We might share a few of these essays over the next few weeks/months, but this roundup from @jstor Daily's editors was too good not to share!
Thanks for sharing!
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JSTOR is starting an online magazine - JSTOR Daily. It’s a scholarly bent on news and culture and it’s live right now but will officially launch next week. We’re accepting pitches from writers on articles - link to the submission guidelines here (and we pay our writers, too!).
So check it out and let me know if you have any questions or thoughts! Also, submit away.
Today is the official launch of JSTOR Daily! It's a new online magazine that features articles and blog posts that draw upon the wealth of scholarship on JSTOR to contextualize the modern world. Check it out and follow my colleagues on Twitter @JSTOR_Daily for updates.
Okay, we’re doing it: Barbie week! Today we share a deep dive by the editors of our free online magazine JSTOR Daily.
Just in time for the movie release, check out the latest article from JSTOR Daily, “Choose Your Own Adventure: The Marvel Universe and Our Cultural Values”
“The Avengers: Age of Ultron premieres this week and is poised to become one of the biggest movies of the year, in addition to occupying a pivotal place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)—the shared universe that comprises the Marvel movies, television shows, DVD shorts, and comic tie-ins.
Age of Ultron is the sequel to The Avengers, the eleventh movie in the Marvel Studios franchise. Its release comes amid a stream of Marvel-related TV news: Netflix just ordered season two of the show Daredevil, and AKA Jessica Jones is currently filming for the online streaming service. ABC’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. recently announced a spin-off, and Marvel’s Agent Carter is primed for a second season renewal.
The continued expansion of the MCU in both TV and movies continues the spirit of the Marvel comics universe, long established as an environment where the reader has control over what stories to read and how to read them. In a 1995 issue of Studies in Popular Culture, Carl Silvio wrote that a founding principle of the Marvel comics universe is the postmodern notion that “contests the idea of center as an organizing and totalizing principle” within a narrative.
For example, each Marvel comic title constitutes its own narrative core, but can be enriched by reading other titles in the universe and participating in crossover events. Expanding this concept to movies and television has been phenomenally successful for Marvel Studios. Viewers can choose to watch only the Iron Man movies, or only stick to the TV shows. Alternatively, a viewer can choose to watch all of the movies and shows, forming a richer understanding of the characters and relationships within the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Superheroes in movies and comics are “culturally valuable because they help us better understand our society,” writes Jon Hogan in 2009. Age of Ultron, the latest cinematic addition to the MCU, demonstrates this by continuing to address themes established in 2008 with the release of Iron Man—the intersection of humanity and technology, and how good intentions and technological progress can lead to terrible outcomes. In the new Avengers movie, Tony Stark (Iron Man) and Bruce Banner (The Hulk) create Ultron—a sentient robot who becomes obsessed with destroying the human race—as a global defense system after the alien invasion in The Avengers.
“The technology is just as much of a star in Iron Man as the man beneath the armor,” writes Hogan. “It is interesting to note that Stark has no special powers: he is a superhero because he knows how to build things.” Genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist Tony Stark reflects the moral ambiguity that surrounds society’s relationship with modern technology.
The expansion of the MCU with Age of Ultron, as well as its continued focus on technology and humanity, indicate that Marvel is upholding the values established by the comics over the last 40 years, and that our superheroes will continue to reflect those values and concerns back at us from the big and small screens.”
From our friends at JSTOR Daily, the history and use of the term “gold digger.”
“The term “gold digger” hasn’t been around for that long—and in the 1930s, writes Clarence R. Slavens, the Great Depression brought a whole new context to the image of the money-hungry woman… rather than being portrayed as evil or morally bankrupt, the 1930s gold digger was more nuanced. First and foremost… the Depression-era gold digger “served to emphasize the economic inequities that were all too apparent after the economic collapse of 1929.” By doing so, she also highlighted inequities between women and men, becoming “a powerful force” by challenging traditional stereotypes of class, race, and gender.”
So, according to this JSTOR Daily article, “Giraffes are among the most conspicuous animals, but researchers still know surprisingly little about them…other African megafauna—particularly elephants—have drawn more of the research and conservation attention, while giraffes have mostly coasted under the research radar. The lack of attention to these iconic animals is especially incongruous given the long history of fascination with giraffes.”
I guess they’re not familiar with the mating habits of giraffes, as so eloquently explained by edwardspoonhands and fishingboatproceeds?
“The morphology of reaction gifs!”
From JSTOR Daily!
*flips table for emphasis*
Courtesy of our friends at JSTOR Daily! “Scientists Have an Answer to How the Egyptian Pyramids Were Built.”
The writers at JSTOR Daily know my heart: the dystopian film and rise thereof.
“This month, Mockingjay, the third film in the immensely successful Hunger Games series, will be released. Divergent, another dystopian film franchise with a young female heroine, came out in March. The cinematic dystopia is hardly a new genre, but there seems to be a curious increase in the number and popularity of such films lately. The summer of 2014 alone saw three dystopian fables enter movie theaters, each keyed to a different demographic. The most artful of these was Snowpiercer, which fed liberal pieties about class equality while sounding a now familiar alarm about climate change.
The cinema has long been drawn to science fiction and the challenge of visualizing the unimaginable. Yet the recent uptick in dystopian and post-apocalyptic scenarios seems more urgent and more extreme. Many of these films, including Snowpiercer, are concerned with environmental apocalypse, or they unfold in the aftermath. Yet they offer no solutions and little consolation.
Why, then, do we shell out 12, 13, 14 dollars for films that seem designed only to frighten and depress us? What species of entertainment, much less relief, do these nightmare scenarios offer?”
TFW you’re just trying to have breakfast with your pals but some ghosts decide to toss your bowler hats around the yard…
Watch the full film by Hans Richter.
📽️ : Hans Richter. Germany. Vortmittagspuk (“Ghosts Before Breakfast”). 1927. Bucknell University.