Journal articles on the topic 'Tortured heroine'

This article discusses how women have significant abilities to cope with the difficulties of war times. They are not the weak and vulnerable victims who are thought to be. On the contrary, they have the power to control over many-sided fronts, like participating in the battlefield as nurses or activists for peace, or even fighters, as well as through the tasks and responsibilities assigned to them to protect and support their families during wartime. The researcher will examine the impact of war upon women. Like men, women suffer during wartime. They are being injured, tortured and killed. Yet, they are able to give examples of love and courage even in the difficult times of war. Hana is one of those women who lived during wartimes, she is supposed to have a beautiful life at the age of twenty one, but she finds herself in Italy taking care of the English Patient leaving all the chances of happy life behind to dedicate herself for becoming a nurse. Michael Ondaatje in his novel The English Patient (1992) has chosen the medical field for Hana for it is an important step in healing and treating the mentality before the body. The English Patient shows the life of women though wartime and it succeeds in depicting how Hana insists on living strongly

Zha Mingzhe's 1997 production of Sartre's Morts sans sépulture takes bold creative license in the form of retooled dialogues; hard-edged stage design; moody, ironic music; and the brutal acoustic ‘facsimile’ of torture to reimagine the play for Chinese audiences. Zha's production is neither an exuberant celebration of ‘heroism’ as the term is conventionally understood, nor a parable-like play given to ‘philosophizing’ the core tenets of Sartre's existentialism. Rather, it is a full-scale, in-your-face presentation of ‘total heroism’: heroism that is flawed, falling far short of the kind of heroism idealized in the annals or mythologies of the so-called ‘red classics’, but it is heroism nonetheless. It is an interrogation, in the fullest sense of the term, of the ‘essence’ of being tested in the crucible of ferocious tortures, and a ‘cruel’ antidote much needed to shock the numbed nerves of the body politic.

If torture is both ethically odious and usually ineffective as an interrogation method, why have states, especially democratic ones, practiced it? This paper develops a theoretical response to this puzzle by extending constructivist understandings of normative effects. I argue that the norm prohibiting torture has the perverse effect of making torture more attractive to some political leaders in two ways: first, the norm attracts those who are looking for an outside-the-box solution to challenging intelligence-gathering scenarios; second, the norm offers political leaders a narrative of heroism in which they sacrifice their morality for the greater good. I illustrate these explanations with the example of torture in the United States war on terror. My argument suggests that norms can shape the interests even of those who do not follow their scripts, implying that the scope of normative impact may be much wider than previously believed.

In these two texts, Zweig Stefan lucidly describes the fear that eats away people who are at fault. This feeling completely destroys the lives of the heroines. Thus, weakened, Irene and Mrs. C. are exposed to all kinds of emotion: fear, hatred, anger and madness succeed one another in their daily lives. Therefore, their confined existence, with no way out, is like an oasis. Through these writings and in a psychocritique approach, we find that fear is a stronger emotion than death. The victims of this feeling, weakened, tortured and profoundly scarred, lose all control. They live a cloistered and quiet life because of fear, and find their freedom only through speech and music.

George Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece, Nineteen Eighty-Four is one of the most pervasively influential books of the twentieth century. Many previous researchers have explored its profound themes and cultural implications. Starting from a different perspective, this thesis approaches the story in the light of anti-heroism. By analyzing the image of Big Brother and the protagonist, the anti-heroic spirit shown in the transformations of the protagonist presents the glory of humanity under the pressure of totalitarianism. The suffering of the protagonist especially when he is under arrest shows readers how humanity will be tortured by totalitarianism in a world which is dominated by traditional heroism. Orwell expresses his comprehending of the freedom and concern for the future of mankind and gives his answer about hero and freedom after a close reading. A true hero is not the one who maintains the leadership of the party, but a man with independent thought, identifying the beauty and ugliness. And the right of freedom is the freedom of ideology on the basis of history.

Abstract Aware of her pupil’s plans to torture and kill a nest of birds, and with no authority to stop him based on her class, gender, and professional positions, the governess-heroine of Anne Brontë’s (2010/1847) Agnes Grey kills the nonhuman animals to keep them from needless suffering. Building on Brontë scholarship as well as animal studies understandings of violence and embodiment, this article considers expectations that Victorian sympathy will be a simplistic and pretty play on reader emotions to argue that nineteenth-century sympathetic feeling was more theoretically and ethically complex than we might imagine. Agnes Grey demonstrates how human-animal violence was thought to be an acceptable expression of middle- and upper-class masculinity, while proper women were expected to be complicit with this treatment of nonhumans. By looking at the close relationship between wanton and merciful embodied violence, the article shows how grotesque Victorian human-animal sympathy could be.

AbstractThree types of heroism can be identified in 1 and 2 Maccabees: those of the warrior, the martyr and the suicide. While these concepts derive in part from the histories in the Hebrew Bible, they also display affinities with Greek ideas. Greek influence may be traced in vocabulary, in the manner of writing history, and in the emphasis on the motivation of the heroes. Greek history writing however occasionally appeals to universal values, whereas the Maccabaean literature does not look directly beyond the defence of the Jewish way of life. The martyrs were honoured by both Christians and Jews in times of persecution; and, although they never directly appealed to the suicide of Razis, Jews embraced suicide under the threat of torture or forced conversion as a legitimate way of 'sanctifying the name'. The example of Judas and his brothers may have been used to justify the Crusades: it has certainly helped to inspire Zionism and Israeli aspirations.

<p>No artigo é reconhecida a admiração que Olga Benario Prestes desperta junto a numerosos setores sociais, mas, por outro lado, obscurece, em certa medida, alguns aspectos das posições ideológicas e políticas por ela sempre adotadas. Revela-se que sua posição frente à chamada “questão democrática”, inspirada no conhecimento dos clássicos do marxismo, contribuiu para que tivesse comportamento heroico diante dos algozes que a torturam e assassinaram</p>

The history of Indian Freedom Struggle would be incomplete without mentioning the contribution of women. The sacrifice made by the women of India will occupy the foremost place. They fought with true spirit and undaunted courage and faced various tortures, exploitations and hardships to earn us freedom. When most of the men freedom fighters were in prison the women came forward and took charge of the struggle. The list of great women whose names have gone down in history for their dedication and undying devotion to the service of India is a long one. Woman's participation in India's freedom struggle began as early as in1817. Bhima Bai Holkar fought bravely against the British colonel Malcolm and defeated him in guerilla warfare. Many women including Rani Channama of Kittur, Rani Begum Hazrat Mahal of Avadh fought against British East India company in the 19th century; 30 years before the “First War of Independence 1857” The role played by women in the War of Independence (the Great Revolt) of 1857 was creditable and invited the admiration even leaders of the Revolt. Rani of Ramgarh, Rani Jindan Kaur, Rani Tace Bai, Baiza Bai, Chauhan Rani, Tapasvini Maharani daringly led their troops into the battlefield. Rani Lakshmi Bai of Jhansi whose heroism and superb leadership laid an outstanding example of real patriotism .Indian women who joined the national movement belonged to educated and liberal families, as well as those from the rural areas and from all walk of life, all castes, religions and communities. Sarojini Naidu, Kasturba Gandhi, Vijayalakmi Pundit and Annie Besant in the 20th century are the names which are remembered even today for their singular contribution both in battlefield and in political field.

In this paper, we consider the phenomenon of fictionalization of the theme of the Goli otok in novels (mostly written by women), as a kind of collective and ideological trauma, which has been a taboo topic in socialist Yugoslavia for more than 40th years. Biljana Jovanović (Duša, jedinica moja, 1984) and Boba Blagojević (Skerletna luda, 1991) started the topic of Goli otok in a women’s ideological novel and after that the topic of IB Resolution continued through different genres: publicist- memoir work (Ženi Lebl), autobiographical novel (Vera Cenić), or a real postmodern novel by Milka Žicina (Sve, sve, sve, 2002), all the way to a modern novel, with a fictional protagonist, which combines all the experiences of the Goli Otok`s victims (G. Zalad, Plava tišina, D. Grossman, Život se sa mnom mnogo poigrao). We divide the origin of these novels into the works of women writers who personally experienced torture of Goli otok (Ž. Lebl, V. Cenić, M. Žicina, Eva Panić), and those who were born much later, dealt with this topic completely through the fiction (G. Zalad, D. Ilić, D. Grosman). V. Cenić and M. Žicine also created several impressive literary heroines, whose degree of fictionalization we have specifically analyzed here as literary heroines (Brana Marković, Dragica Srzentić, Slavka Pogačarević, Eva Panić Nahir), as well as the type of antiheroine in the character of Marija Zelić, the warden of the camp on Goli Otok. These are works whose literary qualities should be much more present on our literary scene, and with a good film adaptation they should enter a much wider, public reception, especially since film as a medium is the main subtext of two modern novels about Goli Otok (G. Zalad, D. Grosman).

This paper examines Medieval hagiography about St. Margaret from the viewpoint of self-torture depiction. Suffering, physical pain and humiliation in the form of self-mutilation belong to the basic means of her achieving holiness. Semiosis of the legend reveals an anthropological discourse (psychological and sexual aspect) alongside a purely religious interpretation. Anthropological horizons are hidden behind semiosis with religious intentionality. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the traditional religious interpretation that St. Margaret underwent self-torture with an effort to resemble the suffering Christ could also be supplemented by other reasons. Following interpretation focuses on the then reality in touch with literary tradition. It shows intertextual connections with the Bible as well as with other medieval and ancient hagiographies. Asceticism as a practice of self-discipline, self-denial, or self-renunciation to achieve a spiritual goal applies in the life of St. Margaret in five ascetic practices: fasting, sexual abstinence, poverty, self-inflicted pain and seclusion. Alongside with topoi, this paper points also to the idiosyncratic motifs, unique in the genre of medieval legends. It notices contrasts and hyperbolization to emphasize heroism of St. Margaret. Practices of medieval female saints are also compared with those of men. Since the lives of saints described in legends were to serve as examples of Christian life, this text also shows a change in Christian life practice – exemplary in the Middle Ages it is today considered to be no longer appropriate.

- According to the author, two different approaches to modernity are now competing. The first one (coming from Schopenhauer and Nietzsche) underlines the irrational and voluntaristic nature of any moral code and political power. The second one (coming from Rousseau and Kant) grounds progress and legitimacy upon democratic, legal and moral universalism. Foucault's philosophy of life belongs to the first of these approaches. This is where the clash with Habermas, belonging to the second approach, becomes poignantly significant. At first, for Foucault, the power of sovereignty represses life, whereas insanity and madness preserve a transcendent meaning of liberation. Later on, life moulds the inside like a pleat of the outside, subjectivity becomes an effect of power. In Foucault's anti-humanism, Man and God die together like far gone delusions that are recaptured into nature. Schopenhauer's compassion becomes sharp diagnosis of the many tortures inflicted upon man's body, whereas Zarathustra's heroism becomes on the one hand neo-stoical aesthetics of existence and on the other political revolutionary anarchism.

Background. As a notion, an opera theater led by a stage director has a strong presence in modern artistic practice, as it puts forward its own range of cognitive and evaluative tasks that undergo criticism. The fi rst task is related to compliance of the proposed rendition with the composer’s concept and music drama of a particular opera music piece. The second one is related to the director’s vision and understanding the peculiarities, which allows us to form an opinion about the comprehension degree of an author’s idea and the individuality of its implementation. The relevance of the designated semantic constants is reinforced by the variety of opera classics incarnation on famous opera stages. Objectives. The purpose of the article is to study and analyze the scenographic techniques that allow M. Marelli with his bright talent as a director to embody the opera plot and uncover incentive-psychological motifs that defi ne the deep content layer of G. Puccini’s “Turandot” opera. Methods. The study is based on a comparative method of analysis, with the help of which the validity of M. Marelli’s directorial concept by the dramatic concept and the semantic lines peculiarities of G. Puccini’s opera is revealed. Results. The stage performance of “Turandot” by G. Puccini on the famous opera stage of the Lake Constance was timed to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Bregenz festival. For the implementation of this project, the Swiss stage director and designer Marco Arturo Marelli was invited for the fi rst time to organize it. The specifi c features of the huge stage forced all the natural conditions to be considered: wind, water, its level, and the weight of the theatrical scenery elements. Therefore, before creating the intended environment, M. Marelli built several preliminary models in search of the only solution that would combine the oriental fl avor and plot intrigue, hidden psychologism and bare emotions, intimacy and pompous mass scenes. The dramatic composition of the scenario, created by M. Marelli, makes it possible to tell how deep his comprehension of Puccini’s music is, as we observe its semantic components and the interaction of contrasting fi gurative lines, author’s remarks in the score, personal circumstances in the composer’s life, his letters, the conditions for creating an opera and a long search of ways to cut the knot of plot contradictions in the Finale part. The techniques he used reveal his artistic and aesthetic principles. This allowed him to create an organic fusion of intense musical and dramatic action, defused by ensemble, choral and dance scenes, visual effects that decode psychological subtext, and the theatrical scenery itself, which specifi es the exact place of events, complements the missing verbal commentary, allowing the stage area to look massive and versatile. As a result, the ideological concept of M. Marelli appears in the interdependence of the internal and external planes; their content is determined by his understanding and vision of the opera “here and now”, that is, as a single musical and theatrical piece. The internal plane is directly connected with the events of the fairy-tale plot, interpreted by the stage director’s individual consciousness. The external one forms the design of the performance through the variety of static and mobile forms, transformed according to the sequence of light effects, and the silent video by A. Kitzig, which gives a slight expressionistic taste. M. Marelli’s intellectual and emotional immersion in the “history” of the opera contributed to the formation of a symbolic by-plot through two fi gures: Puccini and Calaf (a character of the opera). It is played on a small platform at the bottom of the main stage, depicting the “blue room” (O. Schmitt), where you can see the instrument with the scores on the music stand, a table with a jewel-box on it, an armchair, and a bed. The man that appears clearly personifi es the composer, who “looks for” music ideas. As the events are unfolding, Calaf appears in the “room”; he is tormented by the desire to melt the cold heart of Turandot and feverishly looking for a way out of this situation. The novelty of interpreting a well-known fairy-tale plot lies in a fundamentally different motivation for the behavior of Turandot. She identifi es herself with Lou-Ling, who was tortured and murdered by a man long ago, so Turandot is driven by a thirst for revenge. The story about the cry of the miserable princess Turandot, which she constantly hears inside of her, looks differently as if she becomes one with her distant ancestor. By the end of the story, she appears as in a cocoon shell, unattainable and invincible. This is followed by a scene of puzzles that move events to a turning point in the plot twists and turns and mark a kind of a going-back fl ow of time. The director increases of effect of the symbolic line in the performance by adding the silent video by A. Kitzig. The parallel dynamics of the stage action and the metamorphosis of the masks visualizes the psychological component of Puccini’s opera. The whole set of plot and scenery means exists only with the purpose of revealing this psychological component. As a result, the scene of the test Calaf must pass acquires a different dimension, delineating the fate twists of both heroes. Again and again, the pieces of clothes fall down from Turandot like scales of a snake. This is accompanied by the transformation of the previously unfi red face of the mask, which ultimately cracks like a clay cast and fi nally collapses. The heroine remains in a thin silky dress shirt and tries to cover her bare shoulders with her hands. Her nakedness is akin to defenselessness, the loss of solid ground under your feet. This way, M. Marelli resolved not only the problem of the impossibility to show a psychological degeneration of personality on the huge stage by traditional acting techniques, but also contradictions of plot twists that haunted the composer. Conclusions. The experience of the Bregenz version shows that an important role played by the conditions of the stage space, which was used by a talented stage director and designer as a component of the multi-level system, where everything goes with accordance to the hierarchical subordination of the play. This seems to be the masterful combination of M. Marelli’s personal artistic and aesthetic philosophy, the features of the last opera by J. Puccini and all theatrical resources of a unique theatrical scene of the Lake Constance.

Grandcourt threw himself into a chair and said, with undertoned peremptoriness, “Sit down.” She, already in the expectation of something unpleasant, had thrown off her burnous with nervous unconsciousness, and immediately obeyed . . . “Oblige me in future by not showing whims like a mad woman in a play.” (502; ch. 36; emphasis added)NOVELISTIC HEROINES, like Gwendolen in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, become trapped in a complex network of social contradictions when they face the threat of marital violence in a world where such violence was thought not to exist — the middle and upper classes. Though increasing attention was paid to violence in the Victorian home as the century progressed, pamphlets, studies, and legislative inquiry significantly ommited sustained or systematic scrutiny of violence in the home that existed beyond the bounds of the working classes. Frances Power Cobbe’s important essay, “Wife Torture in England,” sought to raise public awareness about marital violence and to stimulate interest in protective legislation for the victims. Yet, in spite of Cobbe’s willingness to consider the possibility that some “gentlemen” might be guilty of abuse, she presents the phenomenon of wife abuse as safely distant from the comfortable quarters of the middle and upper classes, asserting that “the dangerous wife-beater belongs almost exclusively to the artisan and labouring classes” (55). In the debates surrounding the passage of the Divorce Act of 1857, Parliament repeatedly made apparent their belief that middle- and upper-class men could not be a danger to their wives by focusing exclusively on marital violence as a working-class issue. Only in “the humbler ranks of life [was] some prompt remedy” necessary; only “poor women” were conceived of as sufferers of violence at the hands of their husbands (Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., 145 [25 May 1857], col. 801–02).

The Lublin castle has historical connections with the old town area. The castle hill was the seat of a stronghold and residence of the starost who ruled in the king’s name. Excavations led to discovery of traces of a 9th century settlement. The construction of a stone castle began in the 14th century. It was used as a prison in the 19th century and until 1954. In 1939‒1944, the Lublin Castle housed a prison of the Nazi secret police and security service, the Sicherheitsdienstpolizei and Sicherheitsdienst Lublin. The role of the Lublin Castle prison was particularly dreadful; dring the period of martyrdom and extermination of the Polish nation under the Nazi occupation of Poland. Even today, the castle is treated as a national symbol of the heroism and suffering of the Polish nation. Before they took flight, the Nazis organized a last execution on Jury 22, 1944: 286 prisoners were murdesed in the Castle. On that same day and on July 20, 1944, a further 800 prisoners were taken from the castle and executed at the concentration camp in Majdanek, a suburb of Lublin. On July 22, 1944, of the Polish Committee for National Liberation (PKWN) was created under Soviet pressure. It assumed power over the territory of Poland which had been taken by the Red Army after the flight of the Nazis. Organized armed forces known as the Home Army, ‒ operated in Poland troughout the war. They were subordinate to the Polish Government in Exile, residing in England. The Government in Exile was recognized by all counties except the USSR. Home Army troops refused to submit to the Red Army and PKWN. For this reason, the Soviet and Polish army, together with security services, started to disarm the Home Army troop. Mass arrests and deportations into the USSR began. A number of Home Army units were disarmed, among them the famous 27th Infantry Division. Troughoot the Lublin District, mass arrests of Home Army soldiers took place. The detainees were sent to the former concentration camp in Majdanek and the Lublin Castle prison. Arrested were also state oflicials ‒ delegates of the Polish Government in London. The Commander of the Home Army Lublin District, General Kazimierz Tumidajski, was detained during negotiations with Soviet authorities and deported to the USSR. Home Army soldiers who had been arrested and confined to Polish prisons, were subjected to investigations by the Soviet and Polish security service which involved the use of threats and a variety of tortures. Describing his ordeal, one of the prisoners stated he could not relate “all the atrocities” he had suffered from Soviet officers. The detained soldiers received no medical assistance; those who managed to survive the Castle prison nightmare described the appearance of battered Home Army soldiers and related their complaints. During the initial period discussed in this report, most Home Army soldiers were arrested by Soviet authorities without due judicial decision. They were interrogated in Russian, a language they did not speak. It was only 2 or 3 months later that the detainees were handed over to Polish authorities. Only then, Polish prosecutors issued formal decisions to remand them in custody, and the records of selected hearings were translated into Polish. The evidence gathered by Soviet security officers provided the grounds for indictments directed to military courts that operated in Lublin. III. In 1944, the indictments signed by Polish military prosecutors were lodged with the Military Court of the Lublin Garrison, commanded by a Soviet officer, Colonel Konstantin Krukovsky. Preceding the first-instance hearing was a closed sitting where the court, composed of three judges, confirmed the indictment; the trial followed on that same day. The copy the indictment was delivered to the detainee only after the hearing had started. The main charges contained in indictments were: membership in the Home Army, unlicensed possession of firearms, or evasion of military service ‒ acts threatened with capital punishment. There is evidence to show that the actual penalties were decided upon by the Mi1itary Courts Department of the Polish Army, headed by a Soviet ofIicer, Brigadier General Alexander Tarnovsky. The execution of the orders was the responsibility of the head of the court, Colonel Krukovsky, and the judges presiding over the case. In none of the cases did the Lublin Garrison Military Court took any evidence whatsover, whether on motion of the defendant or on its own initiative. The only hearing of evidence consisted of hearing the defendant’s statement; the defendants admitted their membership of the Home Army but refused to acknowledge any guilt. The various formulations they used were then quoted out of context to prove they had in fact been guilty of trying to subvert democratic system of Poland ‒ an assumption made well in advance. The trials were held at the Lublin Castle prison. They were closed sittings in which neither the counsel for the defence nor the prosecutor participated. The defendant’s family were not informed about the date of the trial as they knew nothing about his fate anyway, and the defendant himself did not learn about the trial until it started. Unqualified persons participated in deciding on conviction and sentence, or the court was formed inadequately. For example, the principle that the lay judges’ rank should not be lower than the defendant’s was commonly infringed upon. A glaring example of such infringement was the case of Colonel Edward Jasiński who was convicted by N.C.O. lay judges. Delivering the judgment, the court informed the defendant that the decision was final and not subject to appeal. Most defendants were sentenced to death. Many meritorious Home Army soldiers who had fought for independence throughout the Nazi occupation met death this way. The sentences were carried out upon confirmation by the Commander-in-Chief of the Polish Army (at that time, General Michał Rola-Żymierski) or his second in command (Generals Świerczewski and Berling), and sometimes by lower rank commanders. They were obliged to examine the justification of the sentences ex officio; they also had the right to grant pardon. Confirmation of the sentence and pardon were two separate institutions of the law of criminal procedure; thus pardon could be granted even if the sentence had been confirmed. In practice, no rules whatsoever were observed: confirmed sentences were carried out without pardon proceedings, or following such proceedings but without the proceedings aimed at review of the grounds. It should be added that under the law in force, pardon could only be refused by the President of the National People’s Council, Bolesław Bierut, while the army commanders had merely the right to grant pardon. In fact, they also refused pardon on numerous occasions. In practice, sentences were carried out basied on the order of Brigadier General Alexander Tarnovsky who informed the head of military court about the decision of Commander-in-Chief and ordered the need for immediate execution. Capital punishment was executed at the Castle prison, in the basement of the administration building, at various hours of day and night. The Report quotes the account of an execution provided by a surviving Lublin physician, and a numer of facts which, together with the now available reports from executions, tell about the identity of their participants. The grim record holders are two sergeants: within 50 minutes, one of them participated in the execution of 11, and the other one – of 12 Home Army soldiers. Until January 5, 1945, the bodies of the executed were secretly buried at a Lublin cemetery upon written of the prison warden Second Lieutenant Alojzy Stolarz; the orders have been preserved in the cemetery archives. There is no mention at all about subsequent burials although – as follows from the attached documents – Home Army soldiers were still executed at the Castle after that date. The soldiers kept on their dignity till the end; scant accounts of their demeanour were provided by prison chaplains, the only persons the convict’s family about hos death. Throughout both the preparatory and the judicial proceedings, valid legal provisions were violated. The system of military penal law contained provisions dating from the 1930’s and not yet quashed at the time of examination of the discussed cases. Such provisions were simply treated as non-existent. The Code of Criminal Procedure and the Military Code of the Polish Armed Forces in USSR, developed by the Political and Educational Board of the Polish Army in the USSR established in 1943 was adopted as the legal grounds for proceedings. As shown by the facts quoted in this report, the summary procedure was applied to defendants. It was provided for by the code of criminal procedure of the Polish Armed Forces in the USSR, but military courts competed with each other in breaking the law to the extent of not even observing the law that had been established in the USSR. Under the law then in force, none of the sentences discussed in the report ever became final and valid. Judicial proceedings glaringly infringed on all the principles of procedure: direct examination of evidence, impartiality, presumption of innocence, openness, adversary trial, right to defence, to appeal, and the right to apply for pardon. The Home Army soldiers mentioned in the report were convicted in defiance with the ban on retroactive force of law as the decree on protection of state under which they were tried had entered into force on November 4, 1944 with the binding force since August 15, 1944; most had been imprisoned for many weeks before the decree was actually introduced. VII. The extermination of Home Army soldiers at the Lublin Castle was kept secret for decades. Many attempts at revealing the tragic events failed, and the demands for posthumous acquittal, made by families of the executed, were rejected. It was only after June 4, 1989, as a result of extraordinary appeals or re-institution of proceedings, that the Supreme Court passed many decisions on acquittal, manifesting not only the groundlessness of convictions but also their function as a political disposal of opponents of the new authority – of the Home Army formed by the legitimate Polish Government to fight the Nazi invaders. The enormity of lawlessness of the discussed practices made the Parliament of Republic of Poland pass, on February 23, 1991, an act on the invalidity of the judgments in cases of persons victimized for their activities on behalf of a sovereign Polish state.

In recent years I have almost religiously gone to see something by or featuring Rafael Spregelburd whenever I visit Argentina, on stage or screen. On my last trip, this March, alongside two films(Florencia Percia’s debut Cetáceos and Lucrecia Martel’s historical drama Zama) and a talk, in conversation with the academic Gabriel Guz, it was his ambitious play La terquedad (Stubbornness). Spregelburd is widely acknowledged as one of Argentina’s most significant contemporary dramatists. His work appears regularly on European festival stages, and has won prizes worldwide. He has translated Harold Pinter, Sarah Kane, and other British playwrights for performance in Spanish. Yet it is a number of years now since The Argentine Moment appeared at London’s Royal Court, and his namewill hardly be familiar to British readers. Some may recognise him as a screen actor, playing the proverbially tortured political artist, gruff husband to the eponymous heroine, and love rival to SamHuntington’s lead in Nico Casavecchia’s Finding Sofia (2016).

RESUMEN En este trabajo se describe y analiza la escena representada en la pared norte del cuarto 2 del edificio de las pinturas de Bonampak. En este pasaje mural se representa la tortura y muerte de los vencidos en batalla por Chaan Muan II el 2 de agosto de 792. El derramamiento de sangre representado con enorme maestrí­a técnica se presenta en el mural como un acto heroico y ritual que garantiza el equilibrio cósmico; se expresa una sutil ideologí­a polí­tica que justifica la violencia como medio para conservar el orden social. ABSTRACT In this paper it is described and it analyzes the scene represented at the north wall in the Second Room of the Mural’s Building of Bonampak. In this mural it is represented the torture and death of the conquered ones in battle for Chaan Muan II in August 2, 792. The spill of blood represented with technical master shows up in the mural like a heroic and ritual act that it guarantees the cosmic balance; a political subtle ideology is expressed that justifies the violence like means to conserve the social order.

This book explores the notion of heroism from the feminist point of view by tackling notions such as curiosity and knowledge, deeds (masculine approach) vs stories (feminine approach), creativity (at the beginning limited to the domestic area) and inquisitiveness. It also reveals uncomfortable truths about how abuse, abduction, mutilation and torture forced women into silence. Moreover, the author points out that words have the power to resist injustice and that feminine heroism means the courage to break the silence and start telling ‘your’ story through different channels (weavings, books, social media etc).

In the Starz time-travel drama Outlander, World War II nurse Claire Randall is transported back to 1743 while visiting Scotland. While Claire initially tries to travel back to her husband Frank, she soon becomes caught up in rebellion and marries Scottish Jamie Fraser. Claire, an Englishwoman, is forced to acknowledge the harsh realities of British colonial rule in Scotland. Frank’s ancestor, British Captain “Black Jack” Randall, serves as a terrifying synecdoche for the colonization of Scotland. In this article, the author argues that Black Jack’s obsession with and eventual capture, torture, and rape of Jamie forces both Claire and the viewer to bear witness not only to Jamie’s own suffering but also to the devastating colonization of Scotland. Outlander constructs Jamie as a wild, romantic hero—paralleling Claire’s romanticization of Scotland—and then deconstructs this narrative as it forces its heroine to confront the devastation wrought by her own empire throughout history.

Political power, for individual women, was like a reputation for philosophy or a gift for painting. You had to be the daughter or wife of the right person: it was not possible to make a career, as a man sometimes could, by sheer talent for fighting or arguing or making. You also had to work in the interests of the family and keep a low personal profile.Plutarch, who believed that women were endowed with courage and intelligence, collected instances of Great Deeds by Women (Moralia 242–63). These occur in crises: his heroines do not have, and he does not advocate, an acknowledged social or political role. He admires Aretaphila (257de), who withstood torture, conspired successfully to kill a tyrant, declined an invitation from the people to join the government, and retired gracefully to private life in the women’s quarters. When women are found, in Plutarch’s time, holding magistracies and priesthoods (as they did in Asia Minor in the first and second centuries A.D.), or are honoured by their cities as public benefactors, they too are praised for modesty, charm, and self-restraint, as though everyone needed reassuring that no departure from convention was intended. In fact, it cannot be shown that such women ever chaired a meeting or addressed an assembly, or did more than foot the bills and acknowledge the applause. Some actually have public spokesmen; some are obviously the Lady Mayoress, the wife of the man who had the job.

The Forbidden Forest by Mircea Eliade is a “total novel,” whose complexity is evident on every page through the variety of suggestions, metaphors and symbols, of intertextual and mythological references. In this study, I will mostly discuss the penultimate chapter of this novel where the death of Biriș, the rational and sceptical philosopher, at the beginning a follower of the philosophy of Kierkegaard, is presented. In this troubling episode, I identified the presence of two myths whose unconscious actor this rational spirit currently anchored in history became. The myth—an exemplary story about foundation—seeks his Chosen One and finds him in the opposite of an intellectual, an “unbeliever,” just as Jesus chose his most bitter enemy, Paul of Tarsus, to become his faithful apostle. But the gnostic and religious philosopher also needs to believe in self-salvation from the clutches of the demon of fear and cowardice, and impending death, surrounded by friend-interrogators (Mihai Duma), by a compassionate executioner (Bîrsan), and demonic monks (Bursuc). The healing function of the story is lost in this world of suspicion, where Biriș is surrounded by masks, which disguise their true role. The myth of the sacrifice of Christ acquires a double saving power, because Biriș saves himself and redeems his torturers, too. By converting nocturnal stories into a sacred ritual of story, the destiny of Scheherazade, the heroine of One Thousand and One Nights, is saved from the banality of a simple literary character, because “the story in the story” provokes the human being to descend into the abyss and to live by the symbol. In the company of his interrogators—human aspects of demons—the frightened philosopher becomes the image of a Thracian Orpheus, trying in vain to “tame” the human beasts by his wise Logos. By the Logos, Biriș fails to rescue his torturers and himself from their own bestiality, but at the level of his “trance-conscious”—where Eliade speaks in his scientific work—he mystically lives a symbolic and mysterious superposition between the stages of the sacrifice of the shepherd in “Miorița” and those of the sacrifice of Christ. This intelligent, subtle and erudite intellectual lives deeply rooted in history with the consciousness of the presence of death in all intimate structures of life, a mentality specific to Western conception. In the last moments of his life, Biriș is converted to the sacred mystery of the Great Passing. Homo sapiens becomes Homo religiosus, the mysterious veil of Maya rises and the exit of the labyrinth is a certainty. The two myths which I take into account are the Orphic myth about the healing word and the mixture of the mioritic and the Christ myth of salvation through sacrifice.

Fan cultural production, be it in the form of fan fiction, art or videos are often celebrated in fan studies as evidence of fan creativity, fans’ skills in adopting technology and their expert knowledge of the texts. As Jenkins argues, “the pleasure of the form centers on the fascination in watching familiar images wrenched free from their previous contexts and assigned alternative meanings” (227). However, can fan mash-up videos can also offer an alternative view, not of one’s fandom, but of anti-fandom? Fan pleasure is often seen as declaring love for a text through juxtaposing images to sound in a mash-up video, but this paper will argue that it can also demonstrate hate. Specifically, can these videos affirm anti-fandom readings of a particular text, when clips from two (or more) different texts, seemingly of the same genre and targeting the same demographics, are edited together to offer an alternative story? In 2009, a video entitled Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed (hereafter BvE) (See Video 1) was uploaded to YouTube, juxtaposing clips from across the seven series of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and the first film of the Twilight series. Twilight is a series of novels written by Stephenie Meyer which was adapted into a successful series of five films between the period of 2008 and 2012. Its vampire-centric romance story has resulted in numerous comparisons to, among others, the cult and popular television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (hereafter Buffy) created by Joss Whedon, which aired from 1997 to 2003. In BvE, which has over three million views to date and reportedly has been translated into thirty different languages, Jonathan McIntosh, the video’s creator, “changes Edward Cullen from a smouldering, sparkly antihero into a self-obsessed stalker who's prone to throwing tantrums. Buffy Summers reacts to him with disdain and dwindling patience, assertively rebuking his every self-indulgence” (Leduc). By editing together clips from two texts seemingly of the same genre and targeting the same demographics, this video affirms an anti-fandom reading of Twilight. Video 1: Buffy vs Edward: Twilight RemixedOn the first viewing of the video, I was struck by how accurately it portrayed my own misgivings about Twilight, and by how I had wished Bella Swan was more like Buffy Summers and been a positive role model for girls and women. The content of the video mash-up—along with fan reactions to it—suggests and perpetuates an anti-fandom reading of Twilight via Buffy, by positioning the latter as a text with higher cultural value, in terms of its influence and representations of female characters. As McIntosh himself clarifies in an interview, “the audience is not supposed to go “Oh, see how TV is stupid?” They’re supposed to go “Oh, see how Buffy was awesome!”” (ikat381). As such, the BvE mash-up can be read, not just as a criticism of popular commercial texts, but also as an anti-fan production. Much work surrounding fan culture extrapolates on fans’ love for a text, but I’d like to propose that mash-ups such as BvE reaffirms anti-fandom readings of derided texts via another that is deemed—and presented—as culturally more valuable. In this essay, BvE will be used as an example of how anti-fandom productions can reinforce the audience’s opinion of a despised text. When BvE first launched, it was circulated widely among Buffy fandom, and the narrative of the mash-up, and its implications were debated rather fiercely on Whedonesque.com [http://whedonesque.com/comments/20883], one of the main sites for Joss Whedon’s fandom. Comparisons between the two texts, despite existing in different mediums (film vs. television), were common among general media—some survey respondents reveal they were persuaded to read the books or watch the first film by its assumed similarities to Buffy— as both feature somewhat similar storylines on the surface: a young, teenaged (human) girl falling in love with a vampire, and were presumably aimed at the same demographics of teenaged and college-aged girls. The similarities seem to end there though, for while Buffy is often hailed as a feminist text, Twilight is dismissed as anti-feminist, down to its apparently rabid and overly-emotional (female) fanbase. As one Buffy fan on Whedonesque clarifies: Buffy was more real than Bella ever thought of being. Buffy was flawed, made mistakes, bad decisions and we never saw her sort out a healthy romantic relationship but she was still a tremendous role model not for just teen girl but teen boys as well. […] Bella's big claim to fame seems to be she didn't sleep with her boyfriend before marriage but that was his choice, not hers. BvE appears to reflect the above comparison, as McIntosh justifies the video as “a pro-feminist visual critique of Edward’s character and generally creepy behaviour”—essentially a problem that Buffy, as a vampire slayer and a feminist icon can solve (for the greater good). For the purpose of this paper, I was interested to see if those who are active in fandom in general are aware of the BvE video, and if it informs or reaffirms their anti-fandom views of Twilight. Methodology A short online survey was devised with this in mind and a link to the survey was provided via Twitter (the link was retweeted 27 times), with the explanation that it is on Twilight anti-fandom and the BvE mash-up video. It was further shared on Facebook, by friends and peers. At the same time, I also requested for the link to be posted by the administrators of Whedonesque.com. Despite the posting at Whedonesque, the survey was not particularly aimed at Buffy fans, but rather fans in general who are familiar with both texts. The survey received 419 responses in the span of 24 hours, suggesting that the topic of (Twilight) anti-fandom is one that fans—or anti-fans—are passionately engaged with. Out of the 419 responses, 357 people have seen BvE, and 208 have read the book(s) and/or saw the film(s). The other 211 respondents came into contact with Twilight through paratexts, “semi-textual fragments that surround and position the work” (Gray New 72), such as trailers, word-of-mouth and news outlets. Anti-Fandom, Twilight, and the Buffy vs Edward Mash-Up Fan studies have given us insights into the world of fandom, informing us about the texts that fans love, what fans do with those texts and characters, and how fans interact with one another within the context of fandom. As Henry Jenkins explains: Fan culture finds that utopian dimension within popular culture a site for constructing an alternative culture. Its society is responsive to the needs that draw its members to commercial entertainment, most especially the desire for affiliation, friendship, community (282). Fan studies has obviously progressed from Jenkins’s initial observations as fan scholars subsequently proceed to complicate and augment the field. However, many gaps and silences remain to be filled: Hills (2002) […] argued that fandom is ‘not a thing that can be picked over analytically’ (pp. xi-xii) and separated into neat categories, but is a performative, psychological action that differs according to person, fandom, and generation (Sheffield and Merlo 209). In a 2003 article, Jonathan Gray reflects that in fan scholars’ enthusiasm to present the many interesting facets of fan culture, “reception studies are distorting our understanding of the text, the consumer and the interaction between them” (New Audiences 68). So while there is the friendship, affiliation and sense of community where fans share their mutual affection for their favourite texts and characters, there are also those who engage critically with the texts that they dislike. Gray identifies them as the anti-fans, arguing that these anti-fans are not “against fandom per se, […] but they strongly dislike a given text or genre, considering it inane, stupid, morally bankrupt and/or aesthetic drivel” (New New Audiences 70). Most anti-fans’ encounter with their hated text will not merely be through the text itself, but also through its surrounding paratexts, such as trailers and press articles. These paratextual pieces inform the anti-fan about the text, as much as the original text itself, and together they add to the formation of the anti-fannish identity: Rather than engaging the text directly, […] anti-fans often respond to a “text” they construct from paratextual fragments such as news coverage or word-of-mouth, reading, watching, and learning all they can about a show, book, or person in order to better understand and criticize the text (and, very often, its fans) (Sheffield and Merlo 209). Media attention directed at the Twilight franchise, as well as the attention Twilight fans receive has made it a popular subject in both fan and anti-fan studies. Dan Haggard, in a 2010 online posting, commented on the fascinating position of Twilight fans in popular culture: The Twilight fan is interesting because of reports (however well substantiated) of a degree of extremism that goes beyond what is acceptable, even when considered from a perspective relative to standard fan obsession. The point here is not so much whether Twilight fans are any more extreme than standard fans, but that there is a perception that they are so. (qtd. in Pinkowitz) Twilight fans are more often than not, described as “rabid” and “frenzied” (Click), particularly by the media. This is, of course, in total opposition to the identity of the fan as effective consumer or productive (free) labourer, which scholars like Baym and Burnett, for example, have observed. The anti-fandom in this case seems to go beyond the original text (both the books and the film franchises), extending to the fans themselves. Pinkowitz explains that the anti-fans she examined resent the success Twilight has amassed as they consider the books to be poorly written and they “strongly dislike the popular belief that the Twilight books are good literature and that they deserve the fanaticism its rabid fans demonstrate”. Some survey respondents share this view, criticising that the “writing is horrible”, the books have “awful prose” and “melodramatic characterisations”. Sheffield and Merlo demonstrate that the “most visible Twilight anti-fan behaviors are those that mock or “snark” about the “rabid” Twilight fans, who they argue, “give other fans a bad name”” (210). However, BvE presents another text with which Twilight can be compared to in the form of Buffy. As one survey respondent explains: Bella is a weak character who lacks agency. She lacks the wit, will-power, and determination that makes Buffy such a fun character. […] She is a huge step back especially compared to Buffy, but also compared to almost any modern heroine. Paul Booth argues that for mash-ups, or remixes, to work, as audiences, we are expected to understand—and identify—the texts that are referenced, even if they may be out of context: “we as audiences must be knowledgeable about both sources, as well as the convergence of them, in order to make sense of the final product”. Survey respondents have commented that the mash-up was “more about pleasing Buffy fans”, and that it was “created with an agenda, by someone who hates Twilight and loves Buffy,” which gives “a biased introduction to Buffy”. On the other hand, others have commented that the mash-up “makes [Twilight] seem better than it actually is”, and that it “reinforced [their] perceptions” of Twilight as a weaker text. Booth also suggests that mash-ups create new understandings of taste, of which I would argue that is reinforced through BvE, which McIntosh describes as a “metaphor for the ongoing battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21st century”. In fact, many of the survey respondents share McIntosh’s view, criticising Twilight as an anti-feminist text that, for all its supposed cultural influence, is sending a dangerous message to young girls who are the target demographic of the franchise. As they reflect: It bothers me that so many people (and especially women) love and embrace the story, when at its crux it is about a woman trying to choose between two men. Neither men are particularly good/safe for her, but the book romanticizes the possible violence toward Bella. The idea that Bella is nothing without Edward, that her entire life is defined by this man. She gives up her life—literally—to be with him. It is unhealthy and obsessive. It also implies to women that stalking behaviour like Edward's is romantic rather than illegal. I think what bothers me the most is how Meyers presents an abusive relationship where the old guy (but he's sparkly and pretty, so it's ok) in question stalks the heroine, has her kidnapped, and physically prevents her from seeing whom she wants to see is portrayed as love. In a good way. These testimonials show that fans take a moral stand towards Twilight’s representation of women, specifically Bella Swan. Twilight acts in counterpoint to a text like Buffy, which is critically acclaimed and have been lauded for its feminist representation (the idea that a young, petite girl has the power to fight vampires and other supernatural creatures). The fact that Buffy is a chronological older text makes some fans lament that the girl-power and empowerment that was showcased in the 1990s has now regressed down to the personification of Bella Swan. Gray argues that anti-fandom is also about expectations of quality and value: “of what a text should be like, of what is a waste of media time and space, of what morality or aesthetics texts should adopt, and of what we would like to see others watch or read” (New 73). This notion of taste, and cultural value comes through again as respondents who are fans of Buffy testify: It's not very well-written. I strongly dislike the weak parallels one could draw between the two. Yes Angel and Spike went through a creepy stalking phase with Buffy, and yes for a while there was some romantic triangle action but there was so much more going on. […] My biggest issue is with Bella's characterization. She has flaws and desires but she is basically a whiney, mopey blob. She is a huge step back especially compared to Buffy, but also compared to almost any modern heroine. There is tremendous richness in Buffy—themes are more literate, historically allusive and psychologically deeper than boy-meets-girl, girl submits, boy is tamed. Edward Cullen is white-faced and blank; Spike and Angel are white-faced and shadowed, hollowed, sculpted—occasionally tortured. Twilight invites teen girls to project their desires; Spike and Angel have qualities which are discovered. Buffy the character grows and evolves. Her environment changes as she experiences the world around her. Decisions that she made in high school were re-visited years later, and based on her past experiences, she makes different choices. Bella, however, loses nothing. There's no consequence to her being turned. There's no growth to her character. The final act in the mash-up video, of Buffy slaying Edward can be seen as a re-empowerment for those who do not share the same love for Twilight as its fans do. In the follow-up to his 2003 article that launched the concept of anti-fandom, Gray argues that: Hate or dislike of a text can be just as powerful as can a strong and admiring, affective relationship with a text, and they can produce just as much activity, identification, meaning, and “effects” or serve just as powerfully to unite and sustain a community or subculture (Antifandom 841). Conclusion The video mash-up, in this case, can be read as an anti-fandom reading of Twilight via Buffy, in which the superiority of Buffy as a text is repeatedly reinforced. When asked if the mash-up video would encourage the survey respondents to consider watching Twilight (if they have not before), the respondents’ answers range from a repeated mantra of “No”, to “It makes me want to burn every copy”, to “Not unless it is to mock, or for the purpose of a drinking game”. Not merely resorting to mocking, what McIntosh’s mash-up video has given Twilight anti-fans is yet another paratextual fragment with which to read the text (as in, Edward Cullen is creepy and controlling, therefore he deserves to be slayed, as should have happened if he was in the Buffy universe instead of Twilight). In other words, what I am suggesting here is that anti-fandom can be enforced through the careful framing of a mash-up video, such as that of the Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed mash-up, where the text considered more culturally valuable is used to read and comment on the one considered less valuable. References Baym, Nancy, and Robert Burnett. Amateur Experts: International Fan Labour in Swedish Independent Music. Copenhagen, Denmark, 2008. Booth, Paul. “Mashup as Temporal Amalgam: Time, Taste, and Textuality.” Transformative Works and Cultures 9 (2012): n. pag. 3 Apr. 2013 < http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/297/285 >. Click, Melissa. “‘Rabid’, ‘Obsessed’, and ‘Frenzied’: Understanding Twilight Fangirls and the Gendered Politics of Fandom.” Flow 11.4 (2009): n. pag. 18 June 2013 < http://flowtv.org/2009/12/rabid-obsessed-and-frenzied-understanding-twilight-fangirls-and-the-gendered-politics-of-fandom-melissa-click-university-of-missouri/ >. Gray, Jonathan. “Antifandom and the Moral Text: Television without Pity and Textual Dislike.” American Behavioral Scientist 48 (2005): 840–858. ———. “New Audiences, New Textualities: Anti-Fans and Non-Fans.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 6.1 (2003): 64–81. Hills, Matt. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge, 2002. ikat381. “Total Recut Interviews Jonathan McIntosh about Buffy vs. Edward.” Total Recut 24 Dec. 2009. 20 July 2013 < http://www.totalrecut.com/permalink.php?perma_id=265 >. Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992. Leduc, Martin. “The Two-Source Illusion: How Vidding Practices Changed Jonathan McIntosh’s Political Remix Videos.” Transformative Works and Cultures 9 (2012): n. pag. 19 July 2013 < http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/379/274 >. McIntosh, Jonathan. “Buffy vs Edward: Twilight Remixed.” Rebelliouspixels 20 June 2009. 2 Apr. 2013 < http://www.rebelliouspixels.com/2009/buffy-vs-edward-twilight-remixed >. Pinkowitz, Jacqueline. “‘The Rabid Fans That Take [Twilight] Much Too Seriously’: The Construction and Rejection of Excess in Twilight Antifandom.” Transformative Works and Cultures 7 (2011): n. pag. 21 June 2013 < http://journal.transformativeworks.org/index.php/twc/article/view/247/253 >. Sheffield, Jessica, and Elyse Merlo. “Biting Back: Twilight Anti-Fandom and the Rhetoric of Superiority.” Bitten by Twilight: Youth Culture, Media and the Vampire Franchise. Eds. Melissa Click, Jessica Stevens Aubrey, & Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz. New York: Peter Lang Publishers, 2010. 207–224.

Men in crisis Confused by society's mixed messages about what's expected of them as boys, and later as men, many feel a sadness and disconnection they cannot even name. (Pollack 1) The recent 'crisis in masculinity' has been punctuated by a plethora of material devoted to reclaiming men's 'lost' power within a society. Triggered by the recognition that their roles within our society are changing, this emerging cannon often fails to recognise men as part of a social continuum that subjectifies individuals within discursive frameworks. Rather it mourns this process as the emasculation of male identity within our culture. However, this self-help rhetoric masks a wider project of renegotiating men's power within our society. David Buchbinder for example, calls for an interrogation of "how men and various masculinities are represented" (7). As a consequence, male subjectivities are being called into question. There is now examination of the manner in which "power is differentiated so that particular styles of masculinity become ascendant…in certain situations" (Haywood and Mac an Ghaill 52). In this way, male power is being problematised on many fronts. The desire to shore-up male power in the face of various 'threats' has called for a corporeal manifestation of masculine dominance. Men's bodies have been redefined through contemporary attention to physical sculpting and molding. This reanimation of the Superman ethic of embodiment is part of the hegemonic maintenance of masculine power in our culture. At the times of the greatest threat to male competence and control within society - social, political and economic restructuring, war and recovery - the body has been at the frontier of reasserting male power. This paper traces performances of superhero masculinity across men's bodies. As central 'creators' of their world, superheroes embody a mythology in masculine identity that shapes men as social and natural determinists within a society. In attempting to replicate this role, men are subjected to a rupture in the social fabric whereby their bodies move through a series of discursive frameworks in a contradictory tapestry that activates a 'crisis' within masculine identity. This paper seeks to open the seam between masculinity and power to examine how masculine legitimacy is negotiated on embodied surfaces. This trajectory is constantly stretched to its limits where men's bodies are in a persistent state of rebuilding. Henry Rollins forms part of the frayed edges of superhero identity. Simultaneously validating and undermining this mentality, Rollins creates a nexus of contradictory ideologies. Embracing a "rock-hard male body" (Robinson 11) in a powerfully built embodied reality, and at the same time deconstructing it, Rollins takes issue with men in their mythological role as centres of social reality and their power to create and control it. Rollins forms an identity that is shaped within discursive practices rather than the director of them. In tracing this performance through the "Liar" music video that features Rollins in the Superman role, this paper demonstrates the convoluted masculinity embraced by Rollins and the movement of Superman across his body. Between superheroes, war and bodybuilding, the aim is to trace how men are positioned as unproblematic agents of power, change and creation within the embodied myths of our culture. Bodies of knowledge Men's bodies have changed. While they have been the 'normal' against which women's bodies have been defined, this sense of normality has altered (Cranny-Francis 8). Foucault has consistently demonstrated how bodies are created and inscribed through cultural processes whereby discourses determine the shape and nature of embodied realities. Even though men are often centralised in these knowledge systems, it does not mean that they are immune to their influence. Men are insistently defined through metaphors of the mind. The proper man is a controlled man. In bodybuilding this relationship is activated in the repetitive and disciplined action of tensing and relaxing muscle. Defined as, "the toning and accentuating of muscles by the repeated action of flexing and releasing…particularly through the use of weights" (Carden-Coyne n.pag), it reifies a controlled mind restraining and shaping the physical form. During the Enlightenment thrust toward scientific rationalism, Descartes positioned an uncomplicated division between the mind and the body. Men spent their time purifying their souls and using bodies "as a spiritual vessel, a Christian container of morality and purity" (Carden-Coyne n.pag). They were shells that required discipline so the mind was not led astray. The mind was the controlling agent that subdued a disobedient embodiment. The extent to which this was achieved was the measure of the legitimacy and competence of a man. The currency of this corporeal state resonates most potently today through the phallus. As an extension of the phallus, the surface of the male body is a crucial site for the demonstration of embodied control. For the phallus is not very closely related to the possession of a penis as David Buchbinder argues when he suggests, "the phallus as a symbol, however, is not to be identified with an actual penis, because no actual penis could ever really measure up to the imagined sexual potency and social or magical power of the phallus" (49). Indeed, men's penises are "flaccid most of the time" (Buchbinder 48). They are fragile and soft. They rarely meet the 'supernatural' prowess of the phallus. Phallic power is related to the capacity to occupy the space of symbolic power effectively - to be embodied in a competent masculinity. Bodybuilding demonstrates a mastery over the self that articulates this discipline. The capacity to mobilise this control is linked to wider social power in which men are supposed to be privileged agents of creation and control in the political and economic spheres of life. Henry Rollins mobilises a mythos of masculine embodied control and corporeal hardness in his embrace of Superman. He is the epitome of phallic power and Rollins uses this character as a metonym to articulate the contradictions between the ideologies circulating through culture and the reality of lived experience. While Rollins mobilises a superhero musculature, the surfacing of his self masks a vulnerable masculine subjectivity that is embedded within distinct social frameworks. He uses the ideologies surrounding superheroes to create a dialogue between the reality of everyday life and the discourses that frame those experiences. Superheroes are resourceful, disciplined and righteous. They are sites of strength, moral virtue, creation and control. They often have super-powers, super-human strength, agility or speed that enables them to exist apart from regular humans. They occupy spaces removed from everyday life. However, their separateness from these realities is contrary to real men's experiences. Like the phallus, there is a gulf between the superhero ideology that men are supposed to embody and the reality of lived experience. Nevertheless there remains a constant struggle to build and rebuild the male body to the pinnacle of (super)masculine prowess. Superman is framed within the mind/body binary quite clearly. The control he exercises over his body reifies his calm and disciplined mind. His powerful physique, "represents in vividly graphic detail the masculinity, the confidence, the power that personifies the ideal of phallic masculinity" (Brown n.pag). His control extends across his self and out into the world. Rollins embraces this control through his own self-empowering rhetoric that litters his lyrics, spoken word and concert performances. He also most clearly embodies the Superman ideology through a life-long attention to bodybuilding. Introduced to weightlifting as a teenager, Rollins incorporates the Superman ideology into his subjectivity. He has been referred to as the "tattooed, muscled Ubermensch of serious rawk" (geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/4396/hrf.htm). He works his muscles to rebuild his identity after a disaffiliated, Ritalin-addicted childhood spent bouncing between divorced parents. The processes of disciplining his body and empowering the self are made clear through his relationship to his body and to the weights. Rollins believes in extending himself to his limits and beyond. Bodybuilding is the mattering map Rollins uses to construct a sense of self. He uses it to define who he is and to build his self-esteem. For example,"time away from the Iron makes my mind and body degenerate. I turn on myself and wallow in thick depression that makes me unable to function. The body shuts my mind down. The Iron is the best anti-depressant I have ever found. No better way to fight weakness than with strength. Fight degeneration with generation" (Rollins 257). In his embrace of the embodied power of Superman and the building mechanisms of weightlifting he is able to repair and regenerate his sense of self. He is able to transform himself into something new and different, thereby exercising power as an agent of change. This ethic of rebuilding hails an earlier time when control over the body needed to reestablish the coherent corporeality of damaged men within a culture. World War One redefined popular consciousness of men's bodies as the mechanisation of warfare ripped limbs from torsos and severed the relationship between a disciplined mind and the controlled body. Rebuilding battered bodies The first widespread conflict to use guns, shells and tanks produced the first evidence of neurasthenia, or shell shock (Carden-Coyne n.pag). Faith in evolution and human improvement was shaken to its core with the appearance of physically and emotionally broken masculinity. Men's bodies were dismembered and disabled - their minds were tortured. As a result Carden-Coyne argues, [t]he first world war significantly undermined confidence in the male instinct, by demonstrating that the primitive energies of the male body (virility, physical strength and aggression) were no match for modern technological warfare. A process of healing was needed to rebuild a masculinity of control and strength in these men. Faith in progress needed to be renegotiated and the damaged minds and bodies of men mended. Bodybuilding was seen as the most complete demonstration of embodied control. It required discipline and strength and so required the mind to order the body. Bodybuilding was embraced after World War One to repair the fissures in war-ravaged masculinity. It served, "to shape corporeal borders…against the sense of decay and uncertainty that permeated the 'air' of modernity" (Carden-Coyne n.pag). The strong body created a strong mind and bodybuilding in the post-war period also helped to more popularly render images of heroes. War heroes could be more easily framed in musculature. In popular culture, heroes shifted from aristocratic figures such as the Scarlet Pimpernel, to more everyday men. By 1938 the emergence of Superman comics positioned the ordinary-like man as superhero (Bridwell 6). The hard body had the capacity to make the ordinary man exceptional. Indeed, the superheroes of the twentieth century like "Tarzan, Conan, James Bond" (Connell 6) all depict a resilience and similar competence over all aspects of their lives. However as men's authority has been increasingly challenged within our society, embodied strength has increased in Superman to mirror the changes in the lives of these men. Postmodern paychecks World War Two also tore men's bodies apart. However with this war, the machine was reinscribed as saving rather than taking lives on the battlefield (Fussell 3). The development of the atomic bomb was attributed to, and celebrated as, man's ability to create and conquer anything (Easlea 90). By 1950 Superman comics depicted the man of steel withstanding a nuclear blast thereby validating the superiority and resilience of white, western masculinity and embodied hardness over the weak Others (Bridwell 10). Nevertheless World War Two chewed through men's bodies at an imperceptible rate. Despite the rhetoric of heroism and technological superiority, the reality of everyday battle was broken bodies. The ideology of the superhero served to mask the realities of this war. Despite the damage to the corporeal form, the heroic mythology of masculine identity served to reify a coherent embodiment and a clear mind. The mobilisation of this masculine myth masked the erosion of legitimate male power within culture. This resonates into the postwar period where a whole series of structural changes to the social landscape have radically redefined our social reality. The mechanisms men have used to define themselves have decayed. The rising empowerment of women, gay men and black men have problematised the centrality of white, heterosexual men in our culture (Faludi 40). They are no longer able to easily occupy a stable, silent centre in our society. As a result, there has been an attempt to reclaim the body and reclaim the competency that serves to define men as masculine. The rising interest in men's health and physical fitness on the whole, has lead to a reanimation of the superman figure. Men's bodies are getting harder and larger. Part animal, part machine Henry Rollins embraces the contradictions in heroic masculinity. He demonstrates an embodied control that is regimented through an incorporation of Nietzschean will. In this way he embodies the relationship between the superhero and contemporary masculinity. However, Rollins' Superman is not an Ubermensch (Nietzsche 230). He performs a problematic masculinity. As a result, Rollins deconstructs the masculine hierarchy by subverting, not only his own performance of masculinity, but all such performances. The "Liar" music video by The Rollins Band features Rollins in the Superman role. In this clip he interrogates different levels of truth and reality. For him, neither Clark Kent nor Superman is a valid model on which to base effective performances of masculinity. Neither of these men are heroes, rather they are simulations. The version of Superman that Rollins constructs is authoritative and totalitarian. He depicts a corrupt figure and flawed leader who is not in control and is struggling to meet the demands of his role. This performance of Superman deconstructs the myth of the male hero. For Rollins, this hero does not exist - or if he does - he is a "Liar". Henry Rollins both embodies and deconstructs the superhero identity. He forms a nexus around which contradictory ideologies in masculinity collide and are reworked into a radically subversive critique of the relationship between men and superheroes. For Rollins the superhero mentality masks the complicated ideologies men must negotiate everyday in which they are subjectified within contradictory discursive frameworks that demand multifarious performances. Rollins strips back the layers of masculine power to reveal the ways in which men are embedded within social structures that reflect and affect their reality. In this self-reflexive critique he performs Superman in playful, resistive ways. This Superman does not exist apart from everyday life, but is entrenched within its frameworks that can only produce flawed performances of a social ideal. For Rollins a superhero embodiment cannot wipe away the discourses that encircle men within our culture but is rather a reflection of the extent to which men are embedded within them. In negotiating the difficulties in masculinity, Henry Rollins deprioritises men's roles as super-human agents of control, creation and change within a society. He calls into question the validity of masculine power and reifies the contradictions in manhood. He hails an ultimately resilient and empowered dominant masculinity within a deconstructive rhetoric. He is mobilising a moment within our culture where men must redefine who they are. This redefinition must be less concerned with how men can reclaim the power they are currently mourning in the 'crisis of masculinity'. If we are to make lasting change within a Cultural Studies framework then it cannot end, but only begin, with the articulation of a diversity of voices. Deep, structural change can only be made if we examine how a powerful position is able to occupy an unproblematised node of commonsense. Men need to redefine who they are, their bodies, their minds and their performances to position a masculinity that is not separate from society, but that can exist coherently within it. References Bridwell, Nathan. "Introduction." Superman from the Thirties to the Seventies. New York: Bonanza Books, 1971. Brown, James. "Comic book masculinity and the new black superhero." African American Review. 33.1 (1999): expanded academic database [n.pag]. Accessed 9.4.2001. Buchbinder, David. Performance Anxieties. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1998. Carden-Coyne, Anna. "Classical heroism and modern life: Body building and masculinity in the early twentieth century." Journal of Australian Studies. (December 1999): expanded academic database [n.pag] Accessed 9.4.2001. Connell, Robert. "Masculinity, violence and war" in P. Patton and R. Poole (eds.), War/Masculinity. Sydney: Intervention Publications, 1985. Cranny-Francis, Ann. The Body in the Text. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1995. Descartes, Rene. Key Philosphical Writings. (Translated by E. Haldane and G. Ross) Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1997. Easlea, Brian. Fathering the Unthinkable. London: Pluto Press, 1983. Faludi, Susan. Stiffed: The Betrayal of the Modern Man. London: Chatto and Windus, 1999. Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic. London: Routledge, 1973. ---Madness and Civlisation: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason. London: Routledge, 1965. ---The Order of Things. London: Vintage, 1972. Fussell, Paul. Wartime: Understanding of Behaviour in the Second World War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Haywood, Christina and Mac an Ghaill, Martin. "Schooling masculinities" in Martin Mac an Ghaill (ed.), Understanding Masculinities. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1996. "I Have Zero Sex Appeal." Melody Maker. (March 29 1997). geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Palms/4396/hrf/htm. Accessed July 30 2001. Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche Volume 4, The Will to Power, Book One and Two. O. Levy (ed.), London: George Allen and Unwin, 1924. Pollack, William. Real Boys. Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 1999. Robinson, Doug. No Less a Man. Bowling Green: Bowling Green State University, 1994. Rollins, Henry. "The Iron." The Portable Henry Rollins. London: Phoenix House, 1997.

Introduction "Barbie has a great day every day, but Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him", states the narrator in Barbie (2023). Directed by Greta Gerwig, the film not only claimed the title of the highest-grossing film of the year but also prompted its audience to reconsider a character they had previously mostly overlooked; another one of Barbie’s many accessories: Ken. Ken's identity as Barbie's companion is fundamentally dependent upon the presence and recognition of his more prominent female counterpart. This highlights Ken's secondary role, where he serves as a supporting figure to Barbie's idealised existence. Akin to a Manic Pixie Dream Boy (MPDB) overshadowed by Barbie, we realise Ken’s lack of identity. Throughout the film, Ken, initially depicted as identity-less, embarks on a journey of self-discovery, challenging the confines imposed by white patriarchy, although it doesn’t seem that way at first. This article will first establish Ken's MPDB status, highlighting traits such as (a) seeking to elevate and challenge the main character’s beliefs, (b) harbouring both gentleness and deviousness, while also engaging in playful yet mildly destructive mischief, (c) acting as a catalyst for change, (d) exhibiting a desire to escape, disappear, or transform, leaving valuable lessons behind, and (e) existing solely within the perception of or for the benefit of the main character. Subsequently, it will follow his journey, ultimately examining how a humanoid doll undergoes healing particularly concerning gender issues. Through the deconstruction of his narrative, this article aims to uncover the underlying power dynamics at play and to explore how Ken's transformation contributes to broader conversations surrounding gender fluidity and representation. By doing so, the article will provide an understanding of Ken's role and contribution to the feminist cause, while also offering insights into the broader cultural significance of the film. Manic Pixie Dream Girl In contemporary discourse, the term MPDGirl has gained recognition following its coinage by Nathan Rabin: “that bubbly, shallow, cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures” (Rabin, "The Bataan"). It rapidly gained eminence within popular culture, precipitating a widespread societal fixation on the quest for mining more MPDGs, up to the point where Rabin himself voiced his regret about coining the term ("I’m Sorry"). However, the MPDG was already a presence among us. As Laurie Penny states in the article "I Was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl", “Like scabies and syphilis, Manic Pixie Dream Girls were with us long before they were accurately named”. Additionally, Gouck contends that “the Pixie is a descendant of the Classical Muse and also has roots in the Pygmalion myth” (527). Thus, tracing from these foundational mythical and ancient iterations to contemporary relatives such as the Earnest Elfin Dream Gay (EEDG) and the “Magical Negro”, popularised by Spike Lee, reveals a diverse family tree. Although various writers for online platforms have declared the demise of the MPDG (Eby; Harris; Stoeffel), the trope constantly found ways to revive itself. Harris, in her 2012 article "Is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Dead?", claimed that the trope has been turned on its head with later iterations like Ruby Sparks, “depicting a writer (Paul Dano) whose idealistic, winsome female character comes to life and challenges patriarchal notions of what women actually want”. Tannenbaum, on the other hand, suggested that the MPDG isn’t dead but just evolved through a loophole: the tragic backstory. This article contends that as long as a concept remains in circulation, it cannot die. Thus, even this article itself contributes to the preservation of the phenomenon in question. Manic Pixie Dream Boy In 2012, Molly Lambert introduced a notable extension of the MPDG archetype: the MPDB. Lambert described the MPDB as a character who uplifts the heroine's self-confidence through comfort, inspiration, and nurturing support, without expecting anything in return. He … tamps down her … temper while appreciating her quirks … . He’s a nerd, but not an angry … one. He’s handsome, but he has no idea … . His … hobbies might be immature … but it doesn’t extend to his emotions … . He’s a selfless, responsible Peter Pan. (Lambert) The likening of the MPDB to a selfless and responsible Peter Pan is flawed. One of the main reasons that make Peter Pan Peter Pan is that he doesn’t want to become an adult and be burdened with responsibilities. Additionally, the notion of the MPDB wanting nothing in return is flawed, as the MPDB's actions are usually driven by a fixation obsession rather than genuine altruism. Consequently, rather than epitomising selflessness, the MPDB defined by Lambert aligns more closely with an idealised EveryWoman’sDreamBoy archetype. In 2015, Anna Breslaw introduced another definition, labelling the MPDB as a “self-mythologizing ‘free-spirited’ dude”; however, it still remains unclear and unsatisfactory. Since its inception, there has been a fundamental misunderstanding of the concept of the MPDB. Originally rooted in a female-centric trope, it requires careful interpretation. When the definitions of the MPDB are applied as previously stated, it effectively transforms into an archetype that conventionally represents many women's ideal. However, unlike the MPDG, who is characterised by her eccentricity, the previous definitions of the MPDB reject this norm. Drawing inspiration from figures such as Peter Pan, Puck, King Kong, the Amphibian Man, the Beast, and Edward Scissorhands, the MPDB embodies a blend of comfort and chaos. This dichotomy is exemplified in Ken, who fulfills the role of comfort and chaos for Barbie, yet finds himself unwanted and unneeded. The real MPDB is defined by five core features that distinguish it from the misinterpreted notion often associated with the trope. a) The MPDB seeks to elevate and challenge the main character’s beliefs: Ken consistently tries to alter Barbie’s perceptions, as evidenced by his persistent attempts to reshape her opinion of him beyond superficial interests. This is exemplified by his pursuits beyond conventional activities, such as his daring act of running into the plastic waves, a seemingly unprecedented action that surprises, shocks, or scares those around him. b) The MPDB harbours both gentleness and deviousness, while engaging in playful yet mildly destructive mischief: Ken exhibits a dual nature, demonstrating kindness and charm towards Barbie while simultaneously harbouring ulterior motives, including a deep-seated desire to become Barbie's romantic partner. This complexity in character can be likened to the “nice guy syndrome”, where benevolent actions may mask underlying intentions. Furthermore, upon his return to build patriarchy, this desire is accentuated, showcasing his multilayered personality. c) The MPDB acts as a catalyst for change: Ken serves as an important force in instigating transformation, as demonstrated by the significant shifts that occur in both Barbieland and Barbie's life due to Ken's presence. His actions challenge Barbie's beliefs, whether intentionally or inadvertently, leading her to perceive new perspectives and undergo personal growth. d) The MPDB exhibits a desire to escape, disappear, or transform, leaving valuable lessons behind: Throughout Ken's MPDB journey, his inclination towards escapism, disappearance, or transformation becomes evident. While his initial desire to accompany Barbie may stem from romantic aspirations, it is also fuelled by the rivalry among the Kens. Once Ken realises there is more than Barbieland and he can want different things, he expresses his desire for change. As Ken evolves and heals, he undergoes a transformation, ultimately becoming a changed entity, yet leaving behind significant lessons that pave the way for the transformation of Barbieland and Barbie. e) The MPDB exists solely within the perception of or for the benefit of the main character: Ken’s presence is exclusively crafted within the perspective of, or to serve the needs of, the main character. According to a 2017 GQ article, Michael Shore, the head of Mattel's global consumer insights at the time, states that, “Ken was really viewed as more of an accessory in Barbie’s world, to support the narrative of whatever was happening with the girls” (qtd. in Weaver). This perspective reinforces Ken's role as arm candy within Barbie's world, serving as a complement to her endeavors at a ratio of about 1:7 (Weaver). This aspect highlights the trope's function as a narrative construct intended to support and shape the protagonist's storyline and growth. The MPDB Ken Ken (Ryan Gosling) makes his debut appearance in the Barbie movie at the eight-minute mark. While the narrative primarily revolves around Barbie, Ken's introduction is a subtle but significant moment. As Barbieland unfolds before us, Ken's delayed entrance, as another inhabitant of Barbieland, draws attention. Barbie is everywhere, but where is Ken? Amidst the cheerful exchanges of “Hi Barbie, Hi Ken”, Ken's behavior stands out—he doesn't reciprocate the greeting with other Kens, he only greets Barbie. Ken's omission from acknowledging his fellow Kens seems like a deliberate choice—a denial of their existence, perhaps suggesting that he perceives himself as the sole Ken of significance in Barbieland. His exclusive greeting to Barbie highlights this notion; in his world, Barbie is paramount, and other Kens are unimportant in comparison. We understand that there is a rivalry going on between the Kens; there is no Kenship, mainly between Ken (Gosling) and Ken (Simu Liu). The same evening at the party, while all the Barbies wear complementary yet distinct clothes, the Kens are dressed uniformly in identical outfits. This lack of individuality strips them of identity, claims Roche, “it is a training, an element in the education of controlled individual power ... designed to shape the physique … of [an] individual” (228-9). Uniforms shape individuality into collectivity and thus cause a lack of identity. The white and gold motifs on Kens’ jumpsuits may symbolise collectivity. They are a team; they are minds that have never been shaped before, they are accessories. The 'K' emblem on their jackets further emphasises their lack of identity. Costume designer Jacqueline Durran “imagined Gosling’s character as ‘almost like an accessory’ where his main function is to just be there and match her look. The Kens could all be dressed the same because there wasn’t meant to be anything distinct about them” (Zemler, "Dressing Barbie"). This point is even more highlighted in a scene where Barbie and Ken are in the car going to the real world, where Ken has another jumpsuit that is covered with the letter “B”. In the absence of the other Kens he is even more of an accessory, and even wearing something with his initials is denied, he is Barbie’s property. Contact with Patriarchy Barbie and Ken enter the real world, and interestingly, while throughout the travel sequence, Barbie is in front of Ken, leading Ken, in the shot where they enter the real world, Ken is in front of Barbie. Ken, for the first time alone, somehow ends up at Century City: “it is the antithesis of Barbieland”, says Greenwood, “there is an homage to the male construction industry and the male gaze” (Zemler, "On Location"). Men who are passing him say “excuse me, sir, thanks man, what’s up bud”. This new world that he encounters in Century City is giving him an identity. For the first time, he is something more than an unwanted MPDB. He is sir, he is man, he is bud. Since the Kens exist as a second-class species whose sole purpose is to cheer the Barbies on, he cannot comprehend his actual yearning, he thinks common decency (someone saying excuse me) is what patriarchy is. A fish out of water, the manic pixie Ken creates a pastiche of everything he encounters to assume this new identity: male presidents, mini-fridges, golf, a fur coat, and even horses. His first interaction with horses is through two police officers riding horses. Believing that horses are an important part of patriarchy, Ken wearing a cowboy outfit too, internalises the bond between horse and man. Pickel-Chavelier, in a study about horse stories, states that “the horse has been a fundamental element in the evolution of Western civilization” (120). Robinson argues that historically “the human-horse relationship was male-dominated, reflecting the horses’ role as a work tool and the traditional placing of power and power sources under the control of men” (44). Thus, the rider has been considered to have “increased power and an increased sense of power” while evoking “a sense of inferiority and envy” in pedestrians (Robinson 43). Studying the human-horse relationship through the American mounted police, Lawrence claimed that the mounted police have close relationships with their horses. Robinson states that “the officers spend much time with their animals each day and develop a sense of trust” (43). Ken's admiration of horses likely symbolises his evolving understanding of masculinity and power dynamics within patriarchy. Being introduced to horses as symbols of authority and control, he understands them as companions embodying strength, loyalty, and trust. This explains how he understands masculinity as a realm where power is defined by mutual respect and partnership, rather than dominance, which is also probably the reason why he loses interest in patriarchy when he realises it’s not about horses. Nicholas, in their article "Ken’s Rights?", claims that “radicalization … is often motivated by feelings among … men of being left behind by a feminist world or system that doesn’t value them. This then leads them to long for an imagined natural order of patriarchy where women are back in their place and men regain their entitlements”. Ken’s frustration leads him to introduce patriarchy to his fellow Kens, envisioning a transformation of Barbieland into a new Century City. This shift reflects Ken’s Manic Pixie healing journey: rather than being solely an MPDB, Ken slowly constructs an identity under patriarchy for himself. Drawing from Connell's perspective on hegemonic masculinity, which posits that masculinity is always constructed in response to subordinated masculinities, we see how Ken's desire for change extends to altering the very fabric of Barbieland, from its constitution to its name, renaming it Kendom. This name change holds significance, echoing the concept of “Inceldom” within the larger misogynist ecosystem of the Manosphere, where men perceive themselves as deprived of love and intimacy due to feminist ideals. In addition to incels, the ‘Manosphere’ is comprised of Men’s Right Activists, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), AND Pick-Up Artists (PUAs). Each of these groups subscribe to the same underlying philosophy, referred to as the ‘red pill’… When an individual has ‘taken the red pill’, they have enlightened themselves to a reality in which women wield feminism as a weapon against men, depriving them of sex and love. (Gothard et al. 1) Ken’s new outfit is another important change. As patriarchy leaks into Barbieland, Ken's outfit begins to reflect iconic images of masculinity, such as Sylvester Stallone in a mink coat. Previously, Ken's clothing complemented Barbie's, but now, his fanny pack displays his full name instead of just the letter K, positioned over his non-existent genitalia. This deliberate placement implies a newfound connection between his new identity and his imagined sex. When discontent Barbies strategise to disrupt the new order, they manipulate Kens' fragile egos, inciting conflict just before the crucial constitution vote. The fighting sequence starts with Ryan Gosling’s "I'm just Ken" song and imagery reminiscent of Rodin's iconic statue “The Thinker”. The Rodin Museum describes the figure as “a being with a tortured body, almost a damned soul, and a free-thinking man, determined to transcend his suffering through poetry”, mirroring Ken's current state of turmoil. In Rodin’s lifetime, there were “many marble and bronze editions in several sizes” that have been executed (Zelazko). Similarly, there are countless iterations of Ken, undermining his belief in his uniqueness. The general anticipation of the statue being impressive but then feeling let down when seeing its real size serves as a poignant metaphor for Ken's inflated self-importance, contrasted with his inherent fragility and insignificance. As the chorus “I’m just Ken” starts, Ken (Gosling) rides into the battle “on paddle boats reminiscent of cannon-loaded ships, while [Ken (Liu)]’s crew carries him over their shoulders, spinning umbrellas like wheels and holding stick horses as if they were human chariots” (Lee), having frisbees, tennis rackets, and other sports equipment in their hands. This imagery not only captivates the audience but also serves as a reflection of the sports and war imagery in media representations of men. The notion of hegemonic masculinity is intricately woven into such depictions. Jansen and Sabo point out “that the sport/war metaphor is embedded within a “deep structure” of patriarchal values, beliefs, and power relations that, in turn, reflect and advance the agendas of hegemonic masculinity” (2). This metaphor not only reflects but also advances the agendas of hegemonic masculinity. By glorifying competition and valorising traits associated with aggression and dominance, media representations perpetuate narrow and rigid norms of masculinity, reinforcing the hierarchical gender dynamics prevalent in society. However, through playful exploration of these notions, Barbie introduces a significant step in the healing journey of MPDBs, all while cleverly critiquing the inherent associations society makes between masculinity, competitive sports, and even aspects of warfare. Kenough As Ken continues his performance, seamlessly transitioning from a part-power ballad, part-battle sequence into a dream ballet, the narrative takes a profound turn. Connell's concept of “gender order”, referring to “a historically constructed pattern of power relations between men and women and definitions of femininity and masculinity” that emerge and are transformed within varying institutional contexts (98-99), becomes particularly relevant when applied to dancing, seen as an institutional context. Silvester, discussing how gender dynamics within dancing evolved, notes that in the 60s, with the twist and later with disco dancing, dancers did not have to have partners any more, which made the “presumptions about the effeminacy of professional male dancers” widespread (qtd. in Owen 18). Because in performance culture female dancers were the objects of desire for usually male spectators, dancing found itself a place inside the borders of femininity, “and homophobic prejudices against male dancers grew” (Owen 18). Initially, at the party, dancing symbolises their confinement to their identities as Barbie’s accessory, and later it serves as a catalyst for shedding the performative shackles of masculinity and patriarchy. Through dance, MPDB Ken embraces authenticity, breaking down the barriers of the embarrassment of showing admiration to his fellow Kens and fostering genuine connection and affection. The Kens help each other up, they giggle, and they kiss each other on the cheek; they are no longer threatened by each other or by showing affection. As the battle sequence comes to an end, one Ken acknowledges that they were only fighting because they didn’t know who they were. What initially began as a melodramatic expression of the insecurities of an incel, angry at his object of affection, transforms into a collective affirmation of self-worth, fostering unity and acceptance among the Kens. Lee aptly describes this transformation as an elevation from internal conflict to self-affirming validation, marking a pivotal shift away from self-destructive behaviours towards mutual respect and understanding. Ken finally has an identity that is not defined through Barbie’s gaze or patriarchal vision of masculinity. He is not an MPDB that only exists for the protagonist anymore. He finds an identity; however, one he does not know how to express. Connell and Messerschmidt state that “men can adopt hegemonic masculinity when it is desirable; but the same men can distance themselves strategically from hegemonic masculinity at other moments. Consequently, ‘masculinity’ represents not a certain type of man but, rather, a way that men position themselves through discursive practices” (841). Ken still does not abandon what he has found in the real world. Knowing he has been defeated he tries to “strategically” reposition himself. Like a toddler having a temper tantrum, he runs to his mojo dojo casa house, throws himself on his bed, and starts crying, while Barbie tries to comfort him. Myisha et al. suggest that Barbie, as a woman, again is cast in the role of nurturer and comforter, and thus the movie finds itself repeating gender stereotypes. However, missing the point that Ken is crying in this scene, these criticisms are themselves reinforcing gender stereotypes by mistaking common decency for an intrinsic association with women. Ken later denounces patriarchy and learns from Barbie not to define himself by his possessions, his relationship, or his job. Embracing his individuality, he declares, “I'm Ken, and I'm Kenough”, going down the slide, symbolizing a rebirth. In his final shot, Ken is seen with a sweatshirt proclaiming “I’m Kenough”. In embracing his past identities through the bandana and the color pink, he constructs a new identity, one that welcomes all colors. bell hooks defines feminism as “the struggle to end sexist oppression” for all women without “[privileging] women over men” (26). Greta Gerwig, in an interview with Time, acknowledges the struggles faced by both men and women throughout history, highlighting the universal pressure to meet unrealistic standards (Carlin). This suggests that while women face specific forms of oppression, men too are ensnared by other rigid societal norms, if not the same. By recognising these challenges, feminism advocates for the involvement of men in the movement. Whether it is standing in solidarity with women or confronting their own biases, men play a pivotal role in advancing gender equality. For feminism to thrive, it necessitates men's active participation, urging them to support women's rights and challenge patriarchal structures while remaining open to introspection and growth. Feminism has consistently aimed to dismantle the rigid gender binaries epitomised by the Barbie/Ken dichotomy, advocating for the separation of attributes from their gendered associations. From Barbie, we can glean the lesson that hierarchical and inflexible gender norms benefit no one and that power and social roles should not be determined by one's biological sex. Nicholas, in their article "Ken’s Rights?", claims that online antifeminist discourses reveal parallels between Ken's journey in the movie and themes found in Men’s Rights Activist spaces. Ken's transition from aggrievement to a more enlightened perspective on masculinity mirrors the narratives prevalent in such spaces. This underscores the importance of understanding and addressing men within the context of feminism, as their experiences are intertwined with broader societal structures and expectations. True progress cannot be achieved if we continue to view those who perpetuate patriarchy or toxic masculinity as “others”. We should see them as humanoid Ken dolls, and in doing so help them to help us trigger answers and solutions. Understanding and addressing these issues is crucial for healing and reducing harm inflicted by patriarchal norms. While Barbie may have its flaws, focussing solely on its shortcomings detracts from the opportunity to address deeper issues regarding society. MPDB Ken's portrayal as a subservient accessory to Barbie raises important questions about gender dynamics and the impact of societal expectations on individuals. Rather than vilifying Ken because he brought patriarchy to Barbieland, and reducing him only to a man, I advocate for understanding his journey and recognising him also as a brainwashed character, alongside the brainwashed Barbies, who needed the help of his friends to heal. By acknowledging and addressing the influence of patriarchal norms on all individuals, including men like Ken, we can work towards healing and progress for all. References Barbie. Dir. G. Gerwig. Warner Bros. Pictures, 2023. Breslaw, Anna. “Beware the Manic Pixie Dream Boyfriend.” The Cut, 13 Sep. 2015. <https://www.thecut.com/2015/09/beware-the-manic-pixie-dream-boyfriend.html>. Carlin, Shannon. “The History Behind Barbie’s Ken.” Time, 20 Jul. 2023. <https://time.com/6296386/barbie-ken-history/>. Connell, Raewyn. "The Social Organization of Masculinity." Feminist Theory Reader. Routledge, 2020. 192-200. ———. Gender and Power Cambridge. Polity, 1987. Connell, Raewyn, and James W. Messerschmidt. "Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept." Gender & Society 19.6 (2005): 829-59. “Director Spike Lee Slams ‘Same Old’ Black Stereotypes in Today’s Films.” YALE Bulletin & Calender 29.21 (2 Mar. 2001). <http://archives.news.yale.edu/v29.n21/story3.html>. Eby, Margaret. “The Death of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” Brooklyn, 15 Jul. 2014. <https://www.bkmag.com/2014/07/15/the-death-of-the-manic-pixie-dream-girl/>. Gothard, Kelly Caroline, et al. “The Incel Lexicon: Deciphering the Emergent Cryptolect of a Global Misogynistic Community.” University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, 2021. Gouck, Jennifer. “The Problematic (Im)persistence of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl in Popular Culture and YA Fiction.” Women's Studies 52.5 (2023): 525-44. Harris, Aisha. “Is the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Dead?” Slate, 5 Dec. 2012. <https://slate.com/culture/2012/12/manic-pixie-prostitute-video-is-the-latest-critique-of-the-manic-pixie-dream-girl-archetype-video.html>. hooks, bell. Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. Pluto Press, 2000. Jansen, Sue Curry, and Don Sabo. “The Sport/War Metaphor: Hegemonic Masculinity, the Persian Gulf War, and the New World Order.” Sociology of Sport Journal 11.1 (1994): 1-17. <https://journals.humankinetics.com/view/journals/ssj/11/1/article-p1.xml>. Stoeffel, Kat. “The ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ Has Died.” The Cut, 29 July 2013. <https://www.thecut.com/2013/07/manic-pixie-dream-girl-has-died.html>. Lambert, Molly. “1D Internet Fantasies: Liz Lemon, One Direction, and the Rise of the Manic Pixie Dream Guy.” Grantland: Hollywood Prospectus, 3 Dec. 2012. <https://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/1d-internet-fantasies-liz-lemon-one-direction-and-the-rise-of-the-manic-pixie-dream-guy/>. Lee, Ashley. “How Hilarious ‘Barbie’ Earworm ’I’m Just Ken’ Brings Toxic Masculinity to Its Knees.” Los Angeles Times, 28 Jul. 2023. <https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2023-07-28/barbie-movie-ryan-gosling-im-just-ken-lyrics-dance-moves-explained>. Mason, Derrit. “The Earnest Elfin Dream Gay.” Public Books, 9 Nov. 2018. <https://www.publicbooks.org/the-earnest-elfin-dream-gay/>. Myisha, Nabila, et al. “Decoding the Perpetuation of Patriarchal Culture in the Barbie Movie.” Cultural Narratives 1.2 (2023): 71-82. Nicholas, Lucy. “Ken’s Rights? Our Research Shows Barbie Is Surprisingly Accurate on How ‘Men’s Rights Activists’ Are Radicalized.” The Conversation, 25 Jul. 2023. <https://theconversation.com/kens-rights-our-research-shows-barbie-is-surprisingly-accurate-on-how-mens-rights-activists-are-radicalised-210273>. Owen, Craig Robert. Dancing Gender: Exploring Embodied Masculinities. 2014. PhD dissertation. Bath: University of Bath. <https://purehost.bath.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/187931069/OWEN_Craig_PhD_Thesis_1_6_2014.pdf>. Penny, Laurie. “Laurie Penny on Sexism in Storytelling: I Was a Manic Pixie Dream Girl.” The New Statesman, 7 Aug. 2014. <https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/i-was-manic-pixie-dream-girl>. Pickel-Chavalier, Sylvine. “Popular Horse Stories and the Invention of the Contemporary Human-Horse Relationship through an ‘Alter Ego’ paradigm.” Journal of Sports Science 5 (2017): 119-137. <https://hal.science/hal-01571632/document>. Rabin, Nathan. “The Bataan Death March of Whimsy Case File #1: Elizabethtown.” The A.V. Club, 25 Jan. 2007. <https://www.avclub.com/the-bataan-death-march-of-whimsy-case-file-1-elizabet-1798210595>. ———. “I’m Sorry for Coining the Phrase 'Manic Pixie Dream Girl'.” Salon, 16 Jul. 2014. <https://www.salon.com/2014/07/15/im_sorry_for_coining_the_phrase_manic_pixie_dream_girl/>. Robinson, I.H. “The Human‐Horse Relationship: How Much Do We Know?” Equine Veterinary Journal 31.S28 (Apr. 1999): 42–5. DOI: 10.1111/j.2042-3306.1999.tb05155.x. Roche, Daniel. The Culture of Clothing: Dress and Fashion in the Ancien Régime. Cambridge UP, 1996. Romero-Medina, Pablo, and Júlia Vilasís-Pamos. “Alt-Right, Neomasculinities and Video Games: A Narrative Review.” Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA), 2023. <http://digra.org:9998/DiGRA_2023_CR_1583.pdf>. Tannenbaum, Emily. “The ‘Manic Pixie Dream Girl’ Isn’t Dead – She Has Just Evolved.” Glamour, 25 Aug. 2020. <https://www.glamour.com/story/the-manic-pixie-dream-girl-isnt-dead-shes-just-evolved>. “The Thinker.” Musee Rodin, n.d. <https://www.musee-rodin.fr/en/musee/collections/oeuvres/thinker>. Weaver, Caity. “The Ken Doll Reboot: Beefy, Cornrowed, and Pan-Racial.” GQ, 20 Jun. 2017. <https://www.gq.com/story/the-ken-doll-reboot-beefy-cornrowed-and-pan-racial>. Zelazko, Alicja. “The Thinker.” Britannica, 20 Feb. 2024. <https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Thinker-sculpture-by-Rodin>. Zemler, Emily. “On Location: Unboxing Barbie in Venice Beach.” Conde Nast: Traveler, 21 Jul. 2023. <https://www.cntraveler.com/story/barbie-movie-venice-beach>. ———. Dressing Barbie Was Always the Best Part: Just Ask Costume Designer Jacqueline Durran. Yahoo! Movies, 20 Feb. 2024. <https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/dressing-barbie-always-best-part-130045950.html>.