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- Volume 12, Issue 2, 2023
Australasian Journal of Popular Culture - Volume 12, Issue 2, 2023
Volume 12, Issue 2, 2023
- Editorial
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Critical intersections in popular culture
Authors: Lorna Piatti-Farnell, Ashleigh Prosser and Gwyneth PeatyIn this editorial, the editors introduce the 12.2 volume of The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture. The dynamic and interdisciplinary nature of the field is discussed with reference to the collection of articles within the volume, highlighting the malleability of popular culture in all its transdisciplinary forms. The editors provide a summary of the seven articles included in the volume, which collectively represent diverse critical discussions of the field across sociopolitical, socioeconomic and sociocultural artistic realms. The articles examine the evolving realms of the monstrous, the mythic, the heroic and the historical through various mediums like television, film, characters and historical moments. The editors then conclude by offering a summary of the three book reviews included in the volume.
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- Articles
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Where have all the monsters gone?
More LessMonsters have been rehabilitated in popular culture, moved from the realm of the truly monstrous to the world of neoliberal ‘sameness’. The zombies of In the Flesh and the vampires in True Blood, as only two examples of this trend, have lost their monstrous edge and have come to represent different ways of being human. While some discussions of this reimagined monster describe the weaving of monsters into mainstream culture as a way of acting out discourses of inclusion, I argue here that contemporary narratives that focus on monsters as metaphors for difference and inclusion are, ultimately, not providing a vision of a utopian world of equality. Instead, these representations are enacting a dystopian vision of a neoliberal social order that demonstrates a fear of true or radical difference.
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Virtually identical: The digital zombi(e/i) in Isa Mazzei’s Cam (2018)
Authors: Lauren Gilmore and Daniel RoslerPerhaps due to its relatively recent release, Cam has suffered a significant lack of scholarly attention. Critical and popular reception has focused on the film as a meditation on the darker sides of the internet, adopting a realist paradigm in which the doppelgangers infecting online sex workers are deepfakes and the product of virtual surveillance. In this study, we propose that the post-cinematic ethos of the film both invites and defies a clear interpretive framework for naming the anxieties it highlights. Identification of the monstrous, moreover, is invariably aligned with particular, historically implicated epistemological structures. Ultimately, we propose zombieism, particularly Lauro and Embry’s posthuman zombii as a productive lens through which to recalibrate our indexing of the labouring, digital (un)dead.
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Heroic mice and villainous rats: An analysis of heroism in children’s films
More LessMice are beloved children’s film characters. By embodying the underdog, they not only entertain but also inspire us. This article discusses the evolution of heroic mice in children’s films, thus analysing how mice have been represented as heroes and how heroic representation has changed in recent years. This article will address children’s films with mice that are sidekicks, warriors or use their wit to outsmart others against all odds. An analysis would not be complete without also addressing the representation of rats – as heroes, villains or a mix of both. The article’s findings will present three phases: first, mice as sidekicks only, but nevertheless courageous in their actions; second, mice as heroic role models, inherently good and fearless, and their counterparts, rats, as villains; and third, mice as warriors and knights, with children’s films beginning to question the clear-cut characterization of mice as heroes and rats as villains, hereby negotiating a new understanding of heroism. The representation of heroic mice thus reflects changing morals and expectations and showcases how traditional concepts of heroism are challenged in children’s films.
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Percepts, affects, clinamen: Alienation and entanglement in What Time Is It There? (2001)
By Carmen Xi LIThis article takes as its starting point an uncanny dialectics of alienation, desire and connection that permeates Tsai Ming-liang’s oeuvre. Through approaching the non-intersecting parallel narratives in What Time Is It There? (2001) with the Epicurean and Lucretian notion of clinamen and the Deleuzian concepts of any-space-whatevers, percepts and affects, this article explores the relation between non-intersecting parallel spaces and times and a liminal, spectral cinematic space and time that is created by moving images themselves, which makes the dialectics of alienation and connection possible. This article argues that What Time involves Tsai’s meta-cinematic approach to cinema’s potentiality that enables both characters and spectators to engage directly with moving images and reimagine the world through its spectrality and non-human perception.
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Spare the rod and spoil the pervert: Corporal punishment and the nineteenth century in popular culture
More LessThis article compares corporal punishment in nineteenth-century fiction with corporal punishment in the fictional recreation of the nineteenth century in twentieth-century film and television. It locates in the literature of the actual nineteenth century two creative impulses influencing the dramatic representation of Victorian schooling in modern adaptations. One is the evocation of schools in Victorian works of fiction, which became television and film adaptations. Another impulse is the subversive and covert flagellation literature of the fin de siècle. Both the respectable and the illicit literatures adduce core elements of corporal punishment: the formation of tableaux of bodies; the importance of access to the body; the subversion of what should be an act of correction because the subversion becomes permanent; and the way the restorative becomes aberrant. This article proposes that the popular culture of the twentieth century made overt what had been covert in the nineteenth century. Surveying period drama on British television and film using the 1971 adaptation of Tom Brown’s School Days as a focal point, this article proposes the fusion of the overt and covert of the preceding century. Close readings of popular culture productions show, as do the reactions of contemporary viewers, that they presented corporal punishment which subverted rather than chastised and which perverted rather than restored. These twentieth-century evocations of the previous century were contiguous with debate on the use and abolition of corporal punishment in modern schools. This article weaves together the past and the present, suggesting that classic works made by modern interpreters evoked the past in ways that subverted the present.
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A life in uniform: The mediated images of Queen Elizabeth II, the Rainbow Queen
Authors: Lisa J. Hackett and Jo CoghlanQueen Elizabeth II spent her life in uniform. This article examines what that uniform looked like, what its significance and function was, and how her uniform acted as a discursive textual reference for the institution of the British monarchy. By contextualizing Elizabeth II’s various public uniform before, her early childhood dressed as a twin with Princess Margaret, and the influence of early designers Norman Hartnell and Hardy Aimes, and her later, streamlined wardrobe she co-designed with Angela Kelly, this article provides a framework within which to understand how the fashion of Elizabeth II contributed to public understanding of her, but more so, of the institution of the British monarchy as represented by mediated images of her and her reign.
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The Bondi Mermaids, Lyall Randolph and Bondi Beach 1960–2023
More LessThis article focuses on two aspects of popular culture. Principally, the article presents a history of a popular sculpture erected at Australia’s Bondi Beach in 1960. The narrative follows the genesis of the work, its removal, and subsequent attempts to restore the sculpture at different locations on Bondi Beach and in the adjacent Bondi Park. Based on archival research and material from the popular press, the article offers the first thorough account of the sculpture, highlighting debates around its form, its popularity with local residents, the often-overlooked significance of the work as a tourist attraction, and decades-long efforts to restore the work. Secondly, the article identifies the sculpture’s creator, Lyall Randolph, as an artist who enjoyed popular appeal in Australia at this time, despite never reaching the status of an ‘elite’ artist. Investigating the place of a popular artwork in the cultural and social history of Australia’s most iconic beach, the article contributes to both Bondi and Sydney’s eastern suburbs’ local history and knowledge about popular Australian artists.
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- Book Reviews
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Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste, Jonathan Gray (2021)
Authors: Rachel Berryman, Janey Umback, Luke Webster and Katie EllisReview of: Dislike-Minded: Media, Audiences, and the Dynamics of Taste, Jonathan Gray (2021)
New York: New York University Press, 270 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-47980-998-1, p/bk, AUD 33.75
ISBN 978-1-47980-926-4, h/bk, AUD 200
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Digital Zombies, Undead Stories: Narrative Emergence and Videogames, Lawrence May (2021)
More LessReview of: Digital Zombies, Undead Stories: Narrative Emergence and Videogames, Lawrence May (2021)
London: Bloomsbury Academic, 264 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-50136-354-2, h/bk, AUD 162
ISBN 978-1-50137-487-6, p/bk, AUD 53.99
ISBN 978-1-50136-354-9, e-book, AUD 43.19
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Teen Witches: Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture, Miranda Corcoran (2022)
More LessReview of: Teen Witches: Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture, Miranda Corcoran (2022)
Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 256 pp.,
ISBN 978-1-78683-892-6, p/bk, AUD 57
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