• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.58 no.1
• /
• pp.69-91
• /
• 2012

Marina Carr's By the Bog of Cats.... (1998) is the last play of the trilogy of "the midlands plays" which can be regarded as her re-writing of both Euripides' Medea and J. M. Synge's The Playboy of the Western World by resetting the two plays in the midlands of contemporary Ireland. Carr intends to courageously explore into the dangerous liminal space, i.e., the middle between the past and the present, the high Greek and the Irish folk culture, dealing with the ghosts of the dead writers for her own Irish feminist theatre. Thus, in the middle Carr can build a new Irish theatre by minorating and abjecting the Greek tragedy and subverting and expanding Synge's theatre of grotesque realism. This paper attempts to read By the Bog of Cats... as Carr's final project of exploration into the midland of Ireland to establish a new Irish feminist theatre and at the same time a new Irish folk theatre. By focusing on her strategies of minoration and subversion through grotesque imagery and carnival rituals it argues that Carr put Hester's becoming-ghost in the middle, the bog of the cats as both grave and womb, waiting for the birth of a new Irish people. And it emphasizes that the ghost of Hester, merging with the ghosts of her mother and daughter by the bog of cats will haunt the official society as a threatening abjection, challenging the restoration of the social order.

• Journal of Science and Technology Studies
• /
• v.13 no.1
• /
• pp.41-76
• /
• 2013

Based on an analysis of the Japanese animation director Kamiyama Kenji's Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex series, this paper discusses two important subjects in modern technoscience-cyborg and old age. In fact, age has been an important social and political category in the modern world, along with gender, race, and class. However, age has not been a significant research topic for STS scholars. Even though many of these investigators have extensively explored the complex relationship between gender and technoscience, especially after the publication of Donna Haraway's "Cyborg Manifesto" (1991), few of them have been interested in how age is reconfigured by modern science and technology. If women, as Haraway has claimed, can have a different political and cultural outlook by becoming cyborgs, then, can we expect a similar socio-cultural transformation with regard to the interaction between cyborg and old age? Do the elderly experience lesser age discrimination through the growth of biomedicine and technoscience? Indeed, it is believed that seniors are increasingly becoming cyborgs with advancing age, since their declining bodily functions are consistently replaced and assisted by various biomedical technologies. Does this enable them to overcome ageism and age discrimination as well as their alleged physiological and mental limitations? As an answer to this question, Mike Featherstone has asserted that becoming a cyborg in old age could make the wrinkled skin a mere mask and create diverse new possibilities that were hitherto unavailable to an aging person. Based on my reading of Ghost in the Shell, however, I analyze a more complex set of problems when the senile cyborg is created through the encounter between the elderly and technoscience. I argue that while the senile cyborg could challenge traditional family ideology and nationalism it would leave ageism intact and define a new individualistic life form through a body controlled within the globalized internet and capitalist economy.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
• /
• s.49
• /
• pp.299-323
• /
• 2017

Interests to cultural prototype as a material of cultural contents are getting more increasing nowadays. One of them is myth. The important thing when you are dealing with the myth as the material that how to convert prototype narratives. Today, digital culture is becoming one of the essential elements of mankind, that is a new sociocultural phenomenon and distinguishing differentiation from the past analogue era. In this regard, the combination of mythology and digital culture is effective strategies for transforming storytelling that can resonate with people who are not familiar with myths. puts the view both of this world and underworld, mythical characters, and various elements of the Grim Reaper into the story. And combines them with digital elements. sets the world that the transcendental soul exists as physically transferred data form. and reinterprets the traditional mythology world into the digitally operated world. Soul-Phone from this anime reflects the digital culture such as storage and transmission, and helps enjoying audiences accept the unfamiliar world of myth. And also It symbolically shows dystopian viewpoints through side effects can caused by digital technology development, such as the instrumentalization of human being, the risk of communication through digital media, and ego-loss caused by duplication, etc. In conclusion, forms a consensus with the audience through the transformation strategy of storytelling that converts the world of myth into the digital world. And it reflects the dystopian view and shows a differentiated world view from the narrative of myth.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
• /
• v.58 no.5
• /
• pp.839-858
• /
• 2012

This study is to analyze dreams and madness in Don Quixote and Hamlet which makes these two heroes quite identical rather than antithetical. Don Quixote is usually considered to be an idealistic, enthusiastic, and unselfish doer, whereas Hamlet is a skeptical, melancholic, and self-conscious thinker. However, Don Quixote and Hamlet both reveal a heroic desire to embody an ideal world into a reality through their dreams and madness. Based on Freud's interpretation of the similarities between dream and neurosis, this article focuses on the aspects of Don Quixote's waking dream and Hamlet's affected madness to find out their characteristics as new types of heroes. Don Quixote, the waking dreamer, acts like a maniac and tries to remain in a state of madness to sustain the dream world where he wanders to save the weak, the poor, and the deprived. He accepts psychic breakdown as well as physical trauma if only he can do the role of a knight errant. Sleepless Hamlet witnesses the dream world and experiences it tangibly while he hears an order from the murdered King's ghost. Yet, instead of becoming a neurotic, Hamlet waits for the chance to perform his task to regain the harmony of his family and kingdom. Even on the border of madness, Hamlet does not forsake his own life and duty but dreams in reality and acts without losing his reason. Although there are some apparent outstanding differences between Don Quixote and Hamlet, they have fundamental similarities with each other; Both of them exemplify a new type of hero who desperately tries to fulfill a mad dream to face the suffocating, suspicious, and strange world.