Fiction Series Research Articles

Chinese Killer King: trespassing the boundaries of crime fiction and Cantonese literature

ABSTRACT This essay introduces readers to a Cantonese writer, editor, and director, Yam Wu-Fa/Ren Huhua (?-1976), whose creative life peaked between the 1930s and the 1950s among a Cantonese-speaking readership across the Pacific. Pertinent to our discussion is his crime fiction series, Chinese Killer King (zhongguo sharenwang). The Killer King, “Charlie Chiu”—not to be confused with Earl Derr Biggers’s “Charlie Chan”—is a Cantonese borderland hero who derives from various references, both fictional and historical, addressing a cosmopolitan yet Cantonese imaginary. Overlooked, Yam and his works represent more than the marginalisation that is commonly experienced by Southernly “popular fictions” in a histography under an elitist and Shanghai-Beijing-centric framework. Chinese Killer King challenges the kind of place-bound identity politics evident in today’s discussion on Hong Kong literature and Sinophone writings. The author hence explores the possibility of using “Cantonese literature” as a critical framework to historicise and theorise a Cantonese-ness and its border-crossing dimension and discusses how the series may be positioned among world crime fictions.

Narrative analysis of the webseries Imaginário: folkmidia perspectives, the fantastic and the horror in the work of bruno esposti

How can a serial fiction product use elements of Brazilian folklore, in combination with the fantastic and the horror, to build its narrative? Based on this question, the present work analyzes the webseries Imaginário (2016), by filmmaker Bruno Esposti, which narrates, in each chapter, an urban or folkloric legend of Brazil. This article aims, therefore, to detect the intersections between national folklore, digital media and horror in audiovisual. In order to carry out this study, firstly a theoretical contextualization about the webseries, the media narratives and the webseries Imaginário is presented. Then, a conjuncture in relation to Brazilian folklore is briefly described, recovering epistemological discussions of Folkcommunication (MARQUES DE MELO, 2007; BENJAMIN, 2007), especially in its so-called folkmídia (LUYTEN, 2002; D'ALMEIDA, 2003). After that, aspects of fantastic narrative and horror are presented, based mainly on studies by Todorov (1970) and Cánepa (2008). Subsequently, the webseries Imaginário is analyzed, observing its main narrative elements interesting to the audiovisual, as pointed out by Bordwell and Thompson (2013), based on the analysis script by Gancho (1991), in dialogue with semantic aspects of folk culture compiled by Cascudo (2005). Finally, the final considerations of the research are developed, highlighting the main learnings and considerations made during the research. Among the main results, it is noticed that the webseries can be configured as an audiovisual serial fiction format capable of rescuing elements of folklore and popular culture (Folkcommunication), resignifying them and presenting them in a massive way (folkmedia) for a diverse target audience.

Dehumanizacja Obcego. Rola sztuki popularnej w uświadamianiu problemu na przykładzie Men Against Fire (2016)

Dehumanization is – in the broadest sense – the process of depriving a person of positive human qualities. This problem, considered mainly in the field of social psychology, has strong pedagogical significance. The article is aimed to show the potential importance of popular art for intercultural education, precisely: to show the role that popular art can play in raising the awareness of the problem posed by dehumanization of the Other. To achieve the intended goal, the author indicates the justified presence of popular art in education, introduces the concept of the Other, i.e. a person who is beyond the horizon of a given person’s experience, who is outside a given community or is cognitively dangerous, and outlines the issue of dehumanization. The exemplification was conducted on the example of the episode of the British science fiction series Black Mirror – Men Against Fire (2016). The considerations are carried out from the perspective of contemporary aesthetic education, which refers conceptually to the Polish theory of aesthetic education. Humanistically oriented, contemporary aesthetic education must be conducted in the vein of pluralism and interculturalism; it should also contribute to the development of a person’s holistic personality: from their aesthetic sensitivity and moral orientation, to their ability of critical thinking and creativity. In the article, the possibilities are indicated of using popular art in education by building theoretical interpretive contexts.

AN ANALYSIS OF THE WANDERING EARTH II BASED ON PIERCE SEMIOTICS

As a highly-anticipated domestic science fiction series, “The Wandering Earth II” has captured widespread attention and ignited online discussion upon its release. The film weaves together multiple narrative threads, crafting a diverse array of characters and seamlessly blending surreal themes with realist storytelling. Consequently, its content and scope align closely with Peirce’s semiotic framework. As a founding figure in semiotics, Peirce incorporates various societal factors beyond symbols into his semiotic system, endowing it with extensive interdisciplinary applicability and research potential. Hence, this analysis of “The Wandering Earth II” employs Peirce’s semiotic framework to unravel the construction of the film’s symbolic system, with the aim of seeking novel textual expressions for film semiotics research while providing fresh semiotic perspectives on the interpretation of the movie.

Perception of the filmed urban space: an analysis of the imaginaries of Madrid constructed through series and social networks

Concurrent with the expansion of visual culture, film tourism has experienced a significant boost in recent decades, and the motivation to visit places where series made for television or similar platforms were filmed has been added to this modality. In this context, and taking the city of Madrid as a reference, this work proposes a line of research wherein analysis of the relationships between geographical and audiovisual spaces through cultural and tourist use unites the representation of both, by way of social networks (specifically, Twitter). As regards methodology, an ‘application programming interface’ has been designed which permits the download of a sample of tweets useful for both quantitative and qualitative analysis. The main results indicate the impacts that fiction series have had on recognition of the city (or certain of its elements) as well as relationships established between the narrative and geographical spaces when the latter are referenced via on-site activities. Theoretically, this research focuses on the relationship between real geographies, imagined geographies, and simulacra, as well as their involvement in the commodification of space and in the construction of vicarious geographical experiences.

Watchmen, Copaganda, and Abolition Futurities in US Television

Through this article, we examine the history and conventions of copaganda in the United States, and critically consider how HBO's Watchmen has responded to and represented the historical relationship between policing and white supremacy. We argue that while Watchmen works to explicitly critique the history of white supremacist violence in US policing, the show reproduces several copaganda conventions. Watchmen depicts central law enforcement characters who commit violence as heroes, uplifts the main police character as an eventually almighty arbiter of justice, portrays white supremacist law enforcement characters as anomalous individual infiltrators (a.k.a. 'bad apples'), and was created in collaboration with various members of law enforcement. After presenting this case study in contemporary copaganda, we consider how science fiction series can more meaningfully respond to the movement for police and prison abolition through representing abolitionist futures.

Mujeres directivas y creadoras en el audiovisual. Análisis de las series de ficción españolas presentes en los catálogos de Amazon Prime Video, Movistar+ y Netflix (2019-2021)

This paper studies the presence of female directors and creators in Spanish fiction series released by Movistar+, Netflix and Amazon Prime Video between 2019 and 2021. We reviewed the literature, analysed the technical specifications of the 66 Spanish fiction series released during the study period on the 3 platforms and carried out a semi-structured questionnaire with 15 female directors and creators to find out their perspective on the situation of women in the Spanish audiovisual industry. The results indicate a great inequality in decision-making positions, with women occupying 29.7% of these roles. Parity is a distant goal, with only 20.9% of female directors, 32% of female producers and 33.4% of female scriptwriters, while only 6.1% of titles are conceived with a gender approach. The difficulties faced by women in the sector and the prejudices about their ability are highlighted, as well as the need for them to occupy positions of responsibility and to be able to promote a greater presence of women in the teams.

Anna Wegener: Karin Michaëlis’ Bibi books. Producing, Rewriting, Reading and Continuing a Children’s Fiction Series, 1927–1953

Article Anna Wegener: Karin Michaëlis’ Bibi books. Producing, Rewriting, Reading and Continuing a Children’s Fiction Series, 1927–1953 was published on October 1, 2022 in the journal European Journal of Scandinavian Studies (volume 52, issue 2).

Explainable CLIP-Guided 3D-Scene Generation in an AI Holodeck

This paper describes the AI Holodeck, a co-creative software prototype that creates virtual scenes from the user input text, inspired by the fictional Holodeck virtual reality device from the science fiction series Star Trek. This application collects common-sense knowledge from annotated datasets and reference images. It uses this knowledge to populate scenes with objects found in selected environments alongside those explicitly mentioned by the user. We present the system design of the AI Holodeck, and a proposed study to measure the effects of its visualizations on user perceptions of the system's creativity.

Representación del colectivo LGBT+ en la ficción televisiva española contemporánea (2015-2020)

La investigación examina la construcción de personajes LGBT+ en la ficción seriada española incluida en plataformas de distribución en la última década. Se utiliza un análisis crítico del discurso articulado en un nivel macro, donde se estudian los grandes discursos, y en un nivel micro, donde se presta atención a las temáticas, la lexicalización y las estructuras proposicionales. Los resultados muestran, entre otros, la perpetuación de estereotipos recurrentes, la ubicación marginal de estos personajes y que la construcción de la realidad LGBT+ se presenta de manera negativa o ambigua.

The Reshaping of Home, Privacy and Identity During a Pandemic

ABSTRACT The ways we experience and construct our homes help us know and define who we are. The digital age and the immense presence of social media in people's lives have led to the redefining and, some argue, erasures of the boundaries between ‘private' and ‘public' spheres. Recently, with wide-scale lockdowns and the mass movement of workspaces to homes in response to COVID-19, these boundaries have been altered particularly radically and universally. This paper explores the changing role and function of the home as more than simply a house – or a physical, concrete space – but as multiple, fluid and sometimes intangible spaces. Analysing Australian digital audio fiction series The Fitzroy Diaries, it investigates how individuals negotiate structures of power in these spaces during COVID-19 to create a sense of home but also a sense of self. A close textual analysis illustrates the ways that those living through the pandemic witness and negotiate on the one hand the shrinking of their internal worlds, but on the other hand the opening up of these into ‘outside’ realms, and how individuals are positioned in relation to these changing spaces of home according to their access to power and privilege.

Todas ellas: análisis de la mujer LTBI+ en las series españolas originales de plataformas

Este artículo muestra los resultados de una investigación sobre la representación de las mujeres LTBI+ en la ficción seriada española original emitida en plataformas. Mediante el análisis de contenido de 749 personajes, se constata una ligera infrarrepresentación de las orientaciones no heterosexuales, una mayor representación de hombres GTBI+ que de mujeres LTBI+ y no se halla ningún personaje trans masculino o no binario. Por último, en comparación con las mujeres cis-heterosexuales, los rasgos estereotípicos femeninos se acentúan en los personajes LTBI+.

Bilingual fiction series, genre conventions, and the economy of linguistic interaction in Israeli television

During the last decade, an increasing number of transnational and multilingual television shows have been produced, distributed, and consumed via global streaming platforms. The present study aims to examine bilingual fiction series through the analysis of two high-impact Hebrew-Arabic bilingual television shows, produced by the Israeli television industry: Arab Labor (2007–13) and Fauda (2015–present). While previous studies on these shows focused on the on-screen representation of the Jewish-Israeli and Palestinian population, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the present article proposes a methodology for a quantitative and qualitative analysis of multilingual fiction series. Instead of a linear textual analysis, it suggests focusing on the genre conventions, televisual structure, and linguistic performances that made possible the complex amalgamation of the languages spoken in both series.

The researcher as unreliable narrator: writing sociological crime fiction as a research method

ABSTRACT Whilst works of art, including fiction, are well established as legitimate objects of sociological analysis, and the narratives crafted by the subjects of social research are widely understood to be meaningful, the use of creative writing as a methodology is still quite novel within law and the social sciences. In this article, I seek to demonstrate how the practice and process of creating fiction can extend the aesthetic, affective, and ontological possibilities of social research. Further, I argue that it offers a model for working ethically and creatively with others within a poststructuralist theoretical framework. I will do this by reflecting on the creation of a series of sociological crime fictions, written between 2015 and 2017. I discuss how this approach developed in response to concerns about working ethically with people who had experienced criminalization and stigma, drawing on Carolyn Steedman’s concept of ‘enforced narratives’. I then survey some contemporary trends in sociological fiction, and earlier feminist experimental approaches to writing research, which have inspired my approach. Using one of my own works of sociological crime fiction as an example, I demonstrate how these works are composed, drawing on a conceptualization of research as a process of ‘translation’ as developed within actor–network theory. I hope that the practice of working carefully with people with experience of the justice system to make experimental fiction, might help us reimagine and re-present complex processes of crime and punishment, in a form that can travel beyond social science audiences and enrich the practice of law.

GENDER, CLASS AND IDENTITY: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS OF A SONG OF ICE AND FIRE

Fantasy Fiction unifies supernatural elements and life with the help of imagination to build something novel. Though it is considered far removed from the primary world, it remains a reflection to reality. George R. R. Martin, an American Writer, created a whole new world as a setting for his Fantasy Fiction series, A Song of Ice and Fire. This he did, not only in the geographical sense but also in the social, political and religious sense. Martin invented religions, customs, traditions, legal systems, and languages to suit these, in order to make his world authentic. His inspirations from Medieval Europe are seen in the architecture, attire, food, mannerisms, social rules, language, and so on, which he constructed for his texts. The series has a complex structure and plot, with more complex characters. It is meant to be a heptalogy, but two more volumes are yet to be published. Gender, Class and Identity are some major concepts being discussed in academics. In this article, understanding of these key terms will be established. Subsequently, select instances from the text will be used to demonstrate how these concepts resonate in the selected text. For this purpose, Critical Discourse Analysis will be used as a method to examine the language used in the select instances. Critical Discourse Analysis is a transdisciplinary tool developed borrowing thoughts from fields like Sociology, Psychology, Linguistics, and Criticism. It is also a part of Hermeneutics as discourse analysis is used to explore the possible interpretations of a text and is, in itself, not a substantiating theory

Out of time/in place: Norwegianness, ‘immigration’, and spatial belonging in Beforeigners

Television – as a form of representation, a space of affect, and an instrument of identity production – is a growing force in shaping perceptions of and views on international immigration. While geographers have examined the ways in which films, documentaries, and social media engage with the so-called ‘migrant crisis’ in Europe, there has been little work on fictional TV series as a force in world-building and place-making against the spectre of ‘unchecked migration’. Building on recent research on televisual interventions into the issues of migration, (b)orders, and securitisation, this article interrogates HBO Europe’s Norwegian-language sf series Beforeigners. With a focus on fantastical constructions of spatiality against temporality, the primary focus of this article is on the ways in which near-future science fiction engages with ontological insecurities around integration, xenophobia, and territorial belonging. This is accomplished by engaging the ‘temporal turn’ in cultural geography, which is increasingly focused on linking time, space, and migrant lives/bodies. Recognising TV series’ contributions to cultural, social, and political transformations that are of geographical significance, this essay seeks to expand and complicate scholarship on the suasive power of migrant representation on the small screen.

Rashevsky’s dream: A physico-mathematical foundation of history and culture

The popular science fiction series Foundation penned by Isaac Asimov explores the idea that the course of the future of societies is not only predictable but can be engineered as well. In Asimov’s fictional world, a multidisciplinary science called psychohistory combines mathematics, psychology, and history to predict future events. Nicolas Rashevsky, the father of mathematical biology, lent credibility to the existence of universal principles underpinning human cultural evolution using mathematical models. His vision remains to be fully realized, as our capacity to predict and even engineer is very fragmented. Two main obstacles are a misunderstanding of the role of mathematical models and the limitations of current datasets. Recent advances in complex systems research, computer-based simulations, and large-scale databases, are paving the way towards fully developing a mathematical theory of human history.

Defunto autor eclerks defunct

Abstract This article inquires the hypothesis that one of the boldest and radical innovations of The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, the author defunct, originated from Machado de Assis’ reading of the English essayist Charles Lamb. In the autobiographical and fictional series Essays of Elia, Lamb invented a character and narrator who presents himself as a clerk defunct. The nominalization of defunct (as in defunct author) and the profiling of Elia as a dying and decaying figure, as well as a deceptive narrator who is constantly playing tricks on the readers, may have inspired Machado in the crafting of Brás Cubas. Moreover, Lamb played out his own death in two other moments of his work. Therefore, in this article, I intend to unravel the threads that link Elia to Brás Cubas with an aim of understanding why Machado excluded Lamb from the “definite” prologue to The Posthumous Memoirs.

Westworld and overcoming of traditional gender dualisms: Is feminism really for everybody or just for female androids?

The focus of this article is the science fiction series Westworld (2016, 2018, 2020), inspired by the film of the same name from 1973 (Crichton). In the modern version of Westworld, the dominant characters are Dolores and Maeve, female androids, and the narrative is centred on their awakening and emancipation. The feminist turn may positively indicate the transformations that occurred in the society of the spectacle. Back in 1973, gender-based stereotyping of women was still a firm division point between acceptable female roles of a good and obedient daughter, a faithful wife or a self-sacrificing mother and unacceptable roles of sexually promiscuous rebels and prostitutes. However, Dolores is both a good daughter and a rebel/killer, and Maeve is a prostitute and a self-sacrificing mother. These roles are not evaluated, which suggests that the series overcome the traditional gender dualisms. Unlike female androids, such a change is not visible in the characterization of other female or male human characters. Analysis of the Westworld series is presented through radical feminist lenses and questions whether Westworld’s feminism is really for everybody.

The naturalization of male chauvinism in adolescents through fiction series

The naturalization of male chauvinism in adolescents through fiction series