{"title":"Queer subtext in <i>The Wicker Man</i> (1973)","authors":"Nikila Lakshmanan","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2023.2218628","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2023.2218628","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACTThere is surprisingly scant research on queer subtext in The Wicker Man (1973). I suggest Lord Summerisle, who was portrayed by Christopher Lee, is a queer-coded villain. On the night Willow MacGregor deflowers an adolescent named Ash Buchanan, Summerisle observes a pair of copulating snails, quotes Walt Whitman, and envisions Howie alone in his bedroom. Most terrestrial snails are considered hermaphrodites and liking Whitman, who was probably queer, was historically a code for homosexuality. Summerisle recites Whitman’s poem celebrating animals that ‘do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins’ or make him ‘sick’ discussing their ‘duty’ to the Christian God. The scene implies Summerisle wishes to deflower Howie the way Willow deflowers Ash, and mate with him like the snails. Summerisle resents Howie because his conservative Christianity prevents them from becoming lovers. Summerisle wants to believe Howie will reincarnate as his apple crops; he and his followers intend to consume his flesh and drink his blood in the form of fruit. Like Dracula, whom Lee was famous for playing, Summerisle seeks to penetrate Howie with his teeth in a metaphor for sex.KEYWORDS: The Wicker Man (1973)queer theoryfolk horror Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135643715","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}
{"title":"Human crises and the COVID-19 pandemic: a review","authors":"Sarbani Banerjee","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2023.2202820","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2023.2202820","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has not only claimed innumerable lives but the concomitant inflation has also frustrated many small and large enterprises, not to mention the loss of jobs that employees have suffered and sometimes succumbed to through self-harm and suicides. In this context, this paper probes how a politics of representation has deeply informed the dissemination and consumption of ‘COVID news,’ rendering a legitimate visibility largely to the loss and contributions of subjects that have access to socio-economic and political resources. Milan Kundera uses the term ‘symbolic voltage’ to refer to the role that the media plays in ‘constructing’ our everyday realities. In The Lost Dimension, Paul Virilio states that modern media technology has created a ‘crisis of representation’ or an optical illusion, where the distinctions between near and far, object and image, have imploded. In a bid to keep apace with a metanarrative of pandemic-engendered loss, the collective consciousness of different societies has not adequately focused on the marginalised subjects – the wage worker, the woman, the juvenile and the scholar from suburban/rural area. The paper argues that the ‘Covid-19-as-a-past’ is likely to be represented through the semantics of traditional history, which is a narrative of and by the powerful.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43878805","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}
{"title":"Beyond Miracle: Event, Idea and Organization in the Political Thought of Alain Badiou","authors":"M. Demirtaş","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2023.2207130","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2023.2207130","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article aims to provide a response to the critique of the idea of the ‘event’ that forms the backbone of Alain Badiou’s studies. Accordingly, it argues that Badiou’s event is based on a materialist foundation and that this foundation should be considered together with the concept of ‘Idea’ and ‘organisation.’ It focuses on how the idea of the event, interwoven with the concept of Idea and organisation, can provide a way to change the order of the world or eliminate the established order. Thus, it is argued that the centrality of the concept of event in Badiou’s thought gains importance with the Idea and organisation, and it is stated that it is not possible to consider the event independently of historical struggles. At this point, the main problem of this article takes shape: What is the relationship between the concept of the event and social struggles? In this direction, the main argument of the article is that the concept of the event in Badiou’s thought does not have a miraculous or supernatural dimension, but that, on the contrary, this concept acquires a concrete meaning when it is related to social and historical riots and the communist Idea.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42275793","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}
{"title":"Tyranny and boredom","authors":"Hager Weslati","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2023.2224540","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2023.2224540","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Half-way through Alexandre Kojève’s six-year lectures on Hegel (1933–1939), the dialectic of struggle and work reaches its culmination in the conceptual dyad Napoleon-Hegel as a necessary vehicle for universal emancipation and absolute science. Anticipating the ‘leap’ into post-historical existence, the figure of tyranny and wisdom marks the exception in which the dialectical process is suspended in favour of dualism. This article departs from the objections raised against Kojève’s notion of tyranny to explore the hyphenated dyad Napoleon-Hegel through the cognate concepts of woman, individuality, and boredom. The proposed interpretation of these concepts underscores their role in Kojève’s philosophical project while inviting a timely reflection on their potential to reshape social and political realities.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49623639","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}
{"title":"Bill Gates and the ‘new normal’ COVID-19 conspiracy theories: ‘it’s a new thing’ or nothing new under the sun?","authors":"Arby Ted Siraki, Malek H. Mohammad","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2023.2207129","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2023.2207129","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 in late 2019 and the subsequent lockdowns led to widespread conspiracy theories often involving one particular actor: Bill Gates. Adherents of these conspiracy theories believed Gates was behind the pandemic for some nefarious purpose, including chipping and/or eugenics. This was, however, no fringe sentiment: celebrities and other prominent voices articulated some iteration of the Gates-COVID-19 conspiracy theory beginning in 2020. Though the conspiracy theory appears to have come out of nowhere, it does have a (pre-)history. Some have tried to point to a single or recent origin, but it is in fact much older, more complex, and informed by real developments over the previous two decades. This article traces the origins of the conspiracy theory going back to its prehistory in the 1990s, describes the narrative in its various iterations and (per)mutations – along with Gates’s shifting role in them – and charts the dissemination of this dynamic conspiracy theory while examining some of its notable tropes.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42789585","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}
J. Meyrick, B. Green, Diana Tolmie, J. Frank, Guy L. Cooper
{"title":"Crisis, what’s a crisis? Some methodological reflections on evaluating the impact of Covid-19 on Australian arts and culture","authors":"J. Meyrick, B. Green, Diana Tolmie, J. Frank, Guy L. Cooper","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2023.2217368","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2023.2217368","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This essay discusses a 2021 interview-based pilot project on the impact of COVID-19 on a cross-section of Southeast Queensland artists and cultural organisations. Though it engages with empirical data, it addresses conceptual concerns. Our interviews aimed at capturing the emotional as well as the objective costs of the pandemic on cultural practitioners. The essay considers the phrase ‘crisis of value’ and asks whether it should be used to describe the state of the Australian cultural sector during this time. Following the arguments of Will Davies in respect of the intellectual resources needed to justify a ‘neoliberal realist’ worldview, it explores the impact of COVID-19 on the cultural sector by reflecting on its evaluative methods. Digital analysis of the themes, sentiments, and keywords of 14 interview transcripts are presented and ten inferences drawn about practitioners’ underlying attitudes. Under what circumstances do performances of neoliberal calculations of benefit cease to be convincing and/or delivered in a convincing way? What factors constitute ‘a crisis of value’ in arts and culture? The conclusion argues that the methodic dimension of neoliberal evaluation is only one component of its social acceptability, and therefore only one factor in the perception of a state of crisis.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42495963","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}
H. Daryana, Aquarini Priyatna, Dinda Satya Upaja Budi
{"title":"It is time for men and women to act: constructing a female-friendly space in a male-dominated scene","authors":"H. Daryana, Aquarini Priyatna, Dinda Satya Upaja Budi","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2023.2224538","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2023.2224538","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This study examines how Bandung metal men and women establish gender-sensitive environment, an increasingly crucial task shared with other scene members to create a safe space for women. The research investigates the manifestation of gender-equitable behaviour among male and female metal musicians, the factors that influence such behaviour, and the dynamics of gender relations within the metal scene in Bandung. The data collection for this research was conducted through interviews with fifteen members of the male and female scene and tracing the lyrics of ninety two metal songs from various subgenres. It shows that both women and men in the metal scene struggle to create a sense of safety for women through division of labour, decision-making, and equal opportunity. These conditions provide valuable insights into the struggle to raise awareness and promote gender-equitable practices in the metal community. This study focuses on how an individual’s participation in a metal scene affects social and cultural changes.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44509193","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}
{"title":"The contribution of underwater cultural heritage to gender equality: an iconographic analysis of shipwrecks","authors":"E. Perez-Alvaro","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2023.2215991","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2023.2215991","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article will examine how underwater cultural heritage research can be an essential tool for reaching gender equality in the maritime world. It will examine the interplay of male and female identities in the maritime world of the past through the analysis of works of art depicting shipwrecks. This will make it possible to investigate the social representation of gender roles and produce ground-breaking research on the consequences of past history in current gender conceptions. The importance of this research is reflected in the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes Goal 5, ‘promoting national and international efforts towards gender equality and women’s empowerment’. Since gender inequalities are still deep-rooted in the maritime profession, this article believes that requestioning the vital role of women in the past and asking the right questions can advance gender equality.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48543683","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}
{"title":"The Missionary Housemother and Her ‘Daughters’: Voice and agency in female subaltern spaces in 19th Century Malabar","authors":"Amritha Koiloth Ramath, Shashikantha Koudur","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2023.2194551","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2023.2194551","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The paper attempts to explore notions of public-private dichotomy with reference to collective agency and inclusion. It looks at a women’s shelter run by a missionary wife Julie Gundert of the Basel Mission in nineteenth-century Malabar. The missionaries played a key role in the introduction of printing and the development of a modern public sphere in the region: a space, nevertheless, restricted to men from the educated elite classes. Julie’s shelter, meanwhile, provides an alternate cultural space where women, especially those from the excluded communities, the disabled, the abandoned and the lowest classes and castes could come together. The shelter is seen as a location of intimate and privatised cultural contact radically different from that practised in the formal, restrictive sites of the emerging public sphere; a space where subaltern cultures challenged the status of the visible public sphere as the key platform for social-cultural inclusion and agency.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47556806","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}
{"title":"Visual presentation of self by the British royal family on instagram","authors":"S. Parmelee, C. Greer","doi":"10.1080/14797585.2023.2194550","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2023.2194550","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT For centuries, the British royal family has been the subject of books, articles, broadcast media, and digital communication. The addition of social media platforms has further increased the attention of the royals. Each of the family’s official social media sites have large numbers of followers around the world. The present study uses Goffman’s Presentation of Self to qualitatively examine how the current British royal family portrays itself visually via its official Instagram account. An analysis of two years of posts on the social platform provides a glimpse of how the family works to maintain its image through a highly popular social media platform. Results indicated the presence of three main themes: Queen as the Head of the Monarchy, Honoring the Past, and The Working Royalty. This study offers a means of understanding the importance of visuals in conveying the royal family.","PeriodicalId":44587,"journal":{"name":"Journal for Cultural Research","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.9,"publicationDate":"2023-01-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44555809","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}