The story of comic book character, Cassie Hack, forms the background for my perspective on popular culture and its representations of race and gender.
Cassandra Hack grew up in a small town in western Wisconsin. She had an overbearing, eccentric mother, who was the Lunch Lady at the high school Cassie attended.
Cassie’s classmates considered her a freak and teased and tormented her. Unknown to Cassie, Mrs. Hack began murdering her daughter’s tormentors one by one and serving them up as a mystery meat at lunch. Once clues pointed to Mrs. Hack, she took her own life, leaving Cassie as an orphan.
Placed in a foster home, Cassie was tormented once again as kids at her school learned about her connection to the Lunch Lady. From beyond the grave, her mother began killing off Cassie’s tormentors. Cassie hunted down and destroyed her mother from beyond the grave.
Feeling guilty and all alone in the world, Cassie turned her back on a normal life a became a hunter of killers. Vlad, a gentle and unsightly creature, became her traveling companion. Together, Cassie and Vlad hunt down and destroy slashers in whatever form they take.
Like Cassie, I hunt down representations of gender and race in popular culture that place people in tidy boxes. My mission in this blog is to slash those boxes up and reveal how race and gender are socially constructed and enforced. Likewise, they are also challenged in thought-provoking ways.
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