Leigh Marie Braswell and Tanya Khovanova
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691164038
- eISBN:
- 9781400881338
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691164038.003.0016
- Subject:
- Mathematics, History of Mathematics
This chapter examines the problem of the “Cookie Monster number.” In 2002, Cookie Monster® appeared in the book The Inquisitive Problem Solver by Vaderlind, Guy, and Larson, where the hungry monster ...
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This chapter examines the problem of the “Cookie Monster number.” In 2002, Cookie Monster® appeared in the book The Inquisitive Problem Solver by Vaderlind, Guy, and Larson, where the hungry monster wants to empty a set of jars filled with various numbers of cookies. The Cookie Monster number is the minimum number of moves Cookie Monster must use to empty all the jars. The chapter analyzes this problem by first introducing known general algorithms and known bounds for the Cookie Monster number. It then explicitly finds the Cookie Monster number for jars containing cookies in the Fibonacci, Tribonacci, n-nacci, and Super-n-nacci sequences. The chapter also constructs sequences of k jars such that their Cookie Monster numbers are asymptotically rk, where r is any real number, 0 ≤ r ≤ 1.Less
This chapter examines the problem of the “Cookie Monster number.” In 2002, Cookie Monster® appeared in the book The Inquisitive Problem Solver by Vaderlind, Guy, and Larson, where the hungry monster wants to empty a set of jars filled with various numbers of cookies. The Cookie Monster number is the minimum number of moves Cookie Monster must use to empty all the jars. The chapter analyzes this problem by first introducing known general algorithms and known bounds for the Cookie Monster number. It then explicitly finds the Cookie Monster number for jars containing cookies in the Fibonacci, Tribonacci, n-nacci, and Super-n-nacci sequences. The chapter also constructs sequences of k jars such that their Cookie Monster numbers are asymptotically rk, where r is any real number, 0 ≤ r ≤ 1.
Mary Shelley
David H. Guston, Ed Finn, and Jason Scott Robert (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780262533287
- eISBN:
- 9780262340267
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262533287.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has endured in the popular imagination for two hundred years. Begun as a ghost story by an intellectually and socially precocious eighteen-year-old author during a cold ...
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Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has endured in the popular imagination for two hundred years. Begun as a ghost story by an intellectually and socially precocious eighteen-year-old author during a cold and rainy summer on the shores of Lake Geneva, the dramatic tale of Victor Frankenstein and his stitched-together creature can be read as the ultimate parable of scientific hubris. Victor, “the modern Prometheus,” tried to do what he perhaps should have left to Nature: create life. Although the novel is most often discussed in literary-historical terms—as a seminal example of romanticism or as a groundbreaking early work of science fiction—Mary Shelley was keenly aware of contemporary scientific developments and incorporated them into her story. In our era of synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and climate engineering, this edition of Frankenstein will resonate forcefully for readers with a background or interest in science and engineering, and anyone intrigued by the fundamental questions of creativity and responsibility. This edition of Frankenstein pairs the original 1818 version of the manuscript—meticulously line-edited and amended by Charles E. Robinson, one of the world’s preeminent authorities on the text—with annotations and essays by leading scholars exploring the social and ethical aspects of scientific creativity raised by this remarkable story. The result is a unique and accessible edition of one of the most thought-provoking and influential novels ever written. Essays by Elizabeth Bear, Cory Doctorow, Heather E. Douglas, Josephine Johnston, Kate MacCord, Jane Maienschein, Anne K. Mellor, Alfred NordmannLess
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein has endured in the popular imagination for two hundred years. Begun as a ghost story by an intellectually and socially precocious eighteen-year-old author during a cold and rainy summer on the shores of Lake Geneva, the dramatic tale of Victor Frankenstein and his stitched-together creature can be read as the ultimate parable of scientific hubris. Victor, “the modern Prometheus,” tried to do what he perhaps should have left to Nature: create life. Although the novel is most often discussed in literary-historical terms—as a seminal example of romanticism or as a groundbreaking early work of science fiction—Mary Shelley was keenly aware of contemporary scientific developments and incorporated them into her story. In our era of synthetic biology, artificial intelligence, robotics, and climate engineering, this edition of Frankenstein will resonate forcefully for readers with a background or interest in science and engineering, and anyone intrigued by the fundamental questions of creativity and responsibility. This edition of Frankenstein pairs the original 1818 version of the manuscript—meticulously line-edited and amended by Charles E. Robinson, one of the world’s preeminent authorities on the text—with annotations and essays by leading scholars exploring the social and ethical aspects of scientific creativity raised by this remarkable story. The result is a unique and accessible edition of one of the most thought-provoking and influential novels ever written. Essays by Elizabeth Bear, Cory Doctorow, Heather E. Douglas, Josephine Johnston, Kate MacCord, Jane Maienschein, Anne K. Mellor, Alfred Nordmann
Jonathan Betts
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198568025
- eISBN:
- 9780191718144
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198568025.003.16
- Subject:
- Physics, History of Physics
This chapter details Rupert's investigation of the Loch Ness monster. In the Spring of 1933 rumours had begun of sightings of a large creature, apparently of unknown species, living in Loch Ness. ...
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This chapter details Rupert's investigation of the Loch Ness monster. In the Spring of 1933 rumours had begun of sightings of a large creature, apparently of unknown species, living in Loch Ness. Having published The Case for the Sea Serpent just over 2 years before, Gould soon got to hear of this and needless to say was intrigued by the descriptions, sounding, as they did, remarkably ‘Serpentine’. Rupert personally went to Scotland to investigate Loch Ness. The results of his research were summarized in the book entitled, The Loch Ness Monster and Others, released in June 1934.Less
This chapter details Rupert's investigation of the Loch Ness monster. In the Spring of 1933 rumours had begun of sightings of a large creature, apparently of unknown species, living in Loch Ness. Having published The Case for the Sea Serpent just over 2 years before, Gould soon got to hear of this and needless to say was intrigued by the descriptions, sounding, as they did, remarkably ‘Serpentine’. Rupert personally went to Scotland to investigate Loch Ness. The results of his research were summarized in the book entitled, The Loch Ness Monster and Others, released in June 1934.
J. P. Telotte
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381830
- eISBN:
- 9781781382363
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381830.003.0011
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter analyzes the intersection of cult and science fiction (sf) cinema, focusing on Robot Monster (1953). It argues that sf films have developed a cult reputation and following not only ...
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This chapter analyzes the intersection of cult and science fiction (sf) cinema, focusing on Robot Monster (1953). It argues that sf films have developed a cult reputation and following not only because they are bad films or in some way ‘paracinematic’ but rather because, either intentionally or not, they seem to tap into a double character that, for better or worse, quite often marks the sf film: that ability to seem by turns quite serious, conventional, and compelling, but also more than a bit strained, unserious, even absurd, especially in instances when their special effects become dated and appreciably less appreciated, that is, through a kind of slippage that can make viewers overly conscious of how these works function as films and/or as generic texts, and thus of the special effects' own relationship to these texts. But that is only one connection and, indeed, even without such ‘slippage’, many sf films often seem to be in negotiation between the serious and the strained, to verge on the cult, and this potential kinship says much about both the science fictional and the cult.Less
This chapter analyzes the intersection of cult and science fiction (sf) cinema, focusing on Robot Monster (1953). It argues that sf films have developed a cult reputation and following not only because they are bad films or in some way ‘paracinematic’ but rather because, either intentionally or not, they seem to tap into a double character that, for better or worse, quite often marks the sf film: that ability to seem by turns quite serious, conventional, and compelling, but also more than a bit strained, unserious, even absurd, especially in instances when their special effects become dated and appreciably less appreciated, that is, through a kind of slippage that can make viewers overly conscious of how these works function as films and/or as generic texts, and thus of the special effects' own relationship to these texts. But that is only one connection and, indeed, even without such ‘slippage’, many sf films often seem to be in negotiation between the serious and the strained, to verge on the cult, and this potential kinship says much about both the science fictional and the cult.
Rodney F. Hill
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781781381830
- eISBN:
- 9781781382363
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781381830.003.0012
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter analyzes Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Bride of the Monster (aka, Bride of the Atom, 1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1956, released 1959), and Glen or Glenda? (1953). While known primarily for ...
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This chapter analyzes Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Bride of the Monster (aka, Bride of the Atom, 1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1956, released 1959), and Glen or Glenda? (1953). While known primarily for their cult status, these films abound in science fiction (sf) iconography and thematics — with their flying saucers and intergalactic intelligences, mad scientists and mutant creatures, and ruminations on the use of advanced technology. Cult films also challenge the distinctions between innovation and ‘badness’, between high and low culture, between acceptable and forbidden subject matter. As a result, our experience of the cult is frequently marked by confusion: a confusion not only of categories, but also of response. In Wood's case, he may be regarded as a misunderstood auteur (even, perhaps, an accidental artist of the avant-garde), or dismissed as one of the ‘worst’ directors of all time.Less
This chapter analyzes Edward D. Wood, Jr.'s Bride of the Monster (aka, Bride of the Atom, 1955), Plan 9 from Outer Space (1956, released 1959), and Glen or Glenda? (1953). While known primarily for their cult status, these films abound in science fiction (sf) iconography and thematics — with their flying saucers and intergalactic intelligences, mad scientists and mutant creatures, and ruminations on the use of advanced technology. Cult films also challenge the distinctions between innovation and ‘badness’, between high and low culture, between acceptable and forbidden subject matter. As a result, our experience of the cult is frequently marked by confusion: a confusion not only of categories, but also of response. In Wood's case, he may be regarded as a misunderstood auteur (even, perhaps, an accidental artist of the avant-garde), or dismissed as one of the ‘worst’ directors of all time.
Jonathan Betts
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- January 2010
- ISBN:
- 9780198568025
- eISBN:
- 9780191718144
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198568025.001.0001
- Subject:
- Physics, History of Physics
This is the story of Rupert T. Gould (1890-1948), the polymath and horologist. A remarkable man, Lt Cmdr Gould made important contributions in an extraordinary range of subject areas throughout his ...
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This is the story of Rupert T. Gould (1890-1948), the polymath and horologist. A remarkable man, Lt Cmdr Gould made important contributions in an extraordinary range of subject areas throughout his relatively short and dramatically troubled life. From antique clocks to scientific mysteries, from typewriters to the first systematic study of the Loch Ness Monster, Gould studied and published on them all. With the title ‘The Stargazer’, Gould was an early broadcaster on the BBC's Children's Hour when, with his encyclopaedic knowledge, he became known as The Man Who Knew Everything. Not surprisingly, he was also part of that elite group on BBC radio who formed The Brains Trust, giving on-the-spot answers to all manner of wide ranging and difficult questions. With his wide learning and photographic memory, Gould awed a national audience, becoming one of the era's radio celebrities. During the 1920s Gould restored the complex and highly significant marine timekeepers constructed by John Harrison (1693-1776), and wrote the unsurpassed classic, The Marine Chronometer, its History and Development. Today he is virtually unknown, his horological contributions scarcely mentioned in Dava Sobel's bestseller Longitude. The TV version of Longitude, in which Jeremy Irons played Rupert Gould, did at least introduce Rupert's name to a wider public. Gould suffered terrible bouts of depression, resulting in a number of nervous breakdowns. These, coupled with his obsessive and pedantic nature, led to a scandalously-reported separation from his wife and cost him his family, his home, his job, and his closest friends.Less
This is the story of Rupert T. Gould (1890-1948), the polymath and horologist. A remarkable man, Lt Cmdr Gould made important contributions in an extraordinary range of subject areas throughout his relatively short and dramatically troubled life. From antique clocks to scientific mysteries, from typewriters to the first systematic study of the Loch Ness Monster, Gould studied and published on them all. With the title ‘The Stargazer’, Gould was an early broadcaster on the BBC's Children's Hour when, with his encyclopaedic knowledge, he became known as The Man Who Knew Everything. Not surprisingly, he was also part of that elite group on BBC radio who formed The Brains Trust, giving on-the-spot answers to all manner of wide ranging and difficult questions. With his wide learning and photographic memory, Gould awed a national audience, becoming one of the era's radio celebrities. During the 1920s Gould restored the complex and highly significant marine timekeepers constructed by John Harrison (1693-1776), and wrote the unsurpassed classic, The Marine Chronometer, its History and Development. Today he is virtually unknown, his horological contributions scarcely mentioned in Dava Sobel's bestseller Longitude. The TV version of Longitude, in which Jeremy Irons played Rupert Gould, did at least introduce Rupert's name to a wider public. Gould suffered terrible bouts of depression, resulting in a number of nervous breakdowns. These, coupled with his obsessive and pedantic nature, led to a scandalously-reported separation from his wife and cost him his family, his home, his job, and his closest friends.
Katrina Navickas
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719097058
- eISBN:
- 9781526104144
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097058.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, Social History
This chapter examines protesters’ attachment to the landscape. Peterloo reformers became involved in societies for the protection of footpaths in the 1820s. Increasingly unable to hold public ...
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This chapter examines protesters’ attachment to the landscape. Peterloo reformers became involved in societies for the protection of footpaths in the 1820s. Increasingly unable to hold public meetings in town centres, Chartists and Owenite socialists held monster meetings on fields and moors outside urban jurisdiction. Using the sites and rituals of Methodist camp meetings, moorland meetings reflected a sense of place among protesters. The experience of the environment was physical and elemental, particularly the hard rambles of itinerant lecturers and the secret drilling of radicals at night. The popularity of the Chartist Land Plan among northern industrial workers demonstrated how radicals’ utopian visions of a better life lay in the land as well as the vote.Less
This chapter examines protesters’ attachment to the landscape. Peterloo reformers became involved in societies for the protection of footpaths in the 1820s. Increasingly unable to hold public meetings in town centres, Chartists and Owenite socialists held monster meetings on fields and moors outside urban jurisdiction. Using the sites and rituals of Methodist camp meetings, moorland meetings reflected a sense of place among protesters. The experience of the environment was physical and elemental, particularly the hard rambles of itinerant lecturers and the secret drilling of radicals at night. The popularity of the Chartist Land Plan among northern industrial workers demonstrated how radicals’ utopian visions of a better life lay in the land as well as the vote.
Josephine Metcalf
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617032813
- eISBN:
- 9781617032820
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617032813.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Social Groups
The publication in 1993 of Sanyika Shakur’s Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member generated a huge amount of excitement in literary circles — New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani ...
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The publication in 1993 of Sanyika Shakur’s Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member generated a huge amount of excitement in literary circles — New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani deemed it a “shocking and galvanic book” — and set off a new publishing trend of gang memoirs in the 1990s. The memoirs showcased tales of violent confrontation and territorial belonging but also offered many of the first journalistic and autobiographical accounts of the much-mythologized gang subculture. This book focuses on three of these memoirs — Shakur’s; Luis J. Rodriguez’s Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.; and Stanley “Tookie” Williams’s Rage, Black Redemption — as key representatives of the gang autobiography. It examines the conflict among violence, thrilling sensationalism, and the authorial desire to instruct and warn competing within these works. The narrative arcs of the memoirs themselves rest on the process of conversion from brutal, young gang bangers to nonviolent, enlightened citizens. The author analyzes the emergence, production, marketing, and reception of gang memoirs. Through interviews with Rodriguez, Shakur, and Barbara Cottman Becnel (Williams’s editor), she reveals both the writing and publishing processes. This book analyzes key narrative conventions, specifically how diction, dialogue, and narrative arcs shape the works. It also explores how the memoirs are consumed. This interdisciplinary study — fusing literary criticism, sociology, ethnography, reader-response study, and editorial theory — brings scholarly attention to a popular, much-discussed, but understudied modern expression.Less
The publication in 1993 of Sanyika Shakur’s Monster: The Autobiography of an L.A. Gang Member generated a huge amount of excitement in literary circles — New York Times book critic Michiko Kakutani deemed it a “shocking and galvanic book” — and set off a new publishing trend of gang memoirs in the 1990s. The memoirs showcased tales of violent confrontation and territorial belonging but also offered many of the first journalistic and autobiographical accounts of the much-mythologized gang subculture. This book focuses on three of these memoirs — Shakur’s; Luis J. Rodriguez’s Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A.; and Stanley “Tookie” Williams’s Rage, Black Redemption — as key representatives of the gang autobiography. It examines the conflict among violence, thrilling sensationalism, and the authorial desire to instruct and warn competing within these works. The narrative arcs of the memoirs themselves rest on the process of conversion from brutal, young gang bangers to nonviolent, enlightened citizens. The author analyzes the emergence, production, marketing, and reception of gang memoirs. Through interviews with Rodriguez, Shakur, and Barbara Cottman Becnel (Williams’s editor), she reveals both the writing and publishing processes. This book analyzes key narrative conventions, specifically how diction, dialogue, and narrative arcs shape the works. It also explores how the memoirs are consumed. This interdisciplinary study — fusing literary criticism, sociology, ethnography, reader-response study, and editorial theory — brings scholarly attention to a popular, much-discussed, but understudied modern expression.
Takayuki Tatsumi and Seth Jacobowitz
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2015
- ISBN:
- 9781781380383
- eISBN:
- 9781781381557
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380383.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Pop heroes and anti-heroes like Astro Boy and Godzilla represent not only our technological consequences but also the mythological unconscious. For example, one of the origins of Godzilla could well ...
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Pop heroes and anti-heroes like Astro Boy and Godzilla represent not only our technological consequences but also the mythological unconscious. For example, one of the origins of Godzilla could well be discovered in a pseudo-scientific and pseudo-religious theory championed by a nineteenth century new shintoist Masumi Ohishigori, who was so aware of the limit of Shintoism as to re-locate the origins of man in dinosaurs born of Japanese gods. Therefore, it is his syncretic and creationistic theory of dinosaurs that doubtlessly helped Meiji Japan modernize itself, and even survived the postwar junkyard in the form of Godzilla. Thus, a decade after Godzilla (1954), Ghidorah the Three-headed Monster (1964), which re-appropriates Audrey Hepburn’s Roman Holiday (1954) and dramatizes the way Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra join forces to defeat Ghidorah from outer space, skillfully allegorizes a critical point from the U.S. Occupation period to the High Growth period in Japanese history. The chapter also discusses the influences of Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville on the dinosaur imaginary.Less
Pop heroes and anti-heroes like Astro Boy and Godzilla represent not only our technological consequences but also the mythological unconscious. For example, one of the origins of Godzilla could well be discovered in a pseudo-scientific and pseudo-religious theory championed by a nineteenth century new shintoist Masumi Ohishigori, who was so aware of the limit of Shintoism as to re-locate the origins of man in dinosaurs born of Japanese gods. Therefore, it is his syncretic and creationistic theory of dinosaurs that doubtlessly helped Meiji Japan modernize itself, and even survived the postwar junkyard in the form of Godzilla. Thus, a decade after Godzilla (1954), Ghidorah the Three-headed Monster (1964), which re-appropriates Audrey Hepburn’s Roman Holiday (1954) and dramatizes the way Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra join forces to defeat Ghidorah from outer space, skillfully allegorizes a critical point from the U.S. Occupation period to the High Growth period in Japanese history. The chapter also discusses the influences of Ray Bradbury, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville on the dinosaur imaginary.
David Roche
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617039621
- eISBN:
- 9781626740129
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617039621.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter opens with a critical discussion of the notions of horror, terror and dread, which are defined according to a dialectic between the presence and absence of “monstrous” stimuli. The ...
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This chapter opens with a critical discussion of the notions of horror, terror and dread, which are defined according to a dialectic between the presence and absence of “monstrous” stimuli. The analyses show that the 1970s films consistently undermine the opposition between human and monster, revealing that the monster and the “monstrous” are not discrete concepts but shifting values within the films, and surely within the viewers’ cultural frameworks. As for the 2000s remakes, they significantly increase the danger factor by playing up the “monstrous” characters’ superhuman strength and omnipotence. This contemporary trend affects both the politics and the aesthetics of contemporary horror films: first, it somewhat downplays the “monstrous” characters’ status as victims that enabled a progressive subtext in the 1970s films, even though the contemporary films emphasize these characters’ motives on the diegetic level; secondly, it leaves less time to contemplate the “monstrous” stimuli that are, quite simply, too effective.Less
This chapter opens with a critical discussion of the notions of horror, terror and dread, which are defined according to a dialectic between the presence and absence of “monstrous” stimuli. The analyses show that the 1970s films consistently undermine the opposition between human and monster, revealing that the monster and the “monstrous” are not discrete concepts but shifting values within the films, and surely within the viewers’ cultural frameworks. As for the 2000s remakes, they significantly increase the danger factor by playing up the “monstrous” characters’ superhuman strength and omnipotence. This contemporary trend affects both the politics and the aesthetics of contemporary horror films: first, it somewhat downplays the “monstrous” characters’ status as victims that enabled a progressive subtext in the 1970s films, even though the contemporary films emphasize these characters’ motives on the diegetic level; secondly, it leaves less time to contemplate the “monstrous” stimuli that are, quite simply, too effective.
Emily L. Hiltz
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781496806444
- eISBN:
- 9781496806482
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496806444.003.0009
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature
This essay examines Suzanne Collins’s monstrous “mutts” in her phenomenally popular series The Hunger Games. Hiltz is especially interested in Collins’s characterization of human-animal hybrids, ...
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This essay examines Suzanne Collins’s monstrous “mutts” in her phenomenally popular series The Hunger Games. Hiltz is especially interested in Collins’s characterization of human-animal hybrids, investigating the relationship between the political commentary at work in the novels and these “monsters,” from the half-wolf, half-humans that nearly overtake Katniss at the Cornucopia in the first novel to the lizard-humans whispering her name throughout the viaducts beneath the city in the last. Hiltz focuses on the mutts as abject creatures, demonstrating the ways in which these uncanny monsters, quite literally making the familiar strange, are at once metaphors for the political control exerted by the Capitol, the rebels’ resistance to the Capitol’s power, and the disruption of natural order. She also concentrates on Katniss and Peeta muttations, each of them reformed by warring entities in service of “the greater good.” Most importantly, Hiltz emphasizes that Collins’s mutts are designed to demonstrate the fine and wavering line between good and evil, calling into question the nature of monstrosity, especially as it relates to human behavior. Her location of monstrosity in the protagonists themselves especially offers a new way of thinking about teen dystopic novels that engage horror as a means of conveying identities assaulted by external forces.Less
This essay examines Suzanne Collins’s monstrous “mutts” in her phenomenally popular series The Hunger Games. Hiltz is especially interested in Collins’s characterization of human-animal hybrids, investigating the relationship between the political commentary at work in the novels and these “monsters,” from the half-wolf, half-humans that nearly overtake Katniss at the Cornucopia in the first novel to the lizard-humans whispering her name throughout the viaducts beneath the city in the last. Hiltz focuses on the mutts as abject creatures, demonstrating the ways in which these uncanny monsters, quite literally making the familiar strange, are at once metaphors for the political control exerted by the Capitol, the rebels’ resistance to the Capitol’s power, and the disruption of natural order. She also concentrates on Katniss and Peeta muttations, each of them reformed by warring entities in service of “the greater good.” Most importantly, Hiltz emphasizes that Collins’s mutts are designed to demonstrate the fine and wavering line between good and evil, calling into question the nature of monstrosity, especially as it relates to human behavior. Her location of monstrosity in the protagonists themselves especially offers a new way of thinking about teen dystopic novels that engage horror as a means of conveying identities assaulted by external forces.
Ray Zone
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813136110
- eISBN:
- 9780813141183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813136110.003.0024
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
The release of Chicken Little 3D on November 4, 2005 marks the beginning of digital 3D cinema. Technology used to deliver digital 3D are examined and comments by Phil McNally, stereographer on ...
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The release of Chicken Little 3D on November 4, 2005 marks the beginning of digital 3D cinema. Technology used to deliver digital 3D are examined and comments by Phil McNally, stereographer on Chicken Little are included. Also analysed is the subsequent digital 3D cinema release, Monster House 3D, in 2006.Less
The release of Chicken Little 3D on November 4, 2005 marks the beginning of digital 3D cinema. Technology used to deliver digital 3D are examined and comments by Phil McNally, stereographer on Chicken Little are included. Also analysed is the subsequent digital 3D cinema release, Monster House 3D, in 2006.
Ray Zone
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- January 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813136110
- eISBN:
- 9780813141183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Kentucky
- DOI:
- 10.5810/kentucky/9780813136110.003.0034
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
A survey of the eight 3D productions he supervised (up to 2009) is given with an extensive interview with Rob Engle, Stereoscopic Supervisor at Sony Imageworks.
A survey of the eight 3D productions he supervised (up to 2009) is given with an extensive interview with Rob Engle, Stereoscopic Supervisor at Sony Imageworks.
Josephine Metcalf
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781617032813
- eISBN:
- 9781617032820
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781617032813.003.0004
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Social Groups
This chapter presents four decades in the history of street gang violence — the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s — in order to map the setting in which the narrators of street gang memoirs describe and ...
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This chapter presents four decades in the history of street gang violence — the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s — in order to map the setting in which the narrators of street gang memoirs describe and justify their violent pasts. It explains that the main narrative action of the memoirs Always Running, Blue Rage, and Monster, revolves around tales of violence: the narrators’ violence toward other gang members and the violence committed against them by the authorities. The chapter further describes how, in 1960s California, violence was already embedded in the culture of the state, but it became more oppressive in Los Angeles in the succeeding decades. In the discussions of state power in Always Running, it notes that police brutality in the 1960s was not exclusively toward street gangs, but also toward Mexican political demonstrators.Less
This chapter presents four decades in the history of street gang violence — the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s — in order to map the setting in which the narrators of street gang memoirs describe and justify their violent pasts. It explains that the main narrative action of the memoirs Always Running, Blue Rage, and Monster, revolves around tales of violence: the narrators’ violence toward other gang members and the violence committed against them by the authorities. The chapter further describes how, in 1960s California, violence was already embedded in the culture of the state, but it became more oppressive in Los Angeles in the succeeding decades. In the discussions of state power in Always Running, it notes that police brutality in the 1960s was not exclusively toward street gangs, but also toward Mexican political demonstrators.
Clair Schwarz
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748676392
- eISBN:
- 9780748693856
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748676392.003.0007
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter explores Shane Meadows's approaches to genre, arguing that hybrid forms of film type are employed in order to underscore the elements of myth which are evident in his work. In ...
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This chapter explores Shane Meadows's approaches to genre, arguing that hybrid forms of film type are employed in order to underscore the elements of myth which are evident in his work. In particular, it looks at how evocations of the monster weave through the homosocial romances of the male characters and the way in which they exchange women, or their images, as a means to sure up those relationships. Drawing upon Sedgwick's notion of the erotic triangle and its homosocial dynamic, the chapter looks closely at the vengeance narrative of Dead Man's Shoes, arguing how tropes drawn from Jacobean theatre and genres such as the horror and the western, are particularly employed to question existing models of relationships, whether fraternal, paternal or the modern construct of the nuclear family. Through an examination of the different manifestation of violence in Meadows's work, the chapter suggests that rape, assault and murder are acts which make explicit the underlying homoerotophobia of the texts, with the figure of the monster as a liminal bridge between unconscious desire and physical action. It concludes that Meadows eventually abandons his generic conceits, offering instead a deliberate equivocation which dissolves any fixed notions of style.Less
This chapter explores Shane Meadows's approaches to genre, arguing that hybrid forms of film type are employed in order to underscore the elements of myth which are evident in his work. In particular, it looks at how evocations of the monster weave through the homosocial romances of the male characters and the way in which they exchange women, or their images, as a means to sure up those relationships. Drawing upon Sedgwick's notion of the erotic triangle and its homosocial dynamic, the chapter looks closely at the vengeance narrative of Dead Man's Shoes, arguing how tropes drawn from Jacobean theatre and genres such as the horror and the western, are particularly employed to question existing models of relationships, whether fraternal, paternal or the modern construct of the nuclear family. Through an examination of the different manifestation of violence in Meadows's work, the chapter suggests that rape, assault and murder are acts which make explicit the underlying homoerotophobia of the texts, with the figure of the monster as a liminal bridge between unconscious desire and physical action. It concludes that Meadows eventually abandons his generic conceits, offering instead a deliberate equivocation which dissolves any fixed notions of style.
Jarlath Killeen
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780748690800
- eISBN:
- 9780748697120
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748690800.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, European Literature
Eighteenth-century Irish Anglicans believed themselves surrounded on all sides by hordes of sanguinary and Satanic Catholic demons, waiting for a chance to dismember, disembowel and, in some cases, ...
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Eighteenth-century Irish Anglicans believed themselves surrounded on all sides by hordes of sanguinary and Satanic Catholic demons, waiting for a chance to dismember, disembowel and, in some cases, cannibalise them (as they cannibalised Jesus in the Eucharist), or perhaps possess their bodies and absorb them (through conversion) into the Catholic collective like a kind of primitive Borg. ‘Monster’ may seem like an extreme term to use in relation to Anglican perceptions of Irish Catholics, so this chapter acts as an incursion inside the teradome to justify the use of this term in relation to Irish Catholics in this period. The chapter examines the monstrous construction of the Catholic in English and Irish writing, imbeds this construction in monster theory and the Gothic more generally, before moving on to examine ways Irish Catholic historians attempted to challenge this construction through a revision of the history of the most infamous episode in Irish history, the 1641 Rebellion. It examines, in particular, the new histories of the rising produced by Catholics like John Curry as well as furious Irish Anglican reaction to this attempted ‘unmonstering’.Less
Eighteenth-century Irish Anglicans believed themselves surrounded on all sides by hordes of sanguinary and Satanic Catholic demons, waiting for a chance to dismember, disembowel and, in some cases, cannibalise them (as they cannibalised Jesus in the Eucharist), or perhaps possess their bodies and absorb them (through conversion) into the Catholic collective like a kind of primitive Borg. ‘Monster’ may seem like an extreme term to use in relation to Anglican perceptions of Irish Catholics, so this chapter acts as an incursion inside the teradome to justify the use of this term in relation to Irish Catholics in this period. The chapter examines the monstrous construction of the Catholic in English and Irish writing, imbeds this construction in monster theory and the Gothic more generally, before moving on to examine ways Irish Catholic historians attempted to challenge this construction through a revision of the history of the most infamous episode in Irish history, the 1641 Rebellion. It examines, in particular, the new histories of the rising produced by Catholics like John Curry as well as furious Irish Anglican reaction to this attempted ‘unmonstering’.
Stacey Abbott
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780748694907
- eISBN:
- 9781474426725
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748694907.003.0005
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines the role of the zombie within TV horror both in terms of a long established tradition of monster-of-the-week through to the increasingly prevalent place that the zombie plays ...
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This chapter examines the role of the zombie within TV horror both in terms of a long established tradition of monster-of-the-week through to the increasingly prevalent place that the zombie plays within contemporary serialised television. This chapter challenges the dismissal of television as an appropriate space for horror and the political allegory often associated with Romero’s zombie films, by presenting a series of case studies in which the TV zombie serves such as narrative and thematic purpose. In particular it considers how the serialized nature of television, exemplified by the soap opera format, is well suited to the zombie narrative in which closure is traditionally denied. It also serves to structure the nature and function of allegory within the televisual zombie format. Case studies include: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, The Walking Dead and In the Flesh.Less
This chapter examines the role of the zombie within TV horror both in terms of a long established tradition of monster-of-the-week through to the increasingly prevalent place that the zombie plays within contemporary serialised television. This chapter challenges the dismissal of television as an appropriate space for horror and the political allegory often associated with Romero’s zombie films, by presenting a series of case studies in which the TV zombie serves such as narrative and thematic purpose. In particular it considers how the serialized nature of television, exemplified by the soap opera format, is well suited to the zombie narrative in which closure is traditionally denied. It also serves to structure the nature and function of allegory within the televisual zombie format. Case studies include: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural, The Walking Dead and In the Flesh.
Catherine Dousteyssier-Khoze
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780748692606
- eISBN:
- 9781474444651
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748692606.003.0004
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This chapter examines Chabrol’s fascination with ‘human beasts’ or ‘monsters’ through the following (overlapping) motifs: the serial killer, the automaton and the female killer. Through detailed film ...
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This chapter examines Chabrol’s fascination with ‘human beasts’ or ‘monsters’ through the following (overlapping) motifs: the serial killer, the automaton and the female killer. Through detailed film analysis and close attention to techniques, it shows how Chabrol uses these figures to rethink the boundaries and concepts of normality. Although he often provides a detailed social and ideological framework within which to problematize the human beast, class and gender are misleading keys and causality is ultimately blurred to the point of opacity. The closer one gets to the monster (sometimes literally, through the use of close-up shots), the less one understands it. Case studies of the following films illuminate how Chabrol explores film grammar to convey the complexities of human nature and the fragmented, opaque nature of evil: Le Boucher; Landru; Les Fantômes du chapelier; Violette Nozière; La Demoiselle d’honneur; Blood Relatives.Less
This chapter examines Chabrol’s fascination with ‘human beasts’ or ‘monsters’ through the following (overlapping) motifs: the serial killer, the automaton and the female killer. Through detailed film analysis and close attention to techniques, it shows how Chabrol uses these figures to rethink the boundaries and concepts of normality. Although he often provides a detailed social and ideological framework within which to problematize the human beast, class and gender are misleading keys and causality is ultimately blurred to the point of opacity. The closer one gets to the monster (sometimes literally, through the use of close-up shots), the less one understands it. Case studies of the following films illuminate how Chabrol explores film grammar to convey the complexities of human nature and the fragmented, opaque nature of evil: Le Boucher; Landru; Les Fantômes du chapelier; Violette Nozière; La Demoiselle d’honneur; Blood Relatives.
Raylene Ramsay
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781781380376
- eISBN:
- 9781781387221
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9781781380376.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
The return of the past poses questions in Déwé Gorodé's daring first Kanak novel (2004) in the omnipresent figure of ‘the wreck’ as this stages both colonial destruction and the repressed, the ...
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The return of the past poses questions in Déwé Gorodé's daring first Kanak novel (2004) in the omnipresent figure of ‘the wreck’ as this stages both colonial destruction and the repressed, the unspoken within Kanak society. Sexual desire, possession, revenge and the abusive incestuous power of the ‘maternal uncles’ or older men over young girls, are played out in the figures of’ Old Tom, the ogre and his complicitous ogress; the sorceror/hypocritical tribal orator and the witch, over generations. Pre-empting the ‘Metropolitan ‘reward systems for oppositional projects’ of which Huggan speaks, the shifting positions in Gorodé's work, valuing the Kanak view of the world yet refusing ready-made or idealised assumptions about Kanak community, create dissonance. This is a ‘case not yet closed’, as in the title of her disturbing 1996 short story of colonial revenge, metamorphosis, and magic power, “Affaire classée”. The cannibal ogre is an avatar of Julia Kristeva's ‘monster at the crossroads’, of the hybrid within.Less
The return of the past poses questions in Déwé Gorodé's daring first Kanak novel (2004) in the omnipresent figure of ‘the wreck’ as this stages both colonial destruction and the repressed, the unspoken within Kanak society. Sexual desire, possession, revenge and the abusive incestuous power of the ‘maternal uncles’ or older men over young girls, are played out in the figures of’ Old Tom, the ogre and his complicitous ogress; the sorceror/hypocritical tribal orator and the witch, over generations. Pre-empting the ‘Metropolitan ‘reward systems for oppositional projects’ of which Huggan speaks, the shifting positions in Gorodé's work, valuing the Kanak view of the world yet refusing ready-made or idealised assumptions about Kanak community, create dissonance. This is a ‘case not yet closed’, as in the title of her disturbing 1996 short story of colonial revenge, metamorphosis, and magic power, “Affaire classée”. The cannibal ogre is an avatar of Julia Kristeva's ‘monster at the crossroads’, of the hybrid within.
Robert Horton
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- November 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780231167437
- eISBN:
- 9780231850568
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Columbia University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7312/columbia/9780231167437.003.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
This introductory chapter seeks to identify the timeless cult (with all its religious overtones) appeal of the Frankenstein story, particularly for children, as it is captured in cinema via the 1931 ...
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This introductory chapter seeks to identify the timeless cult (with all its religious overtones) appeal of the Frankenstein story, particularly for children, as it is captured in cinema via the 1931 film of the same name. At the elemental level, Frankenstein is a story of birth—and of “giving birth”, even as it addresses the realisation of death, and the possibility of life after death—both of which would doubtless appeal to and appease childhood anxieties. Additionally, belief systems generally invent an afterlife, or reincarnation, and so does Frankenstein's Monster, as it keeps returning, even after his many deaths, to go about his usual business. The cinema itself is a defiance of death, a graveyard where viewers can re-live past experiences, hear the voices of the dead, and see people long gone. The Frankenstein Monster is the perfect leading man for this ritual.Less
This introductory chapter seeks to identify the timeless cult (with all its religious overtones) appeal of the Frankenstein story, particularly for children, as it is captured in cinema via the 1931 film of the same name. At the elemental level, Frankenstein is a story of birth—and of “giving birth”, even as it addresses the realisation of death, and the possibility of life after death—both of which would doubtless appeal to and appease childhood anxieties. Additionally, belief systems generally invent an afterlife, or reincarnation, and so does Frankenstein's Monster, as it keeps returning, even after his many deaths, to go about his usual business. The cinema itself is a defiance of death, a graveyard where viewers can re-live past experiences, hear the voices of the dead, and see people long gone. The Frankenstein Monster is the perfect leading man for this ritual.
