The Ubume Challenge: A Digital Environmental Humanities Project

<p>In 2019, the “The Momo Challenge” frightened parents in the United States into believing “Momo” would appear online where she’d lure their children into harming themselves. While this challenge is one of many recent viral hoaxes, “Momo” is not simply a product of our digital age. Known as the <em>ubume</em> (“birthing-woman”), the figure who provides the face for “Momo” has lived for centuries in Japanese folklore where <em>yokai</em> (supernatural creatures) often caution listeners against entering unchartered parts of the land. And once Japan industrialized, so too did their “unchartered lands,” the <em>ubume</em> reborn to fit the cities and technologies that assumed these new breeding grounds for uncertainty. On my Scalar website, a platform designed to host media-rich content, I trace three such transmutations of the <em>ubume</em>—the <em>setsuwa </em>(spoken story), illustrated encyclopedia, and viral hoax. Literary critic Frederick Jameson provides the framework for these analyses as he describes the myth as an “imagined solution” to otherwise “unresolvable social contradictions.” I take an ecocritical approach and focus on the contradictions that arise under our dominant technology-as-progress narrative, presenting my research on hidden environmental costs through a combination of text and original comics. My choice to incorporate comics reflects my aim to not only expand access beyond an academic audience but to ensure an authorial transparency that allows users to decide whether they agree with my conclusions (as opposed to computer-generated visuals many people associate with objectivity). Increased user agency is crucial if we are to uncover why certain histories are privileged over others, particularly in our current climate where the hands shaping our digital environments remain so largely hidden.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Year

2020

Author dc:creator

• Risak, Sam

Contributors dc:contributor

• Rei Magosaki
• Jana Remy
• Michael Wood

• anthropocene
• myth
• digital humanities
• folklore
• viral hoax
• environment
• Other English Language and Literature

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/english_theses/15

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.chapman.edu:english_theses-1017