52-74). University of Wales Press.

Week 5 Response – Chloe Pope

5. What genre or genres is Princess Mononoke? How does it relate to its ‘prequel,’ Nausicaā ?

It can be argued that Princess Mononoke (1997) combines two genres – fantasy and historical fiction. The film is set during the Muromachi era of Japan, which stretched from the 12th to 14th century, and was a time of the both great cultural and artistic growth for Japan, and the growth of industries such as agriculture and construction. This is made expressed in large part through the visual aesthetics of the film, such as in the design of the characters (especially characters of certain ‘classes’ such as the brothel women and the ainu) and the architecture of the buildings. From here, however, director Miyazaki divorces the film from it’s historical base and introduces aspects of fantasy, such as spirits and Japanese mythological figures, such as the shishigami (deer god) and kodama (forest spirits). Not only mythological figures, Miyazaki’s representations of them within Mononoke are unique in themselves, furthering the ‘fantasy’ element of Mononoke and creating, ‘an essentially personal mythology’. (Cavallaro, 2006, pp. 120-130)

In comparison, Nausicaa leans further into the ‘fantasy’ genre, lacking the specific historical base that Mononoke has, but with the two films sharing similar fantastical elements, particularly with regards to the creatures and animals the characters encounter, and their relations with them; a comparison could be made between Nausicaa, with her ability to communicate with animals, and San, who has been raised among the animals and treats them as her own family. However, the story of Nausicaa does draw partly from the character of the same name featured in Homer’s Greek epic the ‘Odyssey’ along with Japanese mythology featuring a girl who could speak to animals – another example (or early instance of, given the timelines of the two films) of Miyazaki creating his ‘personal mythology’ from pieces of real-world culture, similar to how he does within Mononoke.(Cavallaro, 2006, pp. 47-57)

While fantasy appears to be the main genre shared between the two texts, both also share similar themes that feature heavily enough in the films (and many of Miyazaki’s other works) that one could argue for them to be considered a genre of their own. ‘Ecofiction’ is a contemporary term for a genre (or ‘supergenre’) that covers texts in which nature or the environment play an integral role. (Dwyer, 2010, pp. 1-8) This rings true for both Mononoke and Nausicaa. Nausicaa takes place in a post-apocalyptic setting where the land has been made toxic through extreme pollution and is now overrun but giant, mutated insects. On the other hand, Mononoke focuses on the conflict between the industrialist Irontown and the various gods of the forest which the town is destroying and killing. Both films focus heavily on the relationship between man and the environment, and seem to have the aim of making the audience keenly aware of this relationship, through showing cycles of behaviour (as seen in Nausicaa, where war-mongering and industrialism of the ‘new’ society seems set about to bring the same destruction that the old did) and a distinct disconnect between human society and nature, often represented by spirits and gods (as seen in Mononoke, with the conflict between the people of Irontown and the forest spirits and, ultimately, the beheading of the deer god). (Morgan, 2015)

References

Cavallaro, D. (2006). Anime Art of Hayao Miyazaki. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers.

Dwyer, J. (2010). Where the Wild Books are: A Field Guide to Ecofiction. Reno: University of Nevada Press.

Morgan, G. (2015). Creatures in Crisis: Apocalyptic Environmental Visions in Miyazaki’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke. Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 2 (3), 172-183.

Week 4 Response – Chloe Pope

2. Is anime a high or low cultural medium, according to Susan Napier (2005) and what are some of its subgenres?

It is hard to argue that anime is a ‘low’ art form, just as it is hard to argue it as a ‘high’ one. Instead, anime seems to blur the lines between what is considered ‘low’ and ‘high’ for a variety of reasons. One of the biggest is perhaps how intrinsically tied to many aspects of Japanese culture – including those that are generally considered to be ‘high’ art – anime is. Many of the frequently seen stylings and aesthetics of anime are taken from Japanese kabuki and noh theatre. (Napier, 2005) Both forms of theatre, while coincidentally regarded as ‘low’ art or entertainment for the commoners in the time they were invented, are regarded in modern culture as a precious art form unique to the Japanese culture. As explored by Stevie Suan in ‘The Anime Paradox : Patterns and Practices Through the Lens of Traditional Japanese Theater’ (2013), multiple aspects, unique to Japanese media as they are not found nearly as often and certainly not within popular American or British (what one could call ‘Western’) media, are shared between the traditional Japanese theatre forms and anime. (Suan, 2013, pp. 1-20)

Most notable of these are some of the most recognizable aspects of anime, such as the visual aesthetics and appearance. Both noh and kabuki put great emphasis on form, using the body, props, lighting, costuming and make-up to create exaggerated appearances featuring extremes of colour and shape. Alongside this (and indeed, part of it – perhaps even impossible without it) was the blending of the ‘unreal’ with the real. Noh and kabuki often featured monsters, ghouls, and other surreal creatures and characters along with fantastical (and often disturbing) happenings. This blending of the real and the unreal is key to both the Japanese theatre forms and anime. (Suan, 2013, pp. 20-35)

Looking at Akira, we can see examples of both of these aspects throughout the film, especially within the closing sequence, where we see Tetsuo’s body swell and mutate into a horrific, monstrous form, then get destroyed by Akira, sucking Kaneda briefly into another dimension in which he has visions of Tetsuo’s childhood. The changing of Tetsuo into a monstrous mass is a clear example of the use of form, especially that of exaggerated and extreme shape, as a mode of storytelling within anime, representing Tetsuo’s transformation into a complete monster of destruction. Along with the transportation of Kaneda to the ‘alternate’ dimension, it is also an example of the unreal meeting the real within anime – although the ‘unreal’ seems to exist even from the moment the audience experiences the almost surreal motorcycle chase through neo-Tokyo at the beginning of the film, it is here that it reaches it’s peak, and is used to fill in the final blocks needed to completely tell the audience the story of Akira.

While this is just one example of the point where anime blurs the line between high and low art, another important point is the wide range of sub-genres that anime stretches across. Traditionally, animation as seen in ‘Western’ counties (such as America and Britain) has been considered children’s fare, with ‘adult’ animated works only becoming more common relatively recently. This has limited it’s sub-genres significantly. Anime, on the other hand, has not had such limitations, and significant anime works can be found in almost every genre. Akira, as an example, is considered a significant work in the cyberpunk genre, and cyberpunk (alongside the mecha genre) remains a notable subgenre within anime. (Napier, 2005) Another popular subgenre is fantasy, and other distinctions within it such as steampunk; these can be seen clearly in the popular works by Hayao Miyazaki under the Studio Ghibli banner, such as within Spirited Away and Laputa: Castle in the Sky. The popularity of both genres can in part be related back to ‘unreal’ aspects of anime taken from Japanese theatre, as both genres heavily involve fantastical, surreal, or ‘magical’ elements, and the unique aesthetic elements of anime play a large part in bringing them to life (as can be seen in the landscape of neo-Tokyo within Akira). (Swaile, 2015, pp. 100-120)

References

Napier, S. (2005). Anime: From Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle. Hampshire: Palgrave/Macmillan.

Suan, S. (2013). The Anime Paradox : Patterns and Practices Through the Lens of Traditional Japanese Theater. Leiden: BRILL.

Swaile, A. D. (2015). Anime Aesthetics : Japanese Animation and the ‘Post-Cinematic’ Imagination. London: Palgrave/Macmillan.

Week 3 Response – Chloe Pope

  1. What gaps are there in Hergé’s representations of women?

Women in the Tintin series are overwhelmingly relegated to background roles, and roles of domesticity or service – wives, mothers, nannies, maids and the like. In the very first Tintin album, Tintin in the Land of Soviets, women have no speaking roles or roles of note at all, merely drawn as background characters in what is shown to be a downtrodden Soviet Union. While the next albums, Tintin in the Congo and Tintin in America, give character (and even a couple of throwaway lines) to a handful of women, these would set the tone for representation of women throughout the rest of Herge’s work – they are shown as wives, mothers, and homemakers, either speaking about their children, their husbands or matters of the home. (Mountfort, 2020) In the two aforementioned albums, it is also notable that the women shown are women of colour – Congolese, African American, and Indigenous American – and, although not the worst of Herge’s racial misrepresentations, similarly sets the precedent for the treatment that women of colour would receive throughout the Tintin series.

When questioned about misrepresentations and stereotyping within his work (particularly racially, although the same can apply to representation of gender), Herge almost famously relegated blame to the time period which he was from and in which he worked. However, multiple points challenge this excuse. For one, Herge’s work spanned a significant period of time, with the first Tintin strips published beginning in 1929, and the final, incomplete album released the year after Herge’s death in 1983. This time period was full of, often radical, societal change. On the gender front, this included the notable second-wave feminist movement, which occurred not just in the United States (upon which the focus is often put), but transnationally, from Asian countries such as Japan and Korea to European countries, including France, in which Tintin was first published.  (Molony & Nelson, 2017, pp. 1-4)

Of particular note is that one of the focuses of French second-wave feminism was the dismantling of societal structures which relegated women to certain ‘roles’ and, effectively, took away their freedom to be individuals and make independent decisions. Historian Natacha Chetcuti-Osorovitz, in her essay on French feminism within ‘Women’s Activism and “Second Wave” Feminism: Transnational Histories, wrote that,‘Ultimately, twentieth-​century feminist struggles expressed women’s desire to escape the subjection to a power system that claimed neutrality and universalism, yet kept them both invisible and marked as different.’ (Molony & Nelson, 2017, p. 65) If women in France, Europe, and worldwide were breaking out of their once designated ‘roles’ from the 1960s onwards, this wasn’t reflected in Herge’s work, as women continued to be relegated to their ‘invisible’ roles, rarely given so much as a name.

Although the feminist movement was far-reaching, Herge’s work and it’s lack of representation of women also stands out when compared to other works from that time outside of the feminist sphere. As study of novels by popular British children’s authors from the 1940s through to the 1970s – all in the midst of Herge’s working period – looked at language and ‘modifiers’ used by the authors when describing male characters and when describing female characters. Although, as author Elizabeth Poytner states, ‘In the mid-twentieth century, sociocultural gender roles were quite distinct in Britain…There was great pressure on women to be primarily wives and mothers’, popular children’s books didn’t necessarily always reflect this, and there were deviations from gender stereotypes, ‘The books examined in this study…offer a more complex picture, often involving equal numbers of boys and girls (Blyton, Saville) as well as courageous and dominating female characters (Brent-Dyer, Johns).’ (Poytner, 2020) Tintin, a series that, although enjoyed by adults, similarly appeals to children, and published within the same time period, shows none of this complexity. Although language analysis alone obviously cannot paint a clear picture of the entirety of the portrayal of women within a particular text (as Poytner points out with the example of George from Enid Blyton’s ‘Famous Five’ series), it is a useful comparison to disprove Herge’s own claims that the lack of representation of women outside of domestic roles throughout his work was a ‘product of it’s time’, and further emphasises just how gaping the holes are where unique, developed, and well-represented women should be within the Tintin series.

References

Molony, B., & Nelson, J. (2017). Women’s Activism and “Second Wave” Feminism: Transnational Histories. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Mountfort, P. (2020). Tintin, gender and desire. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics.

Poytner, E. (2020). Aggressive but loyal: modification and gender. Gender and Language, 175-196.