The Monstrous Fantastic Conference Paper Abstracts - International ...

107. (VPA) Monstrous Gaming Bodies MagnoliaChair: Concetta BommaritoUniversity of Central FloridaThe Monstrous Inventory: The Spaces within Video Game Play Spaces or What’s in the Box!?Gabriel RiviereUniversity of Wisconsin Baraboo/Sauk CountyThis paper explores not only the monstrous effects of play space upon the user but also what the avatar collects and carries around with them.How these game spaces are represented and the manner of interaction is the focus of this paper; however, the spaces in which these items andinteractions exist also offer valuable insight to the subject matter at hand.Game Theoretic Principles Underlying the Starcraft 2 Game Play and NarrativeSean D. NixonUniversity of VermontThis paper considers both the game play and narrative of Starcraft 2 in a game theoretic framework as outlined in a series of papers by Johnvon Neuman and Oskar Morgenstern from 1928-1944 and studies the narrative of the game’s single-player campaign using game theory toanalyze the strategic choices of the main faction leaders.How the Spector of Death Complicates the Image of the Nazi Bogeyman in Markus Zusak’s The Book ThiefRachel Dean-RuzickaGeorgia Institute of TechnologyOne of the primary considerations of German characters and Nazi characters in terms of young adult Holocaust literature is the fact that it isnecessary to not merely create a monolithic group that can be universally reviled. Creating a group of this sort does nothing to enable readerswith a better sense of the complexity of the events of the Holocaust, and can cause muddled understanding of the events of the Nazi era. Thishas been a problem consistently in young adult literature, as Lydia Kokkala noted in her text Representing the Holocaust in Children’sLiterature: “Emphasis is placed on their physical attributes such as shiny boots, set jaws, polished belts, and shining weaponry. These arehumans in disguise; they are Bogeymen” (134). I argue what this stereotype does is obscure the actual German population behind a terrifyingmonstrous caricature that can easily be reduced to an inarticulate “evil” in ways that can lead to misunderstandings and incoherency regardinghistorical facts. So, instead of looking at a cast of characters that are faceless “jackboots,” literary critics must move beyond the mystification ofgenocidal desire in order to confront it face to face, often giving expression to perpetrators in order to strive for understanding, whilewithholding any sense of forgiveness. A book like Zusak’s The Book Thief has the potential to highlight how not all Germans willinglyparticipated in the persecution of their Jewish neighbors, and many German civilians died in various Allied attacks, particularly the night-timeair raids. While I don’t argue that Zusak’s book is the perfect YA Holocaust text, I do believe it complicates the Nazi monster in interesting anduseful ways. At the book’s close there are several things about the German people made clear for the reader: attitudes toward the Nazis weremany and varied, some Germans lost everything they had to senseless violence, and even the Nazi Mayor could make compassionate choices.The Book Thief complicates the vision of the Nazi monster in ways that are worth exploring in terms of the fantastic and what it can illustrateabout historical facts.108. (H) Exquisite Corpse DogwoodChair: Robert HurseyLongwood UniversityCultural Surgery and the Criminal Body: “Jack” as Politicized fReemade ManFranc AuldUniversity of Wisconsin Baraboo/Sauk CountyChina Miéville’s short story “Jack,” published in The New Weird (2008) explores the politicization of the human body through corporealpunishment. Miéville’s story offers a corporeal deregulation that both fragments and extends the body. A fine metaphor for corporalpunishment and the ways in which prisoners’ physical and psychic bodies are shaped by the justice system, “Jack” incarnates Jeffrey JeromeCohen’s thesis that the body of the monster is always a cultural body. In this short story, the author of that body is the story teller; a manwhose engagement with the process is problematized even as it is defined. Miéville’s story places the physical body of the criminal as thecorpus (both story and fleshly site) simultaneously fragmented and expanded through a bio-magic that is both science and thaumaturgy. In theworld of New Crobuzon, criminals experience the amputation of their limbs and organs, as well as the grafting of non-human parts into andonto their bodies. These are not the super-cyclical bodies of a Lovecraft story. They are neither catapulted backward nor forward in evolution.Instead, these tentacled or pincered human forms retain a contemporary humanity. One such criminal, Jack Half-a-Prayer of the title, becomesthe embodiment of a decaying culture’s penal creativity, as well as the marker of its dysfunctionality. His story of resistance is at once heroicand a result of his physical abuse. This text’s structure is mimetic; as the reader empathizes with the Robin Hood-like nature of the criminal, thereader is implicated in the culture’s philosophy of bodily disenfranchisement. The understated heroics of the character become a rationalizationof the fragmentation/expansion of Jack. The borders of narrative, like the hero’s body, have been corrupted and enhanced. Withholding thenature of the speaker, Miéville has crafted a short story that is liminal, both exultation in the “fReemade” man’s status as monster and agraphic citation of the “remaking” of a criminal as a frivolous, exploitive, cultural surgery.