#literature media and communication

[nekhcore]

HEY YOU!

Yeah, you! Are you trans? Do you like reading books? Or watching movies?

Do you like media about trans men/transmasculine characters but don't know where to find it?

That's sooo crazy because I have this little spreadsheet I'm working on where I'm trying to document all media with protagonists/major characters who are FTM or transmasculine.

The spreadsheet currently has 300+ entries spread across the following categories:

Books

Manga

Memoirs and non-fiction

Movies

TV Shows

Graphic novels / Comics

Webcomics

Audio dramas

Books and movies are also sorted by:

Which character is trans (MC, love interest, antagonist, etc)

If the trans character is POC

The trans character's sexuality (Because I saw lots of transhet guys sad about only being able to find gay romances)

If the author/actor is also trans (if we know for sure)

It's free to use, and free to add to as well! Editing permissions are on, and I check on the spreadsheet every now and then to make sure everything is in order and to clean up.

If you know something that isn't on the list, please add it! You don't have to fill in every single column, but fill it to the best of your abilities.

If you don't want to use the big ass long link below, you can also use: bit.ly/FTM-protags

I made this because I want it to be a community resource. So even if you're not a trans guy or transmasculine person, please reblog!

[necroixe]

@ younger creepypasta fans, don't be worried about sharing what you make for the fear of people finding issue with it for existing. We like your art for what it is, and encourage you to keep making it, because that's what the core of being an artist is. The ability to write, draw, create, whatever it is that drives you, and literally nobody ever can take that away from you. Those kids with the shitty stories and self inserts built a fandom from the ground up, wrote and drew their characters just because they wanted to. If you don't care for it, make your own art, or move elsewhere.

The quote in anton's original post is incomplete, so here’s a better one— "find what you love, and let it kill you."

[missessweetabode]

[nondelphic]

You think your thesis is solid? Please. I've read more primary sources before breakfast than you've skimmed in your entire undergrad career. I’ve defended more obscure literary theories in 3-hour seminars than you’ve had coherent thoughts. You don’t even know the pain of a peer-review rejection email, do you? Don’t talk to me about methodology until you’ve stayed up for 72 hours formatting footnotes in Chicago style. I’ve got enough citations to bury you. Next time, come prepared with an argument that actually holds water, junior.

[talefoundryshow]

NEW VIDEO!

"Would you still love me if I was a giant insect?" — Franz Kafka

[percheduphere]

Hey! At first, I want to say that really adore your essays. I found your blog shortly after I joined tumblr and it was a great beginning.

My question is not only about Loki. Few times you mentioned that queer subtext always existed in cinema. So I wanted to know more about it. Are there any common tricks which artists use? How can we know that it isn't just our imagination?

And if you could give some literature recommendations on this topic I'd be thrilled :)

Hi Anon! 

This is a really important question. I’m so glad you asked it, so I’ve bumped you to the front of my inbox queue.  

Superhell (Destiel). Superheaven (Aziracrow). Supertime (Lokius). It’s not an accident these types of tragic queer endings are a pattern in our TV media. Though of the three, Good Omens is the most likely to deliver a happy ending eventually, the resources I provide below contextualize why queer subtext and queer tragedy persists. I believe the paper on Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a particularly important read as it sheds light on tragic queer tropes and utilization of queer subtext from the 1950s that persist to this day. 

I do need to clarify a few things: 

1.) I’m not a formal scholar. I don’t have a Master’s, let alone a PhD. I would love to continue my education, but I only just finished paying off my student loans. This is to say, most of what I’ve learned is from self-guided reading, watching documentaries, and talking to literary and cinematic professionals and members of the LGBTQAI+ community. 

2.) Subtext exists in all forms of art: literature, music, painting, sculptures, film, and so on. There is no 1-to-1 definition of what subtext could be because subtext, by its very definition, is the communicating of information and/or a feeling without communicating it directly. It’s also important to remember that we use subtext in everyday life without realizing it.  

3.) It’s necessary to share foundational resources in order to provide a greater contextual understanding in response to your question. The resources I'll be sharing, which will go from broad foundational to specifically queer subtext in cinema, are as follows: A.) Using JSTOR, B.) Linguistics & Subtext, C.) Film History, D.) Queer Subtext in Literature, Theater, and Film. 

USING JSTOR 

JSTOR is an incredible academic journal article resource. You can sign-up as a user and have access to up to 100 articles per month online for free! If you don’t feel comfortable creating an account, you can also visit your local library, who more likely than not have a JSTOR membership. 

When searching for articles, I recommend using these keywords: queer, homosexuality, subtext, literature, film, history. 

LINGUISTICS & SUBTEXT 

Pragmatics 

-- Jerome Bruner’s “Pragmatics of Language and Language of Pragmatics” (Available on JSTOR; Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press) 

-- Kristin Borjesson’s “The Semantics-Pragmatics Interface: The Role of Speak Intentions and Nature of Implicit Meaning Aspects” (Available on JSTOR; Published by Armand Colin) 

Iceberg Theory and Theory of Omission 

-- Silvia Ammary’s “Poe’s ‘Theory of Omission” and Hemingway’s ‘Unity Effect’” (Available on JSTOR; Published in the Edgar Allan Poe Review) 

-- Charles J. Nolan, Jr’s “‘Out of Season’: The Importance of Close Reading’” (Available on JSTOR; Published in the Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature) 

-- Paul Smith’s “Hemingway’s Early Manuscripts: The Theory and Practice of Omission” (Available on JSTOR; Published by Journal of Modern Literature) 

Implicature 

-- Catherine Abell’s “Pictorial Implicature” (An important read as it provides academic context on interpretation of the visual medium, which is connected to interpretation of film; Available on JSTOR; Published by The American Society for Aesthetics) 

-- Eric Swanson’s “Omissive Implicature” (Linguistic study on implied communication through omission) Available on JSTOR; Published by University of Arkansas Press) 

-- Jacques Moeshcler’s “On the Pragmatics of Logical Connectives” (Published in the book: “Aspects of Linguistic Variation) 

Exformation 

-- David Foster Wallace’s “Laughing with Kafka” (Yes, the same writer of the book, Infinite Jest! A quick 4-page read that explains exformation in literature using Kafka as an example; Available on JSTOR; Published in Log by Anyone Corporation) 

-- Stephen J. Burn’s “Reading the Multiple Drafts Novel” (23 pages; can be a slog to read, but it addresses the issues of “canon”; Available on JSTOR; Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press) 

FILM HISTORY 

Generally, I recommend looking up Hollywood History pre-code (Hays Code aka the Motion Picture Production Code from 1930-1967). Notice that the code’s abandonment was gradual in the 60s, which was when the U.S.’s sexual revolution occured. The MPAA Film Rating System went into effect in 1968.  

Sin if Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood by Mark A. Vieira 

Available in hard cover on Amazon (looks like there’s only 1 copy left); no digital version that I can find. You may be able to find this at your library. 

Forbidden Hollywood: The Pre-Code Era (1930-1934): When Sin Rules the Movies by Mark A. Vieira 

Available on Kindle. Similar to Vieira’s first book but considered inferior.  

The Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality in the Movies by Vito Russo 

Published in the 1980s, a groundbreaking work and the first of its kind. It’s dated but still considered critical reading. 

Screening the Sexes: Homosexuality in the Movies by Parker Tyler 

Available in hardcover and paperback. This is also considered critical reading to be paired with Celluloid Closet. 

Images in the Dark: An Encyclopedia of Gay and Lesbian Film and Video by Raymond Murray 

Available in paperback on Amazon (1 copy left); likely to be in the library as well. 

QUEER SUBTEXT IN LITERATURE, THEATER, AND FILM 

Queerbaiting and Fandom: Teasing Fans through Homoerotic Possibilities 

The first book of its kind, published in 2019. A must-read as contributing articles include analysis on Supernatural, Sherlock, and Merlin, among many others. I highly recommend reading the entire book, but it is expensive. You may be able to find this at your library.  

My recommended articles from this book: 

-- Joseph Brenann’s “Introduction: A History of Queerbaiting” is critical to understanding the Loki series specific place in queer fandom and media history. 

-- Monique Franklin’s “Queerbaiting, Queer Readings, and Heteronormative Viewing Practices” 

-- Guillaume Sirois’s “Hollywood Queerbaiting and the (In)Visibility of Same-Sex Desire

-- Christoferr Bagger’s “Multiversal Queerbaiting: Alan Scott, Alternate Universes, and Gay Characters in Superhero Comics” 

Fandom: Identities and Communities in a Mediated World 

About half the price of Queerbaiting and Fandom but significantly more broad in scope. 

My recommended articles from this book: 

-- Cornel Sandvoss’s The Death of the Reader? Literary Theory and the Study of Texts in Popular Culture 

-- Derek Johnson’s “Fantagonism: Factions, Institutions, Constitutive Hegemonies of Fandom” 

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Reading of epic poem recommended) 

-- David L. Boyd’s “Sodomy, Misogyny, and Displacement: Occluding Queer Desire in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (available on JSTOR; from Arthuriana published by Scriptorium Press) 

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray (Reading the novel recommended) 

-- Jeff Nunokawa’s “Homosexual Desire and the Effacement of the Self in ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray’” (available on JSTOR; Published by The Johns Hopkins University) 

-- Ed Cohen’s “Writing Gone Wilde: Homoerotic Desire in the Closet of Representation” (available on JSTOR; Published by Cambridge University Press) 

-- Sandra Mayer’s “‘A Complex Multiform Creature’: Ambiguity and Limitation Foreshadowed in the Early Critical Reception of Oscar Wilde” (available on JSTOR; Published in AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik) 

Tennessee Williams’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Reading the short story [“Three Players of a Summer Game” and stage play and watching the film adaptation highly recommended) 

-- Dean Shackelford’s “The Truth That Must Be Told: Gay Subjectivity, Homophobia, and Social History in “‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’”. (A must-read, in my opinion. You see a lot of patterns that continue in our subtextual queer stories to this day, concerning since Williams’s play was written in the early 1950s. Available on JSTOR; published in The Tennessee Williams Annual Review) 

I hope these resources are helpful and interesting to you! Happy reading! 

[s0r3muzzi3wh0r3]

does anyone have any writing techniques to help with writing about media or history??? I'm struggling with writing a couple of documents about different ideas trying to write about something unique in media.

here's a couple I thought about:

cultural appropriation, religious iconography, and the ignorance of blatant orientalism in modern media

the rise and risks of shock advertising/content in modern media 

the demonization of queer artists and religious iconography 

I'm just struggling how to extend on them, and observing on Chat GPT with the writing prompts given don't fit my style, and I'm just starting out. What do I do???

[whocookedthelastsupper]

“In the course of history, to be a woman had been a sin against nature and a crime against God. Now it has become an ideological deviance in the bargain. Under this system, the woman who dared to question the ideology by which she was judged would find herself among the "daughters of the Devil" whom the men of God, or the God of men, had determined to destroy. For the woman who argued, questioned, challenged, was not a woman. Woman was designed by nature to please and complement man, to love and serve her lord and master. After all, what else are women for?

In this baseline demand lurks the eternal myth of womanhood, and the eternal unsatisfied fantasy of the self-deluded male. To them, the answer was simple-women were for men, and should be grate-ful. Nowhere has this egregious exaction been more visibly expressed, nor more extensively fostered, than in the world's dream factory of the twentieth century, the Hollywood film industry. Hollywood's idiosyncratic vice and overriding obsession, the sexualizing of the female, in fact is wholly characteristic of all the other mass media, and indeed the secret of their commercial success. But although advertising has now taken over as the prime site of sexual stereotyping in the Western industrialized societies, Hollywood led the way. Whatever ideas the inhabitants of the post-war world nurse about male and female, love and work, they will have derived a high proportion of them from the dream-world of Hollywood fiction.

And what did Hollywood have to tell a breathless world through the undying magic of the silver screen? What was the message of the moguls who knew All About Eve, how women became Notorious, feared a Psycho and longed for King Kong and a grapefruit in the face. What else but that there were bad girls and good girls, girls you fucked and girls you married, little women and good wives, and the birth of a nation was man's work (tell the women to boil some water, lots of it). Study on this, sister, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Without knowing how, for it was always very respectful toward religion (Jesus of Nazareth, the Man Born to Be Box-Office), Hollywood became the Church of America, every film the new covenant, every picture told a story and the story was the greatest, oldest, cruelest, dumbest story ever told, the man born to be man.

For boys will be boys, and nowhere more so than in the all-American playground of the Hollywood movie. As film after film rolled off the cameras under the beady scrutiny of the first generation movie-moguls, patriarchs of the purest water to the last man, the father gods must have been hugging themselves with glee. For who needed physical restraints, savage laws, exclusion from education, from work and from society to keep women in their second-rate “sphere" when you could show them a film that did the same job, and sent them away happy into the bargain?

The extent to which the mass media of the twentieth century have served to replace the older instruments of dominance and restraint in the perennial patriarchal work of keeping women subordinate has yet to be fully acknowledged. But in its groping, voyeuristic response to the female, its tireless recycling of the same old female archetypes of mother, maiden, whore, its unreeling of ideal scenarios contrasted with the threatening accounts of the "girls who went wrong," Hollywood has to take its proud place alongside the "morals police" of the Ayatollah Khomeini for its valuable work in keeping women in line and training them to be everything a regular guy could ever hope for as his wife and the mother of his children.

As these pseudomodern industries, the mass media, lead us firmly by the genitals backward into the future, we can recognize the new arena in which the next stage for the freedom and equality of women will be fought out. Over the millennia of civilization, the source and site of women's inferiority has been located in nature, biology religion, physiology, brain size and the female psyche. Women have fought back, for the right to read, to in so mopey, to vote. One by one chose oppressions have gone down in some parts of the world, thereby undermining the "natural" and inevitable status of those that remain. But underlying patterns change slowly. This is in no way to belittle the fruits of the struggle to date. It is simply to insist that in the deeper struggle that feminists worldwide now realize they face, changing the world takes longer.

For there is much to do, amounting in fact to a remaking of modern society. All democratic experiments, all revolutions, all demands for equality have so far, in every instance, stopped short of sexual equality. Every society has in its prestige structures a series of subtle, interacting codes of dominance that always, everywhere, finally rank men higher than women. Nowhere has any society successfully dispensed with the age-old sex-role division of labor and the rewards in goods and power that accompany it. Nowhere do women enjoy the rights, privileges and possibilities and leisure time that men do. Everywhere men still mediate between women and power, women and the state, women and freedom, women and themselves.”

-Rosalind Miles; Who Cooked The Last Supper? The Women’s History of the World

[adornesibley]

A good work colleague of mine has put up a Kickstarter for a sick looking puzzle adventure game with a thick physical manual for the spaceship you’re aboard and an app where you apply the things you’re learning there to fix problems on the ship.

I immediately backed it on the digital tier (as downunder shipping costs are brutal) but I highly recommend a physical copy of you’re in Canada or State-side.

Make sure to go wish them luck and consider backing them! They’ve got a ways to go, but this project has a hell of a lot of potential~

[selkies-world]

Keep this away from the bigots, please, Tumblr!!!

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

[missessweetabode]

i need to be loved

[joyeeta16]

Read a quote that goes like

"The secret to life is to waste time in ways that you like."

and I can't stop thinking about it.

[teenage-queeries]

Episode 2 is out now!! Very belated Holiday episodr. We're covering George Micheal, How to Excavate a Heart, and other fun things. Happy listening!

[aspectabundgaze]

Activism : The Play, Scene II

Activism has always been around for such a long, long time. However, not a lot of people are aware of how people back in the days used to use their voices or influence in the acts of activism. Which brings up to the question I have in mind, "What was activism like in the days of Ancient Greece?" "Now I know they have protests too, but did they incorporated it into their entertainment? Entertainment has always been a tool to advocate for changes. Right?"

I've always been a huge fan of ancient Greek history, mainly mythology but sometimes, I do dabble into their philosophical and political sides. To answer my own question, I've decided to do a slight dive on Aristophanes.

First thing's first, what is activism? Nolas, S.M., Varvantakis, C. and Aruldoss, V., 2017 defines activism as an act that could be driven by the intentions to challenge social norms, practices that holds back and oppresses, suppresses identities that does not conform to the values of a society. Now activism can happen anywhere and any time, from a playground where both genders can play together without being judged for being a girl or a boy, a dinner table where discussions from studies, work, world issues can happen. Nolas, Varvantakis and Aruldoss, 2017 have also stated in their papers activism can also be a response to changes and events within the society, such as the rise of new social movements and the need to do a dive in onto political participation in the face of unexpected political outcomes. So how does this relate to Aristophanes?

Now according to an article published by Columbia College, Aristophanes was an ancient Greek playwright and comedian who lived in Athens, he was born somewhere around 446 BCE and died around 386 BCE. He was best known for his comedic plays, wrote roughly around 40 plays, where only 11 of his works survived to this very day. The reason why I found that his work is related to activism, particularly political activism is because his plays were known for its satirical and political nature. He incorporated humour, an exaggeration towards contemporary issues, philosophy and social trends into his work, making him known as one of the first people to be a public relations activist. Using political satire was one of the Ancient Greek's way to perform activism and public relations. (Bisbe, M., Molner, E. and Jimenez, M., 2019).

An example that can be taken from Aristophanes' play called "Lysistrata" written in 411 BCE that depicts the Peloponnesian war between the Athens and the Spartans. As known with his knack for satire and comedy, he wrote this as a portrayal of a fictional attempt by women from Ancient Greek to end the war by withholding sexual privileges with their husbands in order to stop the war until a treaty was signed. Albeit the play talking about a woman's needs with her spouses, the dialogue. talked about how men who focused on the war has been nothing but wasteful of the tax payer's money that women and the society contributed to, going back to Aristophanes' way of addressing the the financial effects of war, showing the frivolous nature of war and also the effects of wat on families.

Another example would be one of his well known plays "The Clouds". The Clouds was written as a political and philosophical satire on Socrates and his institution, which is also known as "The Clouds" Aristophanes used humour and exaggerated language to caricature Socrates' methods of inquiry and the perceived consequences of philosophical education. For example, here is a small dialogue from the play I read.

SOCRATES

Well now! what are you doing? are you reflecting?

STREPSIADES

Yes, by Posidon!

SOCRATES

What about?

STREPSIADES

Whether the bugs will entirely devour me.

SOCRATES

May death seize you, accursed man!

He turns aside again.

The play suggests that the pursuit of abstract knowledge and intellectualism can lead to moral and societal corruption, as The Cloud is about a man named Strepsiades who enrolled himself to Socrates' institution in order to avoid getting caught for his financial debts instead of trying his best to work things out and ethically clear out his debts. And in my opinion, activism doesn't always have to be something we do as a form of protest (physically done with marching), or an online post, or a drawing or photos but it could also be done in a form of writing. A script, a play, a book or a poem.

Refences

Nolas, S.M., Varvantakis, C. and Aruldoss, V., 2017. Political activism across the life course. Contemporary Social Science, 12(1-2), pp.1-12, viewed 22 November 2023.

Bisbe, M., Molner, E. and Jimenez, M., 2019. Public intellectuals, political satire and the birth of activist public relations: The case of Attic Comedy. Public Relations Review, 45(5), p.101790, viewed 23 November 2023

Foley, H.P., 1982. The" female intruder" reconsidered: Women in Aristophanes' Lysistrata and Ecclesiazusae. Classical Philology, 77(1), pp.1-21, viewed 19 November 2023

The Internet Classics Archive: The Clouds by aristophanes’, The Internet Classics Archive | The Clouds by Aristophanes, viewed 24 November, 2023, <http://classics.mit.edu/Aristophanes/clouds.html>

[jcmarchi]

Cynthia Griffin Wolff, acclaimed biographer and longtime MIT professor, dies at 87

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/cynthia-griffin-wolff-acclaimed-biographer-and-longtime-mit-professor-dies-at-87/

Cynthia Griffin Wolff, acclaimed biographer and longtime MIT professor, dies at 87

Cynthia Griffin Wolff, a noted scholar of American literature, passed away on July 25. She was 87.

Wolff joined the humanities faculty at MIT in 1980 and was named the Class of 1922 Professor of Humanities in 1985. She taught in the Literature Section, and later moved to the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies. Her expertise was in the exploration of 19th and 20th century female American writers. She retired from MIT in 2003.

Wolff was born in Saint Louis, Missouri, on Aug. 20, 1934. She was a graduate of Radcliffe College, attended Harvard Medical School, and in 1965 received her PhD in English at Harvard University. Before her arrival at MIT, she was a tenured professor of English and American literature at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Wolff wrote two major literary biographies. “A Feast of Words: The Triumph of Edith Wharton” was published in 1977. That was followed by the 1986 biography “Emily Dickinson.” Wolff worked for several years to unearth new and original primary sources before even starting the process of writing a first draft. She sought to analyze her subject’s literary oeuvre with a complete understanding of the authors’ historical and personal contexts. She also edited numerous books that brought long-overdue attention to American women writers.

Several years before her retirement, Wolff began composing a third literary biography on writer Willa Cather. Wolff continued work after her retirement but found herself unable to bring it to fruition and eventually put it aside.

“A devoted teacher and an inspired scholar, Cynthia Griffin Wolff cemented her literary legacy worldwide with her highly influential biographies of Edith Wharton and Emily Dickinson,” says Kenneth Manning, the Thomas Meloy Professor of Rhetoric (programs in Writing and Humanistic Studies and Science, Technology, and Society) at MIT who worked with Wolff during her tenure. “I was anticipating the same creative force in her biographical research on Willa Cather.”

Following her retirement, Wolff spent much of her time in South Dennis, Massachusetts, in an early 19th century Cape Colonial she restored. She later moved into the Orchard Cove senior community in Canton, Massachusetts.

Wolff is survived by her sons Patrick and Tobias; Patrick’s wife, Diana; and two grandchildren, Samuel and Athena.