Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0162
Máiréad Casey
{"title":"‘A Walking Study in Demonology’: Postfeminism and Popular Misogyny in Jennifer’s Body (2009)","authors":"Máiréad Casey","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0162","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the 2009 horror-comedy directed by Karyn Kusama, Jennifer’s Body. I describe how this female-centred horror film critiques the postfeminist or neoliberal feminine subject from an angle that aligns most comfortably with antifeminist sentiments and arguments from the centre-right and right. I discuss how a gendered neoliberal discourse of individualism, and the idea that the individual must be ultimately bear responsibility for their own biography, renders the titular character as an illegible subject of sexualised violence. I argue that the film naturalises threats of sexual violence, attributes blame to the violated female body, and renders her illegible as a victim or as person worthy of sympathy and support. I demonstrate how the film is prescient of secular forms of exclusion, specifically popular misogyny and conforms to some of popular misogyny’s circulated myths and philosophies regarding female sexuality.","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48379707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0161
A. Bride
{"title":"‘What if it’s Not a Ship?’: Reading the Monster Octopus in Jordan Peele’s Nope","authors":"A. Bride","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0161","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0161","url":null,"abstract":"The article argues that the alien monster of Jordan Peele’s Nope (2022) should be read as part of the long legacy of capitalist monster octopuses, and that identification and recognition of the monster octopus in this context allows for a greater understanding of Peele’s specifically gothic critique of capitalism within the film. The article reviews the history of the monster octopus in literature, art, cinema, and political cartoon, outlines Nope’s relationship to and development of these earlier texts, and then examines how the film uses the monster octopus to highlight capitalism as a monstrous system that we can neither survive nor afford to look away from. Critical perspectives explored in the article include Gothic Studies, Financial History, and Critical Race Theory, and Nope is examined as an example of the Economic Humanities in contemporary horror cinema.","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42709286","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0165
Teresa Fitzpatrick
{"title":"Haunted Nature: Entanglements of the Human and Nonhuman. Edited by Sladja Blazan","authors":"Teresa Fitzpatrick","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0165","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45680607","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0168
C. Campbell
{"title":"Witchcraft and Adolescence in American Popular Culture: Teen Witches. By Miranda Corcoran","authors":"C. Campbell","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0168","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0168","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49397813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0164
W. Brewer
{"title":"Mary Robinson’s Walsingham: Self-Monsterization, Gender Nonconformity, and Sexual (Dis)orientation","authors":"W. Brewer","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0164","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0164","url":null,"abstract":"This essay argues that Mary Robinson’s subversion of gender in her Gothic novel Walsingham (1797) is more radical than critics have suggested. I offer a trans reading of Walsingham that focuses on the evolution of Sir Sidney Aubrey’s nonnormative gender identity and behavior. Along with emphasizing transformation and embodiment, trans theory disrupts essentializing categories such as male, female, heterosexual, gay, and lesbian. It thus provides a useful lens through which to examine Walsingham, in which Sidney and the title character transition from one identity to another. I examine the transgender Sidney’s conception of themself as a monster and the eponymous protagonist’s psychosexual development: throughout the novel, both characters see themselves as metamorphic, not-quite-human subjectivities driven by self-destructive passions. The novel’s conclusion presents a scenario in which gender transition occurs rapidly, a trans person finds acceptance, and the conflicted male protagonist immediately falls in love with them.","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42286109","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0167
E. Liggins
{"title":"D. K. Broster, From the Abyss: Weird Fiction, 1907–1945. Ed. Melissa Edmundson","authors":"E. Liggins","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0167","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0167","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47116936","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gothic StudiesPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3366/gothic.2023.0160
Arthur Aroha Kaminski da Silva
{"title":"Bocatorta, a Brazilian Ghoul: Adaptations and Influence of Anglo Arabic Folklore in Monteiro Lobato","authors":"Arthur Aroha Kaminski da Silva","doi":"10.3366/gothic.2023.0160","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/gothic.2023.0160","url":null,"abstract":"One case of Gothic adaptation of pre-Islamic folklore resides in the figure of the ghoul. This Mesopotamian mythical creature was reinvented by Antoine Galland in the European context around 1718, when he translate and rewrote the collection of Hindi-Persian-Arabic narratives known as the One Thousand and One Nights. This article analyses the influence of this European ghoul on the creation of Bocatorta, protagonist of an eponymous short story published by Monteiro Lobato – an important Brazilian writer – in his Urupês (1918). I examine the influence of Galland’s work on Lobato’s work, alongside that of Caliban from Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611), one of Lobato’s main inspirations for the character of Bocatorta.","PeriodicalId":42443,"journal":{"name":"Gothic Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46041646","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}