Guillermo del Toro's reputation as one of the world's most esteemed filmmakers builds on fairy tale and horror-inspired films featuring monsters, such as Hellboy (2004) and Pan's Labyrinth (2006). Not only is del Toro's obsession with the fantasy genre often emphasized, it also incorporates the theme of embracing otherness, which is demonstrated through the allegory of monstrous entities in most of his works. As a Mexican director, del Toro strives to insert his status as "the other" in his movies. This article addresses Guillermo del Toro's 2017 Oscar-winning film, The Shape of Water, through auteur theory with references to fantasy film principles. In a range of aspects, from visual style to its rooted themes, del Toro's films make use of a distinctive set of features with dark green colour, special effects makeup, as well as the theme of resistance against oppression and marginalisation. Using The Shape of Water as a case study, the argument is that the film serves as a critique as well as a defiance against the widespread issues of rising bigoted slurs, immigration bans and racial resentment in the United States, which have occurred ever since the victory of President Donald Trump in early 2017. Indeed, del Toro's triumphs at the 90th Academy Awards have solidified the importance of fantasy films as counter-narratives.
This article addressed identity reconstruction through an analysis of two of the most prominent fictional works by one of the Chinese Indonesian young writers, Audrey Yu Jia Hui. In encompassing the idea of identity rewriting, I addressed Hui’s second and third novels respectively, Mellow Yellow Drama (2014) and Mencari Sila Kelima (Searching for the Fifth Principle, 2015), through the post-structural concepts of Derrida’s deconstruction, and also in relation to cultural studies views on identity. The works were analyzed through close-reading technique. The novels were published during the Reformation (Reformasi) era, where politics had served to be a profound aspect that directed the cultural identity and social attitude of the society. In a range of aspects, from narrative structure to their deeper themes, Hui’s literary works were found to draw on a distinguishable set of strategies which enabled Hui to establish her own identity as someone who was liberated, culturally accepted and free to embrace local colors. This article also showed that Audrey Yu Jia Hui’s narratives have served as an acceptance of an individual’s multiple identities, which often depends on the problem at hand as well as the context of choices.
This article is an exploration of contemporary Turkish and Chinese-Indonesian literatures with regards to a mid to late 18th Century literary niche: the it-narrative. Thinking (noesis) back and forth between centuries and different literary genres makes (poiesis) the conversation possible, which addresses the socio-literary imagination of the last four centuries. The authors re-examine the genre of it-narrative outside 18th Century studies and reassess the encounter of Turkish author Orhan Pamuk and Chinese-Indonesian author Alberta Natasia Adji within the socio-cultural and historico-political context of modern Turkey and Indonesia. The question is how Pamuk’s use of prosopopoeia in his 1998 novel Benim Adım Kırmızı (My Name is Red) influences Adji’s decision to use the 18th Century it-narratives in her 2019 short story I am Her Bracelet. Image by H005 from Wikimedia Commons: ‘Plates for sale on the Grand Bazaar (Kapalı Çarşı) in Istanbul’, CC BY-SA 3.0
The re-writing of a fairy tale caters for characters, settings and values that have undergone changes, be it explicit or implicit. In Juliet Marillier’s Wildwood Dancing, the main female character Jena is transformed from the passive and obedient Twelfth/Youngest Princess of Grimm’s The Worn-Out Dancing Shoes into a brave and sensible figure. She challenges the oppression of patriarchal rules by taking control of her household in her father’s absence, securing her four sisters’ welfare, and keeping secret of their nocturnal dancing trips in the Other Kingdom despite being threatened by her domineering male cousin. In this way, Gerard Genette’s Hypertextuality strives to investigate the underlying patterns manifested in both literary works by applying the Re-vision element. Through it, Jena’s and the Twelfth/Youngest Princess’ sensibility trait and the socio-cultural settings surrounding them are highlighted in order to determine the importance of the overall hypertextuality process that takes place between the two. Later, Jena emerges as the more influential heroine than her predecessor character because she does not stop struggling to be regarded as an independent young woman who can always give advice and make decisions for her family affairs sensibly. Also, it is eventually proven that sensibility is indeed a strong weapon to be possessed by women in order to empower themselves against the conventions of a patriarchal world.
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