Cass Aleatory's Nonfiction Blog

This paper compares two related sequences in Park Chan-wook’ 2016 film The Handmaiden using a theoretical lens that reconciles the writings of two preeminent scholars in the field of queer studies. At the start of this film, neither Tamako nor Lady Hideko understands the web of manipulation and lies in which they are entrapped. Both have some key knowledge, but the film’s male characters work hard to safeguard the gates of their knowledge in a desperate bid to prevent females from attaining agency. Yet by the film’s conclusion, it’s the men who realize their hallowed knowledge allowed them to glimpse but a shade of the women’s true capabilities. Thus, when Tamako and Lady Hideko finally embrace queerness to access the truth of the world around them, they also tear down the superficial facade of knowledge that the film’s male characters passed off for truth, even as they build their own identities anew. The film introduces its audience to the gates of male knowledge very early on, ar

Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home uses many of the base concepts from Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics  to create a storytelling engine that imparts deeper meaning through its expression of emotion, use of iconography, and interplay between text and image. On pages 1, 15, 16, 17, and 18 of Fun Home , this engine is geared specifically towards the characterization of Bechdel’s father and his influence over and modulation of the family dynamic. Additionally, through the use of a unique point of view and a recurring theme of contrast, certain characteristics of both the father and family as a whole are expressed in an especially impactful way: we as readers are let into the world of mystique and unsolved puzzles that Bechdel has come to associate with her past. Image from  Fun Home  page 18. A very visible example of the effect of Bechdel’s father on the family dynamic can be found by analyzing emotional expression and how line is used to achieve it. Looking at the faces on pag

This essay analyzes a late sequence in the original release of Fritz Lang’s  Metropolis . A Marxist analysis of this sequence reveals a surprising codependency between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, represented by Johann Fredersen and the workers respectively. Marx himself may not agree with this portrayal, but Althusser’s ideas concerning the lasting power and reproductive needs of a capitalist system bring the interclass relationships in  Metropolis  into focus.  This point in  Metropolis  finds us in the midst of the workers’ revolution. While the workers have been destroying the machines, Maria, Freder Fredersen, and one of Freder’s petit bourgeois allies have been saving their children. The sequence opens with a long shot of the children running up and embracing their three saviors. The main purpose of this shot is to show the compassion of Freder and Maria, as Lang is preparing Freder to assume the mantle of the mediator in a few short minutes. However, this scene does some