Author: R.C. Neighbors Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 0786488018 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 294
Book Description
Through spaceships, aliens, ray guns and other familiar trappings, science fiction uses the future (and sometimes the past) to comment on current social, cultural and political ideologies; the same is true of science fiction in children's film and television. This collection of essays analyzes the confluences of science fiction and children's visual media, covering such cultural icons as Flash Gordon, the Jetsons and Star Wars, as well as more contemporary fare like the films Wall-E, Monsters vs. Aliens and Toy Story. Collectively, the essays discover, applaud and critique the hidden--and not-so-hidden--messages presented on our children's film and TV screens.
Author: John R. Ziegler Publisher: Springer Nature ISBN: 3030318818 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 269
Book Description
This book assembles ten scholarly examinations of the politics of representation in the groundbreaking animated children’s television series Steven Universe. These analyses address a range of representational sites and subjects, including queerness, race, fandom, colonialism, and the environment, and provide an accessible foundation for further scholarship. The introduction contextualizes Steven Universe in the children’s science-fiction and anime traditions and discusses the series’ crucial mechanic of fusion. Subsequent chapters probe the fandom’s expressions of queer identity, approach the series’ queer force through the political potential of the animated body, consider the unequal privilege of different female characters, and trace the influence of anime director Kunihiko Ikuhara. Further chapters argue that Ronaldo allows satire of multiple media forms, focus on Onion as a surrealist trickster, and contemplate cross-species hybridity and consent. The final chapters concentrate on background art in connection with ecological and geological narratives, adopt a decolonial perspective on the Gems’ legacy, and interrogate how the tension between personal and cultural narratives constantly recreates memory.
Author: Marek Oziewicz Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 135020336X Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 292
Book Description
The first study to look at the intersection of the discourse of the Anthropocene within the two highly influential storytelling modes of fantasy and myth, this book shows the need for stories that articulate visions of a biocentric, ecological civilization. Fantasy and myth have long been humanity's most advanced technologies for collective dreaming. Today they are helping us adopt a biocentric lens, re-kin us with other forms of life, and assist us in the transition to an ecological civilization. Deliberately moving away from dystopian narratives toward anticipatory imaginations of sustainable futures, this volume blends chapters by top scholars in the fields of fantasy, myth, and Young Adult literature with personal reflections by award-winning authors and illustrators of books for young audiences, including Shaun Tan, Jane Yolen, Katherine Applegate and Joseph Bruchac. Chapters cover the works of major fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Prachett, J. K. Rowling, China Miéville, Barbara Henderson, Jeanette Winterson, John Crowley, Richard Powers, George R. R. Martin and Kim Stanley Robinson. They range through narratives set in the UK, USA, Nigeria, Ghana, Pacific Islands, New Zealand and Australia. Across the chapters, fantasy and myth are framed as spaces where visions of sustainable futures can be designed with most detail and nuance. Rather than merely criticizing the ecocidal status quo, the book asks how mythic narratives and fantastic stories can mobilize resistance around ideas necessary for the emergence of an ecological civilization.
Author: Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi ISBN: 1496837371 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 228
Book Description
In 1940, Hans Augusto Rey and Margret Rey built two bikes, packed what they could, and fled wartime Paris. Among the possessions they escaped with was a manuscript that would later become one of the most celebrated books in children’s literature—Curious George. Since his debut in 1941, the mischievous icon has only grown in popularity. After being captured in Africa by the Man in the Yellow Hat and taken to live in the big city’s zoo, Curious George became a symbol of curiosity, adventure, and exploration. In Curious about George: Curious George, Cultural Icons, Colonialism, and US Exceptionalism, author Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre argues that the beloved character also performs within a narrative of racism, colonialism, and heroism. Using theories of colonial and rhetorical studies to explain why cultural icons like Curious George are able to avoid criticism, Schwartz-DuPre investigates the ways these characters operate as capacious figures, embodying and circulating the narratives that construct them, and effectively argues that discourses about George provide a rich training ground for children to learn US citizenship and become innocent supporters of colonial American exceptionalism. By drawing on postcolonial theory, children’s criticisms, science and technology studies, and nostalgia, Schwartz-DuPre’s critical reading explains the dismissal of the monkey’s 1941 abduction from Africa and enslavement in the US, described in the first book, by illuminating two powerful roles he currently holds: essential STEM ambassador at a time when science and technology is central to global competitiveness and as a World War II refugee who offers a “deficient” version of the Holocaust while performing model US immigrant. Curious George’s twin heroic roles highlight racist science and an Americanized Holocaust narrative. By situating George as a representation of enslaved Africans and Holocaust refugees, Curious about George illuminates the danger of contemporary zero-sum identity politics, the colonization of marginalized identities, and racist knowledge production. Importantly, it demonstrates the ways in which popular culture can be harnessed both to promote colonial benevolence and to present possibilities for resistance.
Author: Rebecca Harrison Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 1911239961 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 112
Book Description
The Empire Strikes Back (1980), the second film in the original Star Wars trilogy, is often cited as the 'best' and most popular Star Wars movie. In her compelling study, Rebecca Harrison draws on previously unpublished archival research to reveal a variety of original and often surprising perspectives on the film, from the cast and crew who worked on its production through to the audiences who watched it in cinemas. Harrison guides readers on a journey that begins with the film's production in 1979 and ends with a discussion about its contemporary status as an object of reverence and nostalgia. She demonstrates how Empire's meaning and significance has continually shifted over the past 40 years not only within the franchise, but also in broader conversations about film authorship, genre, and identity. Offering new insights and original analysis of Empire via its cultural context, production history, textual analysis, exhibition, reception, and post-1980 re-evaluations of the film, the book provides a timely and relevant reassessment of this enduringly popular film.
Author: Debbie Olson Publisher: Springer ISBN: 3319482734 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 237
Book Description
This book explores cultural conceptions of the child and the cinematic absence of black children from contemporary Hollywood film. Debbie Olson argues that within the discourse of children’s studies and film scholarship in relation to the conception of “the child,” there is often little to no distinction among children by race—the “child” is most often discussed as a universal entity, as the embodiment of all things not adult, not (sexually) corrupt. Discussions about children of color among scholars often take place within contexts such as crime, drugs, urbanization, poverty, or lack of education that tend to reinforce historically stereotypical beliefs about African Americans. Olson looks at historical conceptions of childhood within scholarly discourse, the child character in popular film and what space the black child (both African and African American) occupies within that ideal.
Author: Christina Adamou Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 1476648336 Category : Performing Arts Languages : en Pages : 237
Book Description
Online television streaming has radically changed the ways in which programs are produced, disseminated and watched. While the market is largely globalized with some platforms streaming in multiple countries, audiences are fragmented, due to a large number of choices and often solitary viewing. However, streaming gives new life to old series and innovates conventions in genre, narrative and characterization. This edited collection is dedicated to the study of the streaming platforms and the future of television. It includes a plethora of carefully organized and similarly structured chapters in order to provide in-depth yet easily accessible readings of major changes in television. Enriching a growing body of literature on the future of television, essays thoroughly assess the effects new television media have on institutions, audiences and content.
Author: Jessica Getman Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 0429871988 Category : Music Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
The tensions between utopian dreams and dystopian anxieties permeate science fiction as a genre, and nowhere is this tension more evident than in Star Trek. This book breaks new ground by exploring music and sound within the Star Trek franchise across decades and media, offering the first sustained look at the role of music in shaping this influential series. The chapters in this edited collection consider how the aural, visual, and narrative components of Star Trek combine as it constructs and deconstructs the utopian and dystopian, shedding new light on the series’ political, cultural, and aesthetic impact. Considering how the music of Star Trek defines and interprets religion, ideology, artificial intelligence, and more, while also considering fan interactions with the show’s audio, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of music, media studies, science fiction, and popular culture.
Author: Eric Erbacher Publisher: Campus Verlag ISBN: 3593501910 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 249
Book Description
The volume reexamines the trope of the intrusive machine and the regenerative pastoral garden, laid out fifty years ago by Leo Marx in "The Machine in the Garden," one of the founding texts of American Studies. Contributions explore the lasting influence of the trope in American culture and the arts, rereading it as a dialectics where nature is as much technologized as technology is naturalized. They trace this dialectic trope in filmic and literary representations of industrial, bureaucratic, and digital gardens; they explore its function in the aftermath of the civil war, the rural electrification during the New Deal, in landscape art, and in ethnic literatures; and they discuss the historical premises and lasting influence of Leo Marx's seminal study.
Author: R.C. Neighbors
Author: John R. Ziegler
Author: Marek Oziewicz
Author: Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre
Author: Rebecca Harrison
Author: Kieran Tranter
Author: Debbie Olson
Author: Christina Adamou
Author: Jessica Getman
Author: Eric Erbacher