Academic Section (Vol. 3, No. 1)

Abstract
Set in an unnamed Michigan suburb in the 1970s, Sofia Coppola’s 1999 film The Virgin Suicides, based on Jeffrey Eugenides’s 1993 novel of the same name, tells the story of the Lisbon family, particularly the demises of the five Lisbon daughters. Narrated through the retrospective lens of a collective ‘we,’ as constituted by the neighborhood boys, the viewer is introduced into this world, attempting to unravel the events that ultimately led to the suicides of Cecilia, Mary, Bonnie, Theresa, and Lux. The visions of a home in disarray and a home in decline are most prominent in constituting the family home as a site of imprisoned teenage femininity under the oppressive rule of the Lisbon parents. The mother appears as the enforcer and the father as a passive accomplice. In the name of keeping the children safe, the parents seek to combat potential deviance by not granting their daughters any mobility outside of parental control. The film shows the detrimental outcome of containing teenage feminine fulfillment as, in the end, all five daughters end their lives. From a theoretical backdrop of predominantly Jessica Enoch’s proposition of the concept of spatial rhetorics, this article aims to uncover how the space of the family home is constituted as a site of oppression. I explore the multimodal ways in which spaces gain meaning by discussing who gets to occupy which space in the home, who is allowed in it, and who gets to control it.

Keywords
Cultural Studies – Spatial Rhetorics – Film Studies – Femininity

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Abstract
This paper examines how Jesmyn Ward’s novel Sing, Unburied, Sing portrays how the US prison system serves as an ongoing form of enslavement. Utilizing ghostliness and haunting as a manifestation of the intergenerational trauma caused by the institution of slavery, the novel showcases a seemingly never-ending circle of violence that is endorsed through the American justice system. Engaging with these themes, this article analyzes the way in which a ghostly presence haunts the novel’s characters and enforces a reenactment of the past to enable release from the oppressive ties that bind them. In addition, it explores how the novel works to reshape the present through the different layers of narrative, showing how the ghostly presence throughout grapples with the trauma of the past while allowing for the hope of a restructuring of the present and release in the future.

Keywords
Ghosts – Literary Haunting – Enslavement – US Prison System – Racialized Violence

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Abstract
A newspaper without words is as perplexing as it sounds, but this is precisely the case with Steve Lawrence’s picture periodical Newspaper. I argue that Lawrence disrupts the traditional newsprint medium by engaging with the mosaic’s fragmented, discontinued, and random form that underscores a non-linear and participatory narrative, ultimately positioning the reader as an active co-creator in interpreting the visual chaos. This visual fragmentation mirrors modernist tendencies – expressionism, cubism, and pop art – allowing for multiple entry points for interpretation. As a result, Lawrence constructs Newspaper as an antienvironment that requires the reader to recognize and reveal the invisible structures that govern the art and media environments. Ultimately, this study explores how Newspaper dematerializes its identity as a news medium while resisting the systems it critiques and anticipates shifts in media literacy through its adaptive mosaic format.  

Keywords
Periodical Studies – Media Studies – Mosaic – (Anti)environment – Conceptual Art

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Abstract
Reinterpreting key concepts from seriality studies within the context of film trailer analysis, this article offers a novel approach to the study of film trailers. Since contemporary film marketing often releases several trailers in the promotion of a film, it is imperative to acknowledge and examine the commonly ignored serial nature of these trailers. As a close reading of three trailers released for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie (2023) demonstrates, each trailer constitutes a successful standalone piece of narrative media; however, additional meanings and interpretations emerge from their seriality. Each trailer crafts a distinct and deliberate version of the film’s plot depending on the specific phase of the promotional campaign during which they were released, resulting in an ambivalent overarching narrative about the film. Techniques of serial narration (e.g., recursion, cliffhangers, and plot twists) used in this meta-narrative about the film ensure viewer engagement and participation. As this article concludes, the trailers decenter the narrative singularity of the film, creating a paratextual network in which the film’s version of the plot becomes merely one node alongside other retellings created prior to the release of the film by the individual trailers and the serialized dramaturgy across them. The plot of the film then reveals itself to be an amalgamation of different serialized texts synthesized by viewers.

Keywords
Film Trailer – Seriality Studies – Serial Narrative – Serialization – Storytelling

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Abstract
This article examines the role of mass media reporting in blurring U.S.-American citizens’ fear affect, leading to a normalization of school shootings. By analyzing three articles from the New York Times, spanning from 1999 to 2024, it uses Massumi’s concept of “fear blur” to demonstrate how the repetitive structure of news headlines can lead to a desensitization of fear. This desensitization suggests that the definition of fear is neither permanent nor universal. Massumi’s media affect is employed to consider how school shootings have become a low-level fear – an occurrence so pervasive in the United States that it no longer elicits the panic that followed the Columbine Shooting 25 years ago. Through close readings of three New York Times articles and Massumi’s The Politics of Everyday Fear (1993), this article demonstrates that the language used in media reports has blurred school shootings into “an endless series of like events” (Massumi 24) thereby altering the fear response of U.S. youth.

Keywords
Affect Studies – Media Affect – Low Level Fear – School Shootings – Mass Media

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Abstract
Gentrification is often defined through the dichotomy of the gentrifiers and those gentrified. Following such definitions, interactions between the groups could only be conflictual in nature, mirroring global power structures in localized conflict spaces. Applying Mary Louise Pratt’s concept of “contact zones” to (fictional) gentrifying communities however offers a more nuanced perspective that allows productive interactions to take place in those communities. I will discuss the special role of shops upholding conflict spaces and creating contact zones inside their respective fictional gentrifying communities. Such establishments are insofar special as they are privately owned, yet part of the public sphere, reflecting the global power structure that drives gentrification in a localized space. Comparing the shopkeepers Sal from Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989) and Fadi from Ivy Pochoda’s Visitation Street (2013), I will analyze how their interactions shape their respective shops as spaces in between conflict spaces and contact zones. I will show how the shop owners are introduced as outsiders but contribute to the communities at the same time, while still upholding their economic interests. Finally, I will discuss the need for representation in these privately owned, yet public spaces in the fictional gentrifying communities.

Keywords
Gentrification – New York – Production of Space – Mary Louise Pratt – Contact Zones

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Abstract
The phenomenon of gentrification is becoming increasingly difficult to define as it evolves, affecting more communities and taking on new forms. In response to a growing public awareness of its detrimental effects contributing to the displacement of populations, supposedly ethical forms of urban change have emerged. Similar to corporate carbon offset practices that aim to mitigate environmental harm, perpetrators of gentrification justify their actions by offsetting their negative impact on communities through practices such as green initiatives, community engagement or rental assistance. The 2023 Showtime series The Curse, created by Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, provides an apt representation of such attempts. It follows Asher and Whitney Siegel as they embark on a mission to ethically gentrify the city of Española, New Mexico. This paper takes a novel approach by applying Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology to a televisual representation of urban change. By employing close readings of the show’s narrative and stylistic devices, including its use of specters and their cyclical hauntings, it is argued that The Curse challenges one-dimensional narratives of gentrification that aim to obscure its detrimental effects, such as cultural erasure and displacement. The analysis of the two key characters, Asher and Whitney, and their interactions with Española and its inhabitants reveals the contradictions in their well-meaning actions, which are obscured by the rhetoric of environmental sustainability. Hauntology’s focus on liminality and the lingering presence of the past in the present offers a deeper understanding of gentrification as an ongoing and unresolved process that, in the case of Española, remains informed by the structures of settler colonialism as described by Patrick Wolfe.

Keywords
Cultural Studies – Gentrification – Post-Colonialism – Hauntology – Popular Culture

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Abstract
Emerging as a terrain where gentrification’s impacts and conflicts are vividly illustrated, the interconnectedness between food and gentrification serves as a lens through which scholars can study the shifting landscapes of neighborhoods. Food is not just a symbol of gentrification, seen as “a harbinger of things to come” (Alkon et al. 5); it manifests as a tangible force in the form of ‘fancy’ coffee shops, restaurants, or grocery stores that can actively contribute to changes in a city’s neighborhood. A notable example for studying the relationship between food and gentrification is FX’s The Bear, a critically acclaimed kitchen ‘dramedy’ that deals with a young chef struggling to uphold the family restaurant in the changing Chicagoan neighborhood of River North. Through an analysis of the changing Italian beef sandwich shop and its effect on the neighborhood, I demonstrate that the transformation of the restaurant represents the processes of retail gentrification, a form of gentrification that changes neighborhoods through the upscaling of businesses (Hubbard 296). To examine the representation of this specific form of gentrification in The Bear, the paper focuses on three key aspects: the restaurant, the neighborhood, and the characters.

Keywords
Retail Gentrification – Food Studies – Television Studies – Urban Studies – The Bear

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