the ongoing plotline of the season as a nuanced and perhaps progressive look at the systemic cycle of help and degradation offered by a society which values certain physical traits so much more highly than others .
In Seth Vanatta ’ s “ Essentialism and the Construction of Gender and Race in Season 2 of Lifetime ’ s UnREAL ,” we see many forms of essentialism in a popular television program . Vanatta explores how the show undermines static notions of gender and its presentation of a nuanced and complex racism , even as concerns intersectionality and white feminism . Perhaps these issues have never been more topical .
On a completely different note , Heather Lusty ’ s colorful look at the world of music and social protest screams to life in “ Children of the Grave : Visual Nuclear Rhetoric in Heavy Metal Music .” While I can ’ t say that I am intimately familiar with all of the groups and artists working in the medium , Lusty ’ s presentation brings the metal world into a dialogue with social consciousness that illustrates how important and self-aware all art can be . These artists have a voice to reach many people , and they are worth listening to .
In Richard Logsdon ’ s “ Where Have All the Vampires Gone ? An Examination of Gothic Horror in BBC ’ s Luther ,” the timeless qualities of Gothic horror come to life once again , overlaid on what might be considered a crime detective drama . This rich exploration of the cultural threat of mass shootings , stabbings , bombings , and other public threats , with its subtle Gothic allusions , unveils how ubiquitous some of these fears have been in the human subconscious and in art for centuries . Graeme John Wilson ’ s look at another acclaimed crime drama , “ A Man Must Have a Code ”: A Contrast of Black and White Masculinity in The Wire ” takes a much more contemporary look at the potentially toxic masculinity omnipresent in our society , but especially obvious in the “ tough guy ” detective featured in so many of these shows . With its surprising and sensitive treatment of sexuality and racial stereotypes , The Wire fulfills the potential of its genre .
In “ The Trajectory of a Comic Celebrity ’ s Career : Robin Williams Does Television ,” Kathy Merlock Jackson explores the innovative personality of Robin Williams , who lobbied his eccentric charisma in a bit part on television into a memorable and enduring career on both the large and the small screens . He was always destined to make us laugh and cry in his exploration of what it truly means to be a human being , from inside and out . Todd Moffett ’ s “ The Blacksmith ” explores one of the archetypal figures that keeps reappearing in myths and stories , perhaps beginning in the Proto-Indian-European tradition and surviving
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