Journals @ KPU (Kwantlen Polytechnic University)
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Hollywood's Portraits of the Artist as a Kept Man
Full text linkSince the early 19th Century, the male artist has been both celebrated as a heroic figure who represents self-expression and freedom from traditional work and a figure whose financial dependence of a patron undermines his masculinity. In the USA after World War Two, men faced increasing suburbanization and consumerism, and often longed for the rebellious freedom represented by artists like Jackson Pollock, Ernest Hemingway, and Jack Kerouac. But in the post-war Cold War culture, those who rebelled were threatened with the label of communist or homosexual. Focusing on three films made after World War Two--Humoresque (1946), Sunset Boulevard (1950), and An American in Paris (1951)--the article explores the portrayal of the male artist as a "kept man," and discusses visual and narrative elements in each film that work to reinscribe traditional gender roles. Specifically, each film uses a love triangle between the artist, an older, wealthy, female patron who threatens the artist's masculinity and artistic integrity, and a younger, more traditionally feminine woman who, by the end of the film, will help the male artist reassert his traditional masculine role. 
The Influence of Influencers: The Impact of Online Political Influencer Content on Political Affiliation
Full text linkPolitical content on the Internet has increased dramatically over the last decade and has a demonstrated effect on the habits and beliefs of voters. We examined whether and to what extent content created by Online Political Influencers (OPIs) is effective at influencing the political affiliation of online audiences and whether this depends on the political affiliation or rhetorical mode (debate or video essay) characterizing their content. Participants (N = 302) were recruited from a variety of online platforms. We found that most participants had experienced a small change in political affiliation since watching OPI content and found evidence for an interaction between rhetorical mode and the size and direction of political affiliation change. People who experienced a significant change to the right were more likely to report watching debate only or mostly debate content
The Ghostly Treasure of Rome: A Close Reading of Lavinia in William Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus
Full text linkA close reading of Lavinia in Titus Andronicus that highlights the ways in which she is objectified and dehumanized in the play
Batman and Sherlock Holmes: The Skills, Morals, and Villains of Fiction’s Definitive Heroic Detectives
Full text linkA comparative examination of the unique skill sets of two famous fictional detectives, Batman and Sherlock Holmes
Anything but Human: Alienation, Robotization, and Capitalistic Consequence in Burning Vision and R.U.R.
Full text linkA consideration of the dire consequences of capitalism for the wage-labourer in plays by Karel Čapek and Marie Clement
Bodily Boundaries: Space, Place, and the Self in Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X
Full text linkTracks the ways in which slam poetry constructs both places and selves in Elizabeth Acevedo’s The Poet X
The Many Voices of Home Fire
Full text linkThis study analyzes the multiple narrative point of views of Kamila Shamsie's Home Fire, a modern retelling of Antigone that deals with post-9/11 racism in Britain. Expanding on the topics of internal and external racism experienced by each character, we introduce the theory of re-orientalism, originally proposed by Lau and Mendes, and consider how each perspective reflects this concept. Further, this study highlights how different point of views change the way the reader understands the story.
This essay won the 2023 Intersectional Social Justice Essay Prize (1st year category
Southwest Popular/American Culture Association Conference
Full text linkA report on the 45th annual Southwest Popular/American Culture Association (SWPACA) Conferenc
Touching the Millennium: The Nostalgic Impulse of Tsai Ming-liang’s The Hole
Full text linkBy taking a close look at the forms and cinematic strategies of Tsai Ming-liang’s 1998 film The Hole, this essay intends to identify the nostalgic subtext that emerges from the tensions generated by different temporal/diegetic levels of representation. Using proper citation mechanisms, the film dialogues with the memory of the century that ends, while projecting into the near future–the overly symbolic year 2000–the anxieties of the present, ultimately proposing a way out through human unmediated connection. Relying on scene analysis, the text will invoke thinkers from cultural studies, film studies, politics, history, philosophy and sociology as well as objects from the visual arts and fiction literature, to create an ample mesh of references that can help contextualize Tsai’s gesture as a filmmaker of its time