Journal of the Austrian Association for American Studies (JAAAS)
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Videogames in Horror Movies: Remediation, Metalepsis, Interface Effects, and Fear of the Digital
Full text linkThis article discusses four movies in which transgressions between gameworlds and diegetic realities take center stage: Brainscan (1994), Stay Alive (2006), Livescream (2018), and Choose or Die (2022). By exploring the interactions between videogame worlds and "reality," these movies do not simply project anxieties onto digital games, but rather reflect on media-specific affordances of videogames, inquire into discourses surrounding videogames, and explore game cultures. I am particularly interested in the strategies and aesthetics of remediating videogames in the horror films and the conceptualizations of videogames and game cultures thus produced, as well as the larger cultural fears and anxieties (and hopes and dreams) that these representations evoke
Childfree Female Characters: Narrating Pronatalism
Full text linkOn June 24, 2022, the United States Supreme Court officially overturned the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision thus ending the constitutional right to abortion. Much of the subsequent mainstream media narrative has focused on the fact that this decision does not even carve out exceptions for victims of rape and incest, which, while important and horrifying, diverts attention away from the actual issue: a person\u27s right to decide not to give birth for any reason. This reframing of the abortion debate around the most extreme cases is clearly informed by a pronatalist ideology that is still pervasive in US culture. However, it is not just the news media that frequently buys into this pronatalist narrative by evading the inclusion of, if not actively undermining, a woman\u27s right to be childfree. Depictions of abortions are rare in popular fictional narratives, be it in television, film, or literature, and so are voluntarily childless female characters, not only but particularly when it comes to lead characters. This introduction to the special issue on childfree female characters in fictional narratives frames the issue of childfreeness, i.e., voluntary childlessness, in the still dominant pronatalist ideology and examines some stereotypical depictions in recent US-American television series
Shallow Narcissist or Sad Spinster? Childless Female Characters in Contemporary Popular Film and Television
Full text linkThe article charts the way childless women are portrayed in contemporary US-American popular film and television. I argue that these representations can be summarized as two distinct figures: The shallow narcissist and the sad spinster. Both figures are unworthy of recognition. The shallow narcissist refers to the voluntarily childless woman, who is being depicted as selfish, childish, and manipulative; the sad spinster refers to the involuntarily childless woman, who is depicted as asexual, lonely, sad, and pathetic. Both figures are founded in the discourse of "reproductive futurism" (Edelman) and teach us that only a child can give meaning to women\u27s lives. Without a child, there is no proper identity and no fulfilling relations or kinships. I also point out, though, that there are exceptions, such as Tanya McQuoid from The White Lotus and Diane Lockhart from The Good Fight, that bring important nuances to the prevailing stereotypes
"Damned If We Do, Damned If We Don\u27t": Ageist Narratives of Reproductive Control
Full text linkWomen who grow up in Western societies are confronted with media, cultural, and literary narratives conveying the notion that motherhood is "natural" and an integral part of womanhood from a very young age. Thus, having a child is frequently presented as the only option for adult women. Nancy Felipe Russo calls this "the motherhood mandate," which problematically suggests that every woman wants to become a mother and that this "is a woman\u27s raison d\u27etre" (144). The normative conflation of womanhood with the obligatory assumption of motherhood is ingrained in North American society and reinforces rigid gender norms while exposing hegemonic reproductive expectations. These norms also extend into efforts to control reproduction and produce condemning, frequently ageist narratives that stigmatize those whose reproductive choices do not comply with heteropatriarchal norms. Therefore, this article proposes that age is a crucial lever of reproductive control and examines how ageist facets of such controlling efforts affect characters\u27 lives in Brit Bennett\u27s The Mothers and Sheila Heti\u27s Motherhood. Based on the reproductive choices in The Mothers and Motherhood, I will argue that the ageist reproductive norms and concomitant stigmatizing narratives aim to exert reproductive control, on the one hand, by suggesting that young women are damned if they become pregnant, mothers, or have an abortion, and, on the other, by condemning adult women who decide to remain childfree
The Abortion Road Trip Film and the Pronatalist Discourse in the Post-Roe v. Wade US
Full text linkWith the overturn of the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, which protected the constitutional right to abortion for almost 50 years, women in America are now faced with extreme difficulties when seeking an abortion. Given this dramatic pronatalist shift that seems only to be getting worse, more and more women will now have to travel through "abortion deserts" in order to seek safe and legal abortion care. Cinema has sought to mediate the troubles and struggles of women "on the road" to safe abortion. Thus, in recent years, we have watched a surge in the representation of abortion within the realm of the road-trip film genre in US-American cinema. Since 2015, several films, such as Grandma (2015), Little Woods (2018), Never Rarely Sometimes Always(2020), Unpregnant (2020), and Plan B (2021), have tackled this issue. Interestingly, only one of those films was directed/written by a male individual, highlighting the way female filmmakers are currently reshaping reproductive health narratives. Additionally, three of these films, namely Grandma, Unpregnant, and Plan B, also fall under the comedy-drama genre, particularly the road trip-buddy comedy genre. This paper aims to explore how the road-trip film genre, which has featured predominantly male characters, is now helping women to share their stories and gain more visibility regarding reproductive rights and how comedy is being used to subvert the overtly dramatic representation of abortion that enhances the pronatalist ideology in most film and television narratives
Jesmyn Ward: New Critical Essays. Edited by Sheri-Marie Harrison, Arin Keeble, and Maria Elena Torres-Quevedo. Edinburgh UP, 2023, 368 pp.
Full text linkKarla Rohová reviews Sheri-Marie Harrison\u27s, Arin Keeble\u27s, and Maria Elena Torres-Quevedo\u27s Jesmyn Ward: New Critical Essays (Edinburgh UP, 2023)
Motherhood as Narrative: Sheila Heti’s Wrestling with the Burden of Choice
Full text linkBurdened with the choice whether to become a mother or not, the protagonist of Sheila Heti\u27s autofictional work Motherhood develops a thoroughgoing critique of the notion of having to make that choice in the first place, encompassing philosophical musings on the impossibility of controlling one\u27s existence by making decisions and astute commentary on social pressures on women to fulfill expected roles. It identifies pro-natalism as a culturally pervasive narrative, which is subtle but rigid in its exclusionary binarism and consequent pressure and divisiveness it imposes upon women. Heti dismantles the narratives that make up the concept of motherhood and redefines it as an inclusive, non-divisive, non-coercive concept. Maintaining its relational basis, she reverses its temporal trajectory and suggests the relationship with the mother as its central concern. Mobilizing the creative potential of writing, she rewrites the narrative of motherhood as the reconstruction of ancestral bonds between women through literature. Via this reversal, she undermines the one-directional conception of motherhood and allows for the term\u27s inclusiveness of all women. In this way, she deflates the notion of decisional compulsion and so creates a spirit of egalitarianism and tolerance from which all mothers, non-mothers, and non-non-mothers can benefit
Before Modernism: Inventing American Lyric. By Virginia Jackson. Princeton UP, 2023, 304 pp.
Full text linkLena E. Leßlhumer reviews Virginia Jackson\u27s Before Modernism: Inventing American Lyric (Princeton UP, 2023)
Digital America: Introduction
Full text linkThis introduction to the special issue "Digital America" sketches some of the ways in which "the digital" has influenced both American culture and American studies scholarship before summarizing the contributions to this issue