Magazine created by students of the Department of English and American Studies at Masaryk University.

Category archive

Reviews

Gender Roles in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

in Current Issue/Reviews/Views

by Arya Dixit

The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (dir. Jacques Demy), was met with mixed reviews when the film premiered in 1964, during the French New Wave movement, but has steadily grown in both popularity and appreciation for its timeless, artistic vision. In Umbrellas, Demy infuses his cinematography with a fairy-tale-like quality. The musical numbers, bold use of colors, and choreographed movements make the visuals and storytelling dream-like. Fairy tales come with stereotypes: the audience expects happy endings, an other-worldly, pure romance, a knight in shining armor who wins over the girl he loves, and the girl who slowly grows to love him back. Similarly, in Hollywood cinema, as Backes states: “everything was larger than life. From the large scale sets, soaring visuals, and grandiose love that always ended with everything in its place”. Demy manages to break almost all of these preconceived notions of fairy-tale (and Hollywood rom-com) cinema and brings to light the inherent class structures, gender roles and expectations, and the reality of romance without losing the brilliancy and charm of a dreamy world. He carefully uses settings, colors, and dialogue to work together and illustrate the complexities of society, especially when gender norms come into play.

Keep Reading

Happily Ever After?

in Current Issue/Reviews/Views

by Alena Gašparovičová

And they lived happily ever after is undoubtedly a well-known phrase that can be found at the end of many a romantic fairy tale. It rounds up the story and suggests that after a period full of struggle, the protagonist(s) are finally getting to a period of peace, prosperity and marital bliss. 

Shared by Willgard under Pixabay License via pixabay.com

The conception that marriage is a state of ideal bliss that is perpetuated in romantic fairy tales is not without issues. The phrase and they lived happily ever after suggests that with marriage, all the problems that the protagonists have faced in the course of the story will come to an end, and no new problems will arise up until they die. The aim of this paper is to discuss the theme of marriage in Naomi Novik’s novel Spinning Silver, focusing on the main female protagonist, Miryem, to show how the author demonstrates that marriage does not necessarily mean that one will live happily ever after. 

Keep Reading

Motherhood Is a Brutal Experience. Why Shouldn’t You Be a Beast? Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch

in Reviews

by Blanka Šustrová

 

The image of motherhood we are being served through the media, be it in advertisements or film, depicting always happy, fresh looking, never tired young mothers with perfect bodies who feel no other thing whatsoever but pure love for their babies and seem to be on top of every task that motherhood brings is often a derision of the real experience and may bring feelings of insufficiency in mothers and primary carers. If you would like to read about motherhood from a very different point of view, a very well-crafted one that goes from satirical and darkly funny to magical realism to absurd to horror and leaves you baffled in the end, try Rachel Yoder’s novel Nightbitch. Keep Reading

Once Upon a Modern Time: Fairy Tales as a Way to Address Modern Issues

in Reviews

by Alena Gašparovičová

Shared by creatifrankenstein under Pixabay License via pixabay.com

 

Once upon a time, there was a beautiful young woman in a desperate situation and in need of a prince to rescue her. However, she is the protagonist of a different story. Despite the name of the famous fairy-tale character Cinderella in the title of the book, Laura Lane’s and Ellen Haun’s Cinderella and the Glass Ceiling: And Other Feminist Fairy Tales offers adaptations of a range of well-known traditional fairy tales. The authors use the familiarity of the fairy-tale settings and characters and mould them into a new form. Aimed at a more mature audience, these stories not only present self-sufficient female characters who do not need any man to save them, they also address issues like class, ethnicity and gender identity that resonate through today’s society. All of that is packaged in the form of a fairy-tale rewriting in a humorous and parodic manner. This article offers a review of the collection as well as an analysis of how selected stories in the book challenge the traditional fairy tale stereotypes and address the issues of modern society. Keep Reading

Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou: Wes Anderson’s Cinematography Breakthrough

in Reviews

by Rastislav Domček

 

Ever since its conception in the early 20th century, film as a story telling medium has gone through constant changes. Filmmakers have always drawn their inspiration from the works of their predecessors, in turn providing inspiration for new generations. When Orson Welles decided to use low camera angles to capture the magnitude of his characters in Citizen Kane in the early 1940s, the world of film did its typical dance of repulsion and adaptation. When Stanley Kubrick introduced the world to his hypnotic masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey in the late 1960s, he guided the sub-genre of ‘little green men’ sci-fi to the brave new world of thought-provoking visual splendour. By the late 1990s, Hollywood was dominated by the high-budget blockbuster mega-film. How do you find success following the likes of Steven Spielberg or James Cameron? The answer is to think outside of the box. Keep Reading

The Old, the New, and the Queerly Magical World of Dickinson

in Reviews

By Tereza Walsbergerová

Due to the specific blend of genres, styles, and themes it chooses to highlight – all wrapped up in a wildly anachronistic package – Alena Smith’s Apple TV+ historical comedy-drama Dickinson (2019–) will never have the same mainstream appeal as the likes of Downton Abbey, Outlander, or The Crown. That said, there probably has not been a better time for shows that explore the tumultuous past of the West (be it Britain, Canada, or America) through contemporary optics, least of all the optic of a young woman. Similar to Moira Walley-Beckett’s coming-of-age period drama adaptation of L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables, Anne with an E , Dickinson offers a view of the old world through the eyes of a young woman so ahead of her time it seems only natural that her opinions be blended with today’s perspectives.  Keep Reading

Future for the Females?

in Reviews

by Jana Záhoráková

The Power, a science fiction novel by British novelist Naomi Alderman, was published in 2016. It won the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction in 2017 and amongst other prestigious praise, it was one of the books former president Barrack Obama listed as his favourites of that year. The novel consists of several stories of mostly young women who struggle to control and use their newly acquired super-powers which emit electricity. These stories are presented as a historical novel written by a man in a distant future world, dominated by women. The source of this power is regarded to be a mysterious liquid called “Guardian Angel” which was a medication developed during the Second World War that prevents people from dying after being exposed to toxic gas (Alderman 123). It was poured into the water reservoir to protect people from enemies. However, it had an unexpected side effect on the generations of females to come. 

Keep Reading

“Becoming” First Lady

in Reviews

by Ľubomíra Tomášová

Throughout the history, there were myriad of biographies written about First Ladies of United States and a number of memoirs written by them. In each case the story was unique and different mirroring both their backgrounds and eras in which they served. At the end of the 2018, Michelle Obama’s memoir Becoming was published and soon it became the best-selling book of 2018 in the United States. This memoir is an account of the 44th First Lady of the United States and at the same time the first African American First Lady, which makes the author even more unique and relatable to her readers. Obama writes very authentically about her childhood struggles as an African American, finding herself as a young woman, wife and mother, navigating her life and finding her own voice as a First Lady and even after this part of her life being over, still continuing to be an inspiration for many.

Keep Reading

Towards Inclusive Heritage: Thoughts on Wain, a collection of LGBT themed poetry by Rachel Plummer

in Reviews/Views

Courtesy of The Emma Press, art by Helene Boppert

by Tereza Walsbergerová

Agender and gender-queer creatures, bisexual mermaids, homosexual warriors, asexual goddesses, non-binary elves, and transgender seal folk. All this and more awaits you in Rachel Plummer’s 2019 LGBT themed retellings of Scottish mythology – Wain: LGBT Reimaginings of Scottish Folklore. As the book was commissioned by an organisation dedicated to the inclusion of queer children and youth in Scottish society, this article questions the educational potential of story-telling, the possibility of inclusive heritage, the use and “abuse” of mythology, and the universal character of mythical meanings.

Keep Reading

1 2 3 4
Go to Top