Despite being born over four hundred and fifty years ago, the impact of William Shakespeare continues to be just about unparalleled when it comes to changing and progressing English literary culture. The Elizabethan era poet and playwright is world-renowned for his epic contributions to early modern drama, with just about everybody having encountered some form of his work. Many of his plays, such as the epic tragedies of King Lear and Hamlet, have been reimagined in all manner of settings, and Romeo and Juliet serves as the inspiration for just about every romance movie out there!
Shakespeare’s contribution to the history and development of modern literature is not by any means limited to the art he produced for the stage. Equally impactful has been his contribution to poetry and, in particular, the modern sonnet. William Shakespeare’s approach to sonnet writing has become a major focus of literary studies, and students looking to pursue a university education in art or literature will undoubtedly encounter this form of sonnet at some point, whether in class or as the subject of an essay assignment. The myriad examples of papers that discuss the poetic and cultural contribution of William Shakespeare, such as at https://gradesfixer.com/free-essay-examples/william-shakespeare/, are a testament to the impact his work has had and its continued importance in education. Both Shakespeare’s overall contribution to literature and the particular impact of his innovative sonnet form make great topics for a college research paper.
Shakespeare and modern literature
The impact of William Shakespeare’s work extends to both our modern culture of Western art and the English language in general. Prior to Shakespeare, the English language was notable for its total lack of consistency when it came to spelling and grammar. The proliferation of Shakespeare’s work led to increased standardization of English, and we can trace back much of the standard spellings of words to how they were used in Bard’s work. Similarly, many common expressions and turns of phrase in English are, in fact, quotes from the works of Shakespeare, and many English speakers regularly reference his work in their speech without even knowing it! Saying something is “neither here nor there”, or referring to jealousy as the “green-eyed monster”, for instance, are ways of directly quoting Shakespeare’s play Othello.
Students of the English language will be well acquainted with Shakespeare’s famous penchant for inventing new words. Of the 20,000 or so words used throughout his works, linguists estimate that Shakespeare invented about 1,700 of these. Many of these words are now commonplace in the English language: bandit, critic, and even swagger are all words we have Shakespeare to thank for. With his influence on the English language being so pervasive, it’s really no surprise that so many have dedicated themselves to his work, and swathes of aspiring writers trying to emulate his prose.
The Shakespearean Sonnet
While the sonnet existed as a poetic form for hundreds of years prior to the birth of William Shakespeare, the Bard put his own spin on the Italian Renaissance poetic syllable form. This style of a sonnet is made instantly recognizable by its most prominent poetic features, which include:
Fourteen lines of poetry.
These fourteen lines are divided into four subgroups.
The first three of these subgroups consist of four lines each (also known as “quatrains”).
The second and fourth line of each quatrain rhyme with one another.
The final two lines (also known as a “couplet”) conclude the sonnet and rhyme with one another.
The meter of a Shakespearean sonnet is typically iambic pentameter, with each line possessing ten syllables.
Since its popularization, many young poets take it upon themselves to write in the Shakespearean sonnet form. The consistent stylistic structure of a sonnet poetic form allows each generation of poets to provide a fresh look on both their subject matter and the role of poetry itself by maintaining the relevance of such a historic traditional style.
Students with a passion for literature need to look no further than the works and impact of William Shakespeare when it comes to a fascinating topic for study. His work and cultural legacy offer a never-ending starting point from which to explore literature, culture, and the human condition.
The fact that beabadoobee released her very first song, ‘Coffee’, all the way back in 2017 might come as a surprise to anyone who only became familiar with her music this year, when Canadian lo-fi artist Powfu sampled the track on his confusingly titled viral hit ‘death bed (coffee for your head)’. Her vocal presence is arguably the most enchanting element of an otherwise painfully mediocre remix, but the song quickly became a favourite on TikTok, thus introducing 20-year-old Beatrice Kristi’s bedroom pop sound to a new audience. Though it worked in context, it’s a shame that her voice was mostly reduced to a warped, ghostly echo; even on her second single – and still her second most popular song – her reserved vocals pirouette around those of fellow rising indie artist Oscar Lang as they deliver a heartfelt rendition of ‘Moon Song’ from the film Her.
Her debut full-length album, Fake It Flowers, is far from the first instance where her voice takes center stage, but there are certainly a lot more people paying attention this time around. Since first emerging in the scene, the London-based singer-songwriter has slowly been shifting away from her lo-fi acoustic stylings to embrace a more guitar-heavy sound that’s shamelessly indebted to 90s alternative rock. She’s not shy about wearing those influences on her sleeve, either; her previous EP, 2019’s Space Cadet, included the song ‘I Wish I Was Stephen Malkmus’, a direct tribute to the Pavement frontman. But on her debut, she’s crafted her most confident and polished artistic statement yet, a clear step forward for an artist still discovering her musical identity.
The majority of the songs here would work on catchiness alone, but Bea infuses them with enough personality to also make them emotionally engaging. Opener ‘Care’ bursts forth with bright melodies and a playfully scorning chorus, and the same kind of self-assured attitude carries over onto tracks like ‘Dye it Red’, which kicks off with the line, “Kiss my ass, you don’t know jack.” As cheerfully infectious as those tracks can be, they don’t quite match up to the intensity of the grittier moments on the album, like the ferocious climax of ‘Charlie Brown’ – closer to Nirvana than anything Coldplay ever laid their hands on – or the thrilling, grungy ‘Sorry’.
What makes beabadoobee’s take on 90s revivalism different and less derivative is that, as much as she attempts to recreate those sounds, she also displays a deeper understanding of what made them resonant in the first place. Adding string arrangements or sweet, poppy choruses to an otherwise heavy track doesn’t necessarily make it any less authentic, as long as they serve to enhance its emotional content; neither does juxtaposing them with the intimacy of a lo-fi acoustic cut. The stripped-back ‘Back to Mars’ may not have the endearing scruffiness of her bedroom recordings, but her vulnerable lyrics are more evocative than ever as she sings, “Take me to the south of France where we could just be old friends/ We’d go to the beach and you could braid my hair.” ‘Emo Song’ is another low-key ballad that, rather than feeling trite, manages to augment the lullaby-like qualities of Bea’s songwriting with waves of wonderfully dreamy synth flourishes.
Unfortunately, some of that inventiveness is lacking on later cuts like ‘Further Away’, which returns to the theme of self-empowerment but is held back by relatively generic songwriting. ‘Horen Sarrison’, named after Bea’s boyfriend, director Soren Harrison, is heartfelt and lusciously produced, but its stretched-out runtime makes it feel somewhat melodramatic, which doesn’t work as well when so much of the writing is anchored in earnest simplicity. Which is exactly what beabadoobee offers on the following track, ‘How Was Your Day?’ – delivering on the promise of the final line on ‘Horen Sarrison’ (“I want you to know that I’m in love”), it’s one of, if not the most hauntingly affecting and memorable song beabadoobee has ever penned. Strikingly raw and drenched in nostalgia, ‘How Was Your Day?’ contrasts the lustrous veneer that characterizes much of LP, as Bea recalls hazy lovelorn memories and stumbles over her own words in a way that’s genuinely heartwarming. It’s the kind of song that, much like Nirvana’s ‘Something in the Way’, could seemingly go on until eternity.
But despite exploring some dark subject matter, there’s a fair amount of optimism in what beabadoobee presents on Fake It Flowers, all the way to the exuberant, slightly absurdist closer ‘Yoshimi, Forest, Magdalene’, where she somehow references a Flaming Lips album, Forrest Gump, and the Pixies song ‘Magdalena’ all at once. The album can feel overproduced in places, and there are certainly areas for improvement – especially in the lyrical department – but it’s refreshing to hear an artist carve out something so personal at such an early age while drawing from overtly familiar territory. “I haven’t felt myself so comfortable,” she sings on ‘Dye It Red’, and that joy reverberates throughout the album.
Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this segment.
This week, James Blake returned with a new EP that hearkens back to his days as a DJ/producer in the London club scene, and opener ‘I Keep Calling’ serves as a mesmerising, layered introduction to the project. Cakes Da Killa made his Classic Music Company debut with the Proper Villains collab ‘Don Dada’, a high-energy club-rap banger (which we missed when it came out the week the before, but is too good not to highlight), while clipping. unleashed yet another sharp, bloodcurdling teaser from their upcoming horror-themed album. Cloud Nothings previewed their forthcoming Steve Albini-produced LP with a driving, slightly off-kilter track, while experimental Chicago duo OHMME delivered an electrifying cut as part of the Sub Pop Singles Club. In the singer-songwriter realm, Glasgow artist and recent Seven Four Seven Six signee Lizzie Reid released her hauntingly personal second single ‘Seamless’, Squirrel Flower offered an intimate rendition of Liz Phair’s ‘Explain It to Me’, and Rostam came through with his first solo release of 2020, the luscious, soothing ‘Unfold You’.
Adele has been announced as host for next week’s episode of Saturday Night Live (October 24), opposite musical guest H.E.R. The pop singer has appeared on the comedy sketch show two times in the past, but this will mark her first time as host.
Revealing the news on Instagram, Adele wrote: “Bloooooody hellllll I’m so excited about this!! And also absolutely terrified! My first ever hosting gig and for SNL of all things!!!! I’ve always wanted to do it as a stand alone moment, so that I could roll up my sleeves and fully throw myself into it, but the time has never been right. But if there was ever a time for any of us to jump head first into the deep end with our eyes closed and hope for the best it’s 2020 right?”
She also noted that her turn as host comes nearly 12 years to the day of her first SNL appearance, which helped break her career in the US. “It feels full circle and I just couldn’t possibly say no!” she continued. “I am besides myself that H.E.R will be the musical guest!! I love her SO much I can’t wait to melt into a flaming hot mess when she performs, then confuse myself while I laugh my arse off in between it all.”
Back in February, Adele said she was planning to release a new album in September. Her last album, 25, arrived in November of 2015.
Foo Fighters performed an acoustic set during the #SaveOurStages virtual festival on Saturday (October 17) from an empty Troubadour in Los Angeles. The three-day virtual event, which also saw artists including Phoebe Bridgers and Miley Cyrus performing in empty venues around the US, was put on to benefit the National Independent Venue Association’s Emergency Relief Fund. Dave Grohl and company played ‘Skin And Bones’, ‘My Hero’, ‘These Days’, ‘Times Like These’, and ‘Everlong’. Watch the band’s half-hour set below.
It’s not the first time Foo Fighters have showed support for the #SaveOurStages campaign. Last month, the group brought back the original designs of two of their 1995 tour T-shirts to help benefit the initiative, with proceeds from sales going to #SaveOurVenues (from UK sales) and #SaveOurStages (from US sales).
The Foos were supposed to head out on a 25th anniversary tour back in April and May, which was postponed and subsequently cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The band have also updated their 2021 schedule, which you can check out here.
Miley Cyrus performed a set during the #SaveOurStages virtual festival on Saturday (October 17). The three-day virtual event, which saw artists including Foo Fighters and Phoebe Bridgers performing in empty venues around the US, was put on to benefit the National Independent Venue Association’s Emergency Relief Fund. Accompanied by a six-piece band, the pop singer took the stage at the historic West Hollywood rock club Whisky a Go Go, where she offered her own renditions of The Cranberries’ classic ‘Zombie’ and The Cure’s ‘Boys Don’t Cry’. She closed her 13-minute set with a performance of her new single ‘Midnight Sky’. Check it out below.
“We’re here at the Whisky a Go Go, where so many of our favorite artists have begun their journey to be icons,” Cyrus said during her performance. “And without venues like the Whisky, we might have never heard of artists like Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Guns N’ Roses and thousands of other bands. So let’s do whatever we can to keep this historic landmark alive.”
The virtual festival also featured appearances from the Roots, Leon Bridges, Marshmello and Demi Lovato, Dave Matthews, Portugal. The Man, Rise Against, Dillon Francis, Macklemore, Jason Mraz, and more.
A day earlier (October 16), Cyrus also brought back her Backyard Sessions performance series for a new edition of MTV Unplugged. She and her band performed covers of the Cardigans’ ‘Communication’, Britney Spears’ ‘Gimme More’, Pearl Jam’s ‘Just Breathe’, Nico’s ‘These Days’, and the Velvet Underground’s ‘Sweet Jane’. Watch those below as well.
Phoebe Bridgers performed a set during the #SaveOurStages virtual festival on Saturday (October 17) from an empty Troubadour in Los Angeles. The three-day virtual event, which saw artists including Foo Fighters and Miley Cyrus performing in empty venues around the US, was put on to benefit the National Independent Venue Association’s Emergency Relief Fund. Watch Bridgers’ full set below.
Wearing her signature skeleton costume, the singer-songwriter was joined by her friends and frequent collaborators Conor Oberst and Christian Lee Hutson. With Oberst, she played ‘Halloween’ and their Better Oblivion Community Center track ‘Dylan Thomas’, while with the latter she covered Hutson’s own song ‘Lose This Number’. She also brought along LA songwriter Charlie Hickey to perform one of his songs. Her set also included her songs ‘Scott Street’, Kyoto’, and ‘I Know The End’.
The virtual festival also featured appearances from the Roots, Leon Bridges, Marshmello and Demi Lovato, Dave Matthews, Portugal. The Man, Rise Against, Dillon Francis, Macklemore, Jason Mraz, and more.
Phoebe Bridgers released her most recent studio album, Punisher, back in June. She recently launched her own label, Saddest Factory Records.
For fans of blaxploitation horror, 1974’s Abby is perhaps most notorious for its marketing as “The Black Exorcist” (nearly named ‘The Blaxorcist’) and having achieved the honor of being sued into (literal) oblivion by Warner Bros. for copyright infringement. It’s undeniably true that the script is, shall we say, lacking in original thought — part and parcel for a blaxploitation feature, right? After all, low budget, big profit is widely understood as the definitive model of exploitation moviemaking in the first place.
But there’s also that slightly more elusive quality all horror fans recognize in exploitation films — the illicitness. It’s so bad it’s good circled back around to bad again. Watched through eyes distanced by nearly half a century, we understand them as problematic, but love to laugh at the spectacle anyway.
In Horror Noire: Uncut, the podcast follow-up to the acclaimed documentary, co-writer & producer, Ashlee Blackwell, draws attention to how the poor production values – now aesthetically elemental to the genre – reflect a type of cultural mining endemic to the entertainment industry (and American capitalism) in its entirety. A known-but-beloved problematic, we refer to the ‘exploitation’ element in terms of both their content and creation, but what of the wider implications of the business model as a whole?
Abby was written and directed by a white man, William Girdler, a sweetheart of notorious exploitation studio, AIP (American International Pictures), under producer, Sam Arkoff. The film only screened for a month in 1974 before being pulled from distribution, but it grossed $4 million on a reported $100,000 budget.
Adjusted for inflation, this would come to just over $21 million on a $525k investment in 2020. Which is to say, profit puts it demurely — throws a handkerchief over something exceedingly dirty.
Indeed, Carol Speed (who plays the titular character) is quoted speculating that Arkoff didn’t even fight the Warner Bros. lawsuit “because he had already made a ton of money off of Abby.”
As Ashlee Blackwell recognizes, itty bitty budgets meant predominantly young (white) writers with flat, cranked-out, uncaring scripts, populated by characters representing evolutions of slavery-era stereotypes which would continue to propagate a perception of us as social monstrosities (in the form of criminals, etc.). It meant Black talent working on an otherwise completely white set, and gross pay disparity, itself always both gendered and racialized.
While Dr. Robin R. Means Coleman identifies this film amongst other examples of 1970s-produced ‘Black horror’ like Blacula (1972) or Ganja & Hess (1973) in her book, Horror Noire: Blacks in American Horror Films 1890s to Present, I strongly disagree with this estimation — rather, I consider it a key example of her very distinction between Black Horror as a cinematic tradition and Blacks in horror, wherein we’re merely “represented” (often represented poorly) in an otherwise white production.
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Since very little critical analysis of the film exists (and even less that goes beyond mere recognition of its exploitative and derivative qualities), it’s worth examining Abby in close proximity to the impact of The Exorcist (1973), not necessarily for the ways in which they are the same, but for the places they diverge.
Australian professor and cultural critic, Barbara Creed, writes on “Woman as Possessed Monster” in The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis wherein she defines the monster as that which ‘takes us to the limits of what is permissible, thinkable, and then draws us back.’ She understands the film as establishing a ‘graphic association of the monstrous with the feminine body.’ Thus, the possession functions as an ‘excuse for legitimizing a display of aberrant feminine behavior which is depicted as depraved, monstrous, abject—and perversely appealing.’
Citing French feminist theorist, Julia Kristeva’s writings on abjection and its Biblical evolutions, Creed notes how, in the transition to the New Testament (i.e. the schism between Judaism and Christ-religions), ‘sin is associated with the spoken word,’ and so ‘rather than encourage the possibility of speaking the abject, of transcending sin by articulating it, the Church adopted a brutal policy…toward those who advocated such a path.’ This acknowledgement leads to her conclusion regarding ‘the project of films such as The Exorcist’ which are rendered subversive precisely for their ‘speaking [of] the abject’:
‘Horror emerges from the fact that woman has broken with her proper feminine role – she has ‘made a spectacle of herself’- put her unsocialized body on display. And to make matters worse, she has done all this before the shocked eyes of two male clerics.’
Linda Blair beneath the makeup of Dick Smith.
Creed also draws our attention to the fact that Pazuzu is voiced by a woman, Mercedes McCambridge. Bearing her psychoanalytic framework in mind (a framework itself obsessed with incest and genitalia), she cites writers and critics of the time who engage only with Pazuzu as ‘the voice of a male devil as spoken by a young girl’, inconsiderate of an interpretation of Pazuzu as ‘a female devil,’ noting how within patriarchy, her possession by a masculine spirit – even (or especially) if evil – is congruous with social expectation. In considering the option that the character’s casting determines their gender (which would render Pazuzu feminine), Regan’s ‘desire to remain locked in a close dyadic relationship with the mother’ becomes both the source and reason for her possession, affirming a femme & queerphobia which seeks to establish alignments between queerness, pedophilia, incest, child abuse, and the demonic while simultaneously ignoring the potential for trans readings of the film.
Regan is a white girlchild and so the overture of her innocence is already encoded on her body. The horror, as Creed notes, is writ on its corruption: the steadily decomposing state, the blasphemy of a child screaming ‘fuck me’ to her mother while mutilating herself with a crucifix, her refusal to maintain ‘the clean and proper body’ prescribed by what Lacanian psychoanalysis refers to as the symbolic order — what is essentially just white supremacist colonial patriarchal ideology, which collapses the figureheads of the husband, father, church, state, and god, all of whom hold dominion over the Other (another term for Manifest Destiny).
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It’s necessary to note a related but different form of exploitation exhibited in Abby, whose spiritual and religious tensions are both compelling and numerous.
In order to render the story of The Exorcist “Black”, the choice was made to substitute Pazuzu with who is referred to as Eshu, portrayed as a type of chaotic African sex demon unleashed by archaeologist, professor, and pastor, Dr. Garrett Williams (played by Blacula himself, William Marshall).
I want to be clear that while they may share the same name, this appropriation accounts for an egregious misrepresentation of the Yoruba orisha — a perspective Dr. Coleman explicitly does not share.
In her studies of 1930s horror, she highlights the demonizing of African spiritual religions within American cinema; a tradition ‘almost as long as the medium itself.’ She discusses its appearance and effect in films like Voodoo Fires (1913), White Zombie (1932), Black Moon (1934), and The Love Wanga (1936). By the time of her arrival at Abby, produced some forty years later, she considers the film’s ‘educational commentary’ regarding Eshu, as well as the ‘Yoruba-informed exorcism’ which eventually liberates the titular character, indicative of a shift in attitudes from earlier films which ‘cast the religion as singularly odd, ahistorical, and evil.’
Said ‘educational commentary,’ however, accounts for a reductive, Western-influenced estimation of Eshu which enacts a literal demonization of that which exists outside the purview of Eurocentric & Christ-religion-informed modes of belief. As such, Eshu’s actual complexity is thus flattened within the projection of the colonizing gaze.
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In Horror Noire (the documentary), Tananarive Due calls Abby “…a really good example of both fear of Black women in general but fear of Black women’s sexuality in particular.”
In order to encode innocence on Abby, a Black adult woman, she had to be rendered the model of respectable Black Christian femininity. At the film’s start, she’s a preacher’s wife and marriage counselor involved with the church, surrounded by “successful” men, beloved by the community. Once possessed, she becomes increasingly lascivious, hypersexual, and violent, just as in The Exorcist. But she doesn’t undergo the physical transformation Regan does. Abby’s monstrosity is indicated largely in language and voice, but instead of rotting her physical form (which would problematize desirability), her monstrousness is prescribed to her overt and predatory sexuality.
There’s a reading in which we might interpret a type of liberation in the character’s acting outside prescribed gender norms, but the shoddy treatment doesn’t create space to navigate this in a way which honors Black women’s relationship to gender as distinct from white women’s. For her possession, Abby has no agency to speak of. The moments when she bursts through the demon’s hold, she is both desperate and terrified. In this way, the film affirms the already-existent notions of Black women’s bodies and sexualities as what theorist, Saidiya Hartman refers to as degraded matter, or what Hortense Spillers has referred to as “flesh.”
Hartman’s essay, Venus In Two Acts, contends with the ways the captive Black woman’s voice is disappeared within the archives of the historical record, accomplished first by disappearing her subjecthood within the projection and prescription of whiteness’ gaze. In this way, she argues, the Black Venus speaks only from negative space, noting how, historically, our bodies have been rendered flesh-spectacle for others’ amusements, pleasure, desire, and comfort — but explicitly never our own.
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Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s Monster Culture (Seven Theses) makes a point of identifying the monster as that which Polices the Borders of the Possible.
He recognizes the monster as a carceral figure, wherein ‘curiosity is more often punished than rewarded…one is better off safely contained within one’s own domestic sphere than abroad, away from the watchful eyes of the state.’ This interpretation of the monster as policing borders of possibility necessarily identifies the parallels between white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism/colonialism, and state sovereignty as interlocking (interbreeding) systems. He writes, ‘the monster prevents mobility (intellectual, geographic, or sexual), delimiting the social spaces through which private bodies may move. To step outside this official geography is to risk attack by some monstrous border patrol or (worse) to become monstrous oneself.’
In her reading of The Exorcist, Barbara Creed’s psychoanalytic framework suggests Regan’s susceptibility to possession as the result of living in a fatherless household with a mother who herself rejects elements of prescribed propriety; the conclusion being, women whose lives are absent men or masculine figures become monstrous as a result (aka daddy issues).
To contrast, no concrete motive for Abby’s possession is offered, though it’s suggested it comes about as a result of her connection to William Marshall’s character, who frees the spirit at the film’s start while on a research trip in Nigeria. As previously noted, Abby’s characterization is distinct from Regan in that she is surrounded by respectable masculine figures – Dr. Williams, but also her husband (a preacher), and her brother, the requisite cop – and it is them who her possession and resultant behavior seemingly seeks to punish. Her monstrosity polices a border of protected and respectable femininity — but it also polices a border of national, cultural, and religious identity, threatening the possibility of what may be unleashed when Black folks go searching for their roots.
All the while, these struggles play out on Abby’s body whose degradation is rendered acceptable for its existence outside both whiteness and cisgender maleness. The prescription of her monstrosity represents, in a word, an ungendering (as coined by Hortense Spillers).
Release poster for ‘Abby’
Dr. Robin Coleman’s reading speaks to this point, which – like Creed’s of The Exorcist – concerns itself with the gender of the possessing demon. Voiced by actor, Bob Holt, she notes the queering inherent when the ‘male spirit seeks sexual conquests while in a female’s body’ and points directly to a scene where Abby/Eshu picks up a man and – entangled in the backseat of a car – growls, ‘“You wanna fuck Abby, don’t you?” The demon has sex with his (male) victims, and at the height of the act he kills.’
Of this scene and others like it, Dr. Coleman describes Abby’s ‘oozing sexuality’; notes the ease with which she can be seen ‘seducing her prey.’ But during the act, her voice is masculinized, her behavior frenzied. The camera cuts between her face and the demon to signify their shared state of being.
If we understand the demon as Cohen’s ‘border patrol’ – the fear of which is meant to keep us contained within the carceral systems of race, gender, sexuality, ability, faith, etc. – Abby, the character, moves entirely outside the ‘official geography’ prescribed by her gender into a state of possession (i.e. enslavement) which, again, essentially reinforces the notion of Black women’s bodies as degraded matter.
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In Abby, unfettered Black feminine sexuality is explicitly made monstrous, but certainly not genuinely scary. For its qualities as an exploitation film, the horror reads more so as camp and is thus rendered humorously. It fails to recognize the history echoing all around wherein our bodies were legally and explicitly not our own possessions. Even in the film’s resolution, following its’ dancefloor exorcism, the inherent “goodness” prescribed to colonial religions (Christianity & Catholicism, with which Yoruba traditions syncretized) serves to perpetuate the notion of our own cultural and spiritual traditions as devilish or evil.
Beyond the act of cultural mining and its ghoulish anti-Blackness, the prescription of evil cast by the colonizing gaze further subsumes our traditions of horror, disappearing them within their projection like so much junk food. This capacity to determine what is horrific within our gaze as opposed to whiteness’ is an aspect of cultural identity lost in endless adaptation and derivation.
Of the film’s conclusion, Dr. Coleman notes, Abby is ‘saved…by her father-in-law, husband, and police officer brother while being restored to favor with her male (Western) God.’ The film forces us to examine the ways in which “the battle between good and evil” is a well-worn weapon of white supremacy whose impact continues to linger in innocuous ways. Ultimately, it begs us to recognize the subjectivity of what we consider evil in the first place.
Yesterday night (October 17), Run the Jewels performed their latest album RTJ4 in full on Adult Swim. The concert, titled ‘Holy Calamavote’, was sponsored by Ben & Jerrys and urged viewers to vote during the November 3 US election. Fans were also encouraged to donate to the ACLU throughout the stream. Watch the full set below.
‘Holy Calamavote’ marked the first time the hip-hop superduo performed their new album live in its entirety. The event also featured guest appearances from Eric Andre, Pharrell, 2 Chainz, Gangsta Boo, Greg Nice, DJ Cutmaster Swiff, Cochemea Gastelum, Mavis Staples, Zack de la Rocha, and Josh Homme.
RTJ are also set to play during the virtual 2020 Adult Swim Festival, which will take place November 13-14 and will be available to watch exclusively on YouTube. The full line-up for the festival was also announced today, including a Club Domo set from Robyn and a performance from Mastodon.
Run the Jewels released RTJ4 back in June. Since then, Killer Mike and El-P teamed up with blink-182’s Travis Barker on ‘Forever’ and dropped the 2 Chainz-featuring video for ‘Out of Sight’.
Josh Naugh takes a look at how Toho’s Godzilla franchise has touched, shaped, and influenced the lives of fans.
Escapism is something we always rely on to remove ourselves from the sometimes depressing confines of reality. Instead of accumulating gloom, it’s more favourable to shift focus to something more positive in order to feel at ease with one’s self.
With beneficial properties, escapism may be used to occupy a person’s mind to block out a persistency of negative feelings or general sadness. Whether it’s “stanning” a pop act, getting lost in the virtual worlds of a video game, or binge-watching the latest show on Netflix, we need that escape for that proverbial breath of fresh air.
Enter the Godzilla franchise.
Comprising over thirty films, TV shows, and video games, Japan’s most famous monster has a mostly solid array of content to jump into, stretching from 1954 to the present day. It’s captivated fans all over the world, commonly referred to in western congregations as “G-Fans”, who have all gained a sense of dear admiration for the fictional radioactive monster.
As for myself, my journey with Godzilla began in 2008. Introduced via a friend, I spent hours, days, and weeks in and out of the school library and at home, delving deep into the series’ films and surrounding lore. Whether it was imagining that I was part of the crew in Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, or adventuring with Minilla on the fictional Solgell Island in Son of Godzilla, the series always provided me with a welcoming home from a bad day. This fascination developed into an obsession, although what this interest was actually providing was a refuge from a jarring school life. Having minimal interest in British mainstream teen culture and unsatisfactory communication skills with my fellow peers, I was considered an outsider in early school life.
With Godzilla, however, I was gaining a fantastic validation I had always wanted as a child which I couldn’t get from reality.
As my interest deepened, I soon began collecting physical copies of the films to satisfy my needs when the fansites and low-quality uploads to YouTube were no longer enough (before automatic copyright detection came about). The unfortunate lack of distribution for the titles in the United Kingdom meant I had to scour the international sellers of eBay and now-defunct Play.com to import them.
The interest would soon fade, however, with me finding new friends and giving myself a mental makeover. My interest in the beloved franchise was still there, but lying dormant, up until the 2014 release of Legendary Pictures’ reboot and the discovery of a community of progressive fans on Tumblr.
Throughout my formative years, the franchise was there to provide a sense of wellbeing – an alternate reality in a sense – away from adolescent troubles and the strain of university hardships. It has also helped to shape and craft my creativity; the output of which has become a successful Godzilla fansite. This has helped me to reach out and befriend others who consider themselves as “G-Fans”.
Digital designer, illustrator, and Godzilla fan, Daniel Hartles, believes the series has done the same for them.
Since joining the creative industry as a designer and illustrator in 2014, Daniel comments that Godzilla has been there every step of the way for them as a “secretive obsession” and “doodle partner.” Daniel continues to say that Godzilla has “influenced almost all of [their] recent projects”, including their popular fan-verse based on the franchise, World of Monsters. Godzilla and other monsters also feature in many of Daniel’s commissions and jobs outside of their full-time work for a children’s publisher.
Titanic friendship in the Godzilla franchise: Jet Jaguar and Godzilla in ‘Godzilla vs. Megalon’
Latino artist and writer, Marcel Rocha, also known as Rochasaurus on Twitter, is also in concurrence with the idea of Godzilla being a major influence in creative projects. “Godzilla has been one of my passions, serving as one of my inspirations as an artist in the community. My wife, who has also been the rock of my life, partakes in my interest.”
Rocha goes on to comment, “art as my passion and my wife as my partner saved me, and seeing how Godzilla has been a part of both, I can happily say that Godzilla by extension saved me.”
Despite this, there are negatives to the fandom’s online presence. There are occasional encounters with unwelcome behaviour, including grim instances of racism, and abuse towards the LGBT+ community. While this isn’t unique to the Godzilla fandom, it is nonetheless a problem.
Most sci-fi franchises with a long history tend to have largely male-driven fanbases who have been, at times, anti-progressive when the focus of their interest or the fandom is not relatable to their identity for once. The thought of someone other than their own, sharing their space, is tantamount to heresy.
This ties in with the LGBT+ community tending to “latch onto” – as one Twitter user, The Antifa Socreroralist, describes – the use of fictional characters, and reconfiguring them to become more relatable to themselves. As they noted, “I think part of that is like how society treats anything divergent, be it queer people, or old movies with effects that aren’t quite what western audiences are used to.”
Echoing that sentiment, Stephen Lavinder, gay and non-binary fan, supposes that the monsters in the genre have “nearly no regard for gender or sexuality; they exist proud, terrifying, and glorious with no fear in their hearts. They go beyond any sort of bravery and declare their existence with a primal glory. There is no anxiety about their identities or appearance, and they relent no ground about what they are there to do.”
That disregard, however, is not shared with everyone across sci-fi fandom spaces.
Reacting to the thought of Jodie Whittaker taking over the titular role in Doctor Who in 2018, Peter Davidson, the fifth Doctor, in line with a minority of that fanbase, said that the casting could mean a “loss of a role model for boys”, highlighting an outdated view that men can’t (or shouldn’t have to) relate to a woman lead.
With the gradual acceptance of women’s voices in sci-fi fandom, alongside those of the LGBT+ community, a certain few have no doubt grown restless over these progressive changes.
Chris McDonald, podcast presenter for Gargantucast, published an article highlighting unchecked homophobia within the ‘kaiju-stanning’ community. The piece was largely met with disdain from those in prominent Facebook groups such as Toku Legion, Toho Kaiju Legion, and across a mysterious traditional front emanating from deep within the fandom’s crevices.
“When I shared the editorial on Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit, it was a sh*tshow of people calling it out as ‘SJW nonsense’ and a lot of similarly disgusting rhetoric”, noted Chris.
To even admit that this sort of pop culture’s fanbase has a reactionary branch, however small, is strange considering the pacifist and anti-capitalist themes that constitute the Godzilla series’ core ethos.
Twitter and Tumblr user Jake, of king_gojira, despite being “firm in the fandom”, hasn’t always had a joyous experience. “I’d say I was pretty embarrassed to be part of a fandom that’s wildly hateful. It really sucks, man, ’cause seeing people who you kinda know, or are friends with, get harassed by freaks is heartbreaking.”
“It’s gotten better, for sure. But even on Kaiju Twitter there are still regular people just being ugly.”
As for myself, who identifies as gay and has been on the receiving end of such hate from some members of the community, it does dampen the mood, and at times it makes me question my presence in an otherwise safe place that commemorates something I hold so dear to my heart.
Negatives aside, digital artist and graphic novelist, Lisa Naffziger, believes that while the fandom can appear saturated with the same content creators and their audiences, she believes the online space has “been the perfect opportunity to find a bigger audience.”
“I’m not worried that I don’t belong – I’m happy that I am seen.” Lisa has hopes that her work’s popularity will influence a wave of other female content creators to join in with sharing their creative passions and love for the franchise.
Godzilla has benefitted my mental health and that of others. To say that it provides an expressive outlet is an understatement. It’s been there for us and won’t dissipate from our conscience any time soon. Opposing ideologies have tainted part of the experience, running rife with underlying hate that undermines the pleasant escapist efforts that Godzilla provides. Nevertheless, the fandom that we’ve tried to create for ourselves and one another is changing for the better. More LGBT+ voices are being welcomed every day, and the fandom is better for their presence.
Chris McDonald believes that despite having anxiety and fear from seeing a community that he once loved show its ugly spots, he has “met some equally amazing individuals who show this community can be a safe place for everyone.”
My time spent with Godzilla by my side has been a long and sometimes treacherous journey. For the fandom to impact positively, it needs to evolve and adapt to the ever-changing times, or risk being stuck in the past and thus possibly trapping the franchise’s reputation with it. Godzilla, as a character, has changed repeatedly over the decades; from nuclear nightmare to stoic hero and back again. In looking at Godzilla, the very reason for this fandom at all, there is hope that the fandom will change with him.
