1,116 research outputs found
Political Emotions: Civil Religion and Melodrama in Spielberg's Lincoln
No full textThis essay focuses on how Spielberg's film engages with and contributes to the myth of Lincoln as a super-natural figure, a saint more than a hero or great statesman, while anchoring his moral authority in the sentimental rhetoric of the domestic sphere. It is this use of the melodramatic mode, linking the familial space with the national through the trope of the victim-hero, which is the essay's main concern. With Tony Kushner, author of Angels in America, as scriptwriter, it is perhaps not surprising that melodrama is the operative mode in the film. One of the issues that emerge from this analysis is how the film updates melodrama for a contemporary audience in order to minimize what could be perceived as manipulative sentimental devices, observing for most of the film an aesthetic of relative sobriety and realism. In the last hour, and especially the final minutes of the film, melodramatic conventions are deployed in full force and infused with hagiographic iconography to produce a series of emotionally charged moments that create a perfect union of American Civil Religion and classical melodrama. The cornerstone of both cultural paradigms, as deployed in this film, is death: Lincoln's at the hands of an assassin, and the Civil War soldiers', poignantly depicted at key moments of the film. Finally, the essay shows how film melodrama as a genre weaves together the private and the public, the domestic with the national, the familial with the military, and links pathos to politics in a carefully choreographed narrative of sentimentalized mythopoesis
Gustav Hasford's Gothic Poetics of Demystification
No full textGustav Hasford is the author of two important Vietnam War novels: The Short-Timers (1979), which was adapted by Stanley Kubrick into Full Metal Jacket (1987), and The Phantom Blooper (1990), its sequel. Relentlessly critical of the war that destroyed his generation, Hasford uses an array of Gothic themes, tropes and figures - such as the werewolf, vampire, and ghost - to describe the transformation of men into monsters that begins with basic training and can never be reversed. These and other Gothic devices allow Hasford to demystify and disenchant the Vietnam War, to strip it of euphemisms and official myths, and to reveal the violence that lays beneath. Unlike other well-known writers of the same generation, such as Michael Herr and Chris O'Brien, Hasford eschews postmodern techniques in order to pursue a rhetorical strategy of horror combined with black humor. The results are two novels of extraordinary ferocity, critical acumen and wit. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the specifically Gothic reading experience of ethical dilemma - a Gothic exercise in judgment - choreographed by both narratives
"I'll Be Whatever Gotham Needs Me to Be": Batman, the Gothic and Popular Culture
No full textThis chapter looks at the place of the Gothic in Batman's history and current revival via the Nolan films. It examines the specificity of comic book characters, which exist in a wide variety of texts, forms and media, and focuses on the way that Batman has oscillated between light and dark versions while always returning to the Gothic as a means of commercial reanimation when the franchise seems to wane
The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic : Gender and Slavery in Nineteenth-Century American Literature
No full textTaking as its point of departure recent insights about the performative¦nature of genre, The Poetics and Politics of the American Gothic¦challenges the critical tendency to accept at face value that gothic¦literature is mainly about fear. Instead, Agnieszka Soltysik Monnet¦argues that the American Gothic, and gothic literature in general,¦is also about judgment: how to judge and what happens when¦judgment is confronted with situations that defy its limits.¦Poe, Hawthorne, Melville, Gilman, and James all shared a concern¦with the political and ideological debates of their time, but tended¦to approach these debates indirectly. Thus, Monnet suggests, while¦slavery and race are not the explicit subject matter of antebellum¦works by Poe and Hawthorne, they nevertheless permeate it through¦suggestive analogies and tacit references. Similarly, Melville, Gilman,¦and James use the gothic to explore the categories of gender and¦sexuality that were being renegotiated during the latter half of the¦century. Focusing on The Fall of the House of Usher, The Marble¦Faun, Pierre, The Turn of the Screw, and The Yellow Wallpaper,¦Monnet brings to bear minor texts by the same authors that further¦enrich her innovative readings of these canonical works. At the same¦time, her study persuasively argues that the Gothic's endurance¦and ubiquity are in large part related to its being uniquely adapted¦to rehearse questions about judgment and justice that continue to¦fascinate and disturb
Envisioning the Ecological Future: Three Perspectives off the Beaten Track
No full textWith few truly hopeful visions currently emerging from mainstream academia or from established science concerning humanity’s collective environmental outlook, it might be necessary to go off the beaten track in order to see how we can maintain a sense of hope while realistically preparing for the gradual erosion of the world as we know it, therefore also leaving some psychological and emotional room for a sense of the tragic. This essay considers three lesser-known but, in our eyes, important contemporary perspectives on the ecological future: Ernest Callenbach’s “ecotopia,” John Michael Greer’s “catabolic descent” and William deBuys’s “hospice for Earth”—all three of which aim to challenge the currently still dominant focus on the binary of “progress or apocalypse” that flows from modern thought. We critically examine these visions and argue that, when combined, they offer an approach to the ecological future that is both more realistic and more inspiring. In essence, Callenbach’s ecotopian vision still has significant traction—and an almost “erotic” appeal—today, but needs to be adapted to contemporary ecological realities through Greer’s and deBuys’s insights into decline, grief and the tragic
“Did You See Last Night’s Episode of Ecotopia?”: How a TV Series Could Help Move Climate Action Forward. A Conversation with Elizabeth Watson
No full text“The Paradise of How It Has to Be”: Writing About the Future of the Earth in a Time of Decline. A Conversation with William deBuys
No full textEcology and Literature: From Fear to Hope in Stories about Social Change, the Climate Crisis and Consumption
No full textErnest Callenbach's 1975 novel Ecotopia and Mbolo Mbue’s more contemporary How Beautiful We Were (2021) illustrate how literature can have an impact on people and their relationship with their environment, including their consumption habits. Scientific facts have not been effective in changing the narratives of infinite growth and unbridled consumerism that underpin the neoliberal paradigm. Fictional stories, on the other hand, show how things can be by creating worlds in which they already exist. This is far more persuasive than facts, which may be accepted rationally, but do not necessarily move the reader emotionally and behaviorally. Thanks to its detailed ‘green’ policy proposals, Ecotopia is considered an inspiration for the first European Green Party in Germany and forerunner of the ‘solarpunk’ art movement that is dedicated to imagining a sustainable and socially just future.Cite as: Soltysik Monnet, Agnieszka (2023): Ecology and Literature: From Fear to Hope in Stories about Social Change, the Climate crisis and Consumption, in: Schweizerische Akademie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaften: Wege zu einem nachhaltigen Konsum | Vers une consommation durable, (Swiss Academies Communications, 18, 5), pp. 161-167. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.817911
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