DOCSLIB.ORG

Today Your Barista Is: Genre Characteristics in the Coffee Shop Alternate Universe

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Today Your Barista Is: Genre Characteristics in the Coffee Shop Alternate Universe Today Your Barista Is: Genre Characteristics in The Coffee Shop Alternate Universe Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Katharine Elizabeth McCain Graduate Program in English The Ohio State University 2020 Dissertation Committee Sean O’Sullivan, Advisor Matthew H. Birkhold Jared Gardner Elizabeth Hewitt 1 Copyright by Katharine Elizabeth McCain 2020 2 Abstract This dissertation, Today Your Barista Is: Genre Characteristics in The Coffee Shop Alternate Universe, works to categorize and introduce a heretofore unrecognized genre within the medium of fanfiction: The Coffee Shop Alternate Universe (AU). Building on previous sociological and ethnographic work within Fan Studies, scholarship that identifies fans as transformative creators who use fanfiction as a means of promoting progressive viewpoints, this dissertation argues that the Coffee Shop AU continues these efforts within a defined set of characteristics, merging the goals of fanfiction as a medium with the specific goals of a genre. These characteristics include the Coffee Shop AU’s structure, setting, archetypes, allegories, and the remediation of related mainstream genres, particularly the romantic comedy. The purpose of defining the Coffee Shop AU as its own genre is to help situate fanfiction within mainstream literature conventions—in as much as that’s possible—and laying the foundation for future close reading. This work also helps to demonstrate which characteristics are a part of a communally developed genre as opposed to individual works, which may assist in legal proceedings moving forward. However, more crucially this dissertation serves to encourage the continued, formal study of fanfiction as a literary and cultural phenomenon, one that is beginning to closely analyze the stories fans produce alongside the fans themselves. Far from writing ii chaotically, fanfiction authors have spent the last six decades developing structured forms of literature for online spaces, of which the Coffee Shop AU is a part, yet most scholarship has yet to acknowledge that structure outside of overly broad categories (such as slash) or equally specific tropes (such as bed sharing). Defining what is currently one of the most popular genres written today—a genre that is the product of and is now helping to produce other genres—is the first step in filling this gap. iii Dedication To my younger self, who wouldn’t have believed this dissertation was possible. To everyone who helped prove me wrong. iv Acknowledgments First and foremost, this dissertation would not have been possible without the endless patience and advice of my committee members. Dr. Sean O’Sullivan should be commended for the number of Wexner meals we sat through together, working to turn a host of ambitious ideas into something tangible. You always knew what needed to be fixed, long before I did. I owe just as much to Dr. Matthew Birkhold for not only helping to cultivate my best arguments, but also reminding me that not all of them can—or should—end up in the final product. Thanks for telling me so many things I didn’t want to hear. Likewise, I am greatly indebted to Dr. Elizabeth Hewitt and Dr. Jared Gardner for helping me get out of my own head and figure out how to write this piece for someone other than myself. Good ideas alone cannot sustain themselves. You also need good writing and a sensible structure, something you both excelled at teaching. A special thanks goes out to the organizers and audience of the Fifth Annual Fandom and Neomedia Studies Conference, held in Ft. Worth Texas in the summer of 2017. They were the first to hear the beginnings of this dissertation and gave me the confidence needed to turn a small paper into something more. This project would simply not exist without the unconditional support given to me throughout the process by family and friends. Mom, Dad, Sean: you three were the safety net I needed to keep pushing forward. Leah, Ian, Amelia, and Kristin: I’m not sure how v many stressed-out texts you all had to read throughout this process, but I’m sure a compilation would be longer than the dissertation itself. Lots of love sent to my dogs, Fergus and River. Every PhD candidate deserves a loyal pet. Finally, the warmest thanks extended to the Supernatural, Teen Wolf, and Witcher fan communities. At its core, this piece is for you. vi Vita May 2015………………. M.A. English Language and Literature, Georgetown University May 2013………………. B.A. Literatures in English, Classics, Connecticut College Publications “Epoximise!: The Renegotiation of Film and Literature Through Harry Potter GIF-sets.” Transforming Harry: The Adaptation of Harry Potter in the Transmedia Age, edited by John Alberti and Andy Miller, Wayne University Press, 2018 “Feeling Exposed? Irene Adler and the Self-Reflective Disguise.” Sherlock Holmes: Essays on Film and Television Adaptations Since 2009, edited by Nadine Farghaly, McFarland, 2015. “Sensibly Organized: Filling in Gaps With Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.” Prequels, Coquels and Sequels in Contemporary Anglophone Fiction, edited by Armelle Parey, CRC Press, Routledge Studies in Contemporary Literature, 2018. Fields of Study Major Field: English vii Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................... ii Dedication ..................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgments ...........................................................................................................v Vita .............................................................................................................................. vii List of Tables................................................................................................................. ix List of Figures .................................................................................................................x Chapter 1. Introduction ....................................................................................................1 Chapter 2. Story World: “A Refuge of Sorts”................................................................ 69 Chapter 3. Structure and Design: “I’m So Sick of These Fake Coffee Shop AUs” ......... 96 Chapter 4. Character Types: “What if They Were, Like, Baristas?” ............................. 146 Chapter 5. Food As Allegory: “Love Me Some Pie” .................................................... 177 Chapter 6. Conclusion ................................................................................................ 207 Appendix A. Index of Terminology ............................................................................ 229 Appendix B. SurveyResponses………………………………………………………....237 Appendix C. Primary Sources…………………………………………………………..243 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………...….246 viii List of Tables Table 1 Alternate Universe Survey Results……………………………………………. 22 Table 2 Coffee Shop AU Word Counts………………………………………………. 113 Table 3 Coffee Shop AU Ratings……………………………………………………. 120 ix List of Figures Figure 1 Tumblr Post Describing Coffee Shop AU Conversation………………………26 Figure 2 What Do Kudos Mean to You? …………………….…………………….……53 Figure 3 Tumblr Photograph of Coffee Shop Chalk Board…………………………… 67 Figure 4 Tumblr Screenshot of GIF Reacting to First-Person Fanfiction……………… 71 Figure 5 A Collection of Tumblr Images Depicting Various Coffee Shops…………… 89 Figure 6 Coffee Shop AU Mood Board…………………………………………………92 Figure 7 Teen Wolf Mood Board……………………………………………………….. 93 Figure 8 Years Active in Fandom Survey Results………………………………………99 Figure 9 Number of Fans Who Read Fanfiction Survey Results……………………….100 Figure 10 Number of Fans Who Write Fanfiction Survey Results……………………..100 Figure 11 Gender Identity Survey Results……………………………………………...101 Figure 12 Gender Identity: Cis and Queer Survey Results……………………………..102 Figure 13 Two Tumblr Screenshots of “I Am the Manager” Comics………………….134 Figure 14 Two Tumblr Screenshots of Dean Winchester………………………………188 Figure 15 Seven Tumblr Screenshots of the Image-Fic Snapchatting Starbucks………193 Figure 16 Tumblr Screenshot of a Harry Potter Text Post…………………………….208 x Chapter 1 Introduction “I want my life to be a dark academia novel mixed with a coffee shop au” - Tumblr user Armands-Adolescentmoodswings It's 6:30pm and you're finally home after a long day at work, ready to unwind and enjoy a bit of time to yourself. There's a half-finished novel on your nightstand table, a queue of television shows primed on Netflix, and more than one unfinished game on Steam. However, you bypass it all and pull up your bookmarked fanfics instead. There you find a free, fifty-thousand-word story to enjoy. It features a young man working as a barista who falls in love with one of his regulars. Or maybe it's the story of the customer falling in love with the barista, the one who takes the time to draw silly doodles on his cup each morning. Perhaps one of the duo is a student, a writer, an artist, a bakery owner, works at a pet shop, or is just using the café to escape the rain. No matter who they are inevitably one of them wanders into a coffee shop and finds the love of their life there. It's the Coffee Shop Alternate Universe (AU)1 and it's simultaneously one of the most recognizable and complex genres found within fanfiction. This work considers the Coffee Shop AU
Load more

Recommended publications
  • See It Big! Action Features More Than 30 Action Movie Favorites on the Big
    FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE ‘SEE IT BIG! ACTION’ FEATURES MORE THAN 30 ACTION MOVIE FAVORITES ON THE BIG SCREEN April 19–July 7, 2019 Astoria, New York, April 16, 2019—Museum of the Moving Image presents See It Big! Action, a major screening series featuring more than 30 action films, from April 19 through July 7, 2019. Programmed by Curator of Film Eric Hynes and Reverse Shot editors Jeff Reichert and Michael Koresky, the series opens with cinematic swashbucklers and continues with movies from around the world featuring white- knuckle chase sequences and thrilling stuntwork. It highlights work from some of the form's greatest practitioners, including John Woo, Michael Mann, Steven Spielberg, Akira Kurosawa, Kathryn Bigelow, Jackie Chan, and much more. As the curators note, “In a sense, all movies are ’action’ movies; cinema is movement and light, after all. Since nearly the very beginning, spectacle and stunt work have been essential parts of the form. There is nothing quite like watching physical feats, pulse-pounding drama, and epic confrontations on a large screen alongside other astonished moviegoers. See It Big! Action offers up some of our favorites of the genre.” In all, 32 films will be shown, many of them in 35mm prints. Among the highlights are two classic Technicolor swashbucklers, Michael Curtiz’s The Adventures of Robin Hood and Jacques Tourneur’s Anne of the Indies (April 20); Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (April 21); back-to-back screenings of Mad Max: Fury Road and Aliens on Mother’s Day (May 12); all six Mission: Impossible films
    [Show full text]
  • Gender and Consent in Supernatural Fanfiction's Alpha/Beta/Omega
    i Just Go Find Yourself a Nice Alpha: Gender and Consent in Supernatural Fanfiction’s Alpha/Beta/Omega Universe by Tessa Barone A THESIS submitted to Oregon State University Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Honors Baccalaureate of Arts in English (Honors Scholar) Honors Baccalaureate of Arts in History (Honors Scholar) Presented May 28, 2019 Commencement June 2019 ii iii AN ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS OF Tessa Barone for the degree of Honors Baccalaureate of Arts in English and Honors Baccalaureate Arts in History presented on May 28, 2019. Title: Just Go Find Yourself a Nice Alpha: Gender and Consent in Supernatural Fanfiction’s Alpha/Beta/Omega Universe. Abstract approved:_____________________________________________________ Rebecca Olson Shows, books, and media are constantly negotiating power with their fans. Who decides what is canon? To whom does the story belong?? The answer has traditionally been in favor of producers. However, in the age of the internet, fans now hold considerably more power than they ever have before, and some shows, like the CW’s Supernatural, respond by participating in “fanservice.” Many fans of this show strongly support slash and incest pairings, and by allowing such interpretations to be acknowledged in the narrative Supernatural makes increasingly transgressive readings available to the audience. The trope known as “Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics” is extremely popular, borderline pornographic, and virtually eradicates women from the narrative—instead depicting a relationship between men that is highly heterosexual in dynamic. This trope deconstructs the gender binary by assigning gender roles based on behavior, rather than biology, and appeals to an animal code of ethics in order to indulge in problematic, sexist, and abusive sexual situations.
    [Show full text]
  • Digital Fanfic in Negotiation: Livejournal, Archive of Our Own, and the Affordances of Read-Write Platforms
    Digital fanfic in negotiation: LiveJournal, Archive of our Own, and the affordances of read-write platforms. Introduction Fanfiction is the unauthorized rewriting or adaptation of popular media narratives, utilizing corporately owned characters, settings and storylines to tell an individual writer’s own story (self-ref, 2017). It is often abbreviated to fanfic or even fic, and exists in a thoroughly grey legal area between copyright infringement and fair use (Tushnet 1997, McCardle 2011). Though there were a few cases of cease-and-desist letters sent to fan writers in the twentieth century, media corporations now understand it is useless to attempt to prosecute fanfic writers – for one thing, there are simply too many of us,1 and for another it would be terrible publicity. Though modern fanfic can be reliably dated to the 1960s (Jenkins 1992), it is now primarily an online practice, and the fastest growing form of writing in the world (self ref). This paper uses participant observation and online ethnography to explore how fanfiction archives utilize digital affordances. Following Murray, I will argue that a robust understanding of digital read-write platforms needs to account for the social and legal context of digital fiction as well as its technological affordances. Whilst the online platform LiveJournal in some ways channels user creativity towards a more self-evidentially ‘digital’ texts than its successor in the Archive of Our Own (A03), the Archive encourages greater reader interactivity at the level of archive and sorting. I will demonstrate that in some ways, the A03 recoups some of the cultural capital and use value of print.
    [Show full text]
  • The Reading Habits and Preferences of LGBTIQ+ Youth Rachel S
    St. Cloud State University theRepository at St. Cloud State Library Faculty Publications Library Services 2019 The Reading Habits and Preferences of LGBTIQ+ Youth Rachel S. Wexelbaum Saint Cloud State University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/lrs_facpubs Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Recommended Citation Wexelbaum, Rachel S., "The Reading Habits and Preferences of LGBTIQ+ Youth" (2019). Library Faculty Publications. 62. https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/lrs_facpubs/62 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Library Services at theRepository at St. Cloud State. It has been accepted for inclusion in Library Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of theRepository at St. Cloud State. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The Reading Habits and Preferences of LGBTIQ+ Youth Rachel Wexelbaum, St. Cloud State University, USA Abstract The author of this article presents the available findings on the reading habits and preferences of LGBTIQ+ youth. She will discuss the information seeking behavior of LGBTIQ+ youth and challenges that these youth face in locating LGBTIQ+ reading materials, whether in traditional book format or via social media. Finally, the author will provide recommendations to librarians on how to make LGBTIQ+ library resources more relevant for youth, as well as identify areas that require more research. Keywords: LGBT; LGBT library resources and services; reading; social
    [Show full text]
  • Front Matter Template
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by UT Digital Repository Copyright by Birch Griesse 2019 The Report Committee for Birch Griesse Certifies that this is the approved version of the following Report: Mediating Conflicting Values in a Community Archives Setting APPROVED BY SUPERVISING COMMITTEE: Amelia Acker, Supervisor Patricia K. Galloway Mediating Conflicting Values in a Community Archives Setting by Birch Griesse Report Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Information Studies The University of Texas at Austin May 2019 Acknowledgements I would like to thank Dr. Amelia Acker for her hard work in helping me navigate the process of researching and writing this report, including helping me overcome several obstacles along the way. I would also like to thank my mother, Janet Titus, for her continuous love and support. iv Abstract Mediating Conflicting Values in a Community Archives Setting Birch Griesse, M.S. Info. St. The University of Texas at Austin, 2019 Supervisor: Amelia Acker This report examines conflicts within the user community of the online fanwork repository Archive of Our Own (AO3). The site is a nonprofit venture with the ambitious goal of serving the large heterogeneous community of fandom writ large. Tensions among subsets of the Archive’s user group have flared up at various points in its ten-year history, forcing its volunteer-based staff into the position of arbiter of community values. These conflicting values have influenced, sometimes asymmetrically, the functionality of the Archive and are now embedded in its design.
    [Show full text]
  • Radicalizing Romance: Subculture, Sex, and Media at the Margins
    RADICALIZING ROMANCE: SUBCULTURE, SEX, AND MEDIA AT THE MARGINS By ANDREA WOOD A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2008 1 © 2008 Andrea Wood 2 To my father—Paul Wood—for teaching me the value of independent thought, providing me with opportunities to see the world, and always encouraging me to pursue my dreams 3 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Kim Emery, my dissertation supervisor, for her constant encouragement, constructive criticism, and availability throughout all stages of researching and writing this project. In addition, many thanks go to Kenneth Kidd and Trysh Travis for their willingness to ask me challenging questions about my work that helped me better conceptualize my purpose and aims. Finally, I would like to thank my friends and family who provided me with emotional and financial support at difficult stages in this process. 4 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...............................................................................................................4 LIST OF FIGURES .........................................................................................................................7 ABSTRACT .....................................................................................................................................9 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................11
    [Show full text]
  • Sfiff 2019 Program Here
    SantaFeIndependent.com 2019 team and advisory board 2019 SFIFF TEAM Jacques Paisner Artistic Director Liesette Paisner Bailey Executive Director Jena Braziel Guest Service Director Derek Horne Director of Shorts Programmer Beau Farrell Associate Programmer Stephanie Love Office Manager Dawn Hoffman Events Manager Deb French Venue Coordinator Chris Bredenberg Tech Director Allie Salazar Graphic Designer Blake Lewis Headquarters Manager Castle Searcy Festival Dailies Adelaide Zhang Box Office Assistant Sarah Mease Box Office Assistant Eileen O’Brien MC Sage Paisner Photographer 2019 SFIFF ADVISORY BOARD Gary Farmer, Chair Chris Eyre Kirk Ellis David Sontag Alexandria Bombach Nicole Guillemet “A young Sundance” Alton Walpole —Indiewire Kimi Ginoza Green Paul Langland Beth Caldarello Xavier Horan “An all inclusive Marissa Juarez resort for cinephiles...” —Filmmaker Magazine “Bringing the community together” 505-349-1414 —Slant Magazine www.santafeindependent.com • [email protected] 418 Montezuma Ave. Suite 22 Santa Fe, NM 87501 3 AD AD welcome WELCOME Dear Santa Fe Independent Film Festival Visitors and Community, Welcome to Santa Fe, and to the festival The Albuquerque Journal calls “The Next Sundance.” The Santa Fe Independent Film Festival (SFIFF), now in its eleventh year, has become one of Santa Fe’s most celebrated annual events. I know you will enjoy SFIFF’s world-class programming and award-winning guests, including renowned ac- tors Jane Seymour and Tantoo Cardinal. I encourage you to investi- gate the many activities, museums, galleries, restaurants, and more that Santa Fe has to offer. The Santa Fe Independent Film Festival fills five days with screen- ings, workshops, educational panels, book signings, and celebra- tions.
    [Show full text]
  • Seana Gorlick Local 706 Makeup Artist Seanabrehgorlick.Com (661) 233-2162
    Seana Gorlick Local 706 Makeup Artist Seanabrehgorlick.com (661) 233-2162 Training: MKC Beauty Academy Masters Makeup Program Airbrushing Clients: Tyler Posey Natalie Martinez Shelley Hennig Dylan Sprayberry Dylan O’Brien Holland Roden Tyler Hoechlin Paul Sorvino Charlie Carver Colton Haynes Daniel Sharman Paul Ben-Victor Kendrick Sampson Chris Zylka Rachel Boston Noah Bean JB Smoove Josie Davis Daniella Bobadilla Thomas F. Wilson Max Carver Ayla Kell Tricia O’Kelley Marin Hinkle James Cromwell Joanna Cassidy Harley Quinn Smith Lily Rose Depp Austin Butler Productions: ABC Television Fall Premiere Event 2010 “The Time” Documentary All American Rejects Music Video; The Beekeeper’s Daughter Black Marigolds; Independent Film No Business Like; Webisode Sunday Guests; Short Film Stalked At 17; Lifetime Feature Film Here For Now; Independent Film The Big Day; Independent Film Another Christmas, Independent Film Good Day LA; Talk Show (Tyler Posey) One Night; Independent Film Nighttime; Short Film Coming Home; Short Film ALLOY Teen Wolf Promotional Video Burton Snowboards Spring/Summer '12 and Fall/Winter '12 Ad Campaign Spy Optic RX 2013 Catalog Carriers; Lifetime Feature Film I Heard; Web Series High School Crush; Lifetime Feature Film Deceit; Lifetime Feature Film RVC Web Series; Created by TJ Miller Missing; Lifetime Feature Film The Cheating Pact; Lifetime Feature Film The Perfect Boyfriend; Lifetime Feature Film Night Vet; Short Film Blood Relatives; TV Series MTV Online Teen Wolf After Show Variety Magazine Cover (Tyler Posey) Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous; Cast Interviews Comic Con 2013 for Teen Wolf Cast Burton Snowboards Spring/Summer ’14 Ad Campaign Teen Wolf; TV Series (Season 3B and 4) TV Guide Cover (Tyler Posey) The Today Show; Teen Wolf (Tyler Posey and Tyler Hoechlin) Comic Con 2014; Teen Wolf Cast Teen Choice Awards 2014 Yoga Hosers; Motion Picture Tabloid; TV Series.
    [Show full text]
  • Audiences, Gender and Community in Fan Vidding Katharina M
    University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2011 "Veni, Vidi, Vids!" audiences, gender and community in Fan Vidding Katharina M. Freund University of Wollongong, [email protected] Recommended Citation Freund, Katharina M., "Veni, Vidi, Vids!" audiences, gender and community in Fan Vidding, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of Social Sciences, Media and Communications, Faculty of Arts, University of Wollongong, 2011. http://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/3447 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] “Veni, Vidi, Vids!”: Audiences, Gender and Community in Fan Vidding A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree Doctor of Philosophy From University of Wollongong by Katharina Freund (BA Hons) School of Social Sciences, Media and Communications 2011 CERTIFICATION I, Katharina Freund, declare that this thesis, submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy, in the Arts Faculty, University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. The document has not been submitted for qualifications at any other academic institution. Katharina Freund 30 September, 2011 i ABSTRACT This thesis documents and analyses the contemporary community of (mostly) female fan video editors, known as vidders, through a triangulated, ethnographic study. It provides historical and contextual background for the development of the vidding community, and explores the role of agency among this specialised audience community. Utilising semiotic theory, it offers a theoretical language for understanding the structure and function of remix videos.
    [Show full text]
  • Black Girl Magic: the (Re)Imagining of Hermione Granger: an Analysis and Autoethnography
    DePaul University Via Sapientiae College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences 6-2021 Black girl magic: the (re)imagining of Hermione Granger: an analysis and autoethnography Kandice Rose DePaul University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd Recommended Citation Rose, Kandice, "Black girl magic: the (re)imagining of Hermione Granger: an analysis and autoethnography" (2021). College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations. 306. https://via.library.depaul.edu/etd/306 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Via Sapientiae. It has been accepted for inclusion in College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Via Sapientiae. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DePaul University Black Girl Magic: The (re)Imagining of Hermione Granger An Analysis and Autoethnography Kandice Rose Critical Ethnic Studies Graduate Candidate June 2021 1 INTRODUCTION I'd very much like to say that I've always loved to read, but that would be patently false. At the age of 6, when I was in the first grade, the grade where Americans generally learn to read, I absolutely hated it. My teacher, Mrs. Johnson, would call on students to stand up and read passages to the class. I would stare in awe as other kids would read their sentences flawlessly, even as butterflies rattled in my stomach, as I waited in dread for her to call on either myself or my twin sister.
    [Show full text]
  • 'Jaws'. In: Hunter, IQ and Melia, Matthew, (Eds.) the 'Jaws' Book : New Perspectives on the Classic Summer Blockbuster
    This is the accepted manuscript version of Melia, Matthew [Author] (2020) Relocating the western in 'Jaws'. In: Hunter, IQ and Melia, Matthew, (eds.) The 'Jaws' book : new perspectives on the classic summer blockbuster. London, U.K. For more details see: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/the-jaws-book-9781501347528/ 12 Relocating the Western in Jaws Matthew Melia Introduction During the Jaws 40th Anniversary Symposium1 Carl Gottlieb, the film’s screenwriter, refuted the suggestion that Jaws was a ‘Revisionist’ or ‘Post’ Western, and claimed that the influence of the Western genre had not entered the screenwriting or production processes. Yet the Western is such a ubiquitous presence in American visual culture that its narratives, tropes, style and forms can be broadly transposed across a variety of non-Western genre films, including Jaws. Star Wars (1977), for instance, a film with which Jaws shares a similar intermedial cultural position between the Hollywood Renaissance and the New Blockbuster, was a ‘Western movie set in Outer Space’.2 Matthew Carter has noted the ubiquitous presence of the frontier mythos in US popular culture and how contemporary ‘film scholars have recently taken account of the “migration” of the themes of frontier mythology from the Western into numerous other Hollywood genres’.3 This chapter will not claim that Jaws is a Western, but that the Western is a distinct yet largely unrecognised part of its extensive cross-generic hybridity. Gottlieb has admitted the influence of the ‘Sensorama’ pictures of proto-exploitation auteur William Castle (the shocking appearance of Ben Gardner’s head is testament to this) as well as The Thing from Another World (1951),4 while Spielberg suggested that they were simply trying to make a Roger Corman picture.5 Critical writing on Jaws has tended to exclude the Western from the film’s generic DNA.
    [Show full text]
  • Azazel Historically, the Word Azazel Is an Idea and Rarely an Incarnate Demon
    Azazel Historically, the word azazel is an idea and rarely an incarnate demon. Figure 1 Possible sigil of Azazel. Modern writings use the sigil for the planet Saturn as well. Vayikra (Leviticus) The earliest known mention of the word Azazel in Jewish texts appears in the late seventh century B.C. which is the third of the five books of the Torah. To modern American ( וַיִּקְרָ א ) book called the Vayikra Christians, this books is Leviticus because of its discussion of the Levites. In Leviticus 16, two goats are placed before the temple for selection in an offering. A lot is cast. One Goat is then sacrificed to Yahweh and the other goats is said to outwardly bear all the sends of those making the sacrifice. The text The general translation .( לַעֲזָאזֵל ) specifically says one goat was chosen for Yahweh and the for Az azel of the words is “absolute removal.” Another set of Hebrew scholars translate Azazel in old Hebrew translates as "az" (strong/rough) and "el" (strong/God). The azazel goat, often called the scapegoat then is taken away. A number of scholars have concluded that “azazel” refers to a series of mountains near Jerusalem with steep cliffs. Fragmentary records suggest that bizarre Yahweh ritual was carried out on the goat. According to research, a red rope was tied to the goat and to an altar next to jagged cliff. The goat is pushed over the cliff’s edge and torn to pieces by the cliff walls as it falls. The bottom of the cliff was a desert that was considered the realm of the “se'irim” class of demons.
    [Show full text]