Fielding Montgomery

As one of the most successful pieces of transnational popular culture, we rhetorically analyze the compelling critique of neoliberal capitalism in the 2020 anime film, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train. Alongside this criticism of neoliberal capitalism, we theorize relations of mujō (無常/impermanence) found in the film, foregrounding this Buddhist principle to advance ways of being that resist neoliberal capitalist impulses. We forward three tenets that emerge in our analysis of this film: (1) recognizing that all beings are embedded within shared entanglements; (2) holding all beings responsible to serve others; (3) transcending the bounds of death by passing the torch of omoi (想い/human feeling). We argue that Mugen Train’s protagonists, the Demon Slayers, embody mujō that demonstrates how those under capitalist subjugation can only be liberated by recognizing human community grounded in such a relational ethic. We thus situate relations of mujō as a critical rhetorical theory that releases us from the neoliberal capitalist pursuit of mugen (無限/limitless).

Japanese anime has continued to gain recognition as one of the strongest cultural influences in a globalized world. We examine how the transnational process of decontextualization-recontextualization can shift the messages of popular culture texts as situated in differing collective memories. To highlight this process, we analyze Shingeki no Kyojin (known to English-speaking audiences as Attack on Titan). Shingeki no Kyojin provides insightful grounds for analysis given its tremendous popularity in both Japan and beyond, its message of resistance against U.S. militarism, and its recontextualized uptake by the American alt-right, even including an Arizona congressman. Our analysis reveals the importance of understanding popular culture alongside context and the impact of decontextualized-recontextualized transformations of meaning on transnational processes of collective memory discourse.

The construction of Nancy Pelosi as the monstrous-feminine reveals itself in the highly misogynistic attack advertisements of Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential reelection campaign. In our analysis of five YouTube attack ads, we demonstrate how short-form digital advertisements use the conventions of digital platforms to heighten the elements of horror used to construct the monstrous-feminine. Drawing from horror genre logics and editing conventions, the Trump campaign produces a narrative strategy that preys on conservative fears regarding women, race, and breaches in a gendered social contract. Targeting one of the most powerful women in American politics, Trump’s digital ads deploy a variety of editing strategies combined with common horror tropes to push audiences toward violent conclusions of how to “defeat” the monstrous-feminine, Pelosi.

In Horror Framing and the General Election: Ghosts and Ghouls in Twenty-First-Century Presidential Campaign Advertisements, UM doctoral student Fielding Montgomery reveals a pattern of mostly increasing horror framing implemented across presidential elections from 2000 to 2020. By analyzing the two most common frameworks of horror within U.S. popular culture (classic and conflicted), he demonstrates how such frameworks are deployed by twenty-first-century U.S. presidential campaign advertisements. Televised advertisements are analyzed to illustrate a clearer picture of how horror frameworks have been utilized, the intensity of their usage, and how self-positive appeals to audience efficacy help bolster these rhetorical attempts at persuasion. Horror Framing and the General Election shows readers how the extensionally constitutive ripples of horrific campaign rhetoric are felt in contemporary political unrest and provides a potential path forward.

Among the most prominent cinematic franchises, the Star Wars universe has shaped popular culture in the United States for over forty years. This essay analyzes one of the newest additions to this lineage, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and the ways the film moves the original Star Wars from the purely fantastical to the contemporary, political climate. Given Rogue One's chronological position between the original and prequel Star Wars trilogies, the film acts as a bridge between the two. Rogue One connects the overt politics of the prequel trilogy with the covert, yet still present, politics of the original trilogy. Ultimately, Rogue One mirrors contemporary conflicts and crises in the geopolitical sphere and moves the original Star Wars films into this territory, creating a potential rhetorical crossroad for renewed cultural readings.