The Gaze and the Circumvention of Power in Richard Strauss’ Salome

Richard Strauss’ opera “Salome” is a musical discourse of the uneven power dynamics between male and female with the idea of the gaze as its central narrative. Under the patriarchal premise of the male gaze, the men emerge as the gazers, while the women are relegated to the role of submissive objectification. This paper examines the way Salome manipulates this patriarchal notion of the gaze for her own gain, voluntarily offering herself as the object of the male gaze. I further postulated that Salome strategically oscillates between the stereotypical image of femme fatale and femme fragile, intentionally succumbing to the masculine-constructed demonization and idealization of female power. Consequently, this paper traces how Strauss’ music realizes those gender portrayals and Salome’s resistance against the male order, reflecting the use of musical analyses as a tool in understanding gender roles and power in operas.

Knowledge Organization in Transmedia Fictional Worlds: A Study of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Marvel Universe, and Star Wars

Currently there is no structured data standard for representing elements commonly found in transmedia fictional universes. There are websites dedicated to individual universes, however, information found on these sites separates the various formats into books, movies, comics, etc.; concentrate on only the bibliographic aspects of the material; and are only full-text searchable. We have created an ontological model that will allow researchers, fans, brand managers, and creators to search for and retrieve the information contained in these worlds based on how they are structured. We conducted a domain analysis and user studies based on the contents of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, the Marvel Universe, and Star Wars in order to build a new model using the Ontology Web Language (OWL) and an artificial intelligence reasoning engine. This model can infer connections between characters, elements of power, items, places, events, etc. This model will facilitate better search and retrieval of the information contained within these vast story universes for all users interested in them. The result of this project is and OWL ontology that is intuitive for users; can be used by AI systems; and has been updated to reflect real user needs based on user research.