This article analyses the Jurassic Park and Jurassic World franchises through Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom , arguing that the films dramatize a recurring dialectic in which technological freedom generates new forms of domination. Fromm contends that freedom, when experienced as anxiety and insecurity, produces a desire for submission to authority. Reading the two trilogies as distinct cultural formations, the article shows how this dynamic shifts from late-twentieth-century techno-scientific optimism to post-financial crisis anxieties about corporate power and technocratic governance. It argues that the franchise organizes this dialectic through three interrelated mechanisms: commodification, engineered autonomy and structured domination. Dinosaurs are transformed from ecological beings into market assets, then granted limited agency so that responsibility, violence and control can be displaced onto them. Drawing on political theory, critical theory and animal studies, the article situates Fromm’s framework as historically and culturally specific, demonstrating how popular cinema offers crucial insight into contemporary ideologies of freedom, authority and power.
Indigenous women’s filmmaking in Aotearoa is shaped by screen policy frameworks that continue to reflect settler-colonial assumptions about value, authorship and creative legitimacy. Although the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) now offers a commitment to equity through strategies such as Te Rautaki Māori (2018–present), these initiatives frequently operate at a level of symbolic inclusion rather than structural change. Wāhine Māori remain responsible for navigating institutional hierarchies while upholding cultural obligations to community, producing conditions in which participation is permitted but sovereignty is constrained. Waru (2017), the first wāhine Māori written and directed feature fiction film since Mauri (1988), offers a critical intervention into these dynamics. Drawing on mana wāhine scholarship and Indigenous feminist praxis, the analysis examines how Waru ’s collaborative production model of eight single-take segments directed by different Māori women mobilizes relational accountability, collective authorship and care-based leadership. This approach resists market-driven, individualized production norms embedded within the NZFC’s institutional logic and foregrounds storytelling as a culturally located, community-held responsibility. Close analysis of the film’s structure and aesthetics helps to reveal the gap between policy rhetoric and lived creative realities, particularly the ongoing cultural load felt by wāhine Māori. Positioning Waru within wider discussions of popular culture, visual sovereignty and everyday Indigenous resistance, the article argues that Indigenous women are reshaping national cinema through practices that privilege tino rangatiratanga , cultural protocol and community accountability. The findings suggest that meaningful transformation in screen policy requires a redistribution of decision-making power and recognition of Indigenous feminist methodologies as central to the future of Aotearoa’s screen industries.
This article explores how Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) reinterpret madness, trauma and imagination as evolving forms of cultural resistance. It argues that Carroll’s Victorian text anticipates the medicalization of the mind that culminated in the diagnosis of hysteria, transforming the era’s anxieties over moral control and female imagination into acts of creative defiance. Through an examination of nineteenth-century psychological discourse including the works of Bain, Spencer and Sully, this study situates Alice within the intellectual climate that sought to regulate emotion and imagination. It then traces how these discourses re-emerge in Burton’s adaptation, where madness is reframed through a post-traumatic lens. Burton’s Alice returns to Wonderland not as a dreamer but as a survivor, confronting grief, repression and patriarchal expectation through a symbolic psychodrama of integration. By combining feminist theory, trauma studies and adaptation theory, this article argues that both Carroll and Burton construct madness as a language of protest that transforms pathology into empowerment. In doing so, Alice in Wonderland becomes a cultural continuum that charts the shifting boundaries between imagination and insanity, resistance and recovery, from the nineteenth century to the present.
Murdoch Mysteries provides audiences with a spectatorial opportunity to experience crime, corpses and forensic science within a historical setting. Murdoch Mysteries originally began as a book series written by Maureen Jennings spanning 1997–2017. In 2004 the first three books debuted as television movies, and their immediate popularity resulted in the production of a serialized television show in 2008 and is now in its nineteenth season in 2026. While both the books and television forays offer insight into early policing practices, social structures and concepts of deviance, morality and crime, the television series adapts a ‘modern’ approach to hook viewers. For example, Murdoch Mysteries draws on the two ‘stars’ of popular culture – corpses and forensic science – as well as a wide-range of intertextual references to immerse viewers into a fictional historical criminal justice setting. Unlike other crime dramas, Murdoch Mysteries asks audiences to reflect on the power imbalances embedded within the legal, social and political structures present in the late nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries British colonial society and encourages viewers to reflect on whether these imbalances are still evident. This paper explores the Murdoch Mysteries universe to critically explore how crime, criminals, deviance and law enforcement are being portrayed, and thus potentially impacting people’s understandings of these terms.
This article examines food culture in gaming fandoms through the latest two instalments of The Legend of Zelda video game series and its fans and players. Specifically, it explores how food has been integrated into the games, how Zelda players engage with the various food-related features, and how these mediate their gaming, everyday life and fandom experiences. Additionally, the commercialization of Zelda foods is examined to showcase the potential that video game foods have for generating increased revenue and exposure for businesses. Relying on conceptual frameworks of resonance theory, affordances, immersion, projective character, participatory culture and the food meaning diagram (FMD) and drawing on participant observation on social media platforms (Reddit, Instagram, X, Facebook, YouTube), media interviews with game developers and in-depth exploration of the game and its content, I demonstrate how video game foods support players’ passions for gaming, creativity, cultural exchange, self-expression and cooking. Exploring fan experiences both in-game and on social media I describe how they are shaped by the prominent presence of food in the latest Zelda games. The key findings reveal a new and complex kind of a relationship emerging between players and the Zelda franchise grounded in the in-game food cultures and implementation of immersive food-related features.
Review of: Ladies in Arms: Women, Guns, and Feminisms in Contemporary Popular Culture , Teresa Hiergeist and Stefanie Schäfer (eds) (2024) Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag, 322 pp., ISBN 978-3-83766-955-8, p/bk, USD 50.00
Evolving dynamics in the music industry increasingly position social media platforms as a space where promotional labour, audience participation and algorithmic visibility converge. In this shifting promotional landscape, this article investigates how TikTok functions as a co-creative marketing environment through the lens of Taylor Swift’s Red (Taylor’s Version) and the #SwiftTok community. By integrating theories of participatory culture, parasociality and transmedia storytelling, the research evaluates how fan activity bolsters – and at times overtakes – conventional industry-led promotional strategies. Applying Braun and Clarke’s thematic approach, the examines a representative dataset of four TikTok’s spanning the pre-announcement, post-announcement and post-release phases. Specific attention was given to identifying platform-specific fan practices and interpretive norms. Three key dynamics are identified: speculative Easter egg interpretation as audience-led hype-generation; choreographed authenticity as strategic relationship management, and transmedia Easter eggs across media channels as a tactic for extending narrative and promotional lifecycles. Ultimately, these findings highlight a significant shift in promotional paradigms, demonstrating how fan-led produsage on TikTok fundamentally transforms the way visibility, value and ownership are negotiated within the modern music industry.
Review of: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 , Sandfall Interactive (2025) London: Kepler Interactive, USD 49.99
The house-museum at 56 Eden Street, was not only the site of turmoil for author Janet Frame and her siblings, but it also provided a space for voracious reading and the Bronte-like creation of make-believe worlds. 56 Eden Street is now owned and administered by the Janet Frame Eden Street Trust and in better condition than it was during Frame’s childhood in the 1930s and 1940s when it was often unkempt and chaotic due to the family’s straitened circumstances. Opened to the public by Prime Minister Helen Clark in 2003, through the ceremonial act of cutting Frame’s typewriter ribbon, the house offers a repository for items that represent Frame’s life and career, such as a radiogram which plays her voice reading from her autobiography, her grey serge school tunic and original lino on the floor. This article considers the history of 56 Eden Street through readings of Frame’s autobiographical text To the Is-Land , alongside handwritten entries in the visitors book and the responses of online reviewers from Google and TripAdvisor. I argue that 56 Eden St is a key part of Aotearoa New Zealand’s cultural heritage and literary infrastructure, offering an immersive visitor experience that can be mundane or magical, depending on what people bring with them.
In this editorial, the editors introduce the 15.1 volume of The Australasian Journal of Popular Culture . The editors reflect on the vital role popular culture plays in understanding contemporary social, political and emotional life. They argue that while the field is sometimes dismissed as less ‘serious’ than other areas of inquiry, popular culture offers essential insight into how we process times marked by global conflict, economic precarity and ecological anxiety. The arts and humanities, the editors argue, are crucial sites for meaning-making, connection and resilience. The issue’s articles collectively illustrate the breadth and depth of this scholarship. The editors provide a summary of the eight articles, the book review and video game review included in the volume.
This article examines Disney’s 1985 animated film The Black Cauldron as a Gothic narrative that provides therapeutic benefits for children and adolescents aged 6–18 experiencing grief, trauma, loss and adolescent challenges. Through an analysis of the film’s unique combination of horror elements and humour, this study demonstrates how gothic children’s cinema can serve as an educational tool for developing coping mechanisms and resilience. The research employs child development theory and cinematherapy principles to argue that The Black Cauldron , despite its initial critical reception, offers valuable opportunities for parents to facilitate difficult conversations about trauma, bullying and adolescent challenges. The findings suggest that Gothic narratives in children’s media, when properly mediated by adults, can contribute significantly to emotional and moral development.
Disabled creators are systematically excluded from shaping the cultural narratives that circulate globally. This exclusion is embedded in the digital infrastructure that enables contemporary cultural production. We situate accessibility within the broader terrain of popular culture studies by examining FilmFreeway, the dominant online submission portal for the global film festival circuit. Festivals are key elements of global screen culture, and FilmFreeway is a ubiquitous and influential element of festival processes. However, the accessibility of FilmFreeway’s submission portal has received little critical attention. This case study follows the submission journey of Teenage Dick: The Making of (2023), a documentary short film produced through an accessible filmmaking process by Australian university students. The film was submitted to 24 international festivals via FilmFreeway and accepted by five. Using thematic analysis, we examine the submission portal and accessibility policies of these five festivals. Our findings reveal that while disability-focused film festivals integrate accessibility into their submission processes, more general film festivals and FilmFreeway itself largely exclude disabled filmmakers, offering only incidental or symbolic access. Drawing on Elizabeth Ellcessor’s concept of cultural accessibility, we argue that meaningful participation in popular culture depends not only on representation and audience reception but also on equitable access to the infrastructures through which culture circulates, including film festivals. Inclusion in festival submission processes requires more than technical access; it requires a systemic rethinking of digital platforms and festival spaces to centre disabled people as valued cultural participants.
This article performs a critical disability analysis of disability memes that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, examining how they functioned as significant counternarratives to dominant cultural representations. The pandemic disrupted the perceived stability of able-bodiedness, forcing many non-disabled people to experience forms of social isolation, bodily vulnerability and environmental limitations that are routine for people with disability. As digital media became central to communication, disability communities used memes – a popular and participatory form of communication – to expose the myth of stable embodiment and offer valuable insights. Drawing on Rosemarie Garland-Thomson’s framework of disability as a relationship between bodies and environments, we identify three categories of disability memes from the pandemic era: experiential, environmental and expectation subversion. These memes, created and shared widely, leveraged disability humour to challenge ableist stereotypes by positioning people with disability as ‘oracles’ and experts in navigating bodily instability and inaccessibility. The experiential memes foregrounded insider knowledge, performing a pedagogical function for a new audience. Environmental memes used humour to critique socially constructed barriers and institutional failures that were suddenly exposed as arbitrary. Finally, expectation-subversion memes challenged the pressures of productivity culture, validating rest and fluctuating capacity while embodying ‘crip time’ as a form of resistance. By analysing these new meme genres, this article argues that the shared experiences of the pandemic fostered a unique cultural moment where disability memes could effectively challenge long-standing, problematic representations – such as those centred on charity, inspiration or faking disability – and offer authentic counternarratives that legitimized the voices and experiences of people with disability.
Netflix’s animated musical KPop Demon Hunters (2025) has achieved unprecedented global success, becoming the platform’s most-watched title of all time. While the film does not explicitly feature disabled characters, disabled fans have created extensive headcanons connecting the protagonists’ experiences to their own. This article applies critical disability studies methodology through a crip reading of KPop Demon Hunters , examining how the film’s narrative arc from shame to acceptance exemplifies the affirmation model of disability in mainstream popular culture. Through textual analysis of the three main characters, Rumi, Mira and Zoey, I demonstrate how their experiences of hiding, masking and suppressing their differences reflect common disability experiences. Crucially, the film subverts traditional cure narratives that dominate disability representation in popular culture. Rather than achieving normalcy through cure, conformity or overcoming difference, the characters find strength through authentic self-expression and community acceptance. This analysis reveals how mainstream popular culture can provide affirming disability representations when audiences apply crip reading strategies. The film’s emphasis on chosen family, authentic community and celebrating rather than curing difference offers a powerful counter-narrative to traditional ableist frameworks, demonstrating the potential for crip readings to uncover disability joy in unexpected places.
Review of: Disabled People Transforming Media Culture for a More Inclusive World , Beth A. Haller (2023) New York: Routledge, 244 pp., ISBN 978-1-03211-258-9, p/bk, USD 121.00
Review of: Kids Across the Spectrums: Growing Up Autistic in the Digital Age , Meryl Alper (2023) Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 320 pp., ISBN 978-0-26254-536-5, USD 40.00
Inspiration porn is a term coined by Australian advocate Stella Young to describe media portrayals of people with disability. These portrayals represent people with disability as inherently inspirational for undertaking ordinary activities, such as attending school or holding employment. These representations are characterized by their sentimental tone and their emotional function for non-disabled audiences, rather than any meaningful insight into the lived experiences or agency of the disabled subject. Drawing on a comprehensive doctoral study examining Australian print media coverage of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) between 2008 and 2013, this article identifies inspiration porn as a recurring and pervasive representational frame that cannot be adequately categorized within the traditional models. The study analysed 684 news articles from 9 major Australian newspapers, surveyed 111 people with disability, and conducted 18 qualitative interviews. The findings demonstrate that inspiration porn was both prevalent and recognizable, with many respondents spontaneously identifying the trope and articulating its damaging effects. This article argues for the academic importance of inspiration porn as a framework for analysis and explores its implications for journalism ethics, media education and public discourse.
In this article, we present findings from the first national study of disability in the Australian screen industry, based on a survey of over 500 workers and interviews with eleven screen workers. While the research focused on workforce conditions, disabled participants consistently framed their creative practice as inseparable from serving their disability community. They positioned disabled viewers as both an under-recognized market and a diverse cultural community. We examine how disabled screen workers connect labour, authentic on-screen representation and audience reception in a collective process of narrating disability identity and community. Participants highlight pervasive inauthentic portrayals and the missed commercial and cultural opportunities of engaging the disability community. Meaningful inclusion in a just and representative screen industry requires recognizing the disability community as both creators and audiences.
Representations of disability in contemporary horror films build on an uneasy legacy. Throughout horror history, filmmakers have used disability as a source of inspiration when creating monsters, villains and evildoers. In the twenty-first century, views on disability are changing and audience expectations are shifting. This article examines The Advent Calendar (2021), a film released at a transitional moment, balanced between embracing new visions of disability in horror and falling back into well-worn stereotypes. I argue that the film illustrates both progressive and conservative impulses towards disability representation in horror, providing a fascinating case study of how popular culture can both reflect and respond to emerging social dialogues.
This article examines how disability is represented, portrayed and marketed through the popular culture icon, Barbie. Barbie celebrated her 65th birthday in 2024 and the iconic doll has come a long way to include disabled people as part of global commodified culture. Barbie’s portrayal of disability has evolved – from her school friend Share-a-Smile Becky in 1996, to Barbie herself as a para-Alpine skier in 2021, bearing the doll’s classic slogan ‘You can be anything!’ inside the pink cardboard box. Despite the criticism of the doll’s hyperfeminized appearance and glamorization of disability and medical conditions, the evolution of Barbie reflects the changes in disability narratives through toys as a form of popular culture. Through the lens of critical disability/feminist theory, we investigate how Barbie, through changing portrayals of disability, shapes attitudes towards disability. We ask this question: how do toys introduce disability as part of human diversity and disability activism, to challenge the medical discourse on normative bodies, in the Global South? We include the Global South perspective by reflecting on previous disability studies in the region and interviewing Indonesian young adults to discuss how disability is understood and communicated through toys and representation.
