Transversal Textures

This paper examines the absurdist trope in chase cartoons, focusing on Tom and Jerry and its parallels to the chase sequences in silent films. Absurdism, often defined by the breakdown of logic and the embrace of the irrational, is a key element in both media, shaping their comedic appeal. By analyzing the episodes of Tom and Jerry alongside iconic silent films, this research explores how physical comedy and surreal exaggeration are used to evoke laughter. The study draws on absurdist theory to argue that Tom and Jerry amplifies the absurdist tradition established in silent films, using the limitless possibilities of animation to exaggerate violence, physicality, and illogical outcomes far beyond the constraints of live-action cinema. The paper also highlights how both forms of visual media use repetitive cycles of pursuit and escape to create a sense of futility, reinforcing the absurdity of their scenarios. A deductive, comparative, analytical, and objective method has been used in t...

This essay delves into the relationship between legal justice and the lived experience of trauma following sexual violence, using Alice Sebold’s memoir, Lucky, as its central case study. Through a detailed textual analysis of the narrative, this study investigates the efficacy of the judicial system in providing meaningful recourse for rape survivors. It examines the journey of seeking legal justice, from the initial reporting of the crime and the subsequent investigation to the emotionally taxing courtroom trial and the ultimate verdict. The analysis pays close attention to the methods employed by defense attorneys, the pervasive influence of societal rape myths on the jury’s perception, and the ways in which the victim’s identity and experiences are scrutinized and often delegitimized within the legal framework (drawing on insights from scholars like Jordan and Rich). Furthermore, the essay extends its scope beyond the courtroom to explore the long-term psychological and emotional af...

Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall” explores the complexities of boundaries, both physical and metaphorical, through the annual ritual of two neighbors who meet and mend a stone wall. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s geophilosophical concepts, this “architextural” essay analyzes the poem as a dynamic interplay between the war machine –represented by the questioning narrator – and the State apparatus, embodied by the tradition-bound neighbor. The wall serves as a One-Two structure, simultaneously a limes and a limen, by reflecting the tension between striating and smoothing forces. While the neighbor upholds the stratified order with the maxim “Good fences make good neighbors,” the narrator challenges this equilibrium through a willingness to transgress and a pursuit of deterritorializing freedom. With this perspective, the poem offers a profound reflection on the paradox of boundaries, which are both divisive and unifying forces. “Mending Wall” also offers unique geophilosophic...

In 2024, Netflix aired its new addition to the already flourishing genre of dystopian TV series. Ready, Set, Love is a Thai comedy romance show set in a world where an epidemic has all but wiped-out men and lowered the birthrate of baby boys to just 1%, turning men into a coveted treasure. Protected at all times, men live in an isolated area called The Farm, and they find partners via the eponymous dating show. The plot intertwines the love story with a gradual exposure of sinister governmental machinations ubiquitous to dystopia. This article aims to analyze how both the game show and the governmental regime objectify and commodify people to gain commercial profit and biopolitical power. The levels of objectification will be examined through the lens of Marxist postulates and reality television scholarship on the one hand and Foucauldian biopolitics on the other.Keywords: biopolitics, commodification, dystopia, Ready, Set, Love, reality television

In this article, I am interested in exploring issues of solastalgia and climate anxiety and how overcoming these emotions leads to the establishment of posthuman agency in Jeff VanderMeer’s ontologically multifaceted novel Borne (2017). I argue that the circumstances of ecological grief can be transformed into an inclusive form of materialist entanglement and intra-active agency, which can eventually create optimal conditions for cross-species understanding. Divided into two core sections, the article first delineates the concept of solastalgia and its dynamics of addressing environmental doom. Through specific textual examples, it examines the conditions of climate anxiety experienced by Rachel, the central protagonist of VanderMeer’s novel, and, secondly, it substantiates how Rachel, by the end of the novel, transforms her solastalgia into an emancipating weapon that helps her, along with Borne as a nonhuman companion, to re-establish a symbiotic relationship with the newly emerging ...

U ovoj knjizi sustavno je i kritički obrađena opsežna biografska građa o Marinu Držiću, s posebnim naglaskom na razlikovanje stvarnih i izmišljenih elemenata u različitim tekstovima koji su tijekom stoljeća pokušavali rekonstruirati njegov lik i djelo. Autorica pristupa temi u skladu s modernim teorijama historiografije i književne povijesti, koje upozoravaju na problematičnu narav povijesnih izvora, bez obzira na to radi li se o službenim zapisima, sudskim dokumentima ili rodoslovljima. Još su strukturalisti sredinom 20. stoljeća istaknuli da je granica između stvarnog i izmišljenog u takvim tekstovima često nejasna, a ta je spoznaja kasnije postala ključna za intertekstualna istraživanja. Uzimajući u obzir i sumnju u vjerodostojnost biografskih narativa koji su od razdoblja pozitivizma smatrani temeljnim dijelom historiografskog pisanja, autorica nije u početku ni predvidjela da ulazi u jedno od najdinamičnijih diskurzivnih prostora hrvatske književne historiografije. U tom prostoru,...