Cait Coker
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781496811523
- eISBN:
- 9781496811561
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496811523.003.0015
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Through her essay “The Mako Mori Fan Club,” Cait Coker examines the subversive nature of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (2013) by utilizing fan works as sources of viable criticism to decenter the ...
More
Through her essay “The Mako Mori Fan Club,” Cait Coker examines the subversive nature of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (2013) by utilizing fan works as sources of viable criticism to decenter the white American male action hero with a Japanese heroine. To this end, Coker delves into the major motifs of Pacific Rim fandom online and considers its relationship with a film that seemingly “failed” in the American market but exploded internationally, even prompting a sequel slated for 2017. She also reflects on how the depictions of close, but not necessarily romantic, relationships are celebrated in both the film and in fandom as illustrating a cooperative ideal generally not seen in popular, mainstream media.Less
Through her essay “The Mako Mori Fan Club,” Cait Coker examines the subversive nature of Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (2013) by utilizing fan works as sources of viable criticism to decenter the white American male action hero with a Japanese heroine. To this end, Coker delves into the major motifs of Pacific Rim fandom online and considers its relationship with a film that seemingly “failed” in the American market but exploded internationally, even prompting a sequel slated for 2017. She also reflects on how the depictions of close, but not necessarily romantic, relationships are celebrated in both the film and in fandom as illustrating a cooperative ideal generally not seen in popular, mainstream media.
Peter Wright
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780853238188
- eISBN:
- 9781846312618
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Discontinued
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780853238188.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Continuing the exploration of the literary game Wolfe plays with his reader, this chapter examines how Wolfe's subversion of the apparently reliable first person narrative form, the literary ...
More
Continuing the exploration of the literary game Wolfe plays with his reader, this chapter examines how Wolfe's subversion of the apparently reliable first person narrative form, the literary conventions of the autobiography, and the quest narrative may also serve as playful means of encouraging misinterpretation. Using close textual analysis and the work of Aleksandr Romanovich Luria, it exposes how Wolfe conceals the inherent unreliability of his narrator by providing him with an eidetic memory. This unreliability, it argues, is obscured further by The Urth Cycle's presentation as memoir-novel, a form which encourages an intimate reader-identification that opposes suspicion and scepticism. Nevertheless, it suggests, Wolfe provides sufficient textual clues to indicate his narrator's untrustworthiness, thereby elaborating the interpretative game played with the reader. This game, the chapter contends, is complicated further by the texts’ monomythic structure, which implies that The Urth Cycle is a genuine narrative of transcendence rather than an act of manipulative mythopoesis both within the storyworld and the reader's reception of the text. It concludes by arguing that The Urth Cycle is, in part, an appeal to the reader's scepticism, intended to overturn reader expectations and habitual literary suppositions.Less
Continuing the exploration of the literary game Wolfe plays with his reader, this chapter examines how Wolfe's subversion of the apparently reliable first person narrative form, the literary conventions of the autobiography, and the quest narrative may also serve as playful means of encouraging misinterpretation. Using close textual analysis and the work of Aleksandr Romanovich Luria, it exposes how Wolfe conceals the inherent unreliability of his narrator by providing him with an eidetic memory. This unreliability, it argues, is obscured further by The Urth Cycle's presentation as memoir-novel, a form which encourages an intimate reader-identification that opposes suspicion and scepticism. Nevertheless, it suggests, Wolfe provides sufficient textual clues to indicate his narrator's untrustworthiness, thereby elaborating the interpretative game played with the reader. This game, the chapter contends, is complicated further by the texts’ monomythic structure, which implies that The Urth Cycle is a genuine narrative of transcendence rather than an act of manipulative mythopoesis both within the storyworld and the reader's reception of the text. It concludes by arguing that The Urth Cycle is, in part, an appeal to the reader's scepticism, intended to overturn reader expectations and habitual literary suppositions.
