The deaf Issue: Hawkeye #19 and Deaf Accessibility in the Comics Medium
The critically acclaimed run of Marvel’s Hawkeye by Matt Fraction, David Aja, and Annie Wu was lauded for its striking design and emotional depth. Its 19th issue in particular, the ‘deaf’ issue, garnered significant praise and discussion for its portrayal of the titular superhero’s experience of deafness. The necessity of communicating inaudibility in a soundless medium makes Hawkeye #19 a deeply resonant experience of deaf subjectivity. To consider a comic as ‘deaf’—or to consider all comics as ‘deaf’—recalls Michel Chion’s renaming of the silent era of cinema as ‘deaf cinema.’ Reading Chion’s theory and Hawkeye #19 as a deaf cinema scholar, I was compelled to contrast the divergent approaches to visualizing aural information in cinema and in comics. This essay seeks to subject cinema’s visualized language, from intertitles to closed captions, to critical examination in comparison to comics’ use of speech bubbles and onomatopoeias. Through analysis of Hawkeye #19, I explore how comics have more successfully incorporated visual communication into their design, and thus contextualize disability as an issue of design. In a world designed to accommodate visualized communication such as speech bubbles—a striking element played with in Hawkeye #19—deafness is not the ‘issue’ that it is in cinema, where captions are perceived to disturb the aesthetic of films because they are not incorporated into a film’s structural design. I use this comparative analysis to suggest ways in which accessible design may be similarly applied to the built environment, made possible by growing theoretical, narrative, and technological connections between comics, cinema, and architecture.
Later, Naja. “The deaf Issue: Hawkeye #19 and Deaf Accessibility in the Comics Medium”. In Uncanny Bodies: Superhero Comics and Disability, edited by Scott T. Smith and José Alaniz, 141–156. University Park: The Pennsylvania University Press, 2019.
Hannibal Lecter’s Monstrous Return: The Horror of Seriality in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal
Hannibal Lecter’s propensity for serial murder has always been central to the horrors of the numerous Hannibal texts, from Thomas Harris’s novels to film adaptations and more recently Bryan Fuller’s television series Hannibal (NBC, 2013–15). In the lat- ter, seriality is foregrounded and embellished in ways that render the characteristics of serial form, such as repetition, liminality, and return, significant components of Lecter’s monstrosity. Hannibal embeds the uncontainable seriality of Lecter’s monstrous violence into the text’s form and themes in a way that torments the viewer in tandem with Lecter’s murder and cannibalism. This analysis exam- ines the relationship between serial murder and serial narrative as it pertains to questions of monstrosity, cultural anxieties about repeti- tion, and the aesthetic devaluing of seriality.
Balanzategui, Jessica; Later, Naja; and Lomax, Tara. “Hannibal Lecter’s Monstrous Return: The Horror of Seriality in Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal” In Becoming: Genre, Queerness, and Transformation in NBC’s Hannibal, edited by Kavita Mudan Finn and EJ Nielsen, 27–53. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2019.
Cannibalizing Hannibal: The Horrific and Appetizing Rewriting of Hannibal Mythology
When NBC adapted Hannibal for television, one of the changes it made to the franchise was the sumptuous scenes of food preparation.1 Fans are invited to Hannibal Lecter’s kitchen to watch him take bodies and masterfully transform them into succulent dishes. The cooking scenes in Hannibal are a channel through which the process of transformative adaptation is explored and encouraged. These scenes encode Hannibal as a multi-authored, cross-media, and trans-textual mythology through their dense allusion, portraying cooking as a transformative, reproducible process. The adaptation of a cooking show aesthetic takes advantage of the genre’s didacticism to suggest that fans “try this at home,” creating transformative fanworks that perpetuate Hannibal’s mythology. In this sense, while other Hannibal scenes may provide content for fanworks, the adaptation of the cooking genre cryptically endorses transformative processes of fandom.
Later, Naja. “Cannibalizing Hannibal: The Horrific and Appetizing Rewriting of Hannibal Mythology”. In Hannibal for Dinner: Essays on America’s Favorite Cannibal on Television, edited by Kyle A. Moody and Nicholas A. Yanes, 89–105. Jefferson: McFarland, 2021.
Captain America, National Narratives, and the Queer Subversion of the Retcon
Captain America (aka Steve Rogers) is a towering figure in the American imagination. Yet, his extensive comic book history complicates an easy reading of his relationship with nation- al ideologies. While all long-running comics use repetition and revision to sustain canon, in Captain America comics this process is often overtly textual and political, as rewriting Cap- tain America’s backstory can involve rewriting America’s war history.1 Steve Rogers’ in- escapable link to World War II requires an unusual approach to narration and retelling, as, unlike other superheroes, his origin story cannot be periodically revised to “he got powers a few years ago”. Flashbacks, revisions, retcons, and mise-en-abyme are fundamental to narrat- ing Captain America and understanding his subversive potential. This chapter explores how Captain America comics combine these narrative devices in order to open a valuable vein of counter-hegemonic readings with significant political allegory. Ultimately this chapter will demonstrate how the dominant narratives of American ideology, particularly those linking the nation at war to ideals of heroism, are increasingly subverted in Captain America through unreliable narratives and queer subtext.
Later, Naja. “Captain America, National Narratives, and the Queer Subversion of the Retcon.” In The Superhero Symbol: Media, Culture & Politics, edited by Liam Burke, Ian Gordon & Angela Ndalianis, 215–230. New Brunswick, Newrak, and London: Rutgers University Press, 2020.
A Darker Truth Underneath: Bucky Barnes and Captain America
Captain America has become a metonym for the heroic ideal. His titular connection to the Ameri- can nation risks the conflation of super-heroism with American self-righteousness, exceptionalism, and nationalism.1 Tension between the genre’s conventions and its intrinsic political context forces Captain America narratives to present both self-reflexively. In embodying the superheroic ideal of America, Captain America—AKA Steve Rogers—must always be better than America itself. This distinction is necessary for the narrative of American progress, and functions to some degree to distance Rogers as a war hero from the villainy committed by the US in foreign affairs. However, the process of establishing this distinction necessitates Rogers’ reflection upon wrongs committed by his country, and, accordingly, by himself. Rogers’ capacity for doubt and self-reflection are strong markers of his heroism, and offer more productive ways of discussing heroism and Americanism critically than reading Rogers in total opposition to his foreign nemeses.
Later, Naja. “A Darker Truth A Darker Truth Underneath: Bucky Barnes and Captain America.” In The Supervillain Reader, edited by Robert Moses Peaslee and Robert G. Weiner, 319–336. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2020.
Review: The Indecent Screen: Regulating Television in the Twenty-First Century, Cynthia Chris (2019)
The Indecent Screen is a fascinating history of censorship and regulation in American broadcast television. As the US enters a period of political upheaval, and traditional media struggle to keep up with the changing landscape, Chris’ project illuminates the unique circumstances of broadcast television and its relationship with free speech regulation. Chris uses this in-depth study of indecency in broadcasting to historicize the limitations on all platforms we call ‘TV’ today. From archaic laws originally created to distinguish radio’s acces- sibility from cinema and newspapers, Chris traces a fascinating series of cases that place broadcast television in an unusual but influential position in the current media environment.
Later, Naja. “The Indecent Screen: Regulating Television in the Twenty-First Century, Cynthia Chris (2019).” Journal of Digital Media & Policy 11:3 (2010): 361-364.
Hannibal (NBC, 2013–2015) as a cultural watershed for Quality Television. Hannibal is a compelling experiment in the televisual form, presents complex challenges to our existing generic formulae, and enacts transformations of both televisual and cultural narratives. This article investigate Hannibal as a transformational text, discussing the significance of showrunner Bryan Fuller’s statement: “Hannibal is my fan fiction” (2015, sic). This definition prompts an evaluation of fanfiction’s gradual steps toward the mainstream, and Fuller’s capacity to be both a fanfiction author and a TV-auteur. Fuller can be labelled a “Promoted Fanboy”, a particular type of TV-auteur whose fan affiliation informs his creative vision—furthermore, his auterist style can be likened to the fanfiction genre. The affirmational nature of an official adaptation like Hannibal intersects with the transformational approach Fuller takes as an auteur. As Quality TV continues to experiment with form, we find Hannibal continually challenges easy delineations between different media and cultural movements.
Later, Naja. “Introduction: Quality Television (TV) Eats Itself: The TV-Auteur and the Promoted Fanboy.” In Hannibal Lecter’s Forms, Formulations and Transformations: Cannibalising Form and Style, edited by Jessica Balanzategui and Naja Later, 1–21. Milton Park and New York: Routledge, 2021.
This essay examines the social stigma surrounding transformative fandom: particularly
fanfiction and fanart, and particularly the romance and erotica genres. I offer a framework
for understanding the prejudices, taboos, and attractions of transformative fandom through
gendered monstrosity. Using a combination of theoretical perspectives on monstrosity and
femininity such as Julia Kristeva’s abjection; Linda Williams’ body genres, Mary Russo’s
female grotesque, and Barbara Creed’s monstrous feminine, I argue that the suppression of
– and grotesque fascination with – transformative fandom in mainstream discourse is
rooted in monstrosity and misogyny. Kristina Busse argues that while data is difficult to
gather due to the necessary anonymity of transformative fandom, this area of fandom is
generally associated with female fans. I argue that this association – whether accurate or
not – informs the specific type of stigma attached to transformative fandom. Transformative
fans may or may not be female, but they are marginalised and cast as monstrous in
feminine ways. The monstrous female body grotesquely over-produces affect and sexuality,
resulting in a hysterical overreaction that has been used since Lizstomania to characterise
female fandom. Like hair, blood, mucus, and tears, fanworks are treated with a strain of
disgust linked to excess excretions of the female body, which must be controlled, shamed,
and stymied. Fanworks are publicly stereotyped as similarly disgusting products of
overactive desire, and objects of revulsion. However, abjection is underpinned by attraction,
which explains the ostensibly-perverse fascination with fandom. Robin Wood argues that
monstrosity has a radical potential: a potential that I argue, complements the optimistic
projections Roberta Pearson and Henry Jenkins make about transformative fandom as a
vehicle for social change. With transformative fandom at a tipping point between
underground and mainstream, its monstrosity could become domesticated, or it could
transgress the misogynist boundaries that kept it safely suppressed.
Later, Naja. “The monstrous narratives of transformative fandom.” Participations: Journal of Audience & Reception Studies 15 (2): 329-324 (2018).
The streaming giant has acknowledged a long-standing problem, thanks in part to Queer Eye's Karamo Brown.
(smh.com.au)
Carmody, Broede, Kavanagh, Kim, and Later, Naja. “Netflix promises to fix closed captions after social media storm.” The Sydney Morning Herald. 3rd July, 2018.
This introduction to the special issue “Hannibal Lecter’s Forms, Formulations and Transformations” outlines the significance of Bryan Fuller’s Hannibal (NBC, 2013–2015) as a cultural watershed for Quality Television. Hannibal is a compelling experiment in the televisual form, presents complex challenges to our existing generic formulae, and enacts transformations of both televisual and cultural narratives. This article investigate Hannibal as a transformational text, discussing the significance of showrunner Bryan Fuller’s statement: “Hannibal is my fan fiction” (2015, sic). This definition prompts an evaluation of fanfiction’s gradual steps toward the mainstream, and Fuller’s capacity to be both a fanfiction author and a TV-auteur. Fuller can be labelled a “Promoted Fanboy”, a particular type of TV-auteur whose fan affiliation informs his creative vision—furthermore, his auterist style can be likened to the fanfiction genre. The affirmational nature of an official adaptation like Hannibal intersects with the transformational approach Fuller takes as an auteur. As Quality TV continues to experiment with form, we find Hannibal continually challenges easy delineations between different media and cultural movements.
Later, Naja. “Quality Television (TV) Eats Itself: The TV-Auteur and the Promoted Fanboy.” Quarterly Review of Film and Video 35 (6): 531-551 (2018).
The late great Stan Lee’s superheroes are grounded in emotional reality and an optimism that we can still save the world, says a University of Melbourne expert
(pursuit.unimelb.edu.au)
Stan Lee’s superheroes are grounded in an emotional reality and optimism that we can still save the world
Later, Naja. “Putting the real in fantasy superheroes.” Pursuit. 14th November, 2018.
Kamahl returns to share his thoughts on Get Out, a horror satire nominated for multiple Oscars. On the 40th anniversary of Sydney Mardis Gras, we take a look at popular culture through a queer lens. And Jordan Raskopoulos and Dr Naja Later make the case for fan fiction.
(abc.net.au)
We’ve made big social strides in LGBTIQ acceptance, but is that reflected in our pop culture?
On the 40th anniversary of the world famous Sydney Mardi Gras, we look at the queering of popular culture, fandom and fan fiction with Dr Naja Later, whose research looks the intersections between pop culture and politics, and performer and fan fiction author Jordan Raskopoulos.
Later, Naja, Raskopoulos, Jordan, Wang, Beverley, Rosewarne, Lauren, and Law, Benjamin. “Kamahl gets into Get Out, Mardi Gras 40th, queering pop culture, and fan fiction.” Stop Everything!. ABC Radio National. Melbourne and Sydney, Australia: RN. 2nd March, 2018.
Reckon there’s something a touch gay about Batman’s leather fetish? Or that there’s something rather queer about Wonder Woman’s Amazonian heritage? The Out Takes team do too, so to coincide with the theatrical release of PROFESSOR MARSTON AND THE WONDER WOMAN and JUSTICE LEAGUE, we turned our attention to the very queer history of the Justice League.
(joy.org.au)
Later, Naja, Browne, Conrad, and Lambropoulos, Gina. “The Not-So-Secret Queer History of the Justice League.” Out Takes. JOY FM. Melbourne, Australia: JOY. 20th November, 2017.
Comics have a close relationship with our contemporary political and real world.
(abc.net.au)
Bainbridge, Jason, Ryan Griffen, Naja Later, Paul Mason, and Scott Stephens. ‘Superheroes and the Real World.’ Big Ideas. ABC Radio National. 11th July, 2017.
