This article explores how the current gender politics, and especially negotiations of gender inequality, gender violence and sexual harassment via the #MeToo movement, impact audience perception of David Mamet’s film adaptation Oleanna (1994). How does the meaning of Oleanna transform in the era of #MeToo? Sexual harassment and abuse have gained particular visibility in the West in 2017, through multiple stories posted on Twitter and other social media. The #MeToo movement emphasizes that frequently women are used as sexual objects by men who are in power and that women are perpetually denied power as such. The movement also foregrounds gender inequality as a serious, global issue. This article examines how watching Oleanna today impacts the viewer’s perception of gender inequality, including in academia, as well as how the film reshapes the meanings of gender, sexual politics and power in the era of #MeToo. The article uses Oleanna as a popular culture text through which the current negotiations of gender equality can be taught and women’s subjugation recognized.
This article follows the transformation of Estella into Cruella de Vil from the movie Cruella, directed by Craig Gillespie, from a screenplay by Dana Fox and Tony McNamara, and a story by Aline Brosh McKenna, Kelly Marcel and Steve Zissis. This transformative process is analysed through two perspectives. The first one is the sociocultural and political background of London in the 1970s, during the rise of the punk aesthetic and its anti-elite subversive resistance ideology. The second interpretative line requires the theoretical background from the book Skin Shows: Gothic Horror and the Technology of Monsters by Jack Halberstam – extraordinary academic work focused on analysing the political, social and economic technologies and fears that are in the background of the production of the monstrous body. Through the analysis, I will also refer to the work of Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin, Jacques Lacan, etc. These two interpretative lines – the more general political and ideological technologies for producing the monster and the particular sociopolitical context in which the character Estella/Cruella is struggling – have proven equally important in the process of unravelling the societal, cultural and economic nets that create the monster, casting it out as a threat, but also in showing its potential to build a new system of power, that is a form of compromise between the former power and the resistance.
Jomo Menmo, the yogini of Cherku village, her disciple Mingma Yangzi and the goddess Palden Lhamo are three fictional female characters in the video game Cursed Mountain (2009, Sproing Interactive and Deep Silver Vienna). They play a key role in the rescue mission undertaken by Eric Simmons on the cursed mountain of Chomolonzo. This article aims to analyse the female characters of this game, their role, intention and place in Eric’s adventure. The actions of various characters are explained through some terms present in Chöd Buddhism. The relationship between the hypotext, the hypertext and urban folklore is also briefly explained. The methods of analysis and synthesis should help to better understand the role of the female characters in this game and how they are framed in the storyline.
Hayao Miyazaki, the acclaimed Studio Ghibli director, has long been known for crafting complex portraits of women and girls in his films. Arguably, the most popular and compelling of these characters is Princess Mononoke’s self-determining San, a monstrous woman who has attracted scholarly attention in work from scholars like Rayna Denison. However, a more overlooked figure in Miyazaki’s pantheon of female characters is Ponyo, the ningyo star of the titular film who transforms into a human and causes a spectacular tsunami in Miyazaki’s reinterpretation of Hans Christian Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’. In this sense, Ponyo is a fascinating re-evaluation of this fairy tale character, altered from a symbol of pubescent curiosity and feminine irresponsibility to a powerful figure that serves as a rare female example of the feral child in fiction (Brodski 2019). In doing this, Miyazaki transforms the character into a feminist symbol of girlhood joy and agency, diverging from conventional male depictions of feral children. This article examines the history of the fictional feral child and Ponyo’s deviation from this tradition, particularly in the context of animation and Ghibli’s own oeuvre. Utilizing narratological theories and aspects of adaptation studies, this work seeks to position Ponyo as an especially disruptive figure in the Ghibli canon, with a feminine trajectory all her own.
This research aims to explore the relationship between the film La Sinfónica de los Andes (2020), directed by legendary Colombian documentarist Marta Rodríguez, and the folkloric practices of the Nasa, an Indigenous community located in the south-western Andes mountains of Colombia. The film has a relevant presence of female reflection through Nasa women who work to protect their culture, defend their native language, vindicate the value of working on the land and resist the Colombian armed conflict that significantly affects this part of the country. This documentary summarizes the anthropological work that Rodríguez has carried out for more than 50 years in this region and her cinematic observation of folkloric practices in these populations. This qualitative research includes a film analysis of the documentary and an in-depth interview with Marta Rodriguez, where she expresses her main motivations, as well as her narrative and cultural concerns in making this film.
This research investigates the spectrum of female representation and the narrative trajectories of female characters in five influential Asian films: two Chinese films, Ang Lee’s (2000) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Jia Zhangke’s (2013) A Touch of Sin; two Korean films, Park Chan-wook’s Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (2005) and The Handmaiden (2016); and one Taiwanese film, Yang Ya-che’s (2017) The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful. Through comparative film analysis, this interdisciplinary study examines how these films portray female agency, resilience and societal roles, offering critical insights into how Asian cinema both challenges and reinforces traditional gender norms. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon explores the tension between physical prowess and gender expectations, reflecting the conflict between personal freedom and cultural constraints. The Handmaiden disrupts conventional depictions of female sexuality, presenting a radical challenge to gender norms through its layered narrative. Sympathy for Lady Vengeance investigates the complexities of victimhood and empowerment, while The Bold, the Corrupt, and the Beautiful delves into power dynamics and corruption, revealing female agency within morally compromised environments. Lastly, A Touch of Sin critiques societal inequalities, focusing on women’s resilience against systemic injustice. This study illuminates the evolving landscape of female representation in Asian cinema, contributing to broader discussions on gender, culture and narrative within film and cultural studies.
This study examines contemporary interpretations of the ‘walled-up woman’ topos within south-east European folklore, focusing on the motif of foundation sacrifice. Analysing cultural perceptions surrounding Rada’s Bridge in Kratovo, North Macedonia, and the Kadin Bridge in Nevestino, Bulgaria, the research highlights how these structures symbolize the sacrificial role of women in overcoming communal crises. The Kadin Bridge is viewed through its supposed maternal healing abilities, aiding fertility and nursing, whereas Rada’s Bridge is associated with a curse demanding continuous sacrifices, linked to cyclical accidents and the legend of Rada. This article explores the integration of these beliefs into local culture, reflecting on their significance in contemporary society and their role in perpetuating ancient sacrificial motifs.
For many years, Black female representation of women in mainstream movies has been lacklustre at best. Most Black female leads have been misconstrued as one-dimensional, stereotypical beings portrayed for the world to see. The decade of 2010–20 proves to be pivotal for cinematic portrayals of Black female leads. A narrative thematic analysis is used to examine Black female lead characters represented in romantic relationships. Fifteen films were chosen in the genres of romantic comedy and romantic drama. Stereotypes are found to still exist. Yet, the relationships of the characters are nuanced, and movies provide more in-depth development for Black women characters than seen in the past and offer more variances of romantic relationships that better reflect those actually existing in the real world. Finding love is not without its obstacles; however, Black female leads tend to still find a Hollywood happy ending.
This article aims to describe how historical characters are represented in cinema through the case of Hypatia of Alexandria in the film Ágora by Alejandro Amenábar (2009). After delving into the debates about the verisimilitude and authenticity of the words-and-sandals films, the film is analysed considering its production context and its aesthetic line to determine how the vindication of women is articulated in history and popular culture. Moreover, the case study is presented as a paradigm of the uses of historical cinema as it is linked to the present. Finally, it concludes with the understanding of the filmmakers’ creative licences in commercial movies in order to obtain historical films more appealing for the audiences.
Nowadays, the spectator lives surrounded by television series in which increasingly complex, depressing and denouncing themes proliferate. About this, the Netflix hit Squid Game (2021) is a clear representation of a mass culture increasingly virtuous in staging, as well as more horrifying, preachy and sensationalist. Based on the observation of the phenomenon that the series has meant, narrative content analysis has been carried out in which we have sought to find evidence of how mainstream culture continues to popularize and stylize audio-visual abjection in the context of the third golden age of television and the fascination with the plots of torture porn or postmodern cinema of cruelty. The results show that Squid Game is a faithful product of its time: as a current prestige series, it is dark, depressing, pessimistic and has an artistic aura without neglecting entertainment and explores human complexity in themes such as suicide, genocide and violence.
This article focuses on the recent Russian and Serbian pop-political entanglement. Russians usually rely on hard-power elements like military, energy and economics, but in the last several years they became active as sport club sponsors, telecommunication provider’s partners and film producers. The article examines the latter phenomenon of increasing presence of Russian characters within Serbian media culture, whether it is domestic, Russian or American production, like in the case of Stranger Things, where a Serbian actor Nikola Đuričko plays a Russian smuggler. The central figure though is young actor Miloš Biković, hired many times by Russian film producers in the last decade. His film The Balkan Line (2019) is examined in this article as a representative of Russian soft-power influence as well as their geopolitical stance. The Balkan Shadows (2017–present) and Stranger Things (2016–present) are analysed as pro-western counterparts in this superpower struggle within Serbian media culture.
The timing of Matt Reeves’s The Batman (2022) situated the film as a symbol of and response to the social troubles that resulted from the political unrest in 2020 and 2021, presenting solution-driven rhetoric amidst the numerous public crises in American discourse and identity. Captured and represented in his opening prologue speech in juxtaposition to his rhetorical culmination speech, Batman’s orations mirror his own arc and the politically prescribed reawakening of confidence in political figures and institutions. Paralleling his addresses, the evolution of Batman’s excessive violence when he initially works under the identity of ‘Vengeance’, compared to his subsequent performance as a first responder at the end of the film, serves as a rhetoric of redemption for first responders. Multiple scenes focus on Batman’s learning to recognize humans’ need for compassion as he becomes a student of social progress. Working as a unifying symbol of a diverse leader, Gotham’s newly elected mayor, Bella Reál, simultaneously offers a vision for transitioning away from leaders associated with racist and sexist discourse. With Batman’s rhetorical culmination and transformation into an emergency rescuer, The Batman serves as unifying verbal and visual discourse in response to contemporary political unrest.
The proliferation of political memes in recent years allows us to assume that they are a new tool of political communication and that social networks increase the possibilities for civil society to express opinions and intervene in the debate on matters of public interest. This article aims to examine the memes that have been disseminated on Twitter since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in South Africa in the wake of the president’s speeches to the nation to discover whether one can speak of a political rhetoric in memes and their argumentation. To this end, the research uses a qualitative-quantitative approach to classify the taxonomy of memes according to their content, combining the thematic classification of memes and the typology of images in digital discourse to discover the existence of the use of popular political rhetoric. The final sample comprises 351 memes, and the analysis shows that they used humour as a means of escape rather than as an effective way of sending political messages. Thus, the results reflect the existence of a resignification of popular culture that transcends memes as persuasive elements based on the inertia of popular rhetoric in contemporary political communication.
Life is Strange is a modern classic of storytelling in games that allows players to make consequential choices at the level of action as well as at the level of narrative. But does it also allow players to play as their authentic selves, or does it constrain them within frameworks of ethics that are assumed by its authors? This study uses an approach that combines elements of ludology, the focus on games as systems that are altered by players through a mechanistic interface, and the application of structuralist narratology. The latter allows us to textually analyse Life is Strange as a case study of a progression game with emergence characteristics, in which mechanics are treated as functional units of narrative. In addition, we draw from a unique quantitative source. Every choice made by players of Life is Strange is recorded and available to see in the public domain. This allows us to compare the narrative structure encoded into the game at the level of action, with the choices players made at the level of narrative. The outcome shows that players subverted hegemonic expectations, within affordances created for them by the game developers, demonstrating an unexpected level of player agency.
This article discusses utopian facets of advertisements and popular cultural products by employing the Blochian formulation of utopia. Grounded in Marx’s theory of alienation, the article asserts that the people encounter numerous socio-economic and emotional deprivations in the capitalist social order. By generating images of an alternative and better future where these deprivations are eliminated, advertisements and popular cultural products achieve a utopian function. Yet this utopian function remains an abstract utopia since it is not equipped with a concrete historical contextualization offered by Marxist dialectic. The discussion is backed by a succinct review of certain video advertisements and pop songs produced by Turkish cultural industries.
In today’s media landscape, concepts like Americanization and professionalization of politics are evolving, driven by technological advancements and social media usage. The internet has transformed political communication, emphasizing emotional appeal and user response, leading to a rise in politainment and celebrity politicians. This shift towards ‘pop politics’ blurs the line between entertainment and information, with virality and humour playing key roles. This study conducts a semiotic-narrative analysis of unofficial social media profiles of Spanish political representatives, examining their language, content, and usage patterns resembling fan communities. Parodic Twitter profiles of prominent figures like Pedro Sánchez, Yolanda Díaz and Isabel Díaz Ayuso, along with Ada Colau's Instagram account, are analyzed. The findings reveal a trend towards employing politainment strategies to engage social media users, fostering emotional connections akin to non-political fan communities.
‘Fulgora’ sets aside identity politics to think through the production of gender and sexuality through a medium-based approach. It considers how gender and sexuality are communicated through the formal resonances and materiality of film and video. As a video artist and curator my practice critiques established ways of looking and classificatory logics. I understand gender as constituted in relationality and through shifting social worlds. This article outlines my latest curatorial project in which I critically embrace the figure of the fulgora (a species of winged insect) to generate idiosyncratic taxonomies that disrupt the presumed epistemological and ontological foundations of gender and sexuality.
Through a discussion of three YouTube vlogs by trans men, I am suggesting that the seemingly simple division between men who have penises (cis) and men who do not (trans) – as long as genital surgery has not been obtained – is materially more muddled than generally culturally considered, as well as to a great extent discursively created and maintained. Instead of understanding trans men’s bodies through lack and deficiency, I consider the trans penis as a part of body-reflexive practices of masculinity, a significant part of building one’s trans male self. I am thus arguing for a change in how we understand what a penis is, or what counts as a penis, as well as in how we see and understand trans men’s bodies.
Critically acclaimed transnational (United States/United Kingdom) drama Succession (2017–23) utilizes classical references combined (arguably juxtaposed) with queerness and insecurities about masculinity/-ties and orientation within its satirical representation of corporate culture. While connecting quality television to British period dramas and queerness, especially on HBO, is relatively common, the series uses phallic discourses not only to illustrate and satirize the toxic masculinity present in its pseudo-royal corporate culture but also to show the complexities of a queer ‘will-they/won’t-they’ couple – Tom Wambsgans (Matthew Macfadyen) and Greg Hirsch (Nicholas Braun) – within this environment. This article will engage in a close reading of representative scenes from the first three series in order to analyse the variety of phallic and other gendered or sexualized discourses within the series which represent contemporary sociocultural anxieties over masculinity/-ties and power as connected with genitalia, castration and/or orientation. This will include discussion and historical contextualization of castration with regard to queerness and different modes of (non-procreative) power, the analogy made to Nero and his castrated slave/spouse Sporus in which the title quote appears in the series as a declaration of love, and discussion of transgression, power and the series’ pseudo-royal court/corporation. The article will illustrate how the series utilizes these discourses to acquire and express the distinction required for quality TV while simultaneously interrogating, satirizing and critiquing the toxicity of contemporary corporate culture with regard to gender and orientation.
The aim of the present study is to analyse the media representation of gender dysphoria in trans* people in two popular films – The Danish Girl and Girl. Specifically, we focus on the role of genitalia in media representation of the trans* experience through the lens of phallocentrism. In the case of Lili and Lara, the trans* female protagonists of the chosen films, their trans* experience is, as we argue, reduced to their relationship towards their genitalia. Consequently, such a portrayal fully corresponds to the prevailing paradigm of transnormativity in media representation of trans* people.
