Monsters and Monstrosity in Media: Reflections on Vulnerability

Min-Chi Chen, Youn Soo Kim Goldstein, Aarzoo Singh, Angie Fazekas, Joshua Nieubuurt, Mychal Reiff-Shanks, Morgan Kate Pinder, Ryanne Probst, Eleanor Gratz, Adam Wadenius, Charlito Codizar, Sheridyn Villarreal, Masound Farahmandfar

Vernon Press, Mar 12, 2024 - Social Science - 218 pages

As monstrous bodies on-screen signal a wide range of subversive destabilization of the notions of identity and community, this anthology asks what meanings monsters and monstrosity convey in relation to our recent circumstances shaped by neoliberalism and the pandemic that have led to the intensified tightening of border controls by nation-states, the intensive categorization of (un)identifiable bodies, and subsequent forms of isolations and detachments imposed by social distancing and the rapid transition of sociality from reality to virtual reality. Presenting various thinkings along the lines of the body and its representations as cultural text, together with popular or recent media productions showing various bodies deemed to be monstrous as they either cross conventionally held borders or stay in liminal spaces such as between human-animal, human-machine, virtual bodies-corporeal flesh, living-death, and other permeable borders, this volume looks into the on-screen constructions of the monster and monstrosity not only as they represent notions of difference, perceived (non)belongings, and disruptions of traditional identity markers, but also as they either conceal various vulnerabilities or implicitly endorse violence towards the labeled Other.

Contents

• The Enemy as Monster the Monster: 1
• Starzs Black Sails: 23
• Reframing: 39
• Trekking through: 55
• Monstrous Gatekeepers Ecogothic Bodies: 75
• Examining the Camera: 91
• Ladies of the Night What Pop Music They: 119
• Watch Out Boys Shell Chew You: 137
• Queering the Cyborg as: 155
• Goth: 173
• List of Contributors: 191

About the author

Yeojin Kim is a Professor of Instruction at the University at Buffalo/Singapore Institute of Management. She received her Ph.D. in the English Department at Binghamton University, State University of New York. She was a Korean Government Honor Fellowship student in 2016. Her primary research interests are cultural studies, transnational cinema studies, transmedia studies, and gender studies. She is a contributor to the book, 'Cinematic Women, From Objecthood to Heroism' (Vernon, 2020). Shane Carreon is an Associate Professor in the College of Communication, Art, and Design at the University of the Philippines Cebu. He was a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and an Academy of American Poets Prize. His creative work practice and research interests include writing and literature, multimodal artistic expressions, gender studies, translation, visual culture, popular culture, and decoloniality.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Monsters and Monstrosity in Media: Reflections on Vulnerability
• Authors: Min-Chi Chen, Youn Soo Kim Goldstein, Aarzoo Singh, Angie Fazekas, Joshua Nieubuurt, Mychal Reiff-Shanks, Morgan Kate Pinder, Ryanne Probst, Eleanor Gratz, Adam Wadenius, Charlito Codizar, Sheridyn Villarreal, Masound Farahmandfar
• Editors: Yeojin Kim, Shane Carreon
• Edition: unabridged
• Publisher: Vernon Press, 2024
• ISBN: 1648898467, 9781648898464
• Length: 218 pages
• Subjects: Social Science / Popular Culture; Social Science / Sociology / General