Journal articles: 'Cavalcade of America (Television program)' – Grafiati (2025)

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Abstract The appearance of Hanna Bloch Kohner on a 1953 episode of the series This Is Your Life is among the earliest presentations of a Holocaust survivor's personal history on American television. Analysis of the program explores how television—a collaborative, corporate medium—shapes the telling of an individual's life story, and how the program relates the story of the Holocaust in terms of personal history. The article also examines how the program's producers employed television's distinctive characteristics to enable, limit, or otherwise shape the presentation of the Holocaust, and how the episode indicates that its creators understood its subject as being somehow singular, even as the conceptualization of the Holocaust was emerging, before the term Holocaust entered American public discourse. The article also considers how the program reflects the social and political context of post-World War II America in general and postwar American Jewish life in particular. Finally, the article considers how analysis of this program offers insight into other, later presentations of the Holocaust on American television, especially those dealing with the life story of an individual survivor. (Yiddish Studies/Jewish ethnology)

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If histories of television recognize it all, the relationship between punk subculture and the mass cultural medium of television is often rendered as a story of misreprentation, conflict, or mutual avoidance. Such studies overlook a rich history of punks throughout North America who produced numerous programs for cable television, especially the non-commercial forum of public access, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Conceiving of TV as a kind of social technology, some punks actively and critically engaged in producing subculture both on and through the medium. This article looks at the case of New Wave Theatre (Theta/KSCI 1979–1983), a Los Angeles–based cable program that featured punk and new-wave bands, performance art, and interviews. It argues that through distinctive performance tactics and production practices, New Wave Theatre developed a form of “subcultural television” rooted in queer “antisociality.”

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Due to the development of so many different educational experiments in radio and television with more than 40 years of existence in many Latin American countries, the appearance of new institutional initiatives done by most of the educational institutions of Latin America and, facing the innovating approaches of technological convergence of telecommunications, the audiovisual means and computer science, with the possible complementarity and interrelation of radio, television and Internet in new broadband IP digital networks, it becomes necessary to raise new lines of future and intervention to encourage the Televisión Educativa Iberoamericana (TEIb) (Latin American Educational Television), Program of Cooperation of the Latin American Heads of States and Governments Summit, and its managing association, the ATEI. Debido al desarrollo de tantas y diversas experiencias de radio y televisión educativas con más de 40 años de existencia en muchos países iberoamericanos, la aparición de nuevas iniciativas institucionales que realizan la mayoría de las instituciones educativas de Iberoamérica y, ante los innovadores planteamientos de la convergencia tecnológica de las telecomunicaciones, los medios audiovisuales y la informática, con la posible complementariedad e interrelación de la radio, televisión e Internet en las nuevas redes digitales de banda ancha IP, se hace necesario plantear nuevas líneas de futuro y actuación para relanzar la Televisión Educativa Iberoamericana (TEIb), Programa de Cooperación de las Cumbres Iberoamericanas de Jefes de Estado y de Gobierno, y su Asociación gestora, la ATEI.

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This paper probes the images of African Americans in a thirty-day sample of videotaped news programs on ABC, CBS, and NBC, and in a computer analysis of verbatim transcripts of ABC's nightly news program for one year. Network news appears to convey more stereotyped impressions — a narrower range of positive roles — for blacks than for whites. Representations of whites in network news are more varied and more positive than of blacks, not because of conscious bias, but because of the way conventional journalistic norms and practices interact with political and social reality. The findings raise theoretical and normative questions about journalists' ability to “represent” the “reality” of black America while adhering to the professional practices that currently shape network news.

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While largely discounted as a genuine sport by most, professional wrestling has evolved from a minor source of “entertainment” to a culturally powerful multi-media complex. Attracting audiences in abundance of fifty million viewers on a weekly basis, professional wrestling has become the number one rated “sports-entertainment” program on television. In doing so, professional wrestling broadcasts challenge long-standing cultural constructions of sport in North America, while hyperbolising and unapologetically exploiting that which is highly entertaining about professional sports contests. Specifically, professional wrestling's mandate is to excite audiences via contrived and hyper-violent athletic competition. Drawing on Elias' (1978, 1983, 1994, 1996) and other process-sociologists' (Dunning, 1999; Maguire, 1999; Sheard, 1999) understanding of mimesis, it is argued here that professional wrestling derives the bulk of its cultural appeal from the ways in which the staged violence is presented as both “sporting” and “exciting” to audiences.

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The latest reality program about weight loss makeover, Australian Channel Seven’s Bringing Sexy Back maintained the dominant frame of fat as bad, shameful and unsexy. Similar to other programs’ point of view, only slim bodies could claim to be healthy and sexy. Conversely the Fat Acceptance movement presents fat as beautiful, sexy, and healthy. But what did online audiences in 2014 think about Bringing Sexy Back? In this article online-viewer-generated comments are analysed to find out: a) whether audiences challenged and contested the dominant framing; and b) what phrases did they use to do this. The research task is a discourse analysis in which key words and phrases are highlighted and colour coded as categories and patterns begin to emerge. My intention is to represent the expressions of the participants responding to the articles and or online forums about the program. The focus is on the ‘language-in-use’ (Gee 34), in particular their gut reactions to the idea of whether only slim people can be sexy and their experience of viewing the program. Selected television websites, online television forums and blogs will be analysed. Introduction The latest makeover television program drawing on the obesity-epidemic discourse Bringing Sexy Back (BSB) promises the audience that by the end of the program participants will have bought their sexy back. Sexy in the program is equated with one’s younger and slimmer self; the program host Samantha Armytage (from Sunrise the national Australian morning show) tells viewers sexy can be reclaimed if participants (from their late 30s and up to 51 years) drop kilos, commit to a strenuous exercise regime, and re-style their wardrobe. Experts, the usual suspects, are bought in—the medical machinery, the personal trainer, the stylist, and the hairdresser etc.—to assess, admonish, advise and appraise the participants. At the final reveal the audience—made up of family, friends and the local community—show enthusiasm for the aesthetic desirability of the participants slimmer sexier body as evidenced by descriptors such as “wow”, and “oh my God” as well as an outpouring of emotion such as crying and squeals of delight. Previous researchers of fat-shaming television programs have found audience’s reactions divided: some audience members see it as motivating; others see it as humiliating; and others see it as what the contestants deserve (Holland, Blood and Thomas; Rodan, Ellis and Lebeck; Sender and Sullivan)! I want to find out if online and social media audiences of the relatively tame makeover program BSB, which features individual Australians and couples who are overweight and obese, challenge and contest the dominant framing. In my analysis of the phrases online audiences’ have used about BSB, posters mostly found the program inspiring and motivating. From this inauspicious first strike, I will push onto examine the phrases posters have used to respond to the program. The paper begins with a short background about the program. The key elements of the makeover television genre are then discussed. Following this, I provide an analysis of the program’s official BSB Facebook site, and unofficial viewer-generated sites, such as the bubhub, TVTONIGHT, MamaMia, The Hoopla and the hashtag #sexybackau on Twitter. Posters to these sites were regular, infrequent or intermittent viewers. My approach to the analysis of these online forums and social media sites is a discourse analysis that examines “language-in-use”—as well as other elements such as values, symbols, tools and thinking styles—so as to identify and track tacit knowledge—that is, meanings emerging from obesity-epidemic discourse (Gee 34, 40–41). Such a method is apt given its capacity to analyse contributors’ spontaneous statements of their feelings—in particular their gut reactions to the program and the participants. The paper ends with my findings and conclusions. Bringing Sexy Back: Background Information Screened in 2014, season one of BSB format consists of a host Samantha Armytage, fitness trainer Cameron Byrnes and stylist Jules Sebastian and her team of hairdresser, groomers etc. Undoubtedly, part of the program’s construction is to select participants who appeal to a broad range of viewers. Participants’ ages range from 21 years (Courney Gollings) to 51 years (Vicki Gollings). The individuals or couples who make up the series include: Ned (truck driver), Sam and Gary (parents of two boys), Lisa Wilson (single mother and hairdresser), Vicki and Courtney Golling (mother and daughter), Livio Caldarone (pizza/small restaurant owner), and Paula Beckton (mother of four), The first episode was aired on Australia’s Channel Seven on 12 August 2014 and the final episode on 13 January 2015. This particular series consisted of 9 episodes. In this paper I focus on the six episodes that were aired in 2014. Generally each individual episode consisted of: the intervention, presenting medical facts about participant’s weight; the helper figures setting training and diet regimes; the trials leading to transformation; and the happy ending evident in the reveal. Essentially, these segments illustrate that the program series is highly contrived and they also demonstrate the program’s method of challenging participants to lose weight. Makeover Television I now provide a further construct to assist the reader’s understanding of ‘what is going on’ in the BSB program, which fits within the genre of makeover program. As reflected in the literature, makeover television has some or all of the following ingredients: personal fitness trainer as expertstylist and grooming expertsfamily members and contestant’s reflexivity (reflect on their own behaviour)new self-celebrated photo shootscontestant winning challengessymbols, such as the dream outfit, and before and after photographstransformation before the ‘big reveal’ Moreover, makeover programs are about the ordinary person on television. According to Redden, identities on these programs are individual rather than collective in that they serve to show a type of “individuality” as if it exists irrespective of any social or cultural group (156). And what is the role of the expert? Redden points out the expert on makeover programs interprets the “life situation of the given person, who may represent a certain social category of ordinary person” (153). So while makeover programs purport to be about the ordinary person and make claims about the actuality of the ordinary person’s life (Skeggs and Wood 559; Stagi 138), they also depict a hierarchy of social categories. The participants’ class also features in makeover programs like BSB. Class is evident in that participants who are selected to be on the program are often from lower-middle class backgrounds. Most participants have non-professional occupations—truck driver (Ned), hairdresser (Lisa), pizza/small restaurant owner (Livio), body caster, a person who makes body casts (Paula). Similar to The Biggest Loser (2004–2014) on American NBC, and Australia Network Ten, the participants in BSB were also mainly from lower–middle class backgrounds (Rodan; Sender and Sullivan 575) Several researcher’s show that makeover television promises advancement for lower–middle class citizens (Fraser 188–189; Miller 589; Redden 155; Skeggs and Wood 561) based on the proposition that contestants have the power to transform themselves (Bratich 17; Ouellette and Hay 471–472; Lewis 443; Sender and Sullivan 581). Like other makeover programs BSB takes advantage of the aspirations of working and lower-middle class participants. And, not surprisingly, the desired transcendence is something most participants/viewers from lower-middle and working class backgrounds cannot strive to achieve without participating in the program (Miller 589). Transcendence in BSB comes from losing weight, and acquiring new gym equipment, gym clothing, access to a personal trainer, gym membership, holiday at a health retreat, new wardrobe, new haircut, and new gym clothes. These acts to transform oneself are often “presented” as the middle class “standard,” taste and specific ongoing “intimate practices” of the “middle class” (Skeggs and Wood 561; Redden 155). But clearly much of the sprucing up (such as a private gym at home, personal trainers) are expensive and beyond the budget of even an Australian middle-class family. Analysis Posters on the official BSB Channel Seven Facebook forum overall were the most positive about the program—they found the program motivating and inspiring. Several posters on Facebook asked how they might apply to be on the program. After the airing of the reveal, posters on all the online forums and social media analysed consistently used adjectives such as fantastic, awesome, congratulations, stunning, amazing, gorgeous, wow, incredible, look sensational, look hot, look great, champion effort, fabulous, impressive, beautiful, inspirational. Fat-Shaming In BSB fat-shaming works through the use of medical machines and imagery, which measure weight and body fat percentage (BMI) using the DXA scanner and X-ray machine. Even though many physicians object to BMI measurement, it has become an “infallible marker of dangerous risk-saturated obesity” (Morgan 205) in Health Department campaigns, insurance company policies and on makeover television. Participants’ current weight is compared to the weight of their 20 year-old self. The program also induces fat-shaming through visuals of food and drink stashes found in participant’s bedroom cupboards (Ned), remnants of take-away packaging in rubbish bins (Lisa), processed foods in pantry cupboards (Vicki and Courtney), and pizza cartons at work (Livio). Here food amounts are quantified for audiences to gasp with shock and horror reinforcing the stereotype that people are fat because they have insufficient willpower and overeat (Farrell 34), thus perpetuating the view that obese people are undisciplined, sloppy and “less likely to do productive work” (Greenberg et al.). Banners are produced of participants’ photographs in their 20s; the photographs chosen have been taken when participants were slim and looked hot at the beach or night clubbing. These banners are juxtaposed with a banner of participant’s current self—appearing overweight in unflattering short crop top and underwear. Both banners are flashed onto the screen during the program especially in the final reveal presumably as a visual measurement to shame participants for “letting themselves go”. Even though host Samantha provides reasons for participants gaining weight—such as the stress of being a single parent, having a busy life as a mother of four, work commitments etc—the visual banners powerfully signify more than the presenter’s dialogue. Katrina Dowd on Facebook suggests it is the banners that signified the truth about participants’ lifestyles when she comments: Absolutely. Amazing how people whom follow unhealthy eating patterns for years with lack of exercise get congratulated because they’ve lost weight. Should never have let yourself get to that stage. Using your children and work commitments as excuses for why you got that way is a big “fail”. Some social media participants on Twitter and online forum posters saw the participants as “Bogan” ( a white working-class person who lacks fashion sense, is uncouth unsophisticated and invokes disgust), lazy, slobs as represented in the following comments: “Bogan Hunters Makeover” (tvaddict); “STILL A FUCKING FAT BOGAN […] JUST STOP EATING” (Al_Mack); “Stop being a lazy bitch […] Seriously lazy slobs” (Dutchess of Tweet St); “learn to cook lazy cow” (Gidgit VonLaRue). Thus, for Katrina and the posters above, it is the “fat body” that is seen as the “uncivilized body” that lacks the self-control of the thin body (Richardson 80). Inspirational and Motivational I discovered that many online forum and social media participants found the program BSB inspiring and motivating. A similar finding to my study of The Biggest Loser online viewers (Rodan), as well as other researchers who interviewed audiences about The Biggest Loser (Readdy and Ebbeck). For instance, Twitter posters said the BSB inspires “everyday women” (Sharon@Shar0n) and “inspires me that I can do the same” (Sharon@KeepitRealV), “another great show #inspiring” (miss shadow). On Facebook most of the posters talked about how inspired they were by the show and or by the individual participants, for instance: Hi Lisa, I think I see a lot of me in you, I pretty much cried through the whole show. You have inspired me, much admiration for sharing your story with Australia. (Haigh) Many posters on Facebook identified with Lisa as a single mother (Jenkins) and her declaration that she was “an emotional eater” (McTavish). This may account for Lisa Wilson (5,824 likes) receiving the most likes on Facebook. There were those who identified with individual participants, such as Paula, who were attempting to lose weight. On the forum the bubhub, a forum for parents established in 2002, the administrator BH-bubhub started a thread titled “Need some motivation to shift those kilos? Our pal Paula is here to help hubbers!” Paula was the participant on BSB who lost the most weight, and was invited onto the forum to answer forum members’ questions. On this forum, disparaging, negative, demotivating comments were removed from public viewing (see caveat BH-bubhub). Overall, online forum posters on the bubhub expressed positive feelings about BSB as a weight loss program. Participants comments included “Awesome work Paula, I have no doubt you will inspire many and I look forward to hearing all your tips” (Mod-Uniquey) “and … you look fabulous” (BH-KatiesMum), “Wow, you must be so proud of yourself! That is an amazing effort and you look great” (Curby), “What an inspirational story!” (Mod-Nomsie). Facebook posters on the BSB official forum found the show motivating and evidence of others finding the same are: “I feel great after watching #sexybackau” (Freeburn), “an uplifting hour” (Hustwaite), “feeling motivated now to change a lot of things about myself” (McDonald). However, online posters rarely commented that the program inspired or motivated them to take specific actions about their own body size or lifestyle. For some, as other researchers have found about makeover programs, it is a form of televisual escapism (Holland, Blood and Thomas; Readdy and Ebbeck 585)—that is, the pleasure of watching others’ emotions in achieving their goal. For many others, identifying with the participants’ struggle, and seeing them overcome daily challenges and obstacles to losing weight, gave posters insights about themselves and how to change their own lifestyle. But maintaining weight-loss and a lifestyle that supports it—as Facebook posters frequently suggest—is very challenging for most people who are overweight. The transformations and reveals make for fairy-tale endings (the essence of makeover television), but the reality of losing weight is persistence, perseverance and hard work. Criticisms of the Program Posters on Facebook were censored more than some of the other online forums and social media. Facebook criticisms about the program BSB were dealt with swiftly by other posters—that is, posters were pressured to only express positive feelings about the program. For instance, Lynne Nicholas in response to Peter Thomson’s criticism that the program is “exploiting these people for cheap television entertainment” (Facebook, 14 August 2014) posted on Facebook: If you don’t like the show then don’t come on the page and comment. Channel 7 gives these people a chance to change their life and inspire others to do the same. (Facebook, 14 Aug. 2014) And in response to criticisms about the amount of processed food Cam discarded from participants Vicki and Courtney’s cupboard, Emily McCabe commented: If you don’t enjoy the concept of the program, feel free to change the channel and keep your negative comments to yourself. (Facebook, 2 Sep. 2014) Nevertheless, a lot of criticism appeared on the various online and social media outlets ranging from: the commercial aspects (matúš; Hales); the constant use of the word “fat” by the host (Spencer); the sponsorship and advertisements by a take-away food company (Daisy Murray; Patriot); the “irresponsible/unsafe training!” (M_Gardner; Ashton); the insufficient number of “diet tips” (Pedron-Peggs); and “sick of seeing all that food thrown away!!” (Barkla; Dunell; Robbie; Martin; Coupland). As noted above, some of the sites were censored. Criticisms of the program were only aired if the online forum and social media allowed people to vent their feelings and express their opinion. Allowing viewers to express their concerns about mainstream television programs such as BSB counters the argument made by other researchers suggesting that makeover programs do the work of audiences becoming “self-managing” and self-governing citizens (see Stagi; Ouellette and Hay 471-472; Sender and Sullivan 581; Ringrose and Walkerdine); and makeover programs perpetuate the myth that obesity is solely an individual behavioural problem (Yoo). Such critical comments (above) reveal that some viewers do question the show’s premises, and as a consequence they do not accept the dominant framing. Thus the hypothesis that all viewers of makeover programs are pliable and docile cannot be supported in my analysis. Findings and Conclusion Most BSB posters said they found the program inspiring and motivating. It seems many of the online posters identified with the participants’ struggle to lose their weight, and stay motivated to keep it off. So there was little fat-shaming from posters on Facebook and the online forums. The posters on Facebook expressed the most positive comments about the BSB program and the participants; however, the Facebook site was the official BSB social media site. It seems that many of the Facebook and online forum discussants were makeover television fans who had acquired a taste for the makeover genre – that is the transformation and the big reveal at the end, the re-styled self, the symbols as well as the tips, information and ideas about how to lose weight and change their lifestyle. Questions were often asked by posters about the participants’ eating plan, exercise regime, maintenance program etc., as well as how they (the posters) could apply to be on the show. Very few social media or online posters questioned and challenged the makeover genre, the advertising during the program, the quality and number of diet and nutrition tips, and the time as well as financial cost required to maintain the new self. References Al_Mack. “STILL A FUCKING FAT BOGAN.” 26 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Al_Mack. “JUST STOP EATING.” 26 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Ashton, Susan. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 13 Jan. 2015, 17:56. Facebook comment. Barkla, Michelle. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 9 Sep. 2014, 18:39. Facebook comment. BH-bubhub Administrator. “Need Some Motivation to Shift Those Kilos? Our Pal Paula Is Here to Help Hubbers!” The Bubhub 3 March 2015. 15:27. BH-KatiesMum. “Need Some Motivation to Shift Those Kilos? Our Pal Paula Is Here to Help Hubbers!” The Bubhub 3 Mar. 2015 19:26. Bratich, Jack Z. “Programming Reality: Control Societies, New Subjects and the Powers of Transformation.” Ed. Dana Heller. Makeover Television: Realities Remodelled. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. 6-22. Coupland, Allison. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 2 Sep. 2014, 17:55. Facebook comment. Curby. “Need Some Motivation to Shift Those Kilos? Our Pal Paula Is Here to Help Hubbers!” The Bubhub 3 Mar. 2015, 19.30. Dowd, Katrina. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 19 Aug. 2014, 21:07. Facebook comment. Dunell, Meredith. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 9 Sep. 2014, 17:54pm. Facebook comment. Dutchess of Tweet St (Appy_Dayz). “Seriously lazy slobs feeling sorry for themselves on #SexyBackAu are just bloody annoying.” 19 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Farrell, Amy E. Fat Shame: Stigma and the Fat Body in American Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2011. Fraser, Kathryn. “‘Now I Am Ready to Tell How Bodies Are Changed into Different Bodies…’ Ovid, The Metamorphoses.” Ed. Dana Heller. Makeover Television: Realities Remodelled. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. 177-92. Freeburn, Tim (TimBurna). “I feel great after watching #sexybackau I would’ve felt better if I didn’t eat all that Lindt chocolate while watching it though.” 19 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Gee, James Paul. An Introduction to Discourse Analysis: Theory and Method. 3rd ed. New York: Routledge, 2010. Gidgit VonLaRue. “You want to eat crap nightly fine, it’s your body – but not fair to your poor kid. Learn to cook lazy cow.” 19 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Greenberg, B., M. Eastin, L. Hofschire, K. Lachlan, and K.D. Brownell. “Portrayals of Overweight and Obese Individuals on Commercial Television.” American Journal of Public Health 93.8 (2003): 1324–48. Haigh, Renee J. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 26 Aug. 2014, 18:47. Facebook comment. Hales, Wendy. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 26 Aug. 2014, 18:38. Facebook comment. Holland, Kate, R., Warwick Blood, and Samantha Thomas. “Viewing The Biggest Loser: Modes of Reception and Reflexivity among Obese People.” Social Semiotics 25.1 (2015): 16-32. Hustwaite, Megan. “What an uplifting hour @BSBon7 is! @sam_armytage shines and @julessebastian is a talent #sexybackau.” 19 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Jenkins, Yohti. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 26 Aug. 2014, 18:45. Facebook comment. Lewis, Tanya. “Introduction: Revealing the Makeover Show.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 22.4 (2008): 441-46. M_Gardner (MSGardner_1). “This show has just trumped biggestloser for irresponsible/unsafe training! Do not try at home people #SexyBackAu.” 12 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Martin, Tania. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 2 Sep. 2014, 18:41. Facebook comment. matúš (MattLXS). “Sales are going to increase now for the fit bit flex thanks to #sexybackau sorry jaw bone up.” 19 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. McCabe, Emily. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 2 Sep. 2014, 21:01. Facebook comment. McDonald, Christine (Clubby_R8). “Watching #sexyback I’m really feeling motivated now to change a lot of things about myself. Although the smoking thing is a tough call.” 26 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. McTavish, Karen. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 26 Aug. 2014, 18:51. Facebook comment. Miller, Toby. “Afterword: The New World Makeover.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 22.4 (2008): 585-90. miss shadow (Miss_Shadow). “another great show #inspiring.” 26 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Mod-Nomsie. “Need Some Motivation to Shift Those Kilos? Our Pal Paula Is Here to Help Hubbers!” The Bubhub 4 Mar. 2015. 11:47. Mod-Uniquey. “Need Some Motivation to Shift Those Kilos? Our Pal Paula Is Here to Help Hubbers!” The Bubhub 3 Mar. 2015, 17:46. Morgan, Kathryn Pauly. “Foucault, Ugly Ducklings, and Technoswans: Analyzing Fat Hatred, Weight-Loss Surgery, and Compulsory Biomedicalized Aesthetics in America.” Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics 4.1 (2011): 188-220. Murray, Daisy. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 2 Sep. 2014, 18:27. Facebook comment. Nicholas, Lynne. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 14 Aug. 2014, 20:08. Facebook comment. Ouellette, Laurie, and James Hay. “Makeover Television, Governmentality and the Good Citizen.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 22.4 (2008): 471-84. Patriot (THEbitchiestgay). “Why is a weight loss show sponsored by a chicken company? Chicken is fattening.” 12 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Pedron-Peggs, Peta. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 16 Sep. 2014, 17:38. Facebook comment. Readdy, Tucker, and Vicki Ebbeck. “Weighing In on NBC’s The Biggest Loser: Governmentality and Self-Concept on the Scale.” Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport 83.4 (2012): 579-86. Redden, Guy. “Makeover Morality and Consumer Culture.” Ed Dana Heller. Makeover Television: Realities Remodelled. London: I.B. Tauris, 2007. 150-64. Richardson, Niall. Transgressive Bodies: Representations in Film and Popular Culture. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing, 2010. Ringrose, Jessica, and Valerie Walkerdine. “The TV Make-Over as Site of Neo-Liberal Reinvention toward Bourgeois Femininity.” Feminist Media Studies 8.3 (2008): 227-46. Robbie, Tina. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 5 Sep. 2014, 16:46. Facebook comment. Rodan, Debbie. “Technologies of the Self: Remaking the Obese ‘Self’ in The Biggest Loser: Couples (Australia).” Proceedings of the Australian and New Zealand Communication Association on Media Democracy and Change Conference. Ed. K. McCallum. Canberra, 2010. Rodan, Debbie, Katie Ellis, and Pia Lebeck. Disability, Obesity and Ageing: Popular Media Identifications. London: Ashgate, 2014. Sender, Katherine, and Margaret Sullivan. “Epidemics of Will, Failures of Self Esteem: Responding to Fat Bodies in The Biggest Loser and What Not to Wear.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 22.4 (2008): 573-84. Sharon (Shar0n). “Watched #SexyBackAu for the first time tonight; a top show to motivate and inspire everyday women to be healthier and set achievable goals.” 26 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Sharon (KeepitRealV). “#SexyBackAu watching another single mum challenge herself and change her life really inspires me that I can do the same!” 26 Aug. 2014, no time. Tweet. Skeggs, Beverley, and Helen Wood. “The Labour of Transformation and Circuits of Value ‘around’ Reality Television.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 22.4 (2008): 559-72. Spencer, Amby. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 17 Aug. 2014, 13:55. Facebook comment. Stagi, Luisa. “Lifestyle Television and Diet: Body Care as a Duty.” Italian Journal of Sociology of Education 6.3 (2014): 130-52. Thomson, Peter. “Bringing Sexy Back.” 14 Aug. 2014, 20:03. Facebook comment. Tvaddict. “Bringing Sexy Back.” TV Tonight 13 Aug. 2014, 18:17. Yoo, Jina. “No Clear Winner: Effects of The Biggest Loser on Stigmatization of Obese Persons. Health Communication 28 (2013): 294-303.

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IntroductionFor both consumers and creators, Web series have been viewed for some time as an appealing alternative to television series. As Alice explains, creating content for the Web was once seen as “a last resort” for projects that were unable to secure funding for television production (59). However, the Web has, in recent years, become a “legitimized” space, allowing Web series to be considered a media platform capable of presenting narratives of various genres (Alice 59). Moreover, due to the lack of restrictions and overheads placed on Web producers, it is argued that there is more capacity to take risks in Web series and thus depict “a broader array of stories” (Christian, “The Web” 352). Nevertheless, television still remains the traditional mode of storytelling, and for many producers, it is still an “object of desire” (Christian, “The Web” 352). Emerging producers still see television as the ultimate “end goal”, leaving the Web as a sufficient platform that will allow them to create something. Alternatively, for many established creators, the Web is understood to be a stage upon which they can tell stories television would perhaps never consider. Regardless of why creators are attracted to the Web, the platform has indeed cemented its place as an alternative in the television media landscape. For Abbi Jacobson and Ilana Glazer, the Web, or more specifically, YouTube, provided an unbridled space for their creativity when nowhere else would. The two comediennes co-wrote and starred in their Web series, Broad City, back in 2009, and it has since been picked up by Comedy Central and successfully turned into a television series. The fourth season is set to air in August 2017. Both versions of the series follow two twenty-something women, Abbi Abrams and Ilana Wexler (played by Jacobson and Glazer respectively), as they explore themselves, and New York City. Broad City is one of the few Web series to be picked up as a television series and maintain its success; an impressive accomplishment, no matter how legitimate Web series have become. However, the unwavering devotion maintained by the television series to continue depicting millennial women in the same fashion as the Web series is, arguably, more impressive. With a focus on Broad City’s depiction of its two eccentric protagonists, this article explores how the transitions from Web to television are negotiated. In the case of Broad City, I contend that its unconventional start as a web series is what allows the television series to continue depicting contemporary womanhood honestly. Taking the Alternate Path: YouTubeDefined as “scripted, episodic and experimental videos made for the internet”, Web episodes (or Webisodes) hold many advantages to the traditional television medium (Kornblum; Peirce 317). Aware of these advantages and struggling to be noticed naturally for their work in the sketch comedy group, Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB), Glazer and Jacobson took to the Internet to write and create their own series, Broad City. This trend arose in 2007 during the difficult phase American television when the Writers Guild of America began its fifteen-month strike (De Moraes). During this time, Peirce states that producing a new program for television proved “almost impossible” (315). There was a level of uncertainty plaguing the future of prime-time television, and with budgets being refashioned, reality programs were filling television line-ups more than any other genre of show (Peirce 315). Within this climate, it is unsurprising that the Google-owned video-sharing website, YouTube, quickly became the frontrunner in online video (Christian, “The Web” 351). YouTube is argued to be responsible for opening the doors to the next wave of entertainment media, after pledging to give users their own personal video network. Suddenly, amateurs, independents and corporations alike were, for the first time, able to compete against each other in shaping this post-network era of television (Christian, “The Web” 351). Moreover, the premise of “anyone can upload” meant that this era allowed for a new variety of television, in a range of genres and storytelling modes that were once considered untouchable to television networks (Christian, “The Web” 351). Evidently, such freedom is appealing to all kinds of online content creators, no matter their status. Established actor, comedian, and writer Louis C.K. most recently joined the Web series movement with his creation Horace and Pete (2016-). The dark comedy is written, directed, and produced entirely by C.K. and he plays the main protagonist, Horace. However, the appeal was not so much the control he would potentially have over the product, but more how the viewers could access it. Upon the release of the pilot episode, C.K. released a statement clarifying why he made a series outside of the television studio system. He explains that he was intrigued by the idea of providing viewers with the newly made show “directly and immediately”, with each episode being posted onto his Website as soon as it is shot. Additionally, C.K. also sought to create a show “without the usual promotion” that, he states, tells the viewer “what the show feels and looks like before you get to see it yourself” (C.K.). It is clear that the unique nature of the modern medium provides benefits to creators at all levels. For the Broad City duo, who unlike C.K., had yet to be noticed, YouTube was appealing because it provided them with an outlet through which they could control the product themselves. Jacobson states, “After a while, we thought, ‘why are we trying to be on something that someone else controls?’” (Paumgarten). The Web series commenced in late 2009 and ran until 2011, with each episode ranging anywhere between one and eight minutes. In the thirty-three episodes created, Abbi and Ilana consistently find themselves in awkward and comedic situations while they try to navigate their lives in New York City. These awkward situations vary in their complexity. One episode simply looks at the two protagonists trying to survive riding the subway, while another looks at the issue of being catcalled and objectified by strangers. There is no narrative arc in either season, the storylines are simply extracted from the lives of the creators. Glazer and Jacobson have discussed this in various interviews, explaining that these characters are essentially exaggerations of themselves and the show is a “heightened version” of their dynamic (Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, 2014; Justin; Matthews). As such, Broad City contributes to a well-established trend of comedians impersonating younger, lazier, and poorer versions of themselves. However, since the Web series’ thematic relies so heavily on the experiences and personality traits of the writers, Glazer and Jacobson are more like the characters they portray than the likes of Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon (30 Rock, 2007-2013) or Lena Dunham’s Hannah Horvath (Girls, 2012-), for example. A result is that the Web series does not seek to provide its viewers with neat conclusions, or have the protagonists grow and evolve over the span of a season. This freedom is only designated to the Web series format, as television viewers – despite not always getting it – yearn for a heartier resolution (DeFino 99). Another attribute of video-sharing sites like YouTube is that they allow anyone to share anything they create, regardless of the budget. The two seasons of Broad City, the Web series, are written, created, and produced by Glazer and Jacobson primarily. As they were still undiscovered, both women were working on the series with very limited funds, and were therefore only able to have friends or family assist them in the production. This results in a series which feels authentically home-made in its aesthetic; features which eventually become characteristics essential to the transferral from Web to television. Glazer and Jacobson resolved to make the Web series from a more professional standpoint by the second season by following a production schedule and choosing to treat the vignettes as if they were real television shorts. As Glazer states, the pair “just had a new attitude”, and suddenly the aim shifted from producing webisodes as a creative outlet, to pitching the show in Los Angeles (Kameir). By the time the final episode was set to go into production, the two creators believed that the chances of having the series picked up by a network would increase if the episode featured a guest star. Because of their involvement in the UCB, Glazer and Jacobson approached one of the founders of the sketch group, Amy Poehler, to make a brief cameo. The Web series as a whole had garnered half a million hits, but the finale in which Poehler plays herself, received almost seventy-five thousand (Paumgarten). Poehler agreed to work with the Broad City duo following her appearance in the finale, and signed on to be Executive Producer should the show ever be made into a television series. The star power held by Poehler is undoubtedly a lead contributor to the success in Broad City’s transfer between the media. Poehler states that she felt a kinship towards the project because of her work in translating UCB sketches to television. In a roundtable interview, she says “Feeling very protective about the material, but wanting to bring it to a bigger audience…I related to that and understood it” (The Paley Centre for Media). On the difficult business of bringing Web series to television, Poehler compares it to that of an organ transplant, explaining “You have to move fast. You have to keep it on ice and be careful not to harm it in any way. A lot of things can go wrong. Sometimes the best way to get a heart or a kidney to a recipient is to get people to move out of the way” (Paumgarten). With Poehler’s assistance, the concept of Broad City as a television series was introduced to various networks before being successfully picked up by Comedy Central. From January of 2014, the network aired Broad City’s first season, comprised of ten, twenty-two-minute-long episodes. Averaging 1.2 million viewers per episode, season one of Broad City became one of Comedy Central’s highest rated shows since 2012 (Ng). From Web to TV: Alternative Ideas of Millennial Women in Broad CityThe factors behind why certain texts effectively transfer from Web to television and others fail continues to be debated within academic and popular culture circles. Series such as Quarterlife (2007), The CollegeHumor Show (2009), and the more recent Haters Back Off (2016-) - all texts which were originally made for online consumption only - were each met with criticism when translated for television (Peirce 317; Lowry; Christian, “How” ). This does not necessarily mean that a Web series is undeserving of a place in commercial or network television. Obviously, it comes down to multiple factors, but often it is because the television series comes across as out of touch, compared to its online version. As Alice points out, with the speed of online release, and the “virality” that accompanies this kind of media, writers have the ability to be “guided by and to capitalise on what and how the viewer public feels” (60). Television series are often seen commenting on outside criticism within episodes, but there is extensive lagging due to the time it takes to produce a season. Broad City was set to have an easier time on television, what with its impressive following, and “Celebrity Shepherd”, Amy Poehler - Poehler presented as a necessity when making the jump from Web to TV, according to Christian (“The Web”). But there appears to be a fine line when shifting between the platforms: in staying too close to the original, a series could come off as unoriginal and therefore unnecessary. Or, alternatively, a series could add too many other storylines in order to fill the time slot, and ruin the simplicity of the premise. Adaptation theorist, Linda Hutcheon, contends that a successful translation occurs when a text remains loyal to the original, but brings creativity to the reimagining (21). If investigating the transferral within the realm of adaptation theory, Broad City’s success as a television series is arguably due to it following this formula. Hutcheon writes that to adapt is not to slavishly copy, but rather, is the process of reclaiming the adapted material. “What one does with the text” is where the novelty is found (21). In looking at what Broad City, the television series, has done with Broad City, the Web series, there is clear loyalty shown to the original. This is seen most significantly in the treatment of the same two protagonists, and the dynamic of their friendship. In both versions of Broad City, Abbi is the older of the two and the more responsible one, to a degree. While she still enjoys smoking marijuana with Ilana, Abbi is also constantly striving to reach traditional goals in her life such as having a career she enjoys, or maintaining a healthy relationship. Ilana, on the other hand, is a proud marijuana enthusiast who occasionally shows up for her job, but cares more for smoking weed, enjoying casual sex, and being with her friends (primarily Abbi). Neither the Web series nor the television series explicitly states how the two characters met, but it is implied that they have built a strong, sister-like relationship with one another. Often Ilana comments on her sexual attraction to Abbi, but it is always seen as comedic rather than as a hint towards a possible coupling in future episodes. In the Web series’ second season, the episode Valentine’s Day, introduces this satirical take on female friendships for the first time. The three-minute episode shows brief cuts of Abbi and Ilana doing various activities in the city, all of which are stereotypically featured in films of the romantic comedy genre. As they play in the snow, ride a ferry, and watch couples ice-skate at the Rockefeller Centre, the clarinet music playing over the sequence builds momentum. However, the scene is suddenly halted as Ilana goes in to kiss Abbi and, unlike in said romantic film montages, Abbi quickly jolts back and cries “Ilana, what the fuck? How many times do I have to fucking tell you?” This is the first line of audible dialogue in the scene thus far, to which a frustrated Ilana responds, “I’m trying to seal the night with a kiss.” Following this is a heated debate regarding how each character viewed the intention of the day, with Ilana thinking it was a really “romantic day”, despite knowing that Abbi is decidedly heterosexual. This kind of satirical angle taken towards the trope of female friendship is carried over to the television series and made just as prominent, with almost every single episode making a joke at Ilana’s romantic desire for Abbi. Alongside the sexual attraction, the closeness of the two female leads remains unchanged between the two media. In the television series, for example, jokes about Ilana’s love for Abbi are scattered throughout, and as in the original series, they remain brief and inconsequential. In the television pilot, What a Wonderful World, the episode opens to a typical scene of the two characters having a V-chat (a nod to a favoured motif in the Web series). While chatting to Abbi, it initially appears as though Ilana is bopping up and down to the music of Lil Wayne. However, it is quickly revealed when Ilana shifts her laptop screen down, that she is actually having sex with her casual partner, Lincoln (Hannibal Buress). The sequence cuts to Abbi looking outraged at her laptop, asking “Oh my god, is that Lincoln?”. Lincoln then replies, “Yep”, just before the camera cuts to him lying on the bed, with Ilana’s laptop on his stomach. When Abbi asks if they are having sex, Ilana casually replies “I’m just keeping it warm”, forcing Abbi to once again have a discussion about boundaries. Once they close the V-chat, the scene stays on a low angle shot of Ilana as she says to Lincoln, “That was like a threesome”, reassuring the audience that she has learned nothing. This is a strong opening scene as it reinforces the understanding that the relationship between the two characters is unchanged. Furthermore, it proves to audiences that although Broad City has moved into a television landscape, it will not be tamed. The result of refusing to be tamed in its new environment is that Broad City can continue representing female friendship in more honest ways, as well as offer new ideas of what it is to be a millennial woman today.Conclusion In an interview, Glazer explains how television has a history of never being honest in its representation of women, arguing, “Nothing’s real on TV” (Miller). Jacobson follows on from this, stating “When we write for these characters… I think the thing we talk about the most is like, well, what would we really do? It’s just real” (Miller). In abiding by this sentiment throughout the web series and the television series, Broad City effectively offers the idea that depicting diversity is possible on both platforms. With various Web series still unable to successfully make the jump to television today, it becomes more obvious that Broad City’s decision to continue showcasing bold female narratives is what allows it to maintain its popularity. Starting in such an uninhibited environment has proven a burden for other texts when it comes to transferring creativity to the more traditional medium of television. For Broad City, however, the alternative storytelling platform allowed the show to create its strong foundation and dedicated fan base. One that has willingly followed Broad City across the platforms, but will only stay tuned if it stays true to representing millennial women honestly, regardless of whether mainstream television is ready.ReferencesAlice, Jessica. “Clicking with Audiences: Web Series and Diverse Representations.” Metro Magazine: Media and Education 187 (2016): 58-63.Angelo, Megan. “The Sneak Attack Feminism of Broad City.” Wall Street Journal, 2011. 17 Dec. 2016 <http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2011/02/14/the-sneak-attack-feminism-of-broad-city/>. Blay, Zeba, “How Feminist TV Became the New Normal.” Huffington Post, 2015. 15 Dec. 2016. <http://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/how-feminist-tv-became-the-new-normal_n_7567898>. Broad City. Comedy Central. New York City. 22 Jan. 2014. Television.“Broad City: Smart Girls w/ Amy Poehler.” YouTube. Uploaded by Amy Poehler’s Smart Girls, 17 May 2013. 15 Dec. 2016 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gd0Lovd4Xv0>.Christian, Aymar Jean. “How Does a Web Series Jump to TV?” IndieWire 2014. 2 Dec. 2016. 15 Dec. 2016 <http://www.indiewire.com/2014/02/how-does-a-web-series-jump-to-tv-29618/>. ———. “The Web as Television Reimagined? Online Networks and the Pursuit of Legacy Media.” Journal of Communication Enquiry 36.4 (2012): 340-356.C.K., Louis. “On Horace and Pete.” LouisCK 2016. 2 Jan. 2017 <https://louisck.net/news/about-horace-and-pete>. DeFino, D.J. The HBO Effect. Sydney: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014. De Moraes, L. "Score One for Old Media." Washington Post, 27 Feb. 2008. 28 Dec. 2016 <www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/27/AR2008022703374.html>. Girls. HBO Time Warner. New York City. 15 Apr. 2012. Television. Haters Back Off. Netflix. Scotts Valley. 14 Oct. 2016. Television. Hutcheon, L. A Theory of Adaptation. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 2013. Kameir, R. “7 Tips for Making a Hit TV Show, According to the Creators of Broad City.” Fader 22 May 2015. 1 Aug. 2016 <http://www.thefader.com/2015/05/22/7-tips-for-making-a-hit-tv-show-according-to-the-creators-of-broad-city>. Kornblum, Janet, “Check Out These Episodes of Webisodes.” USA Today 12 Dec. 2007. 16 Dec. 2016 <http://www.usatoday.com/life/2007-11-12-webisodes-side_N.htm>.Lowry, Brian, “’Haters Back Off’ Doesn’t Earn Much Love on Netflix.” CNN 12 Oct. 2016. 2 Dec. 2016 <http://edition.cnn.com/2016/10/12/entertainment/haters-back-off-review/>.Miller, B. “Broad City Talks Friendship, Feminism, and F*ck/Marry/Kill.” Bust Magazine 2015. 17 Nov. 2016 <http://bust.com/tv/13755-broad-city-talks-friendship-feminism-and-f-ck-marry-kill.html>.Ng, P. “Comedy Central Renews ‘Broad City’ for Second Season.” Hollywood Reporter 2014. 1 Aug. 2016 <http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/broad-city-renewed-season-2-683083>.Paley Center for Media. “Broad City – Ilana Glazer, Abbi Jacobson, Amy Poehler, and Seth Rogen.” YouTube. Uploaded by The Paley Center for Media, 16 Dec. 2014. 15 Dec. 2016 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ab9AmSk8Yg>.Pierce, Meghan L. “Remediation Theory: Analyzing What Made Quarterlife Successful as an Online Series and Not a Television Series.” Television & New Media 12.4 (2011): 314-325. Quarterlife. NBC. Los Angeles. 26 Feb. 2008. Television.The CollegeHumor Show. MTV. New York City. 8 Feb. 2009. Television. 30 Rock. NBC. Los Angeles. 3 Dec. 2007. Television. “Valentine’s Day.” YouTube. Uploaded by Broad City, 12 Feb. 2011. 15 Dec. 2016 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcoJW2BOs6g&index=1&list=PLA51423997CDEA1DA>. “What a Wonderful World.” Broad City. Comedy Central, 22 Jan. 2014. Television.

Abstract:

To listen to them talk, you'd think most Americans hate television. Everyday discourse about television abounds with condemnation of television content. Television is a wasteland, a stream of idiotic material insulting to the intelligence of the viewer. When people deem a particular program worth watching, they often articulate it in contradistinction to the vast majority of awful stuff out there. This almost universal discourse of condemnation does not mean Americans do not watch television, of course. They do, and they watch a great deal of it. Thus we have a conundrum. If it is so awful, why do people watch television? When Americans construct stories about themselves, they construct themselves as choice--making individuals (Polanyi). Sane, mature Americans are expected to be able to make intelligent choices and to live with the consequences of their choices. How, then, can Americans articulate themselves as television viewers, as individuals who choose to view what is clearly awful stuff? In this paper, I want to discuss 'veging out' as an American category of media viewing that resolves this conundrum. In framing their discourse about watching television in terms of 'veging out,' Americans are able to construct themselves as sensible, choice--making persons, and yet explain why they watch large amounts of television. I want to use this example to explore ways that media scholars might supplement explorations of the self as mediated by texts with attention to the ways the viewing self is articulated in everyday discourses about television by viewers. An American Folk Category of Pleasure I said I'm sorry this is late. I just couldn't work on it over the weekend. I just veged out in front of the TV the whole weekend. I realise that's not much of an excuse…but…I had my Arabic test Thursday and I was too burned out afterward to do anything. I had to let my brain recharge. [text one] Let's just veg out tonight. We both had a big lunch, let's just make some popcorn and watch whatever stupid stuff is on TV. Unless you want to get a video. [text two] God, we didn't do anything this weekend. We just sat in front of the TV. (laughs) It was a total veg out weekend, we ordered out every night. John was on the rig for two weeks and then he's had to work late every night since he's been back, and I've had this activity and that activity with the kids, and girl scouts and soccer... We really needed the break. [text three] In the interest of brevity, I offer only three texts here.1 Anyone who has listened to Americans talk about television can probably multiply these examples many times; most Americans of my generation or later have almost certainly been producers of such discourse at one time or another. Each of these examples is drawn from a different context: a student's explanation for handing in a late paper [text one], a wife's suggestion for evening plans [text two], a friend sharing information about her family [text three]. And each is part of the language of experience – the language people use to describe emotions, sensations, and thoughts and, in so doing, articulate a self. 'Veging out' -- the 'veg--' prefix is borrowed from the word 'vegetable' and pronounced with a soft g -- is a nice example of a local taxonomic category of pleasure and the way it is embedded in more complex discursive formations, which it both replicates and refracts. In American society, where sitting in front of the television when there are other things to do is condemned as a waste of time that makes one a 'couch potato,' 'veging out' allows actors to reconstitute 'being a vegetable' as an empowering choice, an intentional and temporary vegetative state one escapes into as a means to relax, reduce stress and 'get away' from one's troubles. Veging out involves escape but specifies that one is escaping to nowhere, that an avoidance of critical mental activity is precisely what is sought. The claim to be veging out thus accepts the general American public discourse of television as a wasteland – the 'waste' in particular involving waste of time -- and simultaneously challenges it by claiming, in essence, that one has a right to do nothing if one has been working 'too hard'. There is nothing fanciful or even insightful in this analysis; discourses in which Americans talk about their television viewing activity tend to be both straightforward and redundant. Americans who say they spent an evening veging out are likely to follow the statement with an explanation of why they are entitled to veg out -- a litany of stresses or labours -- and sometimes also assertions to confirm that the world they escaped to was indeed a place that involved minimal mental activity. For example, the student in Text One quoted above followed it up with the comment, 'There was absolutely nothing on worth watching'. The woman who produced Text Three commented a few lines later, 'It was practically all commercials, nothing could hold my interest because it was always being interrupted. I hardly ever watch TV, I hadn't realised how many commercials there are'. This latter comment also positions the activity as a rare one for this person, emphasising the strategic nature of veging out as a life choice and hence acceptable within American understandings of choice.2 People's own modes of articulation may thus even deny their motivations involve pleasure.3 Choosing to enter the wasteland of television certainly can be, and often is, constructed as a bad choice. As Beeman demonstrates in his analysis of the language of choice in American advertising, making a choice is often constituted as not enough -- one must make the 'right' choice. Discourse about 'veging out' partly forecloses the possibility of the instance described being a bad choice by embedding the choice in the matrix of suffering. Yet as Carbaugh discovers in his sociolinguistic appraisal of TV talk shows, doing something 'wrong' can nonetheless be valorised in America by its formulation as a deliberate exercise of one's right to choose. The moral wrongness of the particular choice is redeemed by the articulation of a self exercising its right to make its own choices, and taking responsibility for those choices. The power of 'veging out' as a representation of social action thus lies in its ability to simultaneously embrace the widespread discourse that 'television is a wasteland' while at the same time subsuming it under the important American discourse of choice. In so doing, it allows Americans to construct themselves as hard--working individuals who choose to waste time as a strategy for resolving the stresses and discomforts of hard work. One articulates a viewing self, that is, which is consonant with the fundamental values of American culture. The Viewing Self The 'viewing self' is that self, or that aspect of the self, constructed through experiences of viewing events and activities in which the person is not a participant. In the contemporary world, such viewing has increased as an activity, accommodated and mediated by film, television, video and other technologies. These technologies offer, among other things, the opportunity for virtual experiences, events and activities that we do not experience with our bodies but which nonetheless offer us comparable fodder for our cognitive processes (Drummond). Studies of the self as viewer have long been dominated in media studies by attention to these virtual experiences as internal. From the early argument that the self is 'interpellated' by the culture industry (Adorno), to the argument that the self is socially and politically positioned in dominated, negotiating or resistant ways (Hall), to the idea of the self as simultaneously occupying multiple (and shifting) spectator positions (Modleski, Williams, Clover, Caton), emphasis has long been on how the viewer experiences structured sets of symbols, appropriates them at various levels of cohesion, cognitively and affectively orders them with regard to pre--existing understandings of and feelings about the world, and uses them in the ongoing construction of the self. I am suggesting here the utility of turning our attention from internal to external articulations of self as viewer. I want to argue that in addition to engaging with the content of the viewing experience, people usually engage with the meaning of the viewing experience as an activity. The viewing experience is never just about engagement with content about what one watches. It is also about the activities of 'watching TV,' 'renting a video,' and 'going to the movies.' Each of these is an experience that must be internally evaluated with regard to one's pre--existing sense of self, and which may have to be verbally articulated in interaction with others. In the latter case, it provides yet more fodder for the construction of the self, as we see versions of ourselves mirrored in the responses of the other to our own self--performance. Given the plethora of media, genres, places and events in which visual media are watched, speaking with others about one's television viewing maps one onto a complex terrain of distinctions about one's taste. One's 'taste' is never innocent, because it ties in to a complex social code that relates it to class, gender, ethnicity, education, and other social categories (Bourdieu). To represent ourselves to others as viewers of any particular kind of media is to position ourselves as particular kinds of persons in relation to others. One can use this code to articulate oneself as a particular kind of person vis--à--vis those with whom one is interacting: an equal who shares common tastes, a superior who enjoys more refined discernment, a populist who revels in his or her common tastes. To speak of our viewing allows us to generate social contact on grounds of shared experience. It allows us to confirm our tastes with regard to the social others who serve as mirrors to our selves. Of course, persons are never omnicompetent in their self--presentations, and efforts to present the self in particular ways can backfire, so that instead of appearing as a woman of discernment one appears pompous; and instead of appearing as a common Joe, one comes across as vulgar. Talking about viewing, in other words, always involves risk. In examining how people manage this risk in their social interactions, as through framing their experience as 'veging out,' we can learn much about how people construct themselves as viewers. Conclusion 'Veging out' is not the only verbal strategy by means of which Americans solve the conundrum of the viewing self. Nor is there anything unique in this American conundrum. Ethnographic accounts clearly demonstrate that many societies offer public condemnatory discourses about television that are at odds with actual viewing practices. The content of television in Belize is 'destroying a whole generation' (Wilk), in Egypt it's a flood of 'moral pollution' (Armbrust), in the Netherlands it's 'an embarrassment' (Alasuutaari). People's ways of speaking about themselves as viewers are clearly often a result of an ambivalence born of their pleasure, on the one hand, and their understanding that one should not be getting pleasure from such stuff, on the other. The result is often discourse that expresses guilt, or embarrassment, as summed up by Alasuutari's informant who said 'I'm ashamed to admit it, but I watch Dallas.' Alasuutari's reliance on interviewing, though, captures the conundrum but not the cultural solutions. An interview with a sociologist is a very different kind of speech act from the quotidian contexts in which people construct themselves as television viewers in interaction with friends, family, the person sitting next to you at the bar, and so forth (Briggs). My objective in this brief exercise is to draw our attention away from interviewing toward ethnography, and away from attention to internal subjectivities to the interactive contexts in which the self is constructed in everyday life. Notes 1 These three examples were all collected among American expatriates while I was teaching at the American University in Cairo. 2 Individual performances of this discourse are always strategic, of course; their articulation shaped by the speakers understanding of the speech event in which they take place. 3 The American discomfort with spending one's leisure pleasurably has been long chronicled. As early as the 1920s the Lynds found the people of Middletown uncomfortable with talking about reading for pleasure rather than instruction and profit. People did not want to articulate themselves as persons who wasted time (Lynd and Lynd 1929: 225) References Adorno, Theodor. 'The Culture Industry Reconsidered.' The Adorno Reader. Ed. Brian O'Connor. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000. 230-38. Alasuutari, Pertti. ''I'm Ashamed to Admit it, but I have Watched Dallas:' The Moral Hierarchy of Television Programmes.' Media, Culture and Society 14 (1992): 561-582. Armbrust, Walter. Mass Culture and Modernisation in Egypt. Cambridge: University Press, 1996. Beeman, William O. 'Freedom to Choose: Symbolic Values in American Advertising.' The Symbolisation of America. Ed. Herve Varenne. Omaha: University of Nebraska Press, 1986 Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1984. Briggs, Charles. Learning How to Ask: A Sociolinguistic Appraisal of the Role of the Interview in Social Science Research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Carbaugh, Donal. Talking American: Cultural Discourses on Donahue. Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1989. Caton, Steven C. Lawrence of Arabia: a Film's Anthropology. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Clover, Carol. Men, Women, and Chain Saws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Drummond, Lee. American Dreamtime: A Cultural Analysis of Popular Movies and Their Implications for a Science of Humanity. Lanham, MD: Littlefield Adams, 1995. Hall, Stuart. 'Culture, the Media and the 'Ideological Effect.' ' Mass Communication and Society. Ed. James Curran, Michael Gurevitch and Janet Woolacott. London: Edward Arnold, 1977. - - - . 'The Rediscovery of 'Ideology:' The Return of the Repressed in Media Studies. Culture, Society and the Media. Ed. Michael Gurevitch, T. Bennett, James Curran and Janet Woolacott. London: Methuen, 1982. Modleski, Tania. The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Analysis. New York: Routledge, 1988 Polanyi, Livia. Telling the American Story. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1989 Wilk, Richard. ''It's Destroying a Whole Generation:' Television and Moral Discourse in Belize.' Visual Anthropology 5 (1995): 229-44. Williams, Linda. Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Peterson, Mark Allen. "Choosing the Wasteland" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.5 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Peterson.html &gt. Chicago Style Peterson, Mark Allen, "Choosing the Wasteland" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 5 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Peterson.html &gt ([your date of access]). APA Style Peterson, Mark Allen. (2002) Choosing the Wasteland. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(5). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0210/Peterson.html &gt ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

The pop cultural moment that most typifies the social psychology of invasion for many of us is Orson Welles's 1938 coast to coast CBS radio broadcast of Invaders from Mars, a narration based on H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds. News bulletins and scene broadcasts followed Welles's introduction, featuring, in contemporary journalistic style, reports of a "meteor" landing near Princeton, N.J., which "killed" 1500 people, and the discovery that it was in fact a "metal cylinder" containing strange creatures from Mars armed with "death rays" which would reduce all the inhabitants of the earth to space dust. Welles's broadcast caused thousands to believe that Martians were wreaking widespread havoc in New York and Jersey. New York streets were filled with families rushing to open spaces protecting their faces from the "gas raids", clutching sacred possessions and each other. Lines of communication were clogged, massive traffic jams ensued, and people evacuated their homes in a state of abject terror while armouries in neighbouring districts prepared to join in the "battle". Some felt it was a very cruel prank, especially after the recent war scare in Europe that featured constant interruption of regular radio programming. Many of the thousands of questions directed at police in the hours following the broadcast reflected the concerns of the residents of London and Paris during the tense days before the Munich agreement. The media had undergone that strange metamorphosis that occurs when people depend on it for information that affects themselves directly. But it was not a prank. Three separate announcements made during the broadcast stressed its fictional nature. The introduction to the program stated "the Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells", as did the newspaper listing of the program "Today: 8:00-9:00 -- Play: H.G. Wells's 'War of the Worlds' -- WABC". Welles, rather innocently, wanted to play with the conventions of broadcasting and grant his audience a bit of legitimately unsettling, though obviously fictitious, verisimilitude. There are not too many instances in modern history where we can look objectively at such incredible reactions to media soundbytes. That evening is a prototype for the impact media culture can have on an audience whose minds are prepped for impending disaster. The interruption of scheduled radio invoked in the audience a knee-jerk response that dramatically illustrated the susceptibility of people to the discourse of invasion, as well as the depth of the relationship between the audience and media during tense times. These days, the media itself are often regarded as the invaders. The endless procession of information that grows alongside technology's ability to present it is feared as much as it is loved. In the current climate of information and technological overload, invasion has swum from the depths of our unconscious paranoia and lurks impatiently in the shallows. There is so much invasion and so much to feel invaded about: the war in Kosovo (one of over sixty being fought today) is getting worse with the benevolence and force of the UN dwindling in a cloud of bureaucracy and failed talks, Ethiopia and Eritrea are going at it again, the ideology of the Olympic Games in Sydney has gone from a positive celebration of the millennium to a revenue-generating boys club of back scratchers, Internet smut is still everywhere, and most horrifically, Baywatch came dangerously close to being shot on location on the East Coast of Australia. In this issue of M/C we take a look at literal and allegorical invasions from a variety of cleverly examined aspects of our culture. Firstly, Axel Bruns takes a look a subtle invasion that is occurring on the Web in "Invading the Ivory Tower: Hypertext and the New Dilettante Scholars". He points to the way the Internet's function as a research tool is changing the nature of academic writing due to its interactivity and potential to be manipulated in a way that conventional written material cannot. Axel investigates the web browser's ability to invade the text and the elite world of academic publishing via the format of hypertext itself rather than merely through ideas. Felicity Meakins's article Shooting Baywatch: Resisting Cultural Invasion examines media and community reactions to the threat of having the television series Baywatch shot on Australian beaches. Felicity looks at the cultural cringe that has surrounded the relationship between Australia and America over the years and is manifested by our response to American accents in the media. American cultural imperialism has come to signify a great deal in the dwindling face of Aussie institutions like mateship and egalitarianism. In a similarly driven piece called "A Decolonising Doctor? British SF Invasion Narratives", Nick Caldwell investigates some of the implications of the "Britishness" of the cult television series Doctor Who, where insularity and cultural authority are taken to extremes during the ubiquitous intergalactic invasions. Paul Mc Cormack's article "Screen II: The Invasion of the Attention Snatchers" turns from technologically superior invaders to an invasion by technology itself -- he considers how the television has irreversibly invaded our lives and claimed a dominant place in the domestic sphere. Recently, the (Internet-connected) personal computer has begun a similar invasion: what space will it eventually claim? Sandra Brunet's "Is Sustainable Tourism Really Sustainable? Protecting the Icon in the Commodity at Sites of Invasion" explores the often forgotten Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia. She looks at ways in which the image of the island is constructed by the government and media for eco-tourism and how faithful this representation is to the farmers, fishermen and other inhabitants of the island. Paul Starr's article "Special Effects and the Invasive Camera: Enemy of the State and The Conversation" rounds off the issue with a look at the troubled relationship between cutting-edge special effects in Hollywood action movies and the surveillance technologies that recent movies such as Enemy of the State show as tools in government conspiracies. The depiction of high-tech gadgetry as 'cool' and 'evil' at the same time, he writes, leads to a collapse of meaning. This issue of M/C succeeds in pointing out sites of invasion in unusual places, continuing the journal's tradition of perception in the face of new media culture. I hope you enjoy this second issue of the second volume: 'invasion'. Ben King 'Invasion' Issue Editor Citation reference for this article MLA style: Ben King. "Editorial: 'Invasion'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.2 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/edit.php>. Chicago style: Ben King, "Editorial: 'Invasion'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 2 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/edit.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Ben King. (1999) Editorial: 'invasion'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(2). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/edit.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

Cyborgs already walk among us. (“Cures to Come” 76) This essay was begun as a reaction to a Hallmark Hall of Fame television movie called Sweet Nothing in My Ear (2008), which follows the lives of two parents, Dan, who is hearing (played by Jeff Daniels), and Laura, who is deaf (Marlee Matlin), as they struggle to make a decision about whether or not to give their 11-year-old son, Adam (late-deafened), a cochlear implant. Dan and Laura represent different perspectives, hearing and deaf perspectives. The film dramatizes the parents’ conflict and negotiation, exposing audiences to both sides of the cochlear implant debate, albeit in a fairly simplistic way. Nevertheless, it represents the lives of deaf people and gives voice to debates about cochlear implants with more accuracy and detail than most film and television dramas. One of the central scenes in the film is what I call the “activation scene”, quite common to cochlear implant narratives. In the scene, the protagonists witness a child having his implant activated or turned on. The depiction is reminiscent of the WATER scene in the film about Helen Keller, The Miracle Worker, employing a sentimental visual rhetoric. First, the two parents are shown seated near the child, clasping their hands as if in prayer. The audiologist, wielder of technology and therefore clearly the authority figure in the scene, types away furiously on her laptop. At the moment of being “turned on,” the child suddenly “hears” his father calling “David! David!” He gazes angelically toward heaven as piano music plays plaintively in the background. The parents all but fall to their knees and the protagonist of the film, Dan, watching through a window, weeps. It is a scene of cure, of healing, of “miracle,” a hyper-sentimentalised portrait of what is in reality often a rather anti-climactic event. It was certainly anti-climactic in my son, Michael’s case. I was taken aback by how this scene was presented and dismayed overall at some of the inaccuracies, small though they were, in the portrayal of cochlear implants in this film. It was, after all, according to the Nielsen ratings, seen by 8 million people. I began to wonder what kinds of misconceptions my son was going to face when he met people whose only exposure to implants was through media representations. Spurred by this question, I started to research other recent portrayals of people with implants on U.S. television in the past ten years, to see how cochlear implant (hereafter referred to as CI) identity has been portrayed by American media. For most of American history, deaf people have been portrayed in print and visual media as exotic “others,” and have long been the subject of an almost morbid cultural fascination. Christopher Krentz suggests that, particularly in the nineteenth century, scenes pairing sentimentality and deafness repressed an innate, Kristevan “abject” revulsion towards deaf people. Those who are deaf highlight and define, through their ‘lack’, the “unmarked” body. The fact of their deafness, understood as lack, conjures up an ideal that it does not attain, the ideal of the so-called “normal” or “whole” body. In recent years, however, the figure of the “deaf as Other” in the media, has shifted from what might be termed the “traditionally” deaf character, to what Brenda Jo Brueggeman (in her recent book Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places), calls “the new deaf cyborg” or the deaf person with a cochlear implant (4). N. Katharine Hailes states that cyborgs are now “the stage on which are performed contestations about the body boundaries that have often marked class, ethnic, and cultural differences” (85). In this essay, I claim that the character with a CI, as portrayed in the media, is now not only a strange, “marked” “Other,” but is also a screen upon which viewers project anxieties about technology, demonstrating both fascination fear. In her book, Brueggeman issues a call to action, saying that Deaf Studies must now begin to examine what she calls “implanting rhetorics,” or “the rhetorical relationships between our technologies and our identity” and therefore needs to attend to the construction of “the new deaf cyborg” (18). This short study will serve, I hope, as both a response to that injunction and as a jumping-off point for more in-depth studies of the construction of the CI identity and the implications of these constructions. First, we should consider what a cochlear implant is and how it functions. The National Association of the Deaf in the United States defines the cochlear implant as a device used to help the user perceive sound, i.e., the sensation of sound that is transmitted past the damaged cochlea to the brain. In this strictly sensorineural manner, the implant works: the sensation of sound is delivered to the brain. The stated goal of the implant is for it to function as a tool to enable deaf children to develop language based on spoken communication. (“NAD Position”) The external portion of the implant consists of the following parts: a microphone, which picks up sound from the environment, which is contained in the behind-the-ear device that resembles the standard BTE hearing aid; in this “hearing aid” there is also a speech processor, which selects and arranges sounds picked up by the microphone. The processor transmits signals to the transmitter/receiver, which then converts them into electric impulses. Part of the transmitter sits on the skin and attaches to the inner portion of the transmitter by means of a magnet. The inner portion of the receiver/stimulator sends the impulses down into the electrode array that lies inside the cochlea, which in turn stimulates the auditory nerve, giving the brain the impression of sound (“Cochlear Implants”). According to manufacturer’s statistics, there are now approximately 188,000 people worldwide who have obtained cochlear implants, though the number of these that are in use is not known (Nussbaum). That is what a cochlear implant is. Before we can look at how people with implants are portrayed in the media, before we examine constructions of identity, perhaps we should first ask what constitutes a “real” CI identity? This is, of course, laughable; pinning down a homogeneous CI identity is no more likely than finding a blanket definition of “deaf identity.” For example, at this point in time, there isn’t even a word or term in American culture for someone with an implant. I struggle with how to phrase it in this essay - “implantee?” “recipient?” - there are no neat labels. In the USA you can call a person deaf, Deaf (the “D” representing a specific cultural and political identity), hearing impaired, hard of hearing, and each gradation implies, for better or worse, some kind of subject position. There are no such terms for a person who gets an implant. Are people with implants, as suggested above, just deaf? Deaf? Are they hard of hearing? There is even debate in the ASL community as to what sign should be used to indicate “someone who has a cochlear implant.” If a “CI identity” cannot be located, then perhaps the rhetoric that is used to describe it may be. Paddy Ladd, in Understanding Deaf Culture, does a brilliant job of exploring the various discourses that have surrounded deaf culture throughout history. Stuart Blume borrows heavily from Ladd in his “The Rhetoric and Counter-Rhetoric of a 'Bionic' Technology”, where he points out that an “essential and deliberate feature” of the history of the CI from the 60s onward, was that it was constructed in an overwhelmingly positive light by the mass media, using what Ladd calls the “medical” rhetorical model. That is, that the CI is a kind of medical miracle that promised to cure deafness. Within this model one may find also the sentimental, “missionary” rhetoric that Krentz discusses, what Ladd claims is a revival of the evangelism of the nineteenth-century Oralist movement in America. Indeed, newspaper articles in the 1980s and 90s hailed the implant as a “breakthrough”, a “miracle”; even a quick survey of headlines shows evidence of this: “Upton Boy Can Hear at Last!”, “Girl with a New Song in Her Heart”, “Children Head Queue for Bionic Ears” (Lane). As recently as January 2010, an issue of National Geographic featured on its cover the headline Merging Man and Machine: The Bionic Age. Sure enough, the second photograph in the story is of a child’s bilateral cochlear implant, with the caption “within months of the surgery (the child) spoke the words his hearing parents longed for: Mama and Dada.” “You’re looking at a real bionic kid,” says Johns Hopkins University surgeon John Niparko, proudly (37). To counter this medical/corporate rhetoric of cure, Ladd and Blume claim, the deaf community devised a counter-rhetoric, a discourse in which the CI is not cast in the language of miracle and life, but instead in terms of death, mutilation, and cultural oppression. Here, the implant is depicted as the last in a long line of sadistic experiments using the deaf as guinea pigs. Often the CI is framed in the language of Nazism and genocide as seen in the title of an article in the British Deaf News: “Cochlear Implants: Oralism’s Final Solution.” So, which of these two “implanting rhetorics” is most visible in the current construction of the CI in American television? Is the CI identity presented by rendering people with CIs impossibly positive, happy characters? Is it delineated using the metaphors of the sentimental, of cure, of miracle? Or is the CI identity constructed using the counter-rhetorical references to death, oppression and cultural genocide? One might hypothesize that television, like other media, cultivating as it does the values of the hearing hegemony, would err on the side of promulgating the medicalised, positivist rhetoric of the “cure” for deafness. In an effort to find out, I conducted a general survey of American television shows from 2000 to now that featured characters with CIs. I did not include news shows or documentaries in my survey. Interestingly, some of the earliest television portrayals of CIs appeared in that bastion of American sentimentality, the daytime soap opera. In 2006, on the show “The Young and the Restless”, a “troubled college student who contracted meningitis” received an implant, and in 2007 “All My Children” aired a story arc about a “toddler who becomes deaf after a car crash.” It is interesting to note that both characters were portrayed as “late-deafened”, or suddenly inflicted with the loss of a sense they previously possessed, thus avoiding any whiff of controversy about early implantation. But one expects a hyper-sentimentalised portrayal of just about everything in daytime dramas like this. What is interesting is that when people with CIs have appeared on several “reality” programs, which purport to offer “real,” unadulterated glimpses into people’s lives, the rhetoric is no less sentimentalized than the soaps (perhaps because these shows are no less fabricated). A good example of this is the widely watched and, I think, ironically named show “True Life” which appears on MTV. This is a series that claims to tell the “remarkable real-life stories of young people and the unusual subcultures they inhabit.” In episode 42, “ True Life: I’m Deaf”, part of the show follows a young man, Chris, born deaf and proud of it (his words), who decides to get a cochlear implant because he wants to be involved in the hearing world. Through an interpreter Chris explains that he wants an implant so he can communicate with his friends, talk with girls, and ultimately fulfill his dreams of having a job and getting married (one has to ask: are these things he can’t do without an implant?). The show’s promo asks “how do you go from living a life in total silence to fully understanding the spoken language?” This statement alone contains two elements common to the “miracle” rhetoric, first that the “tragic” deaf victim will emerge from a completely lonely, silent place (not true; most deaf people have some residual hearing, and if you watch the show you see Chris signing, “speaking” voluminously) to seamlessly, miraculously, “fully” joining and understanding the hearing world. Chris, it seems, will only come into full being when he is able to join the hearing world. In this case, the CI will cure what ails him. According to “True Life.” Aside from “soap opera” drama and so-called reality programming, by far the largest dissemination of media constructions of the CI in the past ten years occurred on top-slot prime-time television shows, which consist primarily of the immensely popular genre of the medical and police procedural drama. Most of these shows have at one time or another had a “deaf” episode, in which there is a deaf character or characters involved, but between 2005 and 2008, it is interesting to note that most, if not all of the most popular of these have aired episodes devoted to the CI controversy, or have featured deaf characters with CIs. The shows include: CSI (both Miami and New York), Cold Case, Law and Order (both SVU and Criminal Intent), Scrubs, Gideon’s Crossing, and Bones. Below is a snippet of dialogue from Bones: Zach: {Holding a necklace} He was wearing this.Angela: Catholic boy.Brennan: One by two forceps.Angela {as Brennan pulls a small disc out from behind the victim’s ear} What is that?Brennan: Cochlear implant. Looks like the birds were trying to get it.Angela: That would set a boy apart from the others, being deaf.(Bones, “A Boy in the Tree”, 1.3, 2005) In this scene, the forensics experts are able to describe significant points of this victim’s identity using the only two solid artifacts left in the remains, a crucifix and a cochlear implant. I cite this scene because it serves, I believe, as a neat metaphor for how these shows, and indeed television media in general, are, like the investigators, constantly engaged in the business of cobbling together identity: in this particular case, a cochlear implant identity. It also shows how an audience can cultivate or interpret these kinds of identity constructions, here, the implant as an object serves as a tangible sign of deafness, and from this sign, or clue, the “audience” (represented by the spectator, Angela) immediately infers that the victim was lonely and isolated, “set apart from the others.” Such wrongheaded inferences, frivolous as they may seem coming from the realm of popular culture, have, I believe, a profound influence on the perceptions of larger society. The use of the CI in Bones is quite interesting, because although at the beginning of the show the implant is a key piece of evidence, that which marks and identifies the dead/deaf body, the character’s CI identity proves almost completely irrelevant to the unfolding of the murder-mystery. The only times the CI character’s deafness is emphasized are when an effort is made to prove that the he committed suicide (i.e., if you’re deaf you are therefore “isolated,” and therefore you must be miserable enough to kill yourself). Zak, one of the forensics officers says, “I didn’t talk to anyone in high school and I didn’t kill myself” and another officer comments that the boy was “alienated by culture, by language, and by his handicap” (odd statements, since most deaf children with or without implants have remarkably good language ability). Also, in another strange moment, the victim’s ambassador/mother shows a video clip of the child’s CI activation and says “a person who lived through this miracle would never take his own life” (emphasis mine). A girlfriend, implicated in the murder (the boy is killed because he threatened to “talk”, revealing a blackmail scheme), says “people didn’t notice him because of the way he talked but I liked him…” So at least in this show, both types of “implanting rhetoric” are employed; a person with a CI, though the recipient of a “miracle,” is also perceived as “isolated” and “alienated” and unfortunately, ends up dead. This kind of rather negative portrayal of a person with a CI also appears in the CSI: New York episode ”Silent Night” which aired in 2006. One of two plot lines features Marlee Matlin as the mother of a deaf family. At the beginning of the episode, after feeling some strange vibrations, Matlin’s character, Gina, checks on her little granddaughter, Elizabeth, who is crying hysterically in her crib. She finds her daughter, Alison, dead on the floor. In the course of the show, it is found that a former boyfriend, Cole, who may have been the father of the infant, struggled with and shot Alison as he was trying to kidnap the baby. Apparently Cole “got his hearing back” with a cochlear implant, no longer considered himself Deaf, and wanted the child so that she wouldn’t be raised “Deaf.” At the end of the show, Cole tries to abduct both grandmother and baby at gunpoint. As he has lost his external transmitter, he is unable to understand what the police are trying to tell him and threatens to kill his hostages. He is arrested in the end. In this case, the CI recipient is depicted as a violent, out of control figure, calmed (in this case) only by Matlin’s presence and her ability to communicate with him in ASL. The implication is that in getting the CI, Cole is “killing off” his Deaf identity, and as a result, is mentally unstable. Talking to Matlin, whose character is a stand-in for Deaf culture, is the only way to bring him back to his senses. The October 2007 episode of CSI: Miami entitled “Inside-Out” is another example of the counter-rhetoric at work in the form of another implant corpse. A police officer, trying to prevent the escape of a criminal en route to prison, thinks he has accidentally shot an innocent bystander, a deaf woman. An exchange between the coroner and a CSI goes as follows: (Alexx Woods): “This is as innocent as a victim gets.”(Calleigh Duquesne): “How so?”AW: Check this out.”CD: “I don’t understand. Her head is magnetized? Steel plate?”AW: “It’s a cochlear implant. Helps deaf people to receive and process speech and sounds.”(CSI dramatization) AW VO: “It’s surgically implanted into the inner ear. Consists of a receiver that decodes and transmits to an electrode array sending a signal to the brain.”CD: “Wouldn’t there be an external component?”AW: “Oh, she must have lost it before she was shot.”CD: “Well, that explains why she didn’t get out of there. She had no idea what was going on.” (TWIZ) Based on the evidence, the “sign” of the implant, the investigators are able to identify the victim as deaf, and they infer therefore that she is innocent. It is only at the end of the program that we learn that the deaf “innocent” was really the girlfriend of the criminal, and was on the scene aiding in his escape. So she is at first “as innocent” as they come, and then at the end, she is the most insidious of the criminals in the episode. The writers at least provide a nice twist on the more common deaf-innocent stereotype. Cold Case showcased a CI in the 2008 episode “Andy in C Minor,” in which the case of a 17-year-old deaf boy is reopened. The boy, Andy, had disappeared from his high school. In the investigation it is revealed that his hearing girlfriend, Emma, convinced him to get an implant, because it would help him play the piano, which he wanted to do in order to bond with her. His parents, deaf, were against the idea, and had him promise to break up with Emma and never bring up the CI again. His body is found on the campus, with a cochlear device next to his remains. Apparently Emma had convinced him to get the implant and, in the end, Andy’s father had reluctantly consented to the surgery. It is finally revealed that his Deaf best friend, Carlos, killed him with a blow to the back of the head while he was playing the piano, because he was “afraid to be alone.” This show uses the counter-rhetoric of Deaf genocide in an interesting way. In this case it is not just the CI device alone that renders the CI character symbolically “dead” to his Deaf identity, but it leads directly to his being literally executed by, or in a sense, excommunicated from, Deaf Culture, as it is represented by the character of Carlos. The “House Divided” episode of House (2009) provides the most problematic (or I should say absurd) representation of the CI process and of a CI identity. In the show, a fourteen-year-old deaf wrestler comes into the hospital after experiencing terrible head pain and hearing “imaginary explosions.” Doctors Foreman and Thirteen dutifully serve as representatives of both sides of the “implant debate”: when discussing why House hasn’t mocked the patient for not having a CI, Thirteen says “The patient doesn’t have a CI because he’s comfortable with who he is. That’s admirable.” Foreman says, “He’s deaf. It’s not an identity, it’s a disability.” 13: “It’s also a culture.” F: “Anything I can simulate with $3 earplugs isn’t a culture.” Later, House, talking to himself, thinks “he’s going to go through life deaf. He has no idea what he’s missing.” So, as usual, without permission, he orders Chase to implant a CI in the patient while he is under anesthesia for another procedure (a brain biopsy). After the surgery the team asks House why he did it and he responds, “Why would I give someone their hearing? Ask God the same question you’d get the same answer.” The shows writers endow House’s character, as they usually do, with the stereotypical “God complex” of the medical establishment, but in doing also they play beautifully into the Ladd and Blume’s rhetoric of medical miracle and cure. Immediately after the implant (which the hospital just happened to have on hand) the incision has, miraculously, healed overnight. Chase (who just happens to be a skilled CI surgeon and audiologist) activates the external processor (normally a months-long process). The sound is overwhelming, the boy hears everything. The mother is upset. “Once my son is stable,” the mom says, “I want that THING out of his head.” The patient also demands that the “thing” be removed. Right after this scene, House puts a Bluetooth in his ear so he can talk to himself without people thinking he’s crazy (an interesting reference to how we all are becoming cyborgs, more and more “implanted” with technology). Later, mother and son have the usual touching sentimental scene, where she speaks his name, he hears her voice for the first time and says, “Is that my name? S-E-T-H?” Mom cries. Seth’s deaf girlfriend later tells him she wishes she could get a CI, “It’s a great thing. It will open up a whole new world for you,” an idea he rejects. He hears his girlfriend vocalize, and asks Thirteen if he “sounds like that.” This for some reason clinches his decision about not wanting his CI and, rather than simply take off the external magnet, he rips the entire device right out of his head, which sends him into shock and system failure. Ultimately the team solves the mystery of the boy’s initial ailment and diagnoses him with sarcoidosis. In a final scene, the mother tells her son that she is having them replace the implant. She says it’s “my call.” This show, with its confusing use of both the sentimental and the counter-rhetoric, as well as its outrageous inaccuracies, is the most egregious example of how the CI is currently being constructed on television, but it, along with my other examples, clearly shows the Ladd/Blume rhetoric and counter rhetoric at work. The CI character is on one hand portrayed as an innocent, infantilized, tragic, or passive figure that is the recipient of a medical miracle kindly urged upon them (or forced upon them, as in the case of House). On the other hand, the CI character is depicted in the language of the counter-rhetoric: as deeply flawed, crazed, disturbed or damaged somehow by the incursions onto their Deaf identity, or, in the worst case scenario, they are dead, exterminated. Granted, it is the very premise of the forensic/crime drama to have a victim, and a dead victim, and it is the nature of the police drama to have a “bad,” criminal character; there is nothing wrong with having both good and bad CI characters, but my question is, in the end, why is it an either-or proposition? Why is CI identity only being portrayed in essentialist terms on these types of shows? Why are there no realistic portrayals of people with CIs (and for that matter, deaf people) as the richly varied individuals that they are? These questions aside, if these two types of “implanting rhetoric”, the sentimentalised and the terminated, are all we have at the moment, what does it mean? As I mentioned early in this essay, deaf people, along with many “others,” have long helped to highlight and define the hegemonic “norm.” The apparent cultural need for a Foucauldian “marked body” explains not only the popularity of crime dramas, but it also could explain the oddly proliferant use of characters with cochlear implants in these particular shows. A person with an implant on the side of their head is definitely a more “marked” body than the deaf person with no hearing aid. The CI character is more controversial, more shocking; it’s trendier, “sexier”, and this boosts ratings. But CI characters are, unlike their deaf predecessors, now serving an additional cultural function. I believe they are, as I claim in the beginning of this essay, screens upon which our culture is now projecting repressed anxieties about emergent technology. The two essentialist rhetorics of the cochlear implant, the rhetoric of the sentimental, medical model, and the rhetoric of genocide, ultimately represent our technophilia and our technophobia. The CI character embodies what Debra Shaw terms a current, “ontological insecurity that attends the interface between the human body and the datasphere” (85). We are growing more nervous “as new technologies shape our experiences, they blur the lines between the corporeal and incorporeal, between physical space and virtual space” (Selfe). Technology either threatens the integrity of the self, “the coherence of the body” (we are either dead or damaged) or technology allows us to transcend the limitations of the body: we are converted, “transformed”, the recipient of a happy modern miracle. In the end, I found that representations of CI on television (in the United States) are overwhelmingly sentimental and therefore essentialist. It seems that the conflicting nineteenth century tendency of attraction and revulsion toward the deaf is still, in the twenty-first century, evident. We are still mired in the rhetoric of “cure” and “control,” despite an active Deaf counter discourse that employs the language of the holocaust, warning of the extermination of yet another cultural minority. We are also daily becoming daily more “embedded in cybernetic systems,” with our laptops, emails, GPSs, PDAs, cell phones, Bluetooths, and the likes. We are becoming increasingly engaged in a “necessary relationship with machines” (Shaw 91). We are gradually becoming no longer “other” to the machine, and so our culturally constructed perceptions of ourselves are being threatened. In the nineteenth century, divisions and hierarchies between a white male majority and the “other” (women, African Americans, immigrants, Native Americans) began to blur. Now, the divisions between human and machine, as represented by a person with a CI, are starting to blur, creating anxiety. Perhaps this anxiety is why we are trying, at least in the media, symbolically to ‘cure’ the marked body or kill off the cyborg. Future examinations of the discourse should, I believe, use these media constructions as a lens through which to continue to examine and illuminate the complex subject position of the CI identity, and therefore, perhaps, also explore what the subject position of the post/human identity will be. References "A Boy in a Tree." Patrick Norris (dir.), Hart Hanson (by), Emily Deschanel (perf.). Bones, Fox Network, 7 Sep. 2005. “Andy in C Minor.” Jeannete Szwarc (dir.), Gavin Harris (by), Kathryn Morris (perf.). Cold Case, CBS Network, 30 March 2008. Blume, Stuart. “The Rhetoric and Counter Rhetoric of a “Bionic” Technology.” Science, Technology and Human Values 22.1 (1997): 31-56. Brueggemann, Brenda Jo. Deaf Subjects: Between Identities and Places. New York: New York UP, 2009. “Cochlear Implant Statistics.” ASL-Cochlear Implant Community. Blog. Citing Laurent Le Clerc National Deaf Education Center. Gallaudet University, 18 Mar. 2008. 29 Apr. 2010 ‹http:/ /aslci.blogspot.com/2008/03/cochlear-implant-statistics.html›. “Cures to Come.” Discover Presents the Brain (Spring 2010): 76. Fischman, Josh. “Bionics.” National Geographic Magazine 217 (2010). “House Divided.” Greg Yaitanes (dir.), Matthew V. Lewis (by), Hugh Laurie (perf.). House, Fox Network, 22 Apr. 2009. “Inside-Out.” Gina Lamar (dir.), Anthony Zuiker (by), David Caruso (perf.). CSI: Miami, CBS Network, 8 Oct. 2007. Krentz, Christopher. Writing Deafness: The Hearing Line in Nineteenth-Century American Literature. Chapel Hill: UNC P, 2007. Ladd, Paddy. Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters Limited, 2002. Lane, Harlan. A Journey Into the Deaf-World. San Diego: DawnSignPress, 1996. “NAD Position Statement on the Cochlear Implant.” National Association of the Deaf. 6 Oct. 2000. 29 April 2010 ‹http://www.nad.org/issues/technology/assistive-listening/cochlear-implants›. Nussbaum, Debra. “Manufacturer Information.” Cochlear Implant Information Center. National Deaf Education Center. Gallaudet University. 29 Apr. 2010 < http://clerccenter.gallaudet.edu >. Shaw, Debra. Technoculture: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg, 2008. “Silent Night.” Rob Bailey (dir.), Anthony Zuiker (by), Gary Sinise (perf.). CSI: New York, CBS Network, 13 Dec. 2006. “Sweet Nothing in My Ear.” Joseph Sargent (dir.), Stephen Sachs (by), Jeff Daniels (perf.). Hallmark Hall of Fame Production, 20 Apr. 2008. TWIZ TV scripts. CSI: Miami, “Inside-Out.” “What Is the Surgery Like?” FAQ, University of Miami Cochlear Implant Center. 29 Apr. 2010 ‹http://cochlearimplants.med.miami.edu/faq/index.asp›.

Abstract:

IntroductionCroquembouche, blast chillers, and plating up—these terms have become normal to ordinary Australians despite Adriano Zumbo’s croquembouche recipe taking more than two hours to complete and blast chillers costing thousands of dollars. Network Ten’s reality talent quest MasterChef Australia (MCA) has brought fine dining and “foodie” culture to a mass audience who have responded enthusiastically. Vicariously “tasting” this once niche lifestyle is empowering viewers to integrate aspects of “foodie” culture into their everyday lives. It helps them become “everyday foodies.” “Everyday foodies” are individuals who embrace and incorporate an appreciation of gourmet food culture into their existing lifestyles, but feel limited by time, money, health, or confidence. So while a croquembouche and blast chiller may be beyond a MCA viewer’s reach, these aspects of “foodie” culture can still be enjoyed via the program. The rise of the “everyday foodie” challenges criticisms of vicarious consumption and negative discourses about reality and lifestyle television. Examining the very different and specific ways in which three MCA-viewing households vicariously experience gourmet food in their adoption of the “everyday foodie” lifestyle will demonstrate the positive value of vicarious consumption through reality and lifestyle programming. A brief background on the MCA phenomenon will be provided before a review of existing literature regarding vicarious consumption and tensions in the reality and lifestyle television field. Three case studies of MCA-viewing households who use vicarious consumption to satisfy “foodie” cravings and broaden their cultural tastes will be presented. Adapted from the United Kingdom’s MasterChef, which has aired since 1990, MCA has proven to be a catalyst for the “cheffing up” of the nation’s food culture. Twenty-odd amateur cooks compete in a series of challenges, guided, and critiqued by judges George Calombaris, Gary Mehigan, and Matt Preston. Contestants are eliminated as they move through a series of challenges, until one cook remains and is crowned the Master Chef of that series. Network Ten’s launch of MCA in 2009 capitalised on the popularity of reality talent quests that grew throughout the 2000s with programs such as Popstars (2000–2002), Australian Idol (2003–2009), X Factor (2005, 2010–) and Australia’s Got Talent (2007–). MCA also captures Australian viewers’ penchant for lifestyle shows including Better Homes and Gardens (1995–), Burke’s Backyard (1987-2004), The Living Room (2012–) and The Block (2003–2004, 2010–). The popularity of these shows, however, does not match the heights of MCA, which has transformed the normal cooking show audience of 200,000 into millions (Greenwood). MCA’s 2010 finale is Australia’s highest rating non-sporting program since OzTAM ratings were introduced in 2001 (Vickery). Anticipating this episode’s popularity, the 2010 Federal Election debate was moved to 6.30pm from its traditional Sunday 7.30pm timeslot (Coorey; Malkin). As well as attracting extensive press coverage and attention in opinion pieces and blogs, the level of academic attention MCA has already received underscores the show’s significance. So far, Lewis (Labours) and Seale have critiqued the involvement of ordinary people as contestants on the show while Phillipov (Communicating, Mastering) explores tensions within the show from a public health angle. While de Solier (TV Dinners, Making the Self, Foodie Makeovers) and Rousseau’s research does not focus on MCA itself, their investigation of Australian foodies and the impact of food media respectively provide relevant discussion about audience relationships with food media and food culture. This article focuses on how audiences use MCA and related programs. Vicarious consumption is presented as a negative practice where the leisure class benefit from another’s productivity (Veblen). Belk presents the simple example that “if our friend lives in an extravagant house or drives an extravagant car, we feel just a bit more extravagant ourselves” (157). Therefore, consuming through another is viewed as a passive activity. In the context of vicariously consuming through MCA, it could be argued that audiences are gaining satisfaction from watching others develop culinary skills and produce gourmet meals. What this article will reveal is that while MCA viewers do gain this satisfaction, they use it in a productive way to discipline their own eating and spending habits, and to allow them to engage with “foodie” culture when it may not otherwise be possible. Rather than embrace the opportunity to understand a new culture or lifestyle, critics of reality and lifestyle television dismiss the empowering qualities of these programs for two reasons. The practice of “advertainment” (Deery 1)—fusing selling and entertainment—puts pressure on, or excludes, the aspirational classes who want, but lack the resources to adopt, the depicted lifestyle (Ouellette and Hay). Furthermore, such programs are criticised for forcing bourgeois consumption habits on its viewers (Lewis, Smart Living) Both arguments have been directed at British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. Oliver’s latest cookbook Save with Jamie has been criticised as it promotes austerity cooking, but costs £26 (approx. 48AUD) and encourages readers to purchase staple ingredients and equipment that total more than £500 (approx. 919AUD) (Ellis-Petersen). Ellis-Petersen adds that the £500 cost uses the cheapest available options, not Oliver’s line of Tefal cooking equipment, “which come at a hefty premium” (7). In 2005, Oliver’s television series Jamie’s School Dinners, which follows his campaign for policy reform in the provision of food to students was met with resistance. 2008 reports claim students preferred to leave school to buy junk food rather than eat healthier fare at school (Rousseau). Parents supported this, providing money to their children rather than packing healthy lunches that would pass school inspections (Rousseau). Like the framing of vicarious consumption, these criticisms dismiss the potential benefits of engaging with different lifestyles and cultures. These arguments do not recognise audiences as active media consumers who use programs like MCA to enhance their lifestyles through the acquisition of cultural capital. Ouellette and Hay highlight that audiences take advantage of a multitude of viewing strategies. One such strategy is playing the role of “vicarious expert” (Ouellette and Hay 117) who judges participants and has their consumption practices reinforced through the show. While audiences are invited to learn, they can do this from a distance and are not obliged to feel as though they must be educated (Ouellette and Hay). Viewers are simply able to enjoy the fantasy and spectacle of food shows as escapes from everyday routines (Lewis, Smart Living). In cases like Emeril Live where the host and chef, Emeril Lagasse “favors [sic] showmanship over instruction” (Adema 115–116) the vicarious consumption of viewing a cooking show is more satisfying than cooking and eating. Another reason vicarious consumption provides pleasure for audiences is because “culinary television aestheticises food,” transforming it “into a delectable image, a form of ‘gastro-porn’ […] designed to be consumed with the eyes” (de Solier, TV Dinners 467). Audiences take advantage of these viewing strategies, using a balance of actual and vicarious consumption in order to integrate gourmet food culture into their pre-existing lifestyle, budget, and cooking ability. The following case studies emerged from research conducted to understand MCA’s impact on households. After shopping with, and interviewing, seven households, the integration of vicarious and actual food consumption habits was evident across three households. Enjoying food images onscreen or in cookbooks is a suitable substitute when actual consumption is unhealthy, too expensive, time consuming, or daunting. It is this balance between adopting consumption habits of a conventional “foodie” and using vicarious consumption in contexts where the viewer sees actual consumption as unreasonable or uncomfortable that makes the “everyday foodie.” Melanie—Health Melanie is 38 years old and works in the childcare industry. She enjoys the “gastro-porn” of MCA and other food media. Interestingly she says food media actually helps her resist eating sumptuous and rich foods: Yeah, like my house is just overrun by cookbooks, cooking magazines. I have Foxtel primarily for the Food Network […] But I know if I cooked it or baked it, I would eat it and I’ve worked too hard to get where I am physically to do that. So I just, I read about it and I watch it, I just don’t do it. This behaviour supports Boulos et al.’s finding that while the Food Network promotes irresponsible consumption habits, these programs are considered a “window into a wider social and cultural world” rather than food preparation guides (150). Using vicarious consumption in this way means Melanie feels she does not “cook as much as what a true foodie would cook,” but she will “have low fat and healthy [options] whenever I can so I can go out and try all the fancy stuff cooked by fancy people.” MCA and food media for Melanie serves a double purpose in that she uses it to restrict, but also aid in her consumption of gourmet food. In choosing a chef or restaurant for the occasions where Melanie wants to enjoy a “fancy” dining experience, she claims food media serves as an educational resource to influence her consumption of gourmet food: I looked up when I was in Sydney where Adriano Zumbo’s shop was to go and try macarons there […] It [MCA] makes me aware of chefs that I may not have been aware of and I may go and … seek that [their restaurants/establishments] out […] Would Adriano Zumbo be as big as he is without MasterChef? No. And I’m a sucker, I want to go and try, I want to know what everyone’s talking about. Melanie’s attitudes and behaviour with regards to food media and consumption illustrates audiences’ selective nature. MCA and other food media influence her to consume, but also control, her consumption. Curtis and Samantha—Broadening Horizons Time and money is a key concern for many “everyday foodies” including Curtis’ family. Along with his wife Samantha they are raising a one-year-old daughter, Amelia. Curtis expressed a fondness for food that he ate while on holiday in the United States: I guess in the last few weeks I’ve been craving the food that we had when we were in America, in particular stuff like pulled pork, ribs, stuff like that. So I’ve replicated or made our own because you can’t get it anywhere around Brisbane like from a restaurant. When talking about cooking shows more generally, Curtis speaks primarily about cooking shows he watches on Foxtel that have a food tourism angle. Curtis mentions programs including Cheese Slices, The Layover and Man v. Food. The latter of these shows follows Adam Richman around the United States attempting to conquer eating challenges set at famous local establishments. Curtis describes his reaction to the program: I say woah that looks good and then I just want to go back to America. But instead of paying thousands of dollars to go, it’s cheaper to look up a recipe and give it a go at home. Cookbooks and food television provide their viewers not only with a window through which they can escape their everyday routines but, as Curtis points out, inspiration or education to cook new dishes themselves. For money conscious “everyday foodies”, the cooking demonstration or mere introduction of a dish broadens viewers’ culinary knowledge. Curtis highlights the importance of this: Otherwise [without food media] you’d be stuck cooking the same things your mum and dad taught you, or your home economics teacher taught you in high school. You’d just be doing the same thing every day. Unless you went out to a restaurant and fell in love with something, but because you don’t go out to restaurants every day, you wouldn’t have that experience every day […] TV gives you the ability—we could flick over to the food channel right now and watch something completely amazing that we’ve never done before. His wife Samantha does not consider herself an adventurous eater. While she is interested in food, her passion lies in cakes and desserts and she jokes that ordering Nando’s with the medium basting is adventurous for her. Vicarious consumption through food media allows Samantha to experience a wider range of cuisines without consuming these foods herself: I would watch a lot more variety than I would actually try. There’s a lot of things that I would happily watch, but if it was put in front of me I probably wouldn’t eat it. Like with MasterChef, I’m quite interested in cooking and stuff, but the range of things [ingredients and cuisines] […] I wouldn’t go there. Rose and Andrew—Set in Their Ways Rose and her husband Andrew are a “basically retired” couple and the parents of Samantha. While they both enjoy MCA and feel it has given them a new insight on food, they find it easier to have a mediated engagement with gourmet food in some instances. Andrew believes MCA is: Taking food out of this sort of very conservative, meat, and three vegetables thing into […] something that is more exotic, for the want of a better word. And I guess that’s where we’ve—we follow it, I follow it. And saying, ‘Oh, geez it’d be nice to do that or to be able to do that,’ and enjoy a bit of creativity in that, but I think it’s just we’re probably pretty set in our ways probably and it’s a bit hard to put that into action sometimes. Andrew goes on to suggest that a generational gap makes their daughters, Samantha and Elle more likely to cook MCA-inspired meals than they are: See Samantha and Elle probably cook with that sort of thing [herbs] more and I always enjoy when they do it, but we probably don’t […] We don’t think about it when we go shopping. We probably shop and buy the basic things and don’t think about the nicer things. Andrew describes himself as “an extremely lazy reader” who finds following a recipe “boring.” Andrew says if he were tempted to cook an MCA-inspired dish, it is unlikely that the required ingredients would be on-hand and that he would not shop for one meal. Rose says she does buy the herbs, or “nicer things” as Andrew refers to them, but is hesitant to use them. She says the primary barrier is lacking confidence in her cooking ability, but also that she finds cooking tiring and is not used to cooking with the gas stove in her new home: Rose: I also think that I probably leave my run late and by night time I’m really tired and my feet are hurting and I tend to think ‘Oh I’ll just get something ready’ […] I know that probably sounds like a lame excuse, but yeah, it’s probably more the confidence thing I think. I often even buy the things [ingredients] to do it and then don’t make it. I’m not confident with my stovetop either. Researcher: Oh why—can you please explain more about that?Rose: Well it’s a gas stovetop and I used to have the electric. I felt like I could main—I could control the setting—the heat—better on it. Rose, in particular, does not let her lack of confidence and time stop her from engaging with gourmet food. Cookbooks and cooking shows like MCA are a valuable channel for her to appreciate “foodie” culture. Rose talks about her interest in MCA: Rose: I’m not a keen cook, but I do enjoy buying recipe books and looking at lovely food and watching—and I enjoyed watching how they did these beautiful dishes. As for the desserts, yes they probably were very fancy, but it was sort of nice to think if you had a really special occasion, you know […] and I would actually get on the computer afterwards and look for some of the recipes. I did subscribe to their magazine […] because I’m a bit of a magazine junkie.Researcher: What do you get out of the recipe books and magazines if you say you’re not a keen cook?Rose: I’d just dream about cooking them probably. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? But, and also probably inspire my daughters […] I like to show them “oh, look at this and this” or, you know, and probably quite often they will try it or—and one day I think I will try it, but whether I ever do or not, I don’t know. Rose’s response also treats the generation gap as a perceived barrier to actual consumption. But while the couple feel unable to use the knowledge they have gained through MCA in their kitchen, they credit the show with broadening the range of cuisines they would eat when dining out: Andrew: You know, even when we’ve been to—I like Asian food in Australia, you know, Chinese, Thai, any of those sorts of foods.Rose: Indian. Andrew: Indian, yeah I like that in Australia.Rose: Which we have probably tried more of since the likes of MasterChef.Andrew: Yeah.Rose: You know, you—and even sushi, like you would never have ever […]Andrew: Gone to sushi previously. And I won’t eat sashimi, but the sushi bar is all right. Um […] but [I] did not enjoy Chinese food in places like Hong Kong or Singapore. As the couple does not seek educational information from the show in terms of cooking demonstration, they appear more invested in the progress of the contestants of the show and how they respond to challenges set by the judges. The involvement of amateur cooks makes the show relatable as they identify with contestants who they see as potential extensions of themselves. Rose identifies with season one winner, Julie Goodwin who entered the program as a 38-year-old mother of three and owner of an IT consulting business: Rose: Well Julie of course is a—I don’t like to use the word square, but she’s sort of like a bit of an old fashioned lady, but you know, more like basic grandma cooking. But […]Andrew: She did it well though.Rose: Yes, yeah. Andrew: And she, she probably—she progressed dramatically, you know, from the comments from when she first started […] to winning. In how she presented, how she did things. She must have learnt a lot in the process is the way I would look at it anyway. Rose: And I’ve seen her sort of on things since then and she is very good at like […] talking about and telling you what she’s doing and—for basic sort of cook—you know what I mean, not basic, but […] for a basic person like me. Although Rose and Andrew feel that their life stage prevents has them from changing long established consumption habits in relation to food, their choices while dining out coupled with a keen interest in food and food media still exemplifies the “everyday foodie” lifestyle. Programs like MCA, especially with its focus on the development of amateur cooks, have allowed Rose and Andrew to experience gourmet food more than they would have otherwise. Conclusion Each viewer is empowered to live their version of the “everyday foodie” lifestyle through adopting a balance of actual and vicarious consumption practices. Vicariously tasting “foodie” culture has broadened these viewers’ culinary knowledge and to some extent has broadened their actual tastes. This is evident in Melanie’s visit to Adriano Zumbo’s patisserie, and Rose and Andrew’s sampling of various Asian cuisines while dining out, for example. It also provides pleasure in lieu of actual consumption in instances like Melanie using food images as a disciplinary mechanism or Curtis watching Man v. Food instead of travelling overseas. The attitudes and behaviours of these MCA viewers illustrate that vicarious consumption through food media is a productive and empowering practice that aids audiences to adopt an “everyday foodie” lifestyle. References Adema, Pauline. “Vicarious Consumption: Food, Television and the Ambiguity of Modernity.” Journal of American and Comparative Cultures 23.3 (2000): 113–23. Belk, Russell. “Possessions and the Extended Self.” Journal of Consumer Research 15.2 (1988): 139–68. Boulous, Rebecca, Emily Kuross Vikre, Sophie Oppenheimer, Hannah Chang, and Robin B. Kanarek. “ObesiTV: How Television is influencing the Obesity Epidemic.” Physiology & Behavior 107.1 (2012): 146–53. Coorey, Phillip. “Chefs Win in Ratings Boilover.” Sydney Morning Herald 20 Jul. 2010: n. pag. Deery, June. “Reality TV as Advertainment.” Popular Communication: The International Journal of Media and Culture 2.1 (2005): 1–20. Ellis-Petersen, Hannah. “Jamie’s Idea of Cooking on a Budget—First Buy £500 of Kitchen Utensils and ‘Basics’ (And Yes Most Of Them DO Come From His Own Range).” Mail Online 31 Aug. 2013: n. pag. Greenwood, Helen. “From TV to Table.” Sydney Morning Herald 3 Jul. 2010: n. pag. Lewis, Tania. Smart Living: Lifestyle Media and Popular Expertise. New York: Peter Lang, 2008. -----. “You’ve Put Yourselves on a Plate: The Labours of Selfhood on MasterChef Australia.” Reality Television and Class. Eds. Helen Wood, and Beverly Skeggs. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 104–6. Malkin, Bonnie. “Australian Election Debate Makes Way for MasterChef Final.” The Telegraph 20 Jul. 2010: n. pag. Ouellette, Laurie, and James Hay. Better Living through Reality TV. Malden: Blackwell, 2008. Phillipov, Michelle. “Communicating Health Risks via the Media: What can we learn from MasterChef Australia?” The Australasian Medical Journal 5.11 (2012): 593–7. -----. “Mastering Obesity: MasterChef Australia and the Resistance to Public Health Nutrition.” Media, Culture & Society 35.4 (2013): 506–15. Rousseau, Signe. Food Media: Celebrity Chefs and the Politics of Everyday Interference. London: Berg, 2012. Seale, Kirsten. “MasterChef’s Amateur Makeovers.” Media International Australia 143 (2012): 28–35. de Solier, Isabelle. “Foodie Makeovers: Public Service Television and Lifestyle Guidance.” Exposing Lifestyle Television: The Big Reveal. Ed. Gareth Palmer. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008. 65–81. -----. “Making the Self in a Material World: Food and Moralities of Consumption.” Cultural Studies Review 19.1 (2013): 9–27. -----. “TV Dinners: Culinary Television, Education and Distinction.” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies 19.4 (2005): 465–81. Vickery, Colin. “Adam Liaw Wins MasterChef as Ratings Soar for Channel 10.” Herald Sun 25 Jul. 2010: n. pag. Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2007.

Abstract:

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) Family Network show Switched at Birth tells two stories—one which follows the unique plot of the show, and one about the new openness of television executives toward integrating more people with a variety of visible and invisible physical embodiments, such as hearing loss, into television content. It first aired in 2011 and in 2017 aired its fifth and final season.The show focuses on two teen girls in Kansas City who find out they were switched due to a hospital error on the day of their birth and who grew up with parents who were not biologically related to them. One, Bay Kennish (Vanessa Marano), lives with her wealthy parents—a stay-at-home mom Kathryn (Lea Thompson) and a former professional baseball player, now businessman, father John (D.W. Moffett). She has an older brother Toby (Lucas Grabeel) who is into music. In her high school science class, Bay learns about blood types and discovers her parents’ blood types could not have produced her. The family has professional genetic tests done and discovers the switch (ABC Family, “This Is Not a Pipe”).In the pilot episode, Bay’s parents find out that deaf teen, Daphne Vasquez (Katie Leclerc), is actually their daughter. She lives in a working class Hispanic neighbourhood with her hairdresser single mother Regina (Constance Marie) and grandmother Adrianna (Ivonne Coll), both of whom are of Puerto Rican ancestry. Daphne is deaf due to a case of meningitis when she was three, which the rich Kennishes feel happened because of inadequate healthcare provided by working class Regina. Daphne attends an all-deaf school, Carlton.The man who was thought to be her biological father, Angelo Sorrento (Gilles Marini), doesn’t appear in the show until episode 10 but becomes a series regular in season 2. It becomes apparent that Daphne believes her father left because of her deafness; however, as the first season progresses, the real reasons begin to emerge. From the pilot onwards, the show dives into clashes of language, culture, ethnicity, class, and even physical appearance—in one scene in the pilot, the waspy Kennishes ask Regina if she is “Mexican.” As later episodes reveal, many of these physical appearance issues are revealed to have fractured the Vasquez family early on—Daphne is a freckled, strawberry blonde, and her father (who is French and Italian) suspected infidelity.The two families merge when the Kennishes ask Daphne and her mother to move into their guest house in order get to know their daughter better. That forces the Kennishes into the world of deafness, and throughout the show this hearing family therefore becomes a surrogate for a hearing audience’s immersion into Deaf culture.Cultural Inclusivity: The Way ForwardShow creator Lizzy Weiss explained that it was actually the ABC Family network that “suggested making one of the kids disabled” (Academy of Television Arts & Sciences). Weiss was familiar with American Sign Language (ASL) because she had a “classical theatre of the Deaf” course in college. She said, “I had in the back of my head a little bit of background at least about how beautiful the language was. So I said, ‘What if one of the girls is deaf?’” The network thought it was wonderful idea, so she began researching the Deaf community, including spending time at a deaf high school in Los Angeles called Marlton, on which she modelled the Switched at Birth school, Carlton. Weiss (Academy of Television Arts & Sciences) says of the school visit experience:I learned so much that day and spoke to dozens of deaf teenagers about their lives and their experiences. And so, this is, of course, in the middle of writing the pilot, and I said to the network, you know, deaf kids wouldn’t voice orally. We would have to have those scenes only in ASL, and no sound and they said, ‘Great. Let’s do it.’ And frankly, we just kind of grew and grew from there.To accommodate the narrative structure of a television drama, Weiss said it became clear from the beginning that the show would need to use SimCom (simultaneous communication or sign supported speech) for the hearing or deaf characters who were signing so they could speak and sign at the same time. She knew this wasn’t the norm for two actual people communicating in ASL, but the production team worried about having a show that was heavily captioned as this might distance its key—overwhelmingly hearing—teen audience who would have to pay attention to the screen during captioned scenes. However, this did not appear to be the case—instead, viewers were drawn to the show because of its unique sign language-influenced television narrative structure. The show became popular very quickly and, with 3.3 million viewers, became the highest-rated premiere ever on the ABC Family network (Barney).Switched at Birth also received much praise from the media for allowing its deaf actors to communicate using sign language. The Huffington Post television critic Maureen Ryan said, “Allowing deaf characters to talk to each other directly—without a hearing person or a translator present—is a savvy strategy that allows the show to dig deeper into deaf culture and also to treat deaf characters as it would anyone else”. Importantly, it allowed the show to be unique in a way that was found nowhere else on television. “It’s practically avant-garde for television, despite the conventional teen-soap look of the show,” said Ryan.Usually a show’s success is garnered by audience numbers and media critique—by this measure Switched at Birth was a hit. However, programs that portray a disability—in any form—are often the target of criticism, particularly from the communities they attempting to represent. It should be noted that, while actress Katie Leclerc, who plays Daphne, has a condition, Meniere’s disease, which causes hearing loss and vertigo on an intermittent basis, she does not identify as a deaf actress and must use a deaf accent to portray Daphne. However, she is ASL fluent, learning it in high school (Orangejack). This meant her qualifications met the original casting call which said “actress must be deaf or hard of hearing and must speak English well, American Sign Language preferred” (Paz, 2010) Leclerc likens her role to that of any actor to who has to affect body and vocal changes for a role—she gives the example of Hugh Laurie in House, who is British with no limp, but was an American who uses a cane in that show (Bibel).As such, initially, some in the Deaf community complained about her casting though an online petition with 140 signatures (Nielson). Yet many in the Deaf community softened any criticism of the show when they saw the production’s ongoing attention to Deaf cultural details (Grushkin). Finally, any lingering criticisms from the Deaf community were quieted by the many deaf actors hired for the show who perform using ASL. This includes Sean Berdy, who plays Daphne’s best friend Emmett, his onscreen mother, played by actress Marlee Matlin, and Anthony Natale who plays his father; their characters both sign and vocalize in the show. The Emmett character only communicates in ASL and does not vocalise until he falls in love with the hearing character Bay—even then he rarely uses his voice.This seemingly all-round “acceptance” of the show gave the production team more freedom to be innovative—by season 3 the audience was deemed to be so comfortable with captions that the shows began to feature less SimCom and more all-captioned scenes. This lead to the full episode in ASL, a first on American mainstream television.For an Hour, Welcome to Our WorldSwitched at Birth writer Chad Fiveash explained that when the production team came up with the idea for a captioned all-ASL episode, they “didn’t want to do the ASL episode as a gimmick. It needed to be thematically resonant”. As a result, they decided to link the episode to the most significant event in American Deaf history, an event that solidified its status as a cultural community—the 1988 Deaf President Now (DPN) protest at Gallaudet University in Washington. This protest inspired the March 2013 episode for Switched at Birth and aired 25 years to the week that the actual DPN protest happened. This episode makes it clear the show is trying to completely embrace Deaf culture and wants its audience to better understand Deaf identity.DPN was a pivotal moment for Deaf people—it truly solidified members of a global Deaf community who felt more empowered to fight for their rights. Students demanded that Gallaudet—as the premier university for deaf and hard-of-hearing students—no longer have a hearing person as its president. The Gallaudet board of trustees, the majority of whom were hearing, tried to force students and faculty to accept a hearing president; their attitude was that they knew what was best for the deaf persons there. For eight days, deaf people across America and the world rallied around the student protestors, refusing to give in until a deaf president was appointed. Their success came in the form of I. King Jordan, a deaf man who had served as dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the time of the protest.The event was covered by media around the world, giving the American Deaf community international attention. Indeed, Gallaudet University says the DPN protest symbolized more than just the hiring of a Deaf president; it brought Deaf issues before the public and “raised the nation’s consciousness of the rights and abilities of deaf and hard of hearing people” (Gallaudet University).The activities of the students and their supporters showed dramatically that in the 1980s deaf people could be galvanized to unite around a common issue, particularly one of great symbolic meaning, such as the Gallaudet presidency. Gallaudet University represents the pinnacle of education for deaf people, not only in the United States but throughout the world. The assumption of its presidency by a person himself deaf announced to the world that deaf Americans were now a mature minority (Van Cleve and Crouch, 172).Deaf people were throwing off the oppression of the hearing world by demanding that their university have someone from their community at its helm. Jankowski (Deaf Empowerment; A Metaphorical Analysis of Conflict) studied the Gallaudet protest within the framework of a metaphor. She found a recurring theme during the DPN protest to be Gallaudet as “plantation”—which metaphorically refers to deaf persons as slaves trying to break free from the grip of the dominant mastery of the hearing world—and she parallels the civil rights movement of African Americans in the 1960s. As an example, Gallaudet was referred to as the “Selma of the Deaf” during the protest, and protest signs used the language of Martin Luther King such as “we still have a dream.” For deaf Americans, the presidency of Gallaudet became a symbol of hope for the future. As Jankowski attests:deaf people perceived themselves as possessing the ability to manage their own kind, pointing to black-managed organization, women-managed organizations, etc., struggling for that same right. They argued that it was a fight for their basic human rights, a struggle to free themselves, to release the hold their ‘masters’ held on them. (“A Metaphorical Analysis”)The creators of the Switched at Birth episode wanted to ensure of these emotions, as well as historical and cultural references, were prevalent in the modern-day, all-ASL episode, titled Uprising. That show therefore wanted to represent both the 1988 DPN protest as well as a current issue in the US—the closing of deaf schools (Anderson). The storyline focuses on the deaf students at the fictitious Carlton School for the Deaf seizing one of the school buildings to stage a protest because the school board has decided to shut down the school and mainstream the deaf students into hearing schools. When the deaf students try to come up with a list of demands, conflicts arise about what the demands should be and whether a pilot program—allowing hearing kids who sign to attend the deaf school—should remain.This show accomplished multiple things with its reach into Deaf history and identity, but it also did something technologically unique for the modern world—it made people pay attention. Because captioning translated the sign language for viewers, Lizzy Weiss, the creator of the series, said, “Every single viewer—deaf or hearing—was forced to put away their phones and iPads and anything else distracting … and focus … you had to read … you couldn’t do anything else. And that made you get into it more. It drew you in” (Stelter). The point, Weiss said, “was about revealing something new to the viewer—what does it feel like to be an outsider? What does it feel like to have to read and focus for an entire episode, like deaf viewers do all the time?” (Stelter). As one deaf reviewer of the Uprising episode said, “For an hour, welcome to our world! A world that’s inconvenient, but one most of us wouldn’t leave if offered a magic pill” (DR_Staff).This episode, more than any other, afforded hearing television viewers an experience perhaps similar to deaf viewers. The New York Times reported that “Deaf and hard-of-hearing viewers commented by the thousands after the show, with many saying in effect, “Yes! That’s what it feels like” (Stelter).Continued ResonancesWhat is also unique about the episode is that in teaching the hearing viewers more about the Deaf community, it also reinforced Deaf community pride and even taught young deaf people a bit of their own history. The Deaf community and Gallaudet were very pleased with their history showing up on a television show—the university produced a 30-second commercial which aired within the episode, and held viewing parties. Gallaudet also forwarded the 35 pages of Facebook comments they’d received about the episode to ABC Family and Gallaudet President T. Alan Hurwitz said of the episode (Yahr), “Over the past 25 years, [DPN] has symbolised self-determination and empowerment for deaf and hard of hearing people around the world”. The National Association of the Deaf (NAD) also lauded the episode, describing it as “phenomenal and groundbreaking, saying the situation is very real to us” (Stelter)—NAD had been vocally against budget cuts and closings of US deaf schools.Deaf individuals all over the Internet and social media also spoke out about the episode, with overwhelmingly favourable opinions. Deaf blogger Amy Cohen Efron, who participated in 1988′s DPN movement, said that DPN was “a turning point of my life, forcing me to re-examine my own personal identity, and develop self-determinism as a Deaf person” and led to her becoming an activist.When she watched the Uprising episode, she said the symbolic and historical representations in the show resonated with her. In the episode, a huge sign is unfurled on the side of the Carlton School for the Deaf with a girl with a fist in the air under the slogan “Take Back Carlton.” During the DPN protest, the deaf student protesters unfurled a sign that said “Deaf President Now” with the US Capitol in the background; this image has become an iconic symbol of modern Deaf culture. Efron says the image in the television episode was much more militant than the actual DPN sign. However, it could be argued that society now sees the Deaf community as much more militant because of the DPN protest, and that the imagery in the Uprising episode played into that connection. Efron also acknowledged the episode’s strong nod to the Gallaudet student protestors who defied the hearing community’s expectations by practising civil disobedience. As Efron explained, “Society expected that the Deaf people are submissive and accept to whatever decision done by the majority without any of our input and/or participation in the process.”She also argues that the episode educated more than just the hearing community. In addition to DPN, Uprising was filled with other references to Deaf history. For example a glass door to the room at Carlton was covered with posters about people like Helen Keller and Jean-Ferdinand Berthier, a deaf educator in 19th century France who promoted the concept of deaf identity and culture—Efron says most people in the Deaf community have never heard of him. She also claims that the younger Deaf community may also not be aware of the 1988 DPN protest—“It was not in high school textbooks available for students. Many deaf and hard of hearing students are mainstreamed and they have not the slightest idea about the DPN movement, even about the Deaf Community’s ongoing fight against discrimination, prejudice and oppression, along with our victories”.Long before the Uprising episode aired, the Deaf community had been watching Switched at Birth carefully to make sure Deaf culture was accurately represented. Throughout season 3 David Martin created weekly videos in sign language that were an ASL/Deaf cultural analysis of Switched at Birth. He highlighted content he liked and signs that were incorrect, a kind of a Deaf culture/ASL fact checker. From the Uprising episode, he said he thought this quote from Marlee Matlin’s character said it all, “Until hearing people walk a day in our shoes they will never understand” (Martin). That succinctly states what the all-ASL episode was trying to capture—creating an awareness of Deaf people’s cultural experience and their oppression in hearing society.Even a deaf person who was an early critic of Switched at Birth because of the hiring of Katie Leclerc and the use of SimCom admitted he was impressed with the all-ASL episode (Grushkin):all too often, we see media accounts of Deaf people which play into our society’s perceptions of Deaf people: as helpless, handicapped individuals who are in need of fixes such as cochlear implants in order to “restore” us to society. Almost never do we see accounts of Deaf people as healthy, capable individuals who live ordinary, successful lives without necessarily conforming to the Hearing ‘script’ for how we should be. And important issues such as language rights or school closings are too often virtually ignored by the general media.In addition to the episode being widely discussed within the Deaf community, the mainstream news media also covered Uprising intensely, seeing it as a meaningful cultural moment, not just for the Deaf community but for popular culture in general. Lacob wrote that he realises that hearing viewers probably won’t understand what it means to be a deaf person in modern America, but he believes that the episodeposits that there are moments of understanding, commonalities, and potential bridge-building between these two communities. And the desire for understanding is the first step toward a more inclusive and broad-minded future.He continues:the significance of this moment can’t be undervalued, nor can the show’s rich embrace of deaf history, manifested here in the form of Gallaudet and the historical figures whose photographs and stories are papered on the windows of Carlton during the student protest. What we’re seeing on screen—within the confines of a teen drama, no less—is an engaged exploration of a culture and a civil rights movement brought to life with all of the color and passion it deserves. It may be 25 years since Gallaudet, but the dreams of those protesters haven’t faded. And they—and the ideals of identity and equality that they express—are most definitely being heard.Lacob’s analysis was praised by several Deaf people—by a Deaf graduate student who teaches a Disability in Popular Culture course and by a Gallaudet student who said, “From someone who is deaf, and not ashamed of it either, let me say right here and now: that was the most eloquent piece of writing by someone hearing I have ever seen” (Emma72). The power of the Uprising episode illustrated a political space where “groups actively fuse and blend their culture with the mainstream culture” (Foley 119, as cited in Chang 3). Switched at Birth—specifically the Uprising episode—has indeed fused Deaf culture and ASL into a place in mainstream television culture.ReferencesABC Family. “Switched at Birth Deaf Actor Search.” Facebook (2010). <https://www.facebook.com/SwitchedSearch>.———. “This Is Not a Pipe.” Switched at Birth. Pilot episode. 6 June 2011. <http://freeform.go.com/shows/switched-at-birth>.———. “Not Hearing Loss, Deaf Gain.” Switched at Birth. YouTube video, 11 Feb. 2013. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5W604uSkrk>.Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. “Talking Diversity: ABC Family’s Switched at Birth.” Emmys.com (Feb. 2012). <http://www.emmys.com/content/webcast-talking-diversity-abc-familys-switched-birth>.Anderson, G. “‘Switched at Birth’ Celebrates 25th Anniversary of ‘Deaf President Now’.” Pop-topia (5 Mar. 2013). <http://www.pop-topia.com/switched-at-birth-celebrates-25th-anniversary-of-deaf-president-now/>.Barney, C. “’Switched at Birth’ Another Winner for ABC Family.” Contra Costa News (29 June 2011). <http://www.mercurynews.com/tv/ci_18369762>.Bibel, S. “‘Switched at Birth’s Katie LeClerc Is Proud to Represent the Deaf Community.” Xfinity TV blog (20 June 2011). <http://xfinity.comcast.net/blogs/tv/2011/06/20/switched-at-births-katie-leclerc-is-proud-to-represent-the-deaf-community/>.Chang, H. “Re-Examining the Rhetoric of the ‘Cultural Border’.” Essay presented at the American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, Dec. 1988.DR_Staff. “Switched at Birth: How #TakeBackCarlton Made History.” deafReview (6 Mar. 2013). <http://deafreview.com/deafreview-news/switched-at-birth-how-takebackcarlton-made-history/>.Efron, Amy Cohen. “Switched At Birth: Uprising – Deaf Adult’s Commentary.” Deaf World as I See It (Mar. 2013). <http://www.deafeyeseeit.com/2013/03/05/sabcommentary/>.Emma72. “ABC Family’s ‘Switched at Birth’ ASL Episode Recalls Gallaudet Protest.” Comment. The Daily Beast (28 Feb. 2013). <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/28/abc-family-s-switched-at-birth-asl-episode-recalls-gallaudet-protest.html>.Fiveash, Chad. Personal interview. 17 Jan. 2014.Gallaudet University. “The Issues.” Deaf President Now (2013). <http://www.gallaudet.edu/dpn_home/issues.html>.Grushkin, D. “A Cultural Review. ASL Challenged.” Switched at Birth Facebook page. Facebook (2013). <https://www.facebook.com/SwitchedatBirth/posts/508748905835658>.Jankowski, K.A. Deaf Empowerment: Emergence, Struggle, and Rhetoric. Washington: Gallaudet UP, 1997.———. “A Metaphorical Analysis of Conflict at the Gallaudet Protest.” Unpublished seminar paper presented at the University of Maryland, 1990.Lacob, J. “ABC Family’s ‘Switched at Birth’ ASL Episode Recalls Gallaudet Protest.” The Daily Beast 28 Feb. 2013. <http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/28/abc-family-s-switched-at-birth-asl-episode-recalls-gallaudet-protest.html>.Martin, D. “Switched at Birth Season 2 Episode 9 ‘Uprising’ ASL/Deaf Cultural Analysis.” David Martin YouTube channel (6 Mar. 2013). <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JA0vqCysoVU>.Nielson, R. “Petitioned ABC Family and the ‘Switched at Birth’ Series, Create Responsible, Accurate, and Family-Oriented TV Programming.” Change.org (2011). <http://www.change.org/p/abc-family-and-the-switched-at-birth-series-create-responsible-accurate-and-family-oriented-tv-programming>.Orangejack. “Details about Katie Leclerc’s Hearing Loss.” My ASL Journey Blog (29 June 2011). <http://asl.orangejack.com/details-about-katie-leclercs-hearing-loss>.Paz, G. “Casting Call: Open Auditions for Switched at Birth by ABC Family.” Series & TV (3 Oct. 2010). <http://seriesandtv.com/casting-call-open-auditions-for-switched-at-birth-by-abc-family/4034>.Ryan, Maureen. “‘Switched at Birth’ Season 1.5 Has More Drama and Subversive Soapiness.” The Huffington Post (31 Aug. 2012). <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/maureen-ryan/switched-at-birth-season-1_b_1844957.html>.Stelter, B. “Teaching Viewers to Hear with Their Eyes Only.” The New York Times 8 Mar. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/arts/television/teaching-viewers-to-hear-the-tv-with-eyes-only.html>.Van Cleve, J.V., and B.A. Crouch. A Place of Their Own: Creating the Deaf Community in America. DC: Gallaudet University Press, 1989.Yahr, E. “Gallaudet University Uses All-Sign Language Episode of ‘Switched at Birth’ to Air New Commercial.” The Washington Post 3 Mar. 2013 <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/tv-column/post/gallaudet-university-uses-all-sign-language-episode-of-switched-at-birth-to-air-new-commercial/2013/03/04/0017a45a-8508-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394_blog.html>.

Abstract:

Introduction A snapshot, not unlike countless photographs likely to be found in any number of family albums, shows two figures sitting on a park bench: an elderly and amiable looking man grins beneath the rim of a golf cap; a young boy of twelve smiles wide for the camera — a rather banal scene, captured on film. And yet, this seemingly innocent and unexceptional photograph was the site of a remarkable and wide ranging discourse — encompassing American conservatism, celebrity politics, and the end of the Cold War — as the image circulated around the globe during the weeklong state funeral of Ronald Wilson Reagan, 40th president of the United States. Taken in 1997 by the young boy’s grandfather, Ukrainian immigrant Yakov Ravin, during a chance encounter with the former president, the snapshot is believed to be the last public photograph of Ronald Reagan. Published on the occasion of the president’s death, the photograph made “instant celebrities” of the boy, now a twenty-year-old college student, Rostik Denenburg and his grand dad. Throughout the week of Reagan’s funeral, the two joined a chorus of dignitaries, politicians, pundits, and “ordinary” Americans praising Ronald Reagan: “The Great Communicator,” the man who defeated Communism, the popular president who restored America’s confidence, strength, and prosperity. Yes, it was mourning in America again. And the whole world was watching. Not since Princess Diana’s sudden (and unexpected) death, have we witnessed an electronic hagiography of such global proportions. Unlike Diana’s funeral, however, Reagan’s farewell played out in distinctly partisan terms. As James Ridgeway (2004) noted, the Reagan state funeral was “not only face-saving for the current administration, but also perhaps a mask for the American military debacle in Iraq. Not to mention a gesture of America’s might in the ‘war on terror.’” With non-stop media coverage, the weeklong ceremonies provided a sorely needed shot in the arm to the Bush re-election campaign. Still, whilst the funeral proceedings and the attendant media coverage were undeniably excessive in their deification of the former president, the historical white wash was not nearly so vulgar as the antiseptic send off Richard Nixon received back in 1994. That is to say, the piety of the Nixon funeral was at once startling and galling to many who reviled the man (Lapham). By contrast, given Ronald Reagan’s disarming public persona, his uniquely cordial relationship with the national press corps, and most notably, his handler’s mastery of media management techniques, the Reagan idolatry was neither surprising nor unexpected. In this brief essay, I want to consider Reagan’s funeral, and his legacy, in relation to what cultural critics, referring to the production of celebrity, have described as “fame games” (Turner, Bonner & Marshall). Specifically, I draw on the concept of “flashpoints” — moments of media excess surrounding a particular personage — in consideration of the Reagan funeral. Throughout, I demonstrate how Reagan’s death and the attendant media coverage epitomize this distinctive feature of contemporary culture. Furthermore, I observe Reagan’s innovative approaches to electoral politics in the age of television. Here, I suggest that Reagan’s appropriation of the strategies and techniques associated with advertising, marketing and public relations were decisive, not merely in terms of his electoral success, but also in securing his lasting fame. I conclude with some thoughts on the implications of Reagan’s legacy on historical memory, contemporary politics, and what neoconservatives, the heirs of the Reagan Revolution, gleefully describe as the New American Century. The Magic Hour On the morning of 12 June 2004, the last day of the state funeral, world leaders eulogized Reagan, the statesmen, at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Among the A-List political stars invited to speak were Margaret Thatcher, former president George H. W. Bush and, to borrow Arundhati Roi’s useful phrase, “Bush the Lesser.” Reagan’s one-time Cold War adversary, Mikhail Gorbachev, as well as former Democratic presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were also on hand, but did not have speaking parts. Former Reagan administration officials, Supreme Court justices, and congressional representatives from both sides of the aisle rounded out a guest list that read like a who’s who of the American political class. All told, Reagan’s weeklong sendoff was a state funeral at its most elaborate. It had it all—the flag draped coffin, the grieving widow, the riderless horse, and the procession of mourners winding their way through the Rotunda of the US Capitol. In this last regard, Reagan joined an elite group of seven presidents, including four who died by assassination — Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley and John F. Kennedy — to be honored by having his remains lie in state in the Rotunda. But just as the deceased president was product of the studio system, so too, the script for the Gipper’s swan song come straight out of Hollywood. Later that day, the Reagan entourage made one last transcontinental flight back to the presidential library in Simi Valley, California for a private funeral service at sunset. In Hollywood parlance, the “magic hour” refers to the quality of light at dusk. It is an ideal, but ephemeral time favored by cinematographers, when the sunlight takes on a golden glow lending grandeur, nostalgia, and oftentimes, a sense of closure to a scene. This was Ronald Reagan’s final moment in the sun: a fitting end for an actor of the silver screen, as well as for the president who mastered televisual politics. In a culture so thoroughly saturated with the image, even the death of a minor celebrity is an occasion to replay film clips, interviews, paparazzi photos and the like. Moreover, these “flashpoints” grow in intensity and frequency as promotional culture, technological innovation, and the proliferation of new media outlets shape contemporary media culture. They are both cause and consequence of these moments of media excess. And, as Turner, Bonner and Marshall observe, “That is their point. It is their disproportionate nature that makes them so important: the scale of their visibility, their overwhelmingly excessive demonstration of the power of the relationship between mass-mediated celebrities and the consumers of popular culture” (3-4). B-Movie actor, corporate spokesman, state governor and, finally, US president, Ronald Reagan left an extraordinary photographic record. Small wonder, then, that Reagan’s death was a “flashpoint” of the highest order: an orgy of images, a media spectacle waiting to happen. After all, Reagan appeared in over 50 films during his career in Hollywood. Publicity stills and clips from Reagan’s film career, including Knute Rockne, All American, the biopic that earned Reagan his nickname “the Gipper”, King’s Row, and Bedtime for Bonzo provided a surreal, yet welcome respite from television’s obsessive (some might say morbidly so) live coverage of Reagan’s remains making their way across country. Likewise, archival footage of Reagan’s political career — most notably, images of the 1981 assassination attempt; his quip “not to make age an issue” during the 1984 presidential debate; and his 1987 speech at the Brandenburg Gate demanding that Soviet President Gorbachev, “tear down this wall” — provided the raw materials for press coverage that thoroughly dominated the global mediascape. None of which is to suggest, however, that the sheer volume of Reagan’s photographic record is sufficient to account for the endless replay and reinterpretation of Reagan’s life story. If we are to fully comprehend Reagan’s fame, we must acknowledge his seminal engagement with promotional culture, “a professional articulation between the news and entertainment media and the sources of publicity and promotion” (Turner, Bonner & Marshall 5) in advancing an extraordinary political career. Hitting His Mark In a televised address supporting Barry Goldwater’s nomination for the presidency delivered at the 1964 Republican Convention, Ronald Reagan firmly established his conservative credentials and, in so doing, launched one of the most remarkable and influential careers in American politics. Political scientist Gerard J. De Groot makes a compelling case that the strategy Reagan and his handlers developed in the 1966 California gubernatorial campaign would eventually win him the presidency. The centerpiece of this strategy was to depict the former actor as a political outsider. Crafting a persona he described as “citizen politician,” Reagan’s great appeal and enormous success lie in his uncanny ability to project an image founded on traditional American values of hard work, common sense and self-determination. Over the course of his political career, Reagan’s studied optimism and “no-nonsense” approach to public policy would resonate with an electorate weary of career politicians. Charming, persuasive, and seemingly “authentic,” Reagan ran gubernatorial and subsequent presidential campaigns that were distinctive in that they employed sophisticated public relations and marketing techniques heretofore unknown in the realm of electoral politics. The 1966 Reagan gubernatorial campaign took the then unprecedented step of employing an advertising firm, Los Angeles-based Spencer-Roberts, in shaping the candidate’s image. Leveraging their candidate’s ease before the camera, the Reagan team crafted a campaign founded upon a sophisticated grasp of the television industry, TV news routines, and the medium’s growing importance to electoral politics. For instance, in the days before the 1966 Republican primary, the Reagan team produced a five-minute film using images culled from his campaign appearances. Unlike his opponent, whose television spots were long-winded, amateurish and poorly scheduled pieces that interrupted popular programs, like Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show, Reagan’s short film aired in the early evening, between program segments (De Groot). Thus, while his opponent’s television spot alienated viewers, the Reagan team demonstrated a formidable appreciation not only for televisual style, but also, crucially, a sophisticated understanding of the nuances of television scheduling, audience preferences and viewing habits. Over the course of his political career, Reagan refined his media driven, media directed campaign strategy. An analysis of his 1980 presidential campaign reveals three dimensions of Reagan’s increasingly sophisticated media management strategy (Covington et al.). First, the Reagan campaign carefully controlled their candidate’s accessibility to the press. Reagan’s penchant for potentially damaging off-the-cuff remarks and factual errors led his advisors to limit journalists’ interactions with the candidate. Second, the character of Reagan’s public appearances, including photo opportunities and especially press conferences, grew more formal. Reagan’s interactions with the press corps were highly structured affairs designed to control which reporters were permitted to ask questions and to help the candidate anticipate questions and prepare responses in advance. Finally, the Reagan campaign sought to keep the candidate “on message.” That is to say, press releases, photo opportunities and campaign appearances focused on a single, consistent message. This approach, known as the Issue of the Day (IOD) media management strategy proved indispensable to advancing the administration’s goals and achieving its objectives. Not only was the IOD strategy remarkably effective in influencing press coverage of the Reagan White House, this coverage promoted an overwhelmingly positive image of the president. As the weeklong funeral amply demonstrated, Reagan was, and remains, one of the most popular presidents in modern American history. Reagan’s popular (and populist) appeal is instructive inasmuch as it illuminates the crucial distinction between “celebrity and its premodern antecedent, fame” observed by historian Charles L. Ponce de Leone (13). Whereas fame was traditionally bestowed upon those whose heroism and extraordinary achievements distinguished them from common people, celebrity is a defining feature of modernity, inasmuch as celebrity is “a direct outgrowth of developments that most of us regard as progressive: the spread of the market economy and the rise of democratic, individualistic values” (Ponce de Leone 14). On one hand, then, Reagan’s celebrity reflects his individualism, his resolute faith in the primacy of the market, and his defense of “traditional” (i.e. democratic) American values. On the other hand, by emphasizing his heroic, almost supernatural achievements, most notably his vanquishing of the “Evil Empire,” the Reagan mythology serves to lift him “far above the common rung of humanity” raising him to “the realm of the divine” (Ponce de Leone 14). Indeed, prior to his death, the Reagan faithful successfully lobbied Congress to create secular shrines to the standard bearer of American conservatism. For instance, in 1998, President Clinton signed a bill that officially rechristened one of the US capitol’s airports to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. More recently, conservatives working under the aegis of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project have called for the creation of even more visible totems to the Reagan Revolution, including replacing Franklin D. Roosevelt’s profile on the dime with Reagan’s image and, more dramatically, inscribing Reagan in stone, alongside Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt at Mount Rushmore (Gordon). Therefore, Reagan’s enduring fame rests not only on the considerable symbolic capital associated with his visual record, but also, increasingly, upon material manifestations of American political culture. The High Stakes of Media Politics What are we to make of Reagan’s fame and its implications for America? To begin with, we must acknowledge Reagan’s enduring influence on modern electoral politics. Clearly, Reagan’s “citizen politician” was a media construct — the masterful orchestration of ideological content across the institutional structures of news, public relations and marketing. While some may suggest that Reagan’s success was an anomaly, a historical aberration, a host of politicians, and not a few celebrities — Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Arnold Schwarzenegger among them — emulate Reagan’s style and employ the media management strategies he pioneered. Furthermore, we need to recognize that the Reagan mythology that is so thoroughly bound up in his approach to media/politics does more to obscure, rather than illuminate the historical record. For instance, in her (video taped) remarks at the funeral service, Margaret Thatcher made the extraordinary claim — a central tenet of the Reagan Revolution — that Ronnie won the cold war “without firing a shot.” Such claims went unchallenged, at least in the establishment press, despite Reagan’s well-documented penchant for waging costly and protracted proxy wars in Afghanistan, Africa, and Central America. Similarly, the Reagan hagiography failed to acknowledge the decisive role Gorbachev and his policies of “reform” and “openness” — Perestroika and Glasnost — played in the ending of the Cold War. Indeed, Reagan’s media managed populism flies in the face of what radical historian Howard Zinn might describe as a “people’s history” of the 1980s. That is to say, a broad cross-section of America — labor, racial and ethnic minorities, environmentalists and anti-nuclear activists among them — rallied in vehement opposition to Reagan’s foreign and domestic policies. And yet, throughout the weeklong funeral, the divisiveness of the Reagan era went largely unnoted. In the Reagan mythology, then, popular demonstrations against an unprecedented military build up, the administration’s failure to acknowledge, let alone intervene in the AIDS epidemic, and the growing disparity between rich and poor that marked his tenure in office were, to borrow a phrase, relegated to the dustbin of history. In light of the upcoming US presidential election, we ought to weigh how Reagan’s celebrity squares with the historical record; and, equally important, how his legacy both shapes and reflects the realities we confront today. Whether we consider economic and tax policy, social services, electoral politics, international relations or the domestic culture wars, Reagan’s policies and practices continue to determine the state of the union and inform the content and character of American political discourse. Increasingly, American electoral politics turns on the pithy soundbite, the carefully orchestrated pseudo-event, and a campaign team’s unwavering ability to stay on message. Nowhere is this more evident than in Ronald Reagan’s unmistakable influence upon the current (and illegitimate) occupant of the White House. References Covington, Cary R., Kroeger, K., Richardson, G., and J. David Woodward. “Shaping a Candidate’s Image in the Press: Ronald Reagan and the 1980 Presidential Election.” Political Research Quarterly 46.4 (1993): 783-98. De Groot, Gerard J. “‘A Goddamed Electable Person’: The 1966 California Gubernatorial Campaign of Ronald Reagan.” History 82.267 (1997): 429-48. Gordon, Colin. “Replace FDR on the Dime with Reagan?” History News Network 15 December, 2003. http://hnn.us/articles/1853.html>. Lapham, Lewis H. “Morte de Nixon – Death of Richard Nixon – Editorial.” Harper’s Magazine (July 1994). http://www.harpers.org/MorteDeNixon.html>. Ponce de Leon, Charles L. Self-Exposure: Human-Interest Journalism and the Emergence of Celebrity in America, 1890-1940. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 2002. Ridgeway, James. “Bush Takes a Ride in Reagan’s Wake.” Village Voice (10 June 2004). http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0423/mondo5.php>. Turner, Graeme, Frances Bonner, and P. David Marshall. Fame Games: The Production of Celebrity in Australia. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Zinn, Howard. The Peoples’ History of the United States: 1492-Present. New York: Harper Perennial, 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Howley, Kevin. "Always Famous: Or, The Electoral Half-Life of Ronald Reagan." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/17-howley.php>. APA Style Howley, K. (Nov. 2004) "Always Famous: Or, The Electoral Half-Life of Ronald Reagan," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/17-howley.php>.

Abstract:

The culture of a community this every time but influenced by the social media.Through these means social behaviors, styles or forms are introduced of living. The information to arrive to be shared in real time by any inhabitant that has access to her through the radio, the TV., Internet... The idea of facilitating the communication allows to overcome big distances. These differences are subject, among other, to the territorial and space difficulties. In this sense, the communication participates of the literacy and the means with the new right settled down in the Constitution of each country. The right to the communication like one of the crucial tools of the democracy. The Literacy changes the content of the institutional education contributing a new sociopolitical element. The literacy produces the first concretion of the principle educational «education-work». This task is linked with the plans of economic activation. The literacy campaigns have a revolutionary character. These take place starting from the demands of a conscious town that he/she wants to be introduced in the knowledge and domain of the capacities of the lecto-writing, and in general, inside the Educational System. It is common to the literacy campaigns developed in Latin America the participation of the masses. The town alphabetizes and it educates to the town. The popular masses are those that educate through their organizations and in function of their own interests. Among other experiences of communication of masses, in short by means of the use of the TV, we want to highlight the following experiences, channels and programs linked to the current literacy campaigns in the Latin American countries: Chain of Public Community Television Lives TV; The Program of Literacy Alpha-TV (Michoacán); The Class of Literacy and Education for Young and Adults of the IPLAC (Institute Pedagogic Latin American and Caribbean) with headquarters in Havana. With the Programs of Literacy for Radio and TV is sought to impact in the reduction of the indexes of illiteracy. It is also wanted to facilitate an access to the Basic Education and the Permanent Education. This is an objective assumed collectively in the Marco of Action of Dakar, and the agreements of the Conference of Minister from Cochabamba. En la configuración cultural de una comunidad o de una sociedad tienen cada vez mayor influencia los medios de comunicación social. A través de estos medios se introducen conductas sociales, estilos o formas de vivir. La información llegar a ser compartida «en tiempo real» por cualquier habitante (que tenga acceso a ella) a través de la radio, la TV o la Red. La idea de «facilitar la comunicación» permite superar grandes distancias. Estas diferencias están sujetas, entre otras, a las dificultades territoriales y espaciales. En este sentido, la comunicación participa de la alfabetización y los medios con el nuevo derecho establecido en la Constitución de cada país. El derecho a la comunicación como una de las herramientas cruciales de la democracia participativa. La Alfabetización cambia el contenido de la educación institucional aportando un nuevo elemento sociopolítico, es decir, produce la primera concreción del principio educativo «educación-trabajo». Esta tarea está vinculada con los planes de reactivación económica. Las campañas de alfabetización tienen un carácter revolucionario. Se producen a partir de las demandas de un pueblo consciente que quiere ser introducido en el conocimiento y dominio de las capacidades de la lecto-escritura, y en general, dentro del Sistema Educativo. Es común a las campañas de alfabetización desarrolladas en Latinoamérica la participación de las masas. Es el pueblo el que alfabetiza y educa al pueblo, es decir, son las masas populares las que educan a las masas populares a través de sus organizaciones y en función de sus propios intereses. Entre otras experiencias de comunicación de masas, en concreto mediante el uso de la TV, deseamos destacar las siguientes experiencias, canales y programas vinculados a las actuales campañas de alfabetización en los países latinoamericanos: cadena de televisión comunitaria «Pública Vive TV», el programa de alfabetización «Alfa-TV (Michoacán)», «La Cátedra de Alfabetización y Educación para Jóvenes y Adultos del IPLAC (Instituto Pedagógico latinoamericano y caribeño)» con sede en La Habana. Con los programas de alfabetización por radio y televisión, se pretende incidir en la reducción de los índices de analfabetismo y facilitar a todos y a todas un acceso a la educación básica y la educación permanente objetivo asumido colectivamente en el marco de acción de Dakar y los acuerdos de la Conferencia de Ministros de Cochabamba.

Abstract:

No man [...] can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which one may be true. (Nathaniel Hawthorne Scarlet Letter – as seen and pondered by Tony Soprano at Bowdoin College, The Sopranos, Season 1, Episode 5: “College”)The fictitious is a particular and varied source of insight into the everyday world. The idea of seriality—with its variations of the serial, series, seriated—is very much connected to our patterns of entertainment. In this essay, I want to begin the process of testing what values and meanings can be drawn from the idea of seriality into comprehending the play of persona in contemporary culture. From a brief overview of the intersection of persona and seriality as well as a review of the deployment of seriality in popular culture, the article focuses on the character/ person-actor relationship to demonstrate how seriality produces persona. The French term for character—personnage—will be used to underline the clear relations between characterisation, person, and persona which have been developed by the recent work by Lenain and Wiame. Personnage, through its variation on the word person helps push the analysis into fully understanding the particular and integrated configuration between a public persona and the fictional role that an actor inhabits (Heinich).There are several qualities related to persona that allow this movement from the fictional world to the everyday world to be profitable. Persona, in terms of origins, in and of itself implies performance and display. Jung, for instance, calls persona a mask where one is “acting a role” (167); while Goffman considers that performance and roles are at the centre of everyday life and everyday forms and patterns of communication. In recent work, I have use persona to describe how online culture pushes most people to construct a public identity that resembles what celebrities have had to construct for their livelihood for at least the last century (“Persona”; “Self”). My work has expanded to an investigation of how online persona relates to individual agency (“Agency”) and professional postures and positioning (Barbour and Marshall).The fictive constructions then are intensified versions of what persona is addressing: the fabrication of a role for particular directions and ends. Characters or personnages are constructed personas for very directed ends. Their limitation to the study of persona as a dimension of public culture is that they are not real; however, when one thinks of the actor who takes on this fictive identity, there is clearly a relationship between the real personality and that of the character. Moreover, as Nayar’s analysis of highly famous characters that are fictitious reveals, these celebrated characters, such as Harry Potter or Wolverine, sometime take on a public presence in and of themselves. To capture this public movement of a fictional character, Nayar blends the terms celebrity with fiction and calls these semi-public/semi-real entities “celefiction”: the characters are famous, highly visible, and move across media, information, and cultural platforms with ease and speed (18-20). Their celebrity status underlines their power to move outside of their primary text into public discourse and through public spaces—an extra-textual movement which fundamentally defines what a celebrity embodies.Seriality has to be seen as fundamental to a personnage’s power of and extension into the public world. For instance with Harry Potter again, at least some of his recognition is dependent on the linking or seriating the related books and movies. Seriality helps organise our sense of affective connection to our popular culture. The familiarity of some element of repetition is both comforting for audiences and provides at least a sense of guarantee or warranty that they will enjoy the future text as much as they enjoyed the past related text. Seriality, though, also produces a myriad of other effects and affects which provides a useful background to understand its utility in both the understanding of character and its value in investigating contemporary public persona. Etymologically, the words “series” and seriality are from the Latin and refer to “succession” in classical usage and are identified with ancestry and the patterns of identification and linking descendants (Oxford English Dictionary). The original use of the seriality highlights its value in understanding the formation of the constitution of person and persona and how the past and ancestry connect in series to the current or contemporary self. Its current usage, however, has broadened metaphorically outwards to identify anything that is in sequence or linked or joined: it can be a series of lectures and arguments or a related mark of cars manufactured in a manner that are stylistically linked. It has since been deployed to capture the production process of various cultural forms and one of the key origins of this usage came from the 19th century novel. There are many examples where the 19th century novel was sold and presented in serial form that are too numerous to even summarise here. It is useful to use Dickens’ serial production as a defining example of how seriality moved into popular culture and the entertainment industry more broadly. Part of the reason for the sheer length of many of Charles Dickens’ works related to their original distribution as serials. In fact, all his novels were first distributed in chapters in monthly form in magazines or newspapers. A number of related consequences from Dickens’ serialisation are relevant to understanding seriality in entertainment culture more widely (Hayward). First, his novel serialisation established a continuous connection to his readers over years. Thus Dickens’ name itself became synonymous and connected to an international reading public. Second, his use of seriality established a production form that was seen to be more affordable to its audience: seriality has to be understood as a form that is closely connected to economies and markets as cultural commodities kneaded their way into the structure of everyday life. And third, seriality established through repetition not only the author’s name but also the name of the key characters that populated the cultural form. Although not wholly attributable to the serial nature of the delivery, the characters such as Oliver Twist, Ebenezer Scrooge or David Copperfield along with a host of other major and minor players in his many books become integrated into everyday discourse because of their ever-presence and delayed delivery over stories over time (see Allen 78-79). In the same way that newspapers became part of the vernacular of contemporary culture, fictional characters from novels lived for years at a time in the consciousness of this large reading public. The characters or personnages themselves became personalities that through usage became a way of describing other behaviours. One can think of Uriah Heep and his sheer obsequiousness in David Copperfield as a character-type that became part of popular culture thinking and expressing a clear negative sentiment about a personality trait. In the twentieth century, serials became associated much more with book series. One of the more successful serial genres was the murder mystery. It developed what could be described as recognisable personnages that were both fictional and real. Thus, the real Agatha Christie with her consistent and prodigious production of short who-dunnit novels was linked to her Belgian fictional detective Hercule Poirot. Variations of these serial constructions occurred in children’s fiction, the emerging science fiction genre, and westerns with authors and characters rising to related prominence.In a similar vein, early to mid-twentieth century film produced the film serial. In its production and exhibition, the film serial was a déclassé genre in its overt emphasis on the economic quality of seriality. Thus, the film serial was generally a filler genre that was interspersed before and after a feature film in screenings (Dixon). As well as producing a familiarity with characters such as Flash Gordon, it was also instrumental in producing actors with a public profile that grew from this repetition. Flash Gordon was not just a character; he was also the actor Buster Crabbe and, over time, the association became indissoluble for audiences and actor alike. Feature film serials also developed in the first half-century of American cinema in particular with child actors like Shirley Temple, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland often reprising variations of their previous roles. Seriality more or less became the standard form of delivery of broadcast media for most of the last 70 years and this was driven by the economies of production it developed. Whether the production was news, comedy, or drama, most radio and television forms were and are variation of serials. As well as being the zenith of seriality, television serials have been the most studied form of seriality of all cultural forms and are thus the greatest source of research into what serials actually produced. The classic serial that began on radio and migrated to television was the soap opera. Although most of the long-running soap operas have now disappeared, many have endured for more than 30 years with the American series The Guiding Light lasting 72 years and the British soap Coronation Street now in its 64th year. Australian nighttime soap operas have managed a similar longevity: Neighbours is in its 30th year, while Home and Away is in its 27th year. Much of the analyses of soap operas and serials deals with the narrative and the potential long narrative arcs related to characters and storylines. In contrast to most evening television serials historically, soap operas maintain the continuity from one episode to the next in an unbroken continuity narrative. Evening television serials, such as situation comedies, while maintaining long arcs over their run are episodic in nature: the structure of the story is generally concluded in the given episode with at least partial closure in a manner that is never engaged with in the never-ending soap opera serials.Although there are other cultural forms that deploy seriality in their structures—one can think of comic books and manga as two obvious other connected and highly visible serial sources—online and video games represent the other key media platform of serials in contemporary culture. Once again, a “horizon of expectation” (Jauss and De Man 23) motivates the iteration of new versions of games by the industry. New versions of games are designed to build on gamer loyalties while augmenting the quality and possibilities of the particular game. Game culture and gamers have a different structural relationship to serials which at least Denson and Jahn-Sudmann describe as digital seriality: a new version of a game is also imagined to be technologically more sophisticated in its production values and this transformation of the similitude of game structure with innovation drives the economy of what are often described as “franchises.” New versions of Minecraft as online upgrades or Call of Duty launches draw the literal reinvestment of the gamer. New consoles provide a further push to serialisation of games as they accentuate some transformed quality in gameplay, interaction, or quality of animated graphics. Sports franchises are perhaps the most serialised form of game: to replicate new professional seasons in each major sport, the sports game transforms with a new coterie of players each year.From these various venues, one can see the centrality of seriality in cultural forms. There is no question that one of the dimensions of seriality that transcends these cultural forms is its coordination and intersection with the development of the industrialisation of culture and this understanding of the economic motivation behind series has been explored from some of the earliest analyses of seriality (see Hagedorn; Browne). Also, seriality has been mined extensively in terms of its production of the pleasure of repetition and transformation. The exploration of the popular, whether in studies of readers of romance fiction (Radway), or fans of science fiction television (Tulloch and Jenkins; Jenkins), serials have provided the resource for the exploration of the power of the audience to connect, engage and reconstruct texts.The analysis of the serialisation of character—the production of a public personnage—and its relation to persona surprisingly has been understudied. While certain writers have remarked on the longevity of a certain character, such as Vicky Lord’s 40 year character on the soap opera One Life to Live, and the interesting capacity to maintain both complicated and hidden storylines (de Kosnik), and fan audience studies have looked at the parasocial-familiar relationship that fan and character construct, less has been developed about the relationship of the serial character, the actor and a form of twinned public identity. Seriality does produce a patterning of personnage, a structure of familiarity for the audience, but also a structure of performance for the actor. For instance, in a longitudinal analysis of the character of Fu Manchu, Mayer is able to discern how a patterning of iconic form shapes, replicates, and reiterates the look of Fu Manchu across decades of films (Mayer). Similarly, there has been a certain work on the “taxonomy of character” where the serial character of a television program is analysed in terms of 6 parts: physical traits/appearance; speech patterns, psychological traits/habitual behaviours; interaction with other characters; environment; biography (Pearson quoted in Lotz).From seriality what emerges is a particular kind of “type-casting” where the actor becomes wedded to the specific iteration of the taxonomy of performance. As with other elements related to seriality, serial character performance is also closely aligned to the economic. Previously I have described this economic patterning of performance the “John Wayne Syndrome.” Wayne’s career developed into a form of serial performance where the individual born as Marion Morrison becomes structured into a cultural and economic category that determines the next film role. The economic weight of type also constructs the limits and range of the actor. Type or typage as a form of casting has always been an element of film and theatrical performance; but it is the seriality of performance—the actual construction of a personnage that flows between the fictional and real person—that allows an actor to claim a persona that can be exchanged within the industry. Even 15 years after his death, Wayne remained one of the most popular performers in the United States, his status unrivalled in its close definition of American value that became wedded with a conservative masculinity and politics (Wills).Type and typecasting have an interesting relationship to seriality. From Eisenstein’s original use of the term typage, where the character is chosen to fit into the meaning of the film and the image was placed into its sequence to make that meaning, it generally describes the circumscribing of the actor into their look. As Wojcik’s analysis reveals, typecasting in various periods of theatre and film acting has been seen as something to be fought for by actors (in the 1850s) and actively resisted in Hollywood in 1950 by the Screen Actors Guild in support of more range of roles for each actor. It is also seen as something that leads to cultural stereotypes that can reinforce the racial profiling that has haunted diverse cultures and the dangers of law enforcement for centuries (Wojcik 169-71). Early writers in the study of film acting, emphasised that its difference from theatre was that in film the actor and character converged in terms of connected reality and a physicality: the film actor was less a mask and more a sense of “being”(Kracauer). Cavell’s work suggested film over stage performance allowed an individuality over type to emerge (34). Thompson’s semiotic “commutation” test was another way of assessing the power of the individual “star” actor to be seen as elemental to the construction and meaning of the film role Television produced with regularity character-actors where performance and identity became indissoluble partly because of the sheer repetition and the massive visibility of these seriated performances.One of the most typecast individuals in television history was Leonard Nimoy as Spock in Star Trek: although the original Star Trek series ran for only three seasons, the physical caricature of Spock in the series as a half-Vulcan and half-human made it difficult for the actor Nimoy to exit the role (Laws). Indeed, his famous autobiography riffed on this mis-identity with the forceful but still economically powerful title I am Not Spock in 1975. When Nimoy perceived that his fans thought that he was unhappy in his role as Spock, he published a further tome—I Am Spock—that righted his relationship to his fictional identity and its continued source of roles for the previous 30 years. Although it is usually perceived as quite different in its constitution of a public identity, a very similar structure of persona developed around the American CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite. With his status as anchor confirmed in its power and centrality to American culture in his desk reportage of the assassination and death of President Kennedy in November 1963, Cronkite went on to inhabit a persona as the most trusted man in the United States by the sheer gravitas of hosting the Evening News stripped across every weeknight at 6:30pm for the next 19 years. In contrast to Nimoy, Cronkite became Cronkite the television news anchor, where persona, actor, and professional identity merged—at least in terms of almost all forms of the man’s visibility.From this vantage point of understanding the seriality of character/personnage and how it informs the idea of the actor, I want to provide a longer conclusion about how seriality informs the concept of persona in the contemporary moment. First of all, what this study reveals is the way in which the production of identity is overlaid onto any conception of identity itself. If we can understand persona not in any negative formulation, but rather as a form of productive performance of a public self, then it becomes very useful to see that these very visible public blendings of performance and the actor-self can make sense more generally as to how the public self is produced and constituted. My final and concluding examples will try and elucidate this insight further.In 2013, Netflix launched into the production of original drama with its release of House of Cards. The series itself was remarkable for a number of reasons. First among them, it was positioned as a quality series and clearly connected to the lineage of recent American subscription television programs such as The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, Dexter, Madmen, The Wire, Deadwood, and True Blood among a few others. House of Cards was an Americanised version of a celebrated British mini-series. In the American version, an ambitious party whip, Frank Underwood, manoeuvres with ruthlessness and the calculating support of his wife closer to the presidency and the heart and soul of American power. How the series expressed quality was at least partially in its choice of actors. The role of Frank Underwood was played by the respected film actor Kevin Spacey. His wife, Clare, was played by the equally high profile Robin Warren. Quality was also expressed through the connection of the audience of viewers to an anti-hero: a personnage that was not filled with virtue but moved with Machiavellian acuity towards his objective of ultimate power. This idea of quality emerged in many ways from the successful construction of the character of Tony Soprano by James Gandolfini in the acclaimed HBO television series The Sopranos that reconstructed the very conception of the family in organised crime. Tony Soprano was enacted as complex and conflicted with a sense of right and justice, but embedded in the personnage were psychological tropes and scars, and an understanding of the need for violence to maintain influence power and a perverse but natural sense of order (Martin).The new television serial character now embodied a larger code and coterie of acting: from The Sopranos, there is the underlying sense and sensibility of method acting (see Vineberg; Stanislavski). Gandolfini inhabited the role of Tony Soprano and used the inner and hidden drives and motivations to become the source for the display of the character. Likewise, Spacey inhabits Frank Underwood. In that new habitus of television character, the actor becomes subsumed by the role. Gandolfini becomes both over-determined by the role and his own identity as an actor becomes melded to the role. Kevin Spacey, despite his longer and highly visible history as a film actor is overwhelmed by the televisual role of Frank Underwood. Its serial power, where audiences connect for hours and hours, where the actor commits to weeks and weeks of shoots, and years and years of being the character—a serious character with emotional depth, with psychological motivation that rivals the most visceral of film roles—transforms the actor into a blended public person and the related personnage.This blend of fictional and public life is complex as much for the producing actor as it is for the audience that makes the habitus real. What Kevin Spacey/Frank Underwood inhabit is a blended persona, whose power is dependent on the constructed identity that is at source the actor’s production as much as any institutional form or any writer or director connected to making House of Cards “real.” There is no question that this serial public identity will be difficult for Kevin Spacey to disentangle when the series ends; in many ways it will be an elemental part of his continuing public identity. This is the economic power and risk of seriality.One can see similar blendings in the persona in popular music and its own form of contemporary seriality in performance. For example, Eminem is a stage name for a person sometimes called Marshall Mathers; but Eminem takes this a step further and produces beyond a character in its integration of the personal—a real personnage, Slim Shady, to inhabit his music and its stories. To further complexify this construction, Eminem relies on the production of his stories with elements that appear to be from his everyday life (Dawkins). His characterisations because of the emotional depth he inhabits through his rapped stories betray a connection to his own psychological state. Following in the history of popular music performance where the singer-songwriter’s work is seen by all to present a version of the public self that is closer emotionally to the private self, we once again see how the seriality of performance begins to produce a blended public persona. Rap music has inherited this seriality of produced identity from twentieth century icons of the singer/songwriter and its display of the public/private self—in reverse order from grunge to punk, from folk to blues.Finally, it is worthwhile to think of online culture in similar ways in the production of public personas. Seriality is elemental to online culture. Social media encourage the production of public identities through forms of repetition of that identity. In order to establish a public profile, social media users establish an identity with some consistency over time. The everydayness in the production of the public self online thus resembles the production and performance of seriality in fiction. Professional social media sites such as LinkedIn encourage the consistency of public identity and this is very important in understanding the new versions of the public self that are deployed in contemporary culture. However, much like the new psychological depth that is part of the meaning of serial characters such as Frank Underwood in House of Cards, Slim Shady in Eminem, or Tony Soprano in The Sopranos, social media seriality also encourages greater revelations of the private self via Instagram and Facebook walls and images. We are collectively reconstituted as personas online, seriated by the continuing presence of our online sites and regularly drawn to reveal more and greater depths of our character. In other words, the online persona resembles the new depth of the quality television serial personnage with elaborate arcs and great complexity. Seriality in our public identity is also uncovered in the production of our game avatars where, in order to develop trust and connection to friends in online settings, we maintain our identity and our patterns of gameplay. At the core of this online identity is a desire for visibility, and we are drawn to be “picked up” and shared in some repeatable form across what we each perceive as a meaningful dimension of culture. Through the circulation of viral images, texts, and videos we engage in a circulation and repetition of meaning that feeds back into the constancy and value of an online identity. Through memes we replicate and seriate content that at some level seriates personas in terms of humour, connection and value.Seriality is central to understanding the formation of our masks of public identity and is at least one valuable analytical way to understand the development of the contemporary persona. This essay represents the first foray in thinking through the relationship between seriality and persona.ReferencesBarbour, Kim, and P. David Marshall. “The Academic Online Constructing Persona.” First Monday 17.9 (2012).Browne, Nick. “The Political Economy of the (Super)Text.” Quarterly Review of Film Studies 9.3 (1984): 174-82. Cavell, Stanley. “Reflections on the Ontology of Film.” Movie Acting: The Film Reader. Ed. Wojcik and Pamela Robertson. London: Routledge, 2004 (1979). 29-35.Dawkins, Marcia Alesan. “Close to the Edge: Representational Tactics of Eminem.” The Journal of Popular Culture 43.3 (2010): 463-85.De Kosnik, Abigail. “One Life to Live: Soap Opera Storytelling.” How to Watch Television. Ed. Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell. New York: New York University Press, 2013. 355-63.Denson, Shane, and Andreas Jahn-Sudmann. “Digital Seriality: On the Serial Aesthetics and Practice of Digital Games.” Journal of Computer Game Culture 7.1 (2013): 1-32.Dixon, Wheeler Winston. “Flash Gordon and the 1930s and 40s Science Fiction Serial.” Screening the Past 11 (2011). 20 May 2014.Goffman, Erving. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press, 1973.Hagedorn, Roger “Technology and Economic Exploitation: The Serial as a Form of Narrative Presentation.” Wide Angle 10. 4 (1988): 4-12.Hayward, Jennifer Poole. Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fictions from Dickens to Soap Opera. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1997.Heinrich, Nathalie. “Personne, Personnage, Personalité: L'acteur a L'ère De Sa Reproductibilité Technique.” Personne/Personnage. Eds. Thierry Lenain and Aline Wiame. Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 2011. 77-101.Jauss, Hans Robert, and Paul De Man. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Brighton: Harvester, 1982.Jenkins, Henry. Textual Poachers: Television Fans & Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge, 1992.Jung, C. G., et al. Two Essays on Analytical Psychology. 2nd ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966.Kracauer, Siegfried. “Remarks on the Actor.” Movie Acting, the Film Reader. Ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik. London: Routledge, 2004 (1960). 19-27.Leonard Nimoy & Pharrell Williams: Star Trek & Creating Spock. Ep. 12. Reserve Channel. December 2013. Lenain, Thierry, and Aline Wiame (eds.). Personne/Personnage. Librairie Philosophiques J. VRIN, 2011.Lotz, Amanda D. “House: Narrative Complexity.” How to Watch TV. Ed. Ethan Thompson and Jason Mittell. New York: New York University Press, 2013. 22-29.Marshall, P. David. “The Cate Blanchett Persona and the Allure of the Oscar.” The Conversation (2014). 4 April 2014.Marshall, P. David “Persona Studies: Mapping the Proliferation of the Public Self.” Journalism 15.2 (2014): 153-70.Marshall, P. David. “Personifying Agency: The Public–Persona–Place–Issue Continuum.” Celebrity Studies 4.3 (2013): 369-71.Marshall, P. David. “The Promotion and Presentation of the Self: Celebrity as Marker of Presentational Media.” Celebrity Studies 1.1 (2010): 35-48.Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. 2nd Ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.Martin, Brett. Difficult Men: Behind the Scenes of a Creative Revolution: From The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men and Breaking Bad. London: Faber and Faber, 2013.Mayer, R. “Image Power: Seriality, Iconicity and the Mask of Fu Manchu.” Screen 53.4 (2012): 398-417.Nayar, Pramod K. Seeing Stars: Spectacle, Society, and Celebrity Culture. New Delhi; Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 2009.Nimoy, Leonard. I Am Not Spock. Milbrae, California: Celestial Arts, 1975.Nimoy, Leonard. I Am Spock. 1st ed. New York: Hyperion, 1995.Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984.Stanislavski, Constantin. Creating a Role. New York: Routledge, 1989 (1961).Thompson, John O. “Screen Acting and the Commutation Test.” Movie Acting: The Film Reader. Ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik. London: Routledge, 2004 (1978). 37-48.Tulloch, John, and Henry Jenkins. Science Fiction Audiences: Watching Doctor Who and Star Trek. London; New York: Routledge, 1995.Vineberg, Steve. Method Actors: Three Generations of an American Acting Style. New York; Toronto: Schirmer Books, 1991.Wills, Garry. John Wayne’s America: The Politics of Celebrity. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997.Wojcik, Pamela Robertson. “Typecasting.” Movie Acting: The Film Reader. Ed. Pamela Robertson Wojcik. London: Routledge, 2004. 169-89.

Abstract:

An event occurred recently in the world of professional sports in North America which may have set a precedent for superstar (celebrity) retirement and celebrity/fan interaction in the future. The event was hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky's last National Hockey League game, played between the New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins (with Gretzky a member of the former), a Sunday 'matinee' contest at the famous Madison Square Garden in New York City. An event occurred recently in the world of professional sports in North America which may have set a precedent for superstar (celebrity) retirement and celebrity/fan interaction in the future. The event was hockey superstar Wayne Gretzky's last National Hockey League game, played between the New York Rangers and Pittsburgh Penguins (with Gretzky a member of the former), a Sunday 'matinee' contest at the famous Madison Square Garden in New York City. What makes this particular event unique is that the game itself (which, if not for Gretzky's retirement, would have been of little interest, since the Rangers were long since eliminated from the playoffs) was virtually 'staged' as a component of Gretzky's retirement ceremony, and indeed resembled a television entertainment special, musical and/or theatrical program in every way. So, every facet of this, one of the last regular season games, was focussed on "The Great One", as he is known to his adoring fans. This is where the pivotal part comes: Gretzky announced his long- speculated retirement, that his last game would be this match, just several days beforehand (in most cases of note, for obvious reasons, this announcement comes after the season ends). This of course sent the media into a frenzy to prepare for what Gretzky himself referred to as a final "celebration", which would honour not only himself, but also involve in an 'intimate' setting those players, coaches, etc. (professional hockey and other sports figures alike; Mario Lemieux, former leader of the Pittsburgh team and former team-mate Mark Messier as the "greatest players he has played against and with"), celebrities from the world of music (Bryan Adams sang the Canadian national anthem) and screen (Christopher Reeve) whom Gretzky considers friends and influences in his life -- and of course his wife, actress Janet Jones, their three children, and parents. And let's not forget the devoted fans and audience, providing the necessary backdrop for it all. What was to be, then, your run-of-the-mill, pre-play-off regular season meaningless hockey game was transformed into an entertainment spectacle, complete with pre-game ceremonies of presentations by his buddies, former and present team-mates, gifts (the usual icons of North-American status excess) of a Jaguar (or Mercedes?), and a massive "high- definition" television set. The network television lead-in confirmed that this was to be "Wayne's day", with highlight reels of his 20-year career in the NHL and his earlier days on the backyard pond. These snippets were even interspersed throughout the breaks in the action during the game, along with short interviews with Wayne's friends in the audience, which by the way inevitably offered the same synopsis: "he was great for the game, but he was also great off the ice." It is this 'off the ice' congeniality/patience with the fans (and media) which has added immensely to his popularity, and has guaranteed that many "billions more will be served" at McDonald's. Perhaps what made this whole spectacle most interesting, however, was the hockey game itself, which seemed something of an afterthought lost in all the hoopla surrounding it. Colour commentator Harry Neal remarked after a period and a half or so of play that it was a "no-hitter", but stopped short of using 'boring' as an adjective. This of course was no accident given the circumstances: Gretzky was a gifted player who relied on skating and playmaking rather than hitting, and who was against fighting in the NHL -- it was obvious that the players on both teams were catering to Gretzky's wishes in honour of this, his last game. They were not going to spoil his 'party', and no-one laid a hand on him, much less each other, during the course of the action. Even Matthew Barnaby, Pittsburgh's noted 'dirty' player was uncharacteristically polite throughout. Indeed, how could they not be on their best behaviour, given that they were as much a part of the pre-game ceremonies as everyone else (the whole Pittsburgh team was seen to 'clap' their sticks against the ice in appreciation after each presentation to Gretzky). The net effect of it all was that everyone could not help but be in awe of "The Great One", who was characteristically humble and gracious throughout it all. By extension this also had the effect of making the play of the game much more 'tentative', where normally aggressive players were seen to compromise their styles in order to 'accommodate' Wayne. In a game which is normally brutally physical and sometimes downright violent (concussions are not uncommon) this particular contest was definitely out of place, more akin to an all-star game where players are careful to avoid bodychecking and injury. But unlike an all-star game because of this tentativeness, it was also low-scoring; short of capping off a 'scripted' ending with Wayne scoring the winner, it was the captain of Pittsburgh who decided the contest into overtime (which was probably appropriate lest the drama seem a little too 'given'). Playing the devil's advocate, I couldn't help but wonder what would have happened if one of the opposing players had really 'had it in' for Gretzky, and realising that this was his last chance to make a little history of his own had taken the liberty to 'take Wayne out'. But then that sort of behaviour simply wouldn't have been tolerated on either side, and it was likely no coincidence that there were no grudges between these two teams (for this game at least). Closing ceremonies were appropriately tearful and long, with Wayne making repeated return appearances/encores to skate around the ice acknowledging the fans and players alike, the highlight reels again, and finally the last intimate interview and press conference. To me, the upshot of it all is this: to my knowledge, no other sports figure has demonstrated the power to 'tailor', if you will, a regularly scheduled contest such that the arena was utilised as a 'stage', with players from both teams willing 'actors', including the audience, of course, in order to provide Wayne with the type of send-off that he would (as 'director') have wished for. And what Wayne wanted was a "celebration" for everyone, hence it was no accident that his retirement announcement came before the season ended. The timing in the 'lull' between the regular season and the playoffs was also perfect. Here I believe we have a case of that 'blurring' or "slipping" between reality and fiction, or fantasy which Marshall refers to in a previous M/C article (b. 8). For what was created in fact was a 'staging', involving an altering of normal player/player and fan/player interaction, such that in the player/player interaction, the staging consisted of an oscillation between how the game is normally played in the minds of the players and an 'acted' version of this in order to accommodate "Wayne's World". The result was a rather unique version of the fastest and arguably the most dangerous of team sports -- truly, a celebrity version. In terms of the fan/player interaction, that 'oscillation' was present here as well, whereby cheering for a team inevitably was dominated by cheering for a single player (thus how the game is normally watched versus watching Wayne's game). The game itself had indeed become meaningless and was transformed into a Gretzky entertainment special; thus it was that the chant "Gretzky, Gretzky" which came up regularly, in order to spur "The Great One" on to his last goal at MSG (as it turned out, he managed an assist). The "slippage" was occurring at this level also, as fan participation reached new heights such that the collective consciousness of encouragement for Wayne provided an idyllic setting for the feature; they had become a part of the film, along with the Gretzky family in the stands, cheering him after every shift, and the distance between hero/player and audience was lessened by Gretzky's acknowledgments (something that simply wouldn't happen, at least to this degree, in a normal game). Fans always like to think that they have some influence on the players and the outcome of the game; in this case that influence was magnified as a sharing of a part of Wayne Gretzky's life. They had become a part of Wayne's movie. The 'slippage' had occurred on a grand scale. To be sure, a sporting contest is entertainment, but this event had 'slipped' into a theatrical contest for all, player and fan included. Everyone was in the picture; the normally fiercely competitive player interaction was tempered, and the fan involvement moved a notch closer to the ice surface. To conclude, I believe that these 'virtual movies' will become more commonplace as both fan/player interaction demand and player as celebrity status increase. For the player/celebrity, it's a way to go out with a 'bang' and satisfy a number of demands in one convenient package. For the fan, it's a step closer to that craved intimacy with their hero, another escape from the confines of the reality of the mundane, only closer yet to that elusive illusory ideal. Thus we will have willing 'actors' in these retirement dramas, where a sports contest is fundamentally altered to an emphasis on sentiment value, an opportunity for a collective 'feel-good' experience where everyone wins -- except for those who come to watch a good hockey game, or whatever the sports 'feature' of the future may be. References P. David Marshall. "The Fiction of Public Life." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.1 (1999). 13 June 1999 <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9902/life.php>. Citation reference for this article MLA style: David Riddell. "Wayne's World: The Making of a Hockey Movie." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/wayne.php>. Chicago style: David Riddell, "Wayne's World: The Making of a Hockey Movie," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/wayne.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: David Riddell. (1999) Wayne's world: the making of a hockey movie. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/wayne.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

Does the arrival of the network society mean we are now a culture of collectors, a society of sharers? We mused about these questions while assembling this M/C Journal issue, which has its genesis in a past event of ‘shared’ confusion. Alex Burns booked into Axel Bruns’s hotel room at the 1998 National Young Writer’s Festival (NYWF) in Newcastle. This ‘identity theft’ soon extended to discussion panels and sessions, where some audience members wondered if the NYWF program had typographical errors. We planned, over café latte at Haddon’s Café, to do a co-session at next year’s festival. By then the ‘identity theft’ had spread to online media. We both shared some common interests: the music of Robert Fripp and King Crimson, underground electronica and experimental turntablism, the Internet sites Slashdot and MediaChannel.org, and the creative possibilities of Open Publishing. “If you’re going to use a pseudonym,” a prominent publisher wrote to Alex Burns in 2001, “you could have created a better one than Axel Bruns.” We haven’t yet done our doppelgänger double-act at NYWF but this online collaboration is a beginning. What became clear during the editorial process was that some people and communities were better at sharing than others. Is sharing the answer or the problem: does it open new possibilities for a better, fairer future, or does it destroy existing structures to leave nothing but an uncontrollable mess? The feature article by Graham Meikle elaborates on several themes explored in his insightful book Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet (New York: Routledge, London: Pluto Press, 2002). Meikle’s study of the influential IndyMedia network dissects three ‘compelling founder’s stories’: the Sydney-based Active software team, the tradition of alternative media, and the frenetic energy of ‘DiY culture’. Meikle remarks that each of these ur-myths “highlights an emphasis on access and participation; each stresses new avenues and methods for new people to create news; each shifts the boundary of who gets to speak.” As the IndyMedia movement goes truly global, its autonomous teams are confronting how to be an international brand for Open Publishing, underpinned by a viable Open Source platform. IndyMedia’s encounter with the Founder’s Trap may have its roots in paradigms of intellectual property. What drives Open Source platforms like IndyMedia and Linux, Tom Graves proposes, are collaborative synergies and ‘win-win’ outcomes on a vast and unpredictable scale. Graves outlines how projects like Lawrence Lessig’s Creative Commons and the Free Software Foundation’s ‘GNU Public License’ challenge the Western paradigm of property rights. He believes that Open Source platforms are “a more equitable and sustainable means to manage the tangible and intangible resources of this world we share.” The ‘clash’ between the Western paradigm of property rights and emerging Open Source platforms became manifest in the 1990s through a series of file-sharing wars. Andy Deck surveys how the ‘browser war’ between Microsoft and Netscape escalated into a long-running Department of Justice anti-trust lawsuit. The Motion Picture Association of America targeted DVD hackers, Napster’s attempt to make the ‘Digital Jukebox in the Sky’ a reality was soon derailed by malicious lawsuits, and Time-Warner CEO Gerald Levin depicted pre-merger broadband as ‘the final battleground’ for global media. Whilst Linux and Mozilla hold out promise for a more altruistic future, Deck contemplates, with a reference to George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia (1938), that Internet producers “must conform to the distribution technologies and content formats favoured by the entertainment and marketing sectors, or else resign themselves to occupying the margins of media activity.” File-sharing, as an innovative way of sharing access to new media, has had social repercussions. Marjorie Kibby reports that “global music sales fell from $41.5 billion in 1995 to $38.5 billion in 1999.” Peer-to-Peer networks like KaZaA, Grokster and Morpheus have surged in consumer popularity while commercial music file subscription services have largely fallen by the wayside. File-sharing has forever changed the norms of music consumption, Kibby argues: it offers consumers “cheap or free, flexibility of formats, immediacy, breadth of choice, connections with artists and other fans, and access to related commodities.” The fragmentation of Australian families into new diversities has co-evolved with the proliferation of digital media. Donell Holloway suggests that the arrival of pay television in Australia has resurrected the ‘house and hearth’ tradition of 1940s radio broadcasts. Internet-based media and games shifted the access of media to individual bedrooms, and changed their spatial and temporal natures. However pay television’s artificial limit of one television set per household reinstated the living room as a family space. It remains to be seen whether or not this ‘bounded’ control will revive family battles, dominance hierarchies and power games. This issue closes with a series of reflections on how the September 11 terrorist attacks transfixed our collective gaze: the ‘sharing’ of media connects to shared responses to media coverage. For Tara Brabazon the intrusive media coverage of September 11 had its precursor in how Great Britain’s media documented the Welsh mining disaster at Aberfan on 20 October 1966. “In the stark grey iconography of September 11,” Brabazon writes, “there was an odd photocopy of Aberfan, but in the negative.” By capturing the death and grief at Aberfan, Brabazon observes, the cameras mounted a scathing critique of industrialisation and the searing legacy of preventable accidents. This verité coverage forces the audience to actively engage with the trauma unfolding on the television screen, and to connect with their own emotions. Or at least that was the promise never explored, because the “Welsh working class community seemed out of time and space in 1960s Britain,” and because political pundits quickly harnessed the disaster for their own electioneering purposes. In the early 1990s a series of ‘humanitarian’ interventions and televised conflicts popularized the ‘CNN Effect’ in media studies circles as a model of how captivated audiences and global media vectors could influence government policies. However the U.S. Government, echoing the coverage of Aberfan, used the ‘CNN Effect’ for counterintelligence and consensus-making purposes. Alex Burns reviews three books on how media coverage of the September 11 carnage re-mapped our ‘virtual geographies’ with disturbing consequences, and how editors and news values were instrumental in this process. U.S. President George W. Bush’s post-September 11 speeches used ‘shared’ meanings and symbols, news values morphed into the language of strategic geography, and risk reportage obliterated the ideal of journalistic objectivity. The deployment of ‘embedded’ journalists during the Second Gulf War (March-April 2003) is the latest development of this unfolding trend. September 11 imagery also revitalized the Holocaust aesthetic and portrayal of J.G. Ballard-style ‘institutionalised disaster areas’. Royce Smith examines why, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, macabre photo-manipulations of the last moments became the latest Internet urban legend. Drawing upon the theoretical contributions of Jean Baudrillard, Roland Barthes and others, Smith suggests that these photo-manipulations were a kitsch form of post-traumatic visualisation for some viewers. Others seized on Associated Press wire photos, whose visuals suggested the ‘face of Satan’ in the smoke of the World Trade Center (WTC) ruins, as moral explanations of disruptive events. Imagery of people jumping from the WTC’s North Tower, mostly censored in North America’s press, restored the humanness of the catastrophe and the reality of the viewer’s own mortality. The discovery of surviving artwork in the WTC ruins, notably Rodin’s The Thinker and Fritz Koenig’s The Sphere, have prompted art scholars to resurrect this ‘dead art’ as a memorial to September 11’s victims. Perhaps art has always best outlined the contradictions that are inherent in the sharing of cultural artefacts. Art is part of our, of humanity’s, shared cultural heritage, and is celebrated as speaking to the most fundamental of human qualities, connecting us regardless of the markers of individual identity that may divide us – yet art is also itself dividing us along lines of skill and talent, on the side of art production, and of tastes and interests, on the side of art consumption. Though perhaps intending to share the artist’s vision, some art also commands exorbitant sums of money which buy the privilege of not having to share that vision with others, or (in the case of museums and galleries) to set the parameters – and entry fees – for that sharing. Digital networks have long been promoted as providing the environment for unlimited sharing of art and other content, and for shared, collaborative approaches to the production of that content. It is no surprise that the Internet features prominently in almost all of the articles in this ‘share’ issue of M/C Journal. It has disrupted the existing systems of exchange, but how the pieces will fall remains to be seen. For now, we share with you these reports from the many nodes of the network society – no doubt, more connections will continue to emerge. Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Burns, Alex and Bruns, Axel. ""Share" Editorial" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/01-editorial.php>. APA Style Burns, A. & Bruns, A. (2003, Apr 23). "Share" Editorial. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/01-editorial.php>

Abstract:

"If people don't trust their information, it's not much better than a Marxist-Leninist society." -- Orville Schell Dean, Graduate School of Journalism, UC Berkeley "Most people aren't very discerning. Maybe they need good financial information, but I don't think people know what good information is when you get into culture, society, and politics." -- Steven Brill,Chairman and Editor-in-chief, Brill's Content Once upon a time, not very long ago, advertisements were easy to recognise. They had simple personalities with goals not much more complicated than selling you a bar of soap or a box of cereal. And they possessed the reassuring familiarity of old friends or relatives you've known all your life. They were Pilgrims who smiled at you from Quaker Oats boxes or little tablets named "Speedy" who joyfully danced into a glass of water with the sole purpose of giving up their short life to help lessen your indigestion from overindulgence. Yes, sometimes they could be a little obnoxious but, hey, it was a predictable annoyance. And once, not very long ago, advertisements also knew their place in the landscape of popular culture, their boundaries were the ad space of magazines or the commercial time of television programs. When the ads got too annoying, you could toss the magazine aside or change the TV channel. The ease and quickness of their dispatch had the abruptness of slamming your front door in the face of an old door-to-door salesman. This all began to change around the 1950s when advertisements acquired a more complex and subtle personality and began straying outside of their familiar media neighborhoods. The social observer Vance Packard wrote a best-selling book in the late 50s called The Hidden Persuaders which identified this change in advertising's personality as coming from hanging around Professor Freud's psychoanalysis and learning his hidden, subliminal methods of trickery. Ice cubes in a glass for a liquor ad were no longer seen as simple props to help sell a brand of whiskey but were now subliminal suggestions of female anatomy. The curved fronts of automobiles were more than aesthetic streamlined design features but rather suggestive of a particular feature of the male anatomy. Forgotten by the new subliminal types of ads was the simple salesmanship preached by founders of the ad industry like David Ogilvy and John Caples. The word "sales" became a dirty word and was replaced with modern psychological buzzwords like subliminal persuasion. The Evolution of Subliminal Techniques The book Hidden Persuaders made quite a stir at the time, bringing about congressional hearings and even the introduction of legislation. Prominent motivation researchers Louis Cheskin and Ernest Dichter utilised the new ad methods and were publicly admonished as traitors to their profession. The life of the new subliminal advertising seemed short indeed. Even Vance Packard predicted its coming demise. "Eventually, say by A.D. 2000," he wrote in the preface to the paperback edition of his book, "all this depth manipulation of the psychological variety will seem amusingly old- fashioned". Yet, 40 years later, any half-awake observer of popular culture knows that things haven't exactly worked out the way Packard predicted. In fact what seems old-fashioned today is the belief that ads are those simpletons they once were before the 50s and that products are sold for features and benefits rather than for images. Even Vance Packard expresses an amazement at the evolution of advertising since the 50s, noting that today ads for watches have nothing to do with watches or that ads for shoes scarcely mention shoes. Packard remarks "it used to be the brand identified the product. In today's advertising the brand is the product". Modern advertising, he notes, has an almost total obsession with images and feelings and an almost total lack of any concrete claims about the product and why anyone should buy it. Packard admits puzzlement. "Commercials seem totally unrelated to selling any product at all". Jeff DeJoseph of the J. Walter Thompson firm underlines Packard's comments. "We are just trying to convey a sensory impression of the brand, and we're out of there". Subliminal advertising techniques have today infiltrated the heart of corporate America. As Ruth Shalit notes in her article "The Return of the Hidden Persuaders" from the 27 September 1999 issue of Salon magazine, "far from being consigned to the maverick fringe, the new psycho- persuaders of corporate America have colonized the marketing departments of mainstream conglomerates. At companies like Kraft, Coca-Cola, Proctor & Gamble and Daimler-Chrysler, the most sought-after consultants hail not from McKinsey & Company, but from brand consultancies with names like Archetype Discoveries, PsychoLogics and Semiotic Solutions". Shalit notes a growing number of CEOs have become convinced they cannot sell their brands until they first explore the "Jungian substrata of four- wheel drive; unlock the discourse codes of female power sweating; or deconstruct the sexual politics of bologna". The result, as Shalit observes, is a "charmingly retro school of brand psychoanalysis, which holds that all advertising is simply a variation on the themes of the Oedipus complex, the death instinct, or toilet training, and that the goal of effective communications should be to compensate the consumer for the fact that he was insufficiently nursed as an infant, has taken corporate America by storm". The Growing Ubiquity of Advertising Yet pervasive as the subliminal techniques of advertising have become, the emerging power of modern advertising ultimately centres around "where" it is rather than "what" it is or "how" it works. The power of modern advertising is within this growing ubiquity or "everywhereness" of advertising rather than the technology and methodology of advertising. The ultimate power of advertising will be arrived at when ads cannot be distinguished from their background environment. When this happens, the environment will become a great continuous ad. In the process, ads have wandered away from their well-known hangouts in magazines and TV shows. Like alien-infected pod-people of early science fiction movies, they have stumbled out of these familiar media playgrounds and suddenly sprouted up everywhere. The ubiquity of advertising is not being driven by corporations searching for new ways to sell products but by media searching for new ways to make money. Traditionally, media made money by selling subscriptions and advertising space. But these two key income sources are quickly drying up in the new world of online media. Journalist Mike France wisely takes notice of this change in an important article "Journalism's Online Credibility Gap" from the 11 October 1999 issue of Business Week. France notes that subscription fees have not worked because "Web surfers are used to getting content for free, and they have been reluctant to shell out any money for it". Advertising sales and their Internet incarnation in banner ads have also been a failure so far, France observes, because companies don't like paying a flat fee for online advertising since it's difficult to track the effectiveness of their marketing dollars. Instead, they only want to pay for actual sales leads, which can be easily monitored on the Web as readers' click from site to site. Faced with the above situation, media companies have gone on the prowl for new ways to make money. This search underpins the emerging ubiquity of advertising: the fact that it is increasingly appearing everywhere. In the process, traditional boundaries between advertising and other societal institutions are being overrun by these media forces on the prowl for new "territory" to exploit. That time when advertisements knew their place in the landscape of popular culture and confined themselves to just magazines or TV commercials is a fading memory. And today, as each of us is bombarded by thousands of ads each day, it is impossible to "slam" the door and keep them out of our house as we could once slam the door in the face of the old door-to-door salesmen. Of course you can find them on the matchbook cover of your favorite bar, on t-shirts sold at some roadside tourist trap or on those logo baseball caps you always pick up at trade shows. But now they have got a little more personal and stare at you over urinals in the men's room. They have even wedged themselves onto the narrow little bars at the check-out counter conveyer belts of supermarkets or onto the handles of gasoline pumps at filling stations. The list goes on and on. (No, this article is not an ad.) Advertising and Entertainment In advertising's march to ubiquity, two major boundaries have been crossed. They are crucial boundaries which greatly enhance advertising's search for the invisibility of ubiquity. Yet they are also largely invisible themselves. These are the boundaries separating advertising from entertainment and those separating advertising from journalism. The incursion of advertising into entertainment is a result of the increasing merger of business and entertainment, a phenomenon pointed out in best-selling business books like Michael Wolf's Entertainment Economy and Joseph Pine's The Experience Economy. Wolf, a consultant for Viacom, Newscorp, and other media heavy-weights, argues business is becoming synonymous with entertainment: "we have come to expect that we will be entertained all the time. Products and brands that deliver on this expectation are succeeding. Products that do not will disappear". And, in The Experience Economy, Pine notes the increasing need for businesses to provide entertaining experiences. "Those businesses that relegate themselves to the diminishing world of goods and services will be rendered irrelevant. To avoid this fate, you must learn to stage a rich, compelling experience". Yet entertainment, whether provided by businesses or the traditional entertainment industry, is increasingly weighted down with the "baggage" of advertising. In a large sense, entertainment is a form of new media that carries ads. Increasingly, this seems to be the overriding purpose of entertainment. Once, not long ago, when ads were simple and confined, entertainment was also simple and its purpose was to entertain rather than to sell. There was money enough in packed movie houses or full theme parks to make a healthy profit. But all this has changed with advertising's ubiquity. Like media corporations searching for new revenue streams, the entertainment industry has responded to flat growth by finding new ways to squeeze money out of entertainment content. Films now feature products in paid for scenes and most forms of entertainment use product tie-ins to other areas such as retail stores or fast-food restaurants. Also popular with the entertainment industry is what might be termed the "versioning" of entertainment products into various sub-species where entertainment content is transformed into other media so it can be sold more than once. A film may not make a profit on just the theatrical release but there is a good chance it doesn't matter because it stands to make a profit in video rentals. Advertising and Journalism The merger of advertising and entertainment goes a long way towards a world of ubiquitous advertising. Yet the merger of advertising and journalism is the real "promised land" in the evolution of ubiquitous advertising. This fundamental shift in the way news media make money provides the final frontier to be conquered by advertising, a final "promised land" for advertising. As Mike France observes in Business Week, this merger "could potentially change the way they cover the news. The more the press gets in the business of hawking products, the harder it will be to criticize those goods -- and the companies making them". Of course, there is that persistent myth, perpetuated by news organisations that they attempt to preserve editorial independence by keeping the institutions they cover and their advertisers at arm's length. But this is proving more and more difficult, particularly for online media. Observers like France have pointed out a number of reasons for this. One is the growth of ads in news media that look more like editorial content than ads. While long-standing ethical rules bar magazines and newspapers from printing advertisements that look like editorial copy, these rules become fuzzy for many online publications. Another reason making it difficult to separate advertising from journalism is the growing merger and consolidation of media corporations. Fewer and fewer corporations control more and more entertainment, news and ultimately advertising. It becomes difficult for a journalist to criticise a product when it has a connection to the large media conglomerate the journalist works for. Traditionally, it has been rare for media corporations to make direct investments in the corporations they cover. However, as Mike France notes, CNBC crossed this line when it acquired a stake in Archipelago in September 1999. CNBC, which runs a business-news Website, acquired a 12.4% stake in Archipelago Holdings, an electronic communications network for trading stock. Long-term plans are likely to include allowing visitors to cnbc.com to link directly to Archipelago. That means CNBC could be in the awkward position of both providing coverage of online trading and profiting from it. France adds that other business news outlets, such as Dow Jones (DJ), Reuters, and Bloomberg, already have indirect ties to their own electronic stock-trading networks. And, in news organisations, a popular method of cutting down on the expense of paying journalists for content is the growing practice of accepting advertiser written content or "sponsored edit" stories. The confusion to readers violates the spirit of a long-standing American Society of Magazine Editors (ASME) rule prohibiting advertisements with "an editorial appearance". But as France notes, this practice is thriving online. This change happens in ever so subtle ways. "A bit of puffery inserted here," notes France, "a negative adjective deleted there -- it doesn't take a lot to turn a review or story about, say, smart phones, into something approaching highbrow ad copy". He offers an example in forbes.com whose Microsoft ads could easily be mistaken for staff-written articles. Media critic James Fallows points out that consumers have been swift to discipline sites that are caught acting unethically and using "sponsored edits". He notes that when it was revealed that amazon.com was taking fees of up to $10,000 for books that it labelled as "destined for greatness", its customers were outraged, and the company quickly agreed to disclose future promotional payments. Unfortunately, though, the lesson episodes like these teach online companies like Amazon centres around more effective ways to be less "revealing" rather than abstention from the practice of "sponsored edits". France reminds us that journalism is built on trust. In the age of the Internet, though, trust is quickly becoming an elusive quality. He writes "as magazines, newspapers, radio stations, and television networks rush to colonize the Internet, the Great Wall between content and commerce is beginning to erode". In the end, he ponders whether there is an irrevocable conflict between e-commerce and ethical journalism. When you can't trust journalists to be ethical, just who can you trust? Transaction Fees & Affiliate Programs - Advertising's Final Promised Land? The engine driving the growing ubiquity of advertising, though, is not the increasing merger of advertising with other industries (like entertainment and journalism) but rather a new business model of online commerce and Internet technology called transaction fees. This emerging and potentially dominant Internet e-commerce technology provides for the ability to track transactions electronically on Websites and to garner transaction fees. Through these fees, many media Websites take a percentage of payment through online product sales. In effect, a media site becomes one pervasive direct mail ad for every product mentioned on its site. This of course puts them in a much closer economic partnership with advertisers than is the case with traditional fixed-rate ads where there is little connection between product sales and the advertising media carrying them. Transaction fees are the new online version of direct marketing, the emerging Internet technology for their application is one of the great economic driving forces of the entire Internet commerce apparatus. The promise of transaction fees is that a number of people, besides product manufacturers and advertisers, might gain a percentage of profit from selling products via hypertext links. Once upon a time, the manufacturer of a product was the one that gained (or lost) from marketing it. Now, however, there is the possibility that journalists, news organisations and entertainment companies might also gain from marketing via transaction fees. The spread of transaction fees outside media into the general population provides an even greater boost to the growing ubiquity of advertising. This is done through the handmaiden of media transaction fees: "affiliate programs" for the general populace. Through the growing magic of Internet technology, it becomes possible for all of us to earn money through affiliate program links to products and transaction fee percentages in the sale of these products. Given this scenario, it is not surprising that advertisers are most likely to increasingly pressure media Websites to support themselves with e-commerce transaction fees. Charles Li, Senior Analyst for New Media at Forrester Research, estimates that by the year 2003, media sites will receive $25 billion in revenue from transaction fees, compared with $17 billion from ads and $5 billion from subscriptions. The possibility is great that all media will become like great direct response advertisements taking a transaction fee percentage for anything sold on their sites. And there is the more dangerous possibility that all of us will become the new "promised land" for a ubiquitous advertising. All of us will have some cut in selling somebody else's product. When this happens and there is a direct economic incentive for all of us to say nice things about products, what is the need and importance of subliminal techniques and methods creating advertising based on images which try to trick us into buying things? A Society Without Critics? It is for these reasons that criticism and straight news are becoming an increasingly endangered species. Everyone has to eat but what happens when one can no longer make meal money by criticising current culture? Cultural critics become a dying breed. There is no money in criticism because it is based around disconnection rather than connection to products. No links to products or Websites are involved here. Critics are becoming lonely icebergs floating in the middle of a cyber-sea of transaction fees, watching everyone else (except themselves) make money on transaction fees. The subliminal focus of the current consultancies is little more than a repackaging of an old theme discovered long ago by Vance Packard. But the growing "everywhereness" and "everyoneness" of modern advertising through transaction fees may mark the beginning of a revolutionary new era. Everyone might become their own "brand", a point well made in Tim Peters's article "A Brand Called You". Media critic James Fallows is somewhat optimistic that there still may remain "niche" markets for truthful information and honest cultural criticism. He suggests that surely people looking for mortgages, voting for a politician, or trying to decide what movie to see will continue to need unbiased information to help them make decisions. But one must ask what happens when a number of people have some "affiliate" relationship with suggesting particular movies, politicians or mortgages? Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley, has summarised this growing ubiquity of advertising in a rather simple and elegant manner saying "at a certain point, people won't be able to differentiate between what's trustworthy and what isn't". Over the long run, this loss of credibility could have a corrosive effect on society in general -- especially given the media's importance as a political, cultural, and economic watchdog. Schell warns, "if people don't trust their information, it's not much better than a Marxist-Leninist society". Yet, will we be able to realise this simple fact when we all become types of Marxists and Leninists? Still, there is the great challenge to America to learn how to utilise transaction fees in a democratic manner. In effect, a combination of the technological promise of the new economy with that old promise, and perhaps even myth, of a democratic America. America stands on the verge of a great threshold and challenge in the growing ubiquity of advertising. In a way, as with most great opportunities or threats, this challenge centres on a peculiar paradox. On the one hand, there is the promise of the emerging Internet business model and its centre around the technology of transaction fees. At the same time, there is the threat posed by transaction fees to America's democratic society in the early years of the new millennium. Yes, once upon a time, not very long ago, advertisements were easy to recognise and also knew their place in the landscape of popular culture. Their greatest, yet silent, evolution (especially in the age of the Internet) has really been in their spread into all areas of culture rather than in methods of trickery and deceit. Now, it is more difficult to slam that front door in the face of that old door-to-door salesman. Or toss that magazine and its ad aside, or switch off commercials on television. We have become that door-to-door salesman, that magazine ad, that television commercial. The current cultural landscape takes on some of the characteristics of the theme of that old science fiction movie The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. A current advertising campaign from RJ Reynolds has a humorous take on the current zeitgeist fad of alien abduction with copy reading "if aliens are smart enough to travel through space then why do they keep abducting the dumbest people on earth?" One might add that when Americans allow advertising to travel through all our space, perhaps we all become the dumbest people on earth, abducted by a new alien culture so far away from a simplistic nostalgia of yesterday. (Please press below for your links to a world of fantastic products which can make a new you.) References Brill, Steven. Quoted by Mike France in "Journalism's Online Credibility Gap." Business Week 11 Oct. 1999. France, Mike. "Journalism's Online Credibility Gap." Business Week 11 Oct. 1999. <http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_41/b3650163.htm>. Packard, Vance. The Hidden Persuaders. Out of Print, 1957. Pine, Joseph, and James Gilmore. The Experience Economy. Harvard Business School P, 1999. Shalit, Ruth. "The Return of the Hidden Persuaders." Salon Magazine 27 Sep. 1999. <http://www.salon.com/media/col/shal/1999/09/27/persuaders/index.php>. Schell, Orville. Quoted by Mike France in "Journalism's Online Credibility Gap." Business Week 11 Oct. 1999. Wolf, Michael. Entertainment Economy. Times Books, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA style: John Fraim. "Friendly Persuasion: The Growing Ubiquity of Advertising, or What Happens When Everyone Becomes an Ad?." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3.1 (2000). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/ads.php>. Chicago style: John Fraim, "Friendly Persuasion: The Growing Ubiquity of Advertising, or What Happens When Everyone Becomes an Ad?," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3, no. 1 (2000), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/ads.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: John Fraim. (2000) Friendly Persuasion: The Growing Ubiquity of Advertising, or What Happens When Everyone Becomes an Ad?. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 3(1). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/0003/ads.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

Introduction Tiffany and Co. is an American luxury jewellery and specialty retailer with its headquarters in New York City. Each piece of jewellery, symbolically packaged in a blue box and tied with a white bow, encapsulates the brand’s unique diamond pieces, symbolic origin story, branded historical contributions and representations in culture. Cultural brands are those that live and thrive in the minds of consumers (Holt). Their brand promise inspires loyalty and trust. These brands offer experiences, products, and personalities and spark emotional connotations within consumers (Arvidsson). This case study uses Tiffany & Co. as a successful example to reveal the importance of understanding consumers, the influential nature of media culture, and the efficacy of strategic branding, advertising, and marketing over time (Holt). It also reveals how Tiffany & Co. earned and maintained its place as an iconic cultural brand within consumer culture, through its strong association with New York and products from abroad. Through its trademarked logo and authentic luxury jewellery, encompassed in the globally recognised “Tiffany Blue” boxes, Tiffany & Co.’s cultural significance stems from its embodiment of the expected makings of a brand (Chernatony et al.). However, what propels this brand into what Douglas Holt terms “iconic territory” is that in its one hundred and seventy-nine years of existence, Tiffany’s has lived exclusively in the minds of its consumers.Tiffany & Co.’s intuitive prowess in reaching its target audience is what allows it to dominate the luxury jewellery market (Halasz et al.). This is not only a result of product value, but the alluring nature of the “Tiffany's from New York” brand imagery and experience (Holt et al.), circulated and celebrated in consumer culture through influential depictions in music, film and literature over time (Knight). Tiffany’s faithfully participates in the magnetic identity myth embodied by the brand and city, and has become globally sought after by consumers near and far, and recognised for its romantic connotations of love, luxury, and New York (Holt). An American Dream: New York Affiliation & Diamond OriginsIt was Truman Capote’s characterisation of Holly Golightly in his book (1958) and film adaption, Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961) that introduced the world to New York as the infatuating “setting,” upon which the Tiffany’s diamond rested. It was a place, that enabled the iconic Holly Golightly to personify the feeling of being abroad in New York and to demonstrate the seductive nature of a Tiffany’s store experience, further shaping the identity myth encompassed by the brand and the city for their global audience (Holt). Essentially, New York was the influential cultural instigator that propelled Tiffany & Co. from a consumer product, to a cultural icon. It did this by circulating its iconography via celebrity affiliations and representations in music, film, and literature (Knight), and by guiding strong brand associations in the minds of consumers (Arvidsson). However, before Tiffany’s became culturally iconic, it established its place in American heritage through historical contributions (Tiffany & Co.) and pledged an association to New York by personifying the American Dream (Mae). To help achieve his dream in a rapidly evolving economy (Elliott), Charles Lewis Tiffany purportedly brought the first substantial gemstones into America from overseas, and established the first American jewellery store to sell them to the public (Halasz et al.). The Tiffany & Co. origin story personifies the alluring nature of products from abroad, and their influence on individuals seeking an image of affluence for themselves. The ties between New York, Tiffany’s, and its consumers were further strengthened through the established, invaluable and emblematic nature of the diamond, historically launched and controlled by South African Diamond Cartel of De Beers (Twitchell). De Beers manipulated the demand for diamonds and instigated it as a status symbol. It then became a commoditised measurement of an individual’s worth and potential to love (Twitchell), a philosophy, also infused in the Tiffany & Co. brand ideology (Holt). Building on this, Tiffany’s further ritualised the justification of the material symbolisation of love through the idealistic connotations surrounding its assorted diamond ring experiences (Lee). This was projected through a strategic product placement and targeted advertising scheme, evident in dominant culture throughout the brand’s existence (Twitchell). Idealistically discussed by Purinton, this is also what exemplified, for consumers, the enticing cultural symbolism of the crystal rock from New York (Halasz et al.). Brand Essence: Experience & Iconography Prior to pop culture portraying the charming Tiffany’s brand imagery in mainstream media (Balmer et al.), Charles Tiffany directed the company’s ascent into luxury jewellery (Phillips et al.), fashioned the enticing Tiffany’s “store experience”, and initiated the experiential process of purchasing a diamond product. This immediately intertwined the imagery of Tiffany’s with New York, instigating the exclusivity of the experience for consumers (Holt). Tiffany’s provided customers with the opportunity to participate in an intricately branded journey, resulting in the diamond embodiment which declared their love most accurately; a token, packaged and presented within an iconic “Tiffany Blue” box (Klara). Aligning with Keller’s branding blueprint (7), this interactive process enabled Tiffany & Co. to build brand loyalty by consistently connecting with each of its consumers, regardless of their location in the world. The iconography of the coveted “blue box” was crafted when Charles Tiffany trademarked the shade Pantone No. 1837 (Osborne), which he coined for the year of Tiffany’s founding (Klara). Along with the brand promise of containing quality luxury jewellery, the box and that particular shade of blue instantly became a symbol of exclusivity, sophistication, and elegance, as it could only be acquired by purchasing jewellery from a Tiffany’s store (Rawlings). The exclusive packaging began to shape Tiffany’s global brand image, becoming a signifier of style and superiority (Phillips et al.), and eventually just as iconic as the jewellery itself. The blue box is still the strongest signifier of the brand today (Osborne). Ultimately, individuals want to participate in the myth of love, perfection and wealth (Arvidsson), encompassed exclusively by every Tiffany’s “blue box”. Furthermore, Tiffany’s has remained artistically significant within the luxury jewellery landscape since introducing its one-of-a-kind Tiffany Setting in 1886. It was the first jewellery store to fully maximise the potential of the natural beauty possessed of diamonds, while connotatively reflecting the natural beauty of every wearer (Phillips et al.). According to Jeffrey Bennett, the current Vice President of Tiffany & Co. New York, by precisely perching the “Tiffany Diamond” upon six intricately crafted silver prongs, the ring shines to its maximum capacity in a lit environment, while being closely secured to the wearer’s finger (Lee). Hence, the “Tiffany Setting” has become a universally sought after icon of extravagance and intricacy (Knight), and, as Bennett further describes, even today, the setting represents uncompromising quality and is a standard image of true love (Lee). Alluring Brand Imagery & Influential Representations in CultureEmpirical consumer research, involving two focus groups of married and unmarried, ethnically diverse Australian women and conducted in 2015, revealed that even today, individuals accredit their desire for Tiffany’s to the inspirational imagery portrayed in music, movies and television. Through participating in the Tiffany's from New York store experience, consumers are able to indulge in their fantasies of what it would feel like to be abroad and the endless potential a city such as New York could hold for them. Tiffany’s successfully disseminated its brand ideology into consumer culture (Purinton) and extended the brand’s significance for consumers beyond the 1960s through constant representation of the expensive business of love, lust and marriage within media culture. This is demonstrated in such films as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), Legally Blonde (2001), Sweet Home Alabama (2002), The Great Gatsby (2013), and in the influential television shows, Gossip Girl (2007—2012), and Glee (2009—2015).The most important of these was the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), and the iconic embodiment of Capote’s (1958) Holly Golightly by actress Audrey Hepburn (Wasson). Hepburn’s (1961) portrayal of the emotionally evocative connotations of experiencing Tiffany’s in New York, as personified by her romantic dialogue throughout the film (Mae), produced the image that nothing bad could ever happen at a Tiffany’s store. Thus began the Tiffany’s from New York cultural phenomenon, which has been consistently reiterated in popular media culture ever since.Breakfast at Tiffany’s also represented a greater struggle faced by women in the 1960s (Dutt); that of gender roles, women’s place in society, and their desire for stability and freedom simultaneously (Sheehan). Due to Hepburn’s accurate characterisation of this struggle, the film enabled Tiffany & Co. to become more than just jewellery and a symbol of support (Torelli). Tiffany’s also allowed filming to take place inside its New York flagship store to which Capote’s narrative so idealistically alludes, further demonstrating its support for the 1960s women’s movement at an opportune moment in history (Torelli). Hence, Tiffany’s from New York became a symbol for the independent materialistic modern woman (Wasson), an ideal, which has become a repeated motif, re-imagined and embodied by popular icons (Knight) such as, Madonna in Material Girl (1985), and the characterisations of Carrie Bradshaw by Sarah Jessica Parker, Charlotte York by Kristin Davis (Sex and the City), and Donna Paulsen by Sarah Rafferty (Suits). The iconic television series Sex and the City, set in New York, boldly represented Tiffany’s as a symbol of friendship when a fellow female protagonist parted with her lavish Tiffany’s engagement ring to help her friend financially (Sex and the City). This was similarly reimagined in the popular television series Suits, also set in New York, where a protagonist is gifted two Tiffany Boxes from her female friend, as a token of congratulations on her engagement. This allowed Tiffany & Co. to add friendship to its symbolic repertoire (Manning), whilst still personifying a symbol of love in the minds of its consumers who were tactically also the target audiences of these television shows (Wharton).The alluring Tiffany’s image was presented specifically to a male audience through the first iconic Bond Girl named Tiffany Case in the novel Diamonds Are Forever (Fleming). The film adaption made its cultural imprint in 1971 with Sean Connery portraying James Bond, and paired the exaggerated brand of “007” with the evocative imagery of Tiffany’s (Spilski et al.). This served as a reminder to existing audiences about the powerful and seductive connotations of the blue box with the white ribbon (Osborne), as depicted by the enticing Tiffany Case in 1956.Furthermore, the Tiffany’s image was similarly established as a lyrical status symbol of wealth and indulgence (Knight). Portrayed most memorably by Marilyn Monroe’s iconic performance of Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend (Gentlemen Prefer Blondes). Even though the song only mentions Tiffany’s lyrically twice (Vito et al.), through the celebrity affiliation, Monroe was introduced as a credible embodiment of Tiffany’s brand essence (Davis). Consequently, she permanently attached her image to that of the alluring Tiffany Diamonds for the target audience, male and female, past and present (Vito et al.). Exactly thirty-two years later, Monroe’s 1953 depiction was reinforced in consumer culture (Wharton) through an uncanny aesthetic and lyrical reimagining of the original performance by Madonna in her music video Material Girl (1985). This further preserved and familiarised the Tiffany’s image of glamour, luxury and beauty by implanting it in the minds of a new generation (Knight). Despite the shift in celebrity affiliation to a current cultural communicator (Arvidsson), the influential image of the Tiffany Diamond remains constant and Tiffany’s has maintained its place as a popular signifier of affluence and elegance in mainstream consumer culture (Jansson). The main difference, however, between Monroe’s and Madonna’s depictions is that Madonna aspired to be associated with the Tiffany’s brand image because of her appreciation for Marilyn Monroe and her brand image, which also intrinsically exuded beauty, money and glamour (Vito et al.). This suggests that even a musical icon like Madonna was influenced by Tiffany & Co.’s hold on consumer culture (Spilski et al.), and was able to inject the same ideals into her own loyal fan base (Fill). It is evident that Tiffany & Co. is thoroughly in tune with its target market and understands the relevant routes into the minds of its consumers. Kotler (113) identifies that the brand has demonstrated the ability to reach its separate audiences simultaneously, with an image that resonates with them on different levels (Manning). For example, Tiffany & Co. created the jewellery that featured in Baz Luhrmann’s 2013 cinematic adaption of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel, The Great Gatsby (1925). Through representing a signifier of love and lust induced by monetary possessions (Fitzgerald), Tiffany’s truthfully portrayed its own brand image and persuaded audiences to associate the brand with these ideals (Holt). By illustrating the romantic, alluring and powerful symbolism of giving or obtaining love, armed with a Tiffany’s Diamond (Mae), Tiffany’s validated its timeless, historical and cultural contemporary relevance (Greene).This was also most recently depicted through Tiffany & Co.’s Will You (2015) advertising campaign. The brand demonstrated its support for marriage equality, by featuring a real life same-sex couple to symbolise that love is not conditional and that Tiffany’s has something that signifies every relationship (Dicker). Thus, because of the brand’s rooted place in central media culture and the ability to appeal to the belief system of its target market while evolving with, and understanding its consumers on a level of metonymy (Manning), Tiffany & Co. has transitioned from a consumer product to a culturally relevant and globally sought-after iconic brand (Holt). ConclusionTiffany & Co.’s place-based association and representational reflection in music, film, and literature, assisted in the formation of loyal global communities that thrive on the identity building side effects associated with luxury brand affiliation (Banet-Weiser et al.). Tiffany’s enables its global target market to revel in the shared meanings surrounding the brand, by signifying a symbolic construct that resonates with consumers (Hall). Tiffany’s inspires consumers to eagerly exercise their brand trust and loyalty by independently ritualising the Tiffany’s from New York brand experience for themselves and the ones they love (Fill). Essentially, Tiffany & Co. successfully established its place in society and strengthened its ties to New York, through targeted promotions and iconographic brand dissemination (Nita).Furthermore, by ritualistically positioning the brand (Holt), surrounding and saturating it in existing cultural practices, supporting significant cultural actions and becoming a symbol of wealth, luxury, commitment, love and exclusivity (Phillips et al.), Tiffany’s has steadily built a positive brand association and desire in the minds of consumers near and far (Keller). As a direct result, Tiffany’s earned and kept its place as a culturally progressive brand in New York and around the world, sustaining its influence and ensuring its survival in today’s contemporary consumer society (Holt).Most importantly, however, although New York has become the anchor in every geographically exemplified Tiffany’s store experience in literature, New York has also become the allegorical anchor in the minds of consumers in actuality (Arvidsson). Hence, Tiffany & Co. has catered to the needs of its global target audience by providing it with convenient local stores abroad, where their love can be personified by purchasing a Tiffany Diamond, the ultimate symbol of authentic commitment, and where they can always experience an allusive piece of New York. ReferencesArvidsson, Adam. Brands: Meaning and Value in Media Culture. New York: Routledge, 2006.Balmer, John M.T., Stephen A. Greyser, and Mats Urde. “Corporate Brands with a Heritage.” Journal of Brand Management 15.1 (2007): 4–17.Banet-Weiser, Sarah, and Charlotte Lapsansky. “RED Is the New Black: Brand Culture, Consumer Citizenship and Political Possibility.” International Journal of Communication 2 (2008): 1248–64. Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Blake Edwards. Paramount Pictures, 1961.Capote, Truman. Breakfast at Tiffany’s. New York: Random House, 1958.Chernatony, Leslie D, and Francesca Dall'Olmo Riley. “Defining a 'Brand': Beyond the Literature with Experts' Interpretations.” Journal of Marketing Management 14.5 (1998): 413–38.Material Girl. Performed by Madonna. Mary Lambert. Warner Bros, 1985. Music Video. Davis, Aeron. Promotional Cultures. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2013.Diamonds Are Forever. Guy Hamilton. United Artists, 1971.Dicker, Ron. “Tiffany Ad Features Gay Couple, Rings in New Year in a Big Way.” The Huffington Post Australia, 11 Jan. 2015. 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Abstract:

It is time for the truth to be brought out ... . Behind the scenes high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. -- Rear Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter, Director of Central Intelligence (1947-50), signed statement to Congress, 22 Aug. 1960 As an avid UFO enthusiast, an enduring subject of frustration for me is the complacency and ignorance that tends to characterise public knowledge of the phenomenon itself and its social repercussions. Its hard for people like myself to understand how anyone could not be interested in UFOs, let alone Congressional statements from ex-Directors of the Central Intelligence Agency testifying to an official policy of secrecy and ridicule (in other words, propaganda), which aims to suppress public interest and belief in UFOs. As a student of cultural studies who also happens to be a conspiracy theorist, the idea of the Central Intelligence Agency seeking to manipulate one of the twentieth century's most significant icons -- the UFO -- is a fascinating one, because it allows for the possibility that the ways in which the UFO has come to be understood by the public may involve more than the everyday cultural processes described by cultural studies. A review of the history of the CIA's interest in UFO phenomena actually suggests, quite compellingly I think, that since the 1950s, American culture (and, indirectly and to a lesser degree, the rest of the western world) may have been subjected to a highly sophisticated system of UFO propaganda that originated from the Central Intelligence Agency. This is, of course, a highly contentious claim which would bring many important repercussions should it turn out to be true. There is no point pretending that it doesn't sound like a basic premise of The X-Files -- of course it does. So to extract the idea from its comfortable fictional context and attempt to place it into a real historical one (a completely legitimate endeavour) one must become familiar with the politics of the UFO phenomenon in Cold War America, a field of history which is, to understate the matter, largely ignored by academia. A cursory glance at the thousands of (now declassified) UFO-related documents that once circulated through some of the highest channels of US intelligence reveal that, rather than the nonsense topic it is often considered, the UFO phenomenon has been a matter of great concern for the US government since 1947. To get a sense of just how seriously UFOs were taken by the CIA in the 1950s, consider this declassified 'Secret' memorandum from H. Marshall Chadwell, Assistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, to the Director of Central Intelligence, General Walter Bedell Smith, dated 24 September 1952: a world-wide reporting system has been instituted and major Air Force bases have been ordered to make interceptions of unidentified flying objects ... . Since 1947, ATIC [Air Technical Intelligence Center, a branch of the US Air Force] has received approximately 1500 official reports of sightings ... . During 1952 alone, official reports totalled 250. Of the 1500 reports, Air Force carries 20 percent as unexplained and of those received from January through July 1952 it carries 28 percent as unexplained. (qtd. in Good 390) Fifteen-hundred reports in five years is roughly three-hundred reports per year, which is dangerously close to one per day. Although only twenty percent, or one-fifth of these reports were unexplained, equalling about 60 unexplained sightings per year, this still equalled more than one unexplained sighting per week. But these were just the unexplained, official sightings collected by ATIC, which was by no means a comprehensive database of all sightings occurring in the United States, or the rest of the world, for that matter. Extrapolation of these figures suggested that the UFO problem was probably much more extensive than the preliminary findings were indicating, hence the erection of a world-wide reporting system and the interception of UFOs by major US Air Force bases. The social consequences of the UFO problem quickly became a matter of major importance to the CIA. Chadwell went on to point out that: The public concern with the phenomena, which is reflected both in the United States press and in the pressure of inquiry upon the Air Force, indicates that a fair proportion of our population is mentally conditioned to the acceptance of the incredible. In this fact lies the potential for the touching-off of mass hysteria and panic. (qtd. in Good 393) By "acceptance of the incredible" Chadwell was probably referring to acceptance of the existence of intelligently controlled, disc-shaped craft which are capable of performing aerial manoeuvres far in excess of those possible with contemporary technology. Flying saucers were, and remain, incredible. Yet belief in them had permeated the US government as early as 1947, when a 'Secret' Air Materiel Command report (now declassified) from Lieutenant General Nathan Twining to the Commanding General, Army Air Forces, announced that: It is the opinion that: (a) The phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary and fictitious. There are objects probably approximating the shape of a disc, of such appreciable size as to appear to be as large as man-made aircraft. There is a possibility that some of the incidents may be caused by natural phenomena, such as meteors. (b) The reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, manoeuvrability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft or radar, lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely. -- (qtd. in Good 313-4) This report was compiled only two months after the term flying saucer had been invented, following pilot Kenneth Arnold's historic sighting of nine saucer-like objects in June 1947. The fact that a phenomenon which should have been ignored as a tabloid fad was being confirmed, extremely quickly, by the Air Materiel Command Headquarters suggested that those people mentally conditioned to accept the impossible were not restricted to the public domain. They also, apparently, held positions of considerable power within the government itself. This rapid acceptance, at the highest levels of America's defense agencies, of the UFO reality must have convinced certain segments of the CIA that a form of hysteria had already begun, so powerful that those whose job it was to not only remain immune from such psychosocial forces, but to manage them, were actually succumbing to it themselves. What the CIA faced, then, was nothing short of a nation on the verge of believing in aliens. Considering this, it should become a little clearer why the CIA might develop an interest in the UFO phenomenon at this point. Whether aliens were here or not did not, ultimately, matter. What did matter was the obvious social phenomenon of UFO belief. Walter Bedell Smith, Director of Central Intelligence, realised this in 1952, and wrote to the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council (in a letter previously classified 'Secret'): It is my view that this situation has possible implications for our national security which transcend the interests of a single service. A broader, coordinated effort should be initiated to develop a firm scientific understanding of the several phenomena which apparently are involved in these reports, and to assure ourselves that the incidents will not hamper our present efforts in the Cold War or confuse our early warning system in case of an attack. I therefore recommend that this Agency and the agencies of the Department of Defense be directed to formulate and carry out a program of intelligence and research activities required to solve the problem of instant positive identification of unidentified flying objects ... . This effort shall be coordinated with the military services and the Research and Development Board of the Department of Defense, with the Psychological Strategy Board and other Governmental agencies as appropriate. (qtd. in Good 400-1) What the Director was asserting, basically, was that the UFO problem was too big for the CIA to solve alone. Any government agencies it was deemed necessary to involve were to be called into action to deal with the UFOs. If this does not qualify UFOs as serious business, it is difficult to imagine what would. In the same year, Chadwell again reported to the CIA Director in a memo which suggests that he and his colleagues were on the brink of believing not only that UFOs were real, but that they represented an extraterrestrial presence: At this time, the reports of incidents convince us that there is something going on that must have immediate attention ... . Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major US defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles. (qtd. in Good 403) In 1953, these concerns eventually led to the CIA's most public investigation of the UFO phenomenon, the Robertson Panel. Its members were Dr H. P. Robertson (physics and radar); Dr Lloyd V. Berkner (geophysics); Dr Samuel Goudsmit (atomic structure and statistical problems); and Dr Thornton Page (astronomy and astrophysics). Associate members were Dr J. Allen Hynek (astronomy) and Frederick C. Durant (missiles and rockets). Twelve hours of meetings ensued (not nearly enough time to absorb all of the most compelling UFO data gathered at this point), during which the panel was shown films of UFOs, case histories and sightings prepared by the ATIC, and intelligence reports relating to the Soviet Union's interest in US sightings, as well as numerous charts depicting, for example, frequency and geographic location of sightings (Good 404). The report (not fully declassified until 1975) concluded with a highly skeptical, and highly ambiguous, view of UFO phenomena. Part IV, titled "Comments and Suggestions of the Panel", stated that: Reasonable explanations could be suggested for most sightings ... by deduction and scientific method it could be induced (given additional data) that other cases might be explained in a similar manner. (qtd. in Good 404) However, even if the panel's insistence that UFOs were not of extraterrestrial origin seemed disingenuous, it still noted the subjectivity of the public to mass hysteria and greater vulnerability to possible enemy psychological warfare (qtd. in Good 405). To remedy this, it recommended quite a profound method of propaganda: The debunking aim would result in reduction in public interest in flying saucers which today evokes a strong psychological reaction. This education could be accomplished by mass media such [as] television, motion pictures, and popular articles. Basis of such education would be actual case histories which had been puzzling at first but later explained. As in the case of conjuring tricks, there is much less stimulation if the secret is known. Such a program should tend to reduce the current gullibility of the public and consequently their susceptibility to clever hostile propaganda. The panel noted that the general absence of Russian propaganda based on a subject with so many obvious possibilities for exploitation might indicate a possible Russian official policy ... . It was felt strongly that psychologists familiar with mass psychology should advise on the nature and extent of the program ... . It was believed that business clubs, high schools, colleges, and television stations would all be pleased to cooperate in the showing of documentary type motion pictures if prepared in an interesting manner. The use of true cases showing first the mystery and then the explanation would be forceful ... . The continued emphasis on the reporting of these phenomena does, in these parlous times, result in a threat to the orderly functioning of the protective organs of the body politic ... . [It is recommended that] the national security agencies take immediate steps to strip the Unidentified Flying Objects of the special status they have been given and the aura of mystery they have unfortunately acquired; that the national security agencies institute policies on intelligence, training, and public education designed to prepare the material defenses and the morale of the country to recognise most promptly and to react most effectively to true indications of hostile intent or action. We suggest that these aims may be achieved by an integrated program designed to reassure the public of the total lack of evidence of inimical forces behind the phenomena, to train personnel to recognize and reject false indications quickly and effectively, and to strengthen regular channels for the evaluation of and prompt reaction to true indications of hostile measures. (qtd. in Good 405-6) The general aim of the Robertson Panel's recommendations, then, was to not only stop people believing in UFOs, but to stop people seeing UFOs, which constitutes an extreme manipulation of the public consciousness. It was the intention of the CIA to ensure, as subtly as was possible, that most people interpreted specific visual experiences (i.e. UFO sightings) in terms of a strict CIA-developed criterion. This momentous act basically amounts to an attempt to define, control and enforce a particular construction of reality which specifically excludes UFOs. In an ironic way, the Robertson Panel report advocated a type of modern exorcism, and may have been the very birthplace of the idea that such an obvious icon of wonder and potential as the UFO is, it can never be more than a misidentification or a hoax. We cannot be certain to what extent the recommendations of the Robertson Panel were put into practice, but we can safely assume that its findings were not ignored by the CIA. For example, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, Chief of the ATIC's Aerial Phenomena Branch, has testified that "[We were] ordered to hide sightings when possible, but if a strong report does get out, we have to publish a fast explanation -- make up something to kill the report in a hurry, and also ridicule the witnesses, especially if we can't find a plausible answer. We even have to discredit our own pilots" (Good 407). Comments like these make one wonder just how extensive the program of debunking and ridicule actually was. What I have suggested here is that during the 1950s, and possibly throughout the four decades since, an objective of the CIA has been to downplay its own interest in the UFO phenomenon to the public whilst engaging in secret, complex investigations of the phenomenon itself and its social repercussions. If this is the case, as the evidence -- the best of which can be found in the government's own files (even though such evidence, as tens of thousands of conspiracy theorists continue to stress, can hardly be taken simply at face value) -- indicates, then the construction of the UFO in western popular culture will have to be revised as a process involving more than just the projection of popular hopes, desires and anxieties onto an abstract, mythical object. It will also need to be seen as involving the clandestine manipulation of this process by immeasurably powerful groups within the culture itself, such as the CIA. And since the CIAs major concerns about UFOs haved traditionally been explicitly related to the Cold War, the renewed prominence of the UFO in western popular culture since the demise of the Soviet Union requires immediate, serious investigation in a political context. For the UFO issue is, and has always been, a political issue. I suggest that until this fascinating chapter of American domestic history is explored more thoroughly, the cultural function of the UFO will remain just as poorly understood as its physical nature. References Good, Timothy. Beyond Top Secret: The Worldwide UFO Security Threat. London: MacMillan, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Adam Dodd. "Making It Unpopular: The CIA and UFOs in Popular Culture." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php>. Chicago style: Adam Dodd, "Making It Unpopular: The CIA and UFOs in Popular Culture," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Adam Dodd. (1999) Making it unpopular: the CIA and UFOs in popular culture. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/cia.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

Introduction: Our current obsession with the lives of others “Biography—that is to say, our creative and non-fictional output devoted to recording and interpreting real lives—has enjoyed an extraordinary renaissance in recent years,” writes Nigel Hamilton in Biography: A Brief History (1). Ian Donaldson agrees that biography is back in fashion: “Once neglected within the academy and relegated to the dustier recesses of public bookstores, biography has made a notable return over recent years, emerging, somewhat surprisingly, as a new cultural phenomenon, and a new academic adventure” (23). For over a decade now, commentators having been making similar observations about our obsession with the intimacies of individual people’s lives. In a lecture in 1994, Justin Kaplan asserted the West was “a culture of biography” (qtd. in Salwak 1) and more recent research findings by John Feather and Hazel Woodbridge affirm that “the undiminished human curiosity about other peoples lives is clearly reflected in the popularity of autobiographies and biographies” (218). At least in relation to television, this assertion seems valid. In Australia, as in the USA and the UK, reality and other biographically based television shows have taken over from drama in both the numbers of shows produced and the viewers these shows attract, and these forms are also popular in Canada (see, for instance, Morreale on The Osbournes). In 2007, the program Biography celebrated its twentieth anniversary season to become one of the longest running documentary series on American television; so successful that in 1999 it was spun off into its own eponymous channel (Rak; Dempsey). Premiered in May 1996, Australian Story—which aims to utilise a “personal approach” to biographical storytelling—has won a significant viewership, critical acclaim and professional recognition (ABC). It can also be posited that the real home movies viewers submit to such programs as Australia’s Favourite Home Videos, and “chat” or “confessional” television are further reflections of a general mania for biographical detail (see Douglas), no matter how fragmented, sensationalized, or even inane and cruel. A recent example of the latter, the USA-produced The Moment of Truth, has contestants answering personal questions under polygraph examination and then again in front of an audience including close relatives and friends—the more “truthful” their answers (and often, the more humiliated and/or distressed contestants are willing to be), the more money they can win. Away from television, but offering further evidence of this interest are the growing readerships for personally oriented weblogs and networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook (Grossman), individual profiles and interviews in periodical publications, and the recently widely revived newspaper obituary column (Starck). Adult and community education organisations run short courses on researching and writing auto/biographical forms and, across Western countries, the family history/genealogy sections of many local, state, and national libraries have been upgraded to meet the increasing demand for these services. Academically, journals and e-mail discussion lists have been established on the topics of biography and autobiography, and North American, British, and Australian universities offer undergraduate and postgraduate courses in life writing. The commonly aired wisdom is that published life writing in its many text-based forms (biography, autobiography, memoir, diaries, and collections of personal letters) is enjoying unprecedented popularity. It is our purpose to examine this proposition. Methodological problems There are a number of problems involved in investigating genre popularity, growth, and decline in publishing. Firstly, it is not easy to gain access to detailed statistics, which are usually only available within the industry. Secondly, it is difficult to ascertain how publishing statistics are gathered and what they report (Eliot). There is the question of whether bestselling booklists reflect actual book sales or are manipulated marketing tools (Miller), although the move from surveys of booksellers to electronic reporting at point of sale in new publishing lists such as BookScan will hopefully obviate this problem. Thirdly, some publishing lists categorise by subject and form, some by subject only, and some do not categorise at all. This means that in any analysis of these statistics, a decision has to be made whether to use the publishing list’s system or impose a different mode. If the publishing list is taken at face value, the question arises of whether to use categorisation by form or by subject. Fourthly, there is the bedeviling issue of terminology. Traditionally, there reigned a simple dualism in the terminology applied to forms of telling the true story of an actual life: biography and autobiography. Publishing lists that categorise their books, such as BookScan, have retained it. But with postmodern recognition of the presence of the biographer in a biography and of the presence of other subjects in an autobiography, the dichotomy proves false. There is the further problem of how to categorise memoirs, diaries, and letters. In the academic arena, the term “life writing” has emerged to describe the field as a whole. Within the genre of life writing, there are, however, still recognised sub-genres. Academic definitions vary, but generally a biography is understood to be a scholarly study of a subject who is not the writer; an autobiography is the story of a entire life written by its subject; while a memoir is a segment or particular focus of that life told, again, by its own subject. These terms are, however, often used interchangeably even by significant institutions such the USA Library of Congress, which utilises the term “biography” for all. Different commentators also use differing definitions. Hamilton uses the term “biography” to include all forms of life writing. Donaldson discusses how the term has been co-opted to include biographies of place such as Peter Ackroyd’s London: The Biography (2000) and of things such as Lizzie Collingham’s Curry: A Biography (2005). This reflects, of course, a writing/publishing world in which non-fiction stories of places, creatures, and even foodstuffs are called biographies, presumably in the belief that this will make them more saleable. The situation is further complicated by the emergence of hybrid publishing forms such as, for instance, the “memoir-with-recipes” or “food memoir” (Brien, Rutherford and Williamson). Are such books to be classified as autobiography or put in the “cookery/food & drink” category? We mention in passing the further confusion caused by novels with a subtitle of The Biography such as Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. The fifth methodological problem that needs to be mentioned is the increasing globalisation of the publishing industry, which raises questions about the validity of the majority of studies available (including those cited herein) which are nationally based. Whether book sales reflect what is actually read (and by whom), raises of course another set of questions altogether. Methodology In our exploration, we were fundamentally concerned with two questions. Is life writing as popular as claimed? And, if it is, is this a new phenomenon? To answer these questions, we examined a range of available sources. We began with the non-fiction bestseller lists in Publishers Weekly (a respected American trade magazine aimed at publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents that claims to be international in scope) from their inception in 1912 to the present time. We hoped that this data could provide a longitudinal perspective. The term bestseller was coined by Publishers Weekly when it began publishing its lists in 1912; although the first list of popular American books actually appeared in The Bookman (New York) in 1895, based itself on lists appearing in London’s The Bookman since 1891 (Bassett and Walter 206). The Publishers Weekly lists are the best source of longitudinal information as the currently widely cited New York Times listings did not appear till 1942, with the Wall Street Journal a late entry into the field in 1994. We then examined a number of sources of more recent statistics. We looked at the bestseller lists from the USA-based Amazon.com online bookseller; recent research on bestsellers in Britain; and lists from Nielsen BookScan Australia, which claims to tally some 85% or more of books sold in Australia, wherever they are published. In addition to the reservations expressed above, caveats must be aired in relation to these sources. While Publishers Weekly claims to be an international publication, it largely reflects the North American publishing scene and especially that of the USA. Although available internationally, Amazon.com also has its own national sites—such as Amazon.co.uk—not considered here. It also caters to a “specific computer-literate, credit-able clientele” (Gutjahr: 219) and has an unashamedly commercial focus, within which all the information generated must be considered. In our analysis of the material studied, we will use “life writing” as a genre term. When it comes to analysis of the lists, we have broken down the genre of life writing into biography and autobiography, incorporating memoir, letters, and diaries under autobiography. This is consistent with the use of the terminology in BookScan. Although we have broken down the genre in this way, it is the overall picture with regard to life writing that is our concern. It is beyond the scope of this paper to offer a detailed analysis of whether, within life writing, further distinctions should be drawn. Publishers Weekly: 1912 to 2006 1912 saw the first list of the 10 bestselling non-fiction titles in Publishers Weekly. It featured two life writing texts, being headed by an autobiography, The Promised Land by Russian Jewish immigrant Mary Antin, and concluding with Albert Bigelow Paine’s six-volume biography, Mark Twain. The Publishers Weekly lists do not categorise non-fiction titles by either form or subject, so the classifications below are our own with memoir classified as autobiography. In a decade-by-decade tally of these listings, there were 3 biographies and 20 autobiographies in the lists between 1912 and 1919; 24 biographies and 21 autobiographies in the 1920s; 13 biographies and 40 autobiographies in the 1930s; 8 biographies and 46 biographies in the 1940s; 4 biographies and 14 autobiographies in the 1950s; 11 biographies and 13 autobiographies in the 1960s; 6 biographies and 11 autobiographies in the 1970s; 3 biographies and 19 autobiographies in the 1980s; 5 biographies and 17 autobiographies in the 1990s; and 2 biographies and 7 autobiographies from 2000 up until the end of 2006. See Appendix 1 for the relevant titles and authors. Breaking down the most recent figures for 1990–2006, we find a not radically different range of figures and trends across years in the contemporary environment. The validity of looking only at the top ten books sold in any year is, of course, questionable, as are all the issues regarding sources discussed above. But one thing is certain in terms of our inquiry. There is no upwards curve obvious here. If anything, the decade break-down suggests that sales are trending downwards. This is in keeping with the findings of Michael Korda, in his history of twentieth-century bestsellers. He suggests a consistent longitudinal picture across all genres: In every decade, from 1900 to the end of the twentieth century, people have been reliably attracted to the same kind of books […] Certain kinds of popular fiction always do well, as do diet books […] self-help books, celebrity memoirs, sensationalist scientific or religious speculation, stories about pets, medical advice (particularly on the subjects of sex, longevity, and child rearing), folksy wisdom and/or humour, and the American Civil War (xvii). Amazon.com since 2000 The USA-based Amazon.com online bookselling site provides listings of its own top 50 bestsellers since 2000, although only the top 14 bestsellers are recorded for 2001. As fiction and non-fiction are not separated out on these lists and no genre categories are specified, we have again made our own decisions about what books fall into the category of life writing. Generally, we erred on the side of inclusion. (See Appendix 2.) However, when it came to books dealing with political events, we excluded books dealing with specific aspects of political practice/policy. This meant excluding books on, for instance, George Bush’s so-called ‘war on terror,’ of which there were a number of bestsellers listed. In summary, these listings reveal that of the top 364 books sold by Amazon from 2000 to 2007, 46 (or some 12.6%) were, according to our judgment, either biographical or autobiographical texts. This is not far from the 10% of the 1912 Publishers Weekly listing, although, as above, the proportion of bestsellers that can be classified as life writing varied dramatically from year to year, with no discernible pattern of peaks and troughs. This proportion tallied to 4% auto/biographies in 2000, 14% in 2001, 10% in 2002, 18% in 2003 and 2004, 4% in 2005, 14% in 2006 and 20% in 2007. This could suggest a rising trend, although it does not offer any consistent trend data to suggest sales figures may either continue to grow, or fall again, in 2008 or afterwards. Looking at the particular texts in these lists (see Appendix 2) also suggests that there is no general trend in the popularity of life writing in relation to other genres. For instance, in these listings in Amazon.com, life writing texts only rarely figure in the top 10 books sold in any year. So rarely indeed, that from 2001 there were only five in this category. In 2001, John Adams by David McCullough was the best selling book of the year; in 2003, Hillary Clinton’s autobiographical Living History was 7th; in 2004, My Life by Bill Clinton reached number 1; in 2006, Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck: and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman was 9th; and in 2007, Ishmael Beah’s discredited A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier came in at 8th. Apart from McCulloch’s biography of Adams, all the above are autobiographical texts, while the focus on leading political figures is notable. Britain: Feather and Woodbridge With regard to the British situation, we did not have actual lists and relied on recent analysis. John Feather and Hazel Woodbridge find considerably higher levels for life writing in Britain than above with, from 1998 to 2005, 28% of British published non-fiction comprising autobiography, while 8% of hardback and 5% of paperback non-fiction was biography (2007). Furthermore, although Feather and Woodbridge agree with commentators that life writing is currently popular, they do not agree that this is a growth state, finding the popularity of life writing “essentially unchanged” since their previous study, which covered 1979 to the early 1990s (Feather and Reid). Australia: Nielsen BookScan 2006 and 2007 In the Australian publishing industry, where producing books remains an ‘expensive, risky endeavour which is increasingly market driven’ (Galligan 36) and ‘an inherently complex activity’ (Carter and Galligan 4), the most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics figures reveal that the total numbers of books sold in Australia has remained relatively static over the past decade (130.6 million in the financial year 1995–96 and 128.8 million in 2003–04) (ABS). During this time, however, sales volumes of non-fiction publications have grown markedly, with a trend towards “non-fiction, mass market and predictable” books (Corporall 41) resulting in general non-fiction sales in 2003–2004 outselling general fiction by factors as high as ten depending on the format—hard- or paperback, and trade or mass market paperback (ABS 2005). However, while non-fiction has increased in popularity in Australia, the same does not seem to hold true for life writing. Here, in utilising data for the top 5,000 selling non-fiction books in both 2006 and 2007, we are relying on Nielsen BookScan’s categorisation of texts as either biography or autobiography. In 2006, no works of life writing made the top 10 books sold in Australia. In looking at the top 100 books sold for 2006, in some cases the subjects of these works vary markedly from those extracted from the Amazon.com listings. In Australia in 2006, life writing makes its first appearance at number 14 with convicted drug smuggler Schapelle Corby’s My Story. This is followed by another My Story at 25, this time by retired Australian army chief, Peter Cosgrove. Jonestown: The Power and Myth of Alan Jones comes in at 34 for the Australian broadcaster’s biographer Chris Masters; the biography, The Innocent Man by John Grisham at 38 and Li Cunxin’s autobiographical Mao’s Last Dancer at 45. Australian Susan Duncan’s memoir of coping with personal loss, Salvation Creek: An Unexpected Life makes 50; bestselling USA travel writer Bill Bryson’s autobiographical memoir of his childhood The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid 69; Mandela: The Authorised Portrait by Rosalind Coward, 79; and Joanne Lees’s memoir of dealing with her kidnapping, the murder of her partner and the justice system in Australia’s Northern Territory, No Turning Back, 89. These books reveal a market preference for autobiographical writing, and an almost even split between Australian and overseas subjects in 2006. 2007 similarly saw no life writing in the top 10. The books in the top 100 sales reveal a downward trend, with fewer titles making this band overall. In 2007, Terri Irwin’s memoir of life with her famous husband, wildlife warrior Steve Irwin, My Steve, came in at number 26; musician Andrew Johns’s memoir of mental illness, The Two of Me, at 37; Ayaan Hirst Ali’s autobiography Infidel at 39; John Grogan’s biography/memoir, Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog, at 42; Sally Collings’s biography of the inspirational young survivor Sophie Delezio, Sophie’s Journey, at 51; and Elizabeth Gilbert’s hybrid food, self-help and travel memoir, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything at 82. Mao’s Last Dancer, published the year before, remained in the top 100 in 2007 at 87. When moving to a consideration of the top 5,000 books sold in Australia in 2006, BookScan reveals only 62 books categorised as life writing in the top 1,000, and only 222 in the top 5,000 (with 34 titles between 1,000 and 1,999, 45 between 2,000 and 2,999, 48 between 3,000 and 3,999, and 33 between 4,000 and 5,000). 2007 shows a similar total of 235 life writing texts in the top 5,000 bestselling books (75 titles in the first 1,000, 27 between 1,000 and 1,999, 51 between 2,000 and 2,999, 39 between 3,000 and 3,999, and 43 between 4,000 and 5,000). In both years, 2006 and 2007, life writing thus not only constituted only some 4% of the bestselling 5,000 titles in Australia, it also showed only minimal change between these years and, therefore, no significant growth. Conclusions Our investigation using various instruments that claim to reflect levels of book sales reveals that Western readers’ willingness to purchase published life writing has not changed significantly over the past century. We find no evidence of either a short, or longer, term growth or boom in sales in such books. Instead, it appears that what has been widely heralded as a new golden age of life writing may well be more the result of an expanded understanding of what is included in the genre than an increased interest in it by either book readers or publishers. What recent years do appear to have seen, however, is a significantly increased interest by public commentators, critics, and academics in this genre of writing. We have also discovered that the issue of our current obsession with the lives of others tends to be discussed in academic as well as popular fora as if what applies to one sub-genre or production form applies to another: if biography is popular, then autobiography will also be, and vice versa. If reality television programming is attracting viewers, then readers will be flocking to life writing as well. Our investigation reveals that such propositions are questionable, and that there is significant research to be completed in mapping such audiences against each other. This work has also highlighted the difficulty of separating out the categories of written texts in publishing studies, firstly in terms of determining what falls within the category of life writing as distinct from other forms of non-fiction (the hybrid problem) and, secondly, in terms of separating out the categories within life writing. Although we have continued to use the terms biography and autobiography as sub-genres, we are aware that they are less useful as descriptors than they are often assumed to be. In order to obtain a more complete and accurate picture, publishing categories may need to be agreed upon, redefined and utilised across the publishing industry and within academia. This is of particular importance in the light of the suggestions (from total sales volumes) that the audiences for books are limited, and therefore the rise of one sub-genre may be directly responsible for the fall of another. Bair argues, for example, that in the 1980s and 1990s, the popularity of what she categorises as memoir had direct repercussions on the numbers of birth-to-death biographies that were commissioned, contracted, and published as “sales and marketing staffs conclude[d] that readers don’t want a full-scale life any more” (17). Finally, although we have highlighted the difficulty of using publishing statistics when there is no common understanding as to what such data is reporting, we hope this study shows that the utilisation of such material does add a depth to such enquiries, especially in interrogating the anecdotal evidence that is often quoted as data in publishing and other studies. Appendix 1 Publishers Weekly listings 1990–1999 1990 included two autobiographies, Bo Knows Bo by professional athlete Bo Jackson (with Dick Schaap) and Ronald Reagan’s An America Life: An Autobiography. In 1991, there were further examples of life writing with unimaginative titles, Me: Stories of My Life by Katherine Hepburn, Nancy Reagan: The Unauthorized Biography by Kitty Kelley, and Under Fire: An American Story by Oliver North with William Novak; as indeed there were again in 1992 with It Doesn’t Take a Hero: The Autobiography of Norman Schwarzkopf, Sam Walton: Made in America, the autobiography of the founder of Wal-Mart, Diana: Her True Story by Andrew Morton, Every Living Thing, yet another veterinary outpouring from James Herriot, and Truman by David McCullough. In 1993, radio shock-jock Howard Stern was successful with the autobiographical Private Parts, as was Betty Eadie with her detailed recounting of her alleged near-death experience, Embraced by the Light. Eadie’s book remained on the list in 1994 next to Don’t Stand too Close to a Naked Man, comedian Tim Allen’s autobiography. Flag-waving titles continue in 1995 with Colin Powell’s My American Journey, and Miss America, Howard Stern’s follow-up to Private Parts. 1996 saw two autobiographical works, basketball superstar Dennis Rodman’s Bad as I Wanna Be and figure-skater, Ekaterina Gordeeva’s (with EM Swift) My Sergei: A Love Story. In 1997, Diana: Her True Story returns to the top 10, joining Frank McCourt’s Angela’s Ashes and prolific biographer Kitty Kelly’s The Royals, while in 1998, there is only the part-autobiography, part travel-writing A Pirate Looks at Fifty, by musician Jimmy Buffet. There is no biography or autobiography included in either the 1999 or 2000 top 10 lists in Publishers Weekly, nor in that for 2005. In 2001, David McCullough’s biography John Adams and Jack Welch’s business memoir Jack: Straight from the Gut featured. In 2002, Let’s Roll! Lisa Beamer’s tribute to her husband, one of the heroes of 9/11, written with Ken Abraham, joined Rudolph Giuliani’s autobiography, Leadership. 2003 saw Hillary Clinton’s autobiography Living History and Paul Burrell’s memoir of his time as Princess Diana’s butler, A Royal Duty, on the list. In 2004, it was Bill Clinton’s turn with My Life. In 2006, we find John Grisham’s true crime (arguably a biography), The Innocent Man, at the top, Grogan’s Marley and Me at number three, and the autobiographical The Audacity of Hope by Barack Obama in fourth place. Appendix 2 Amazon.com listings since 2000 In 2000, there were only two auto/biographies in the top Amazon 50 bestsellers with Lance Armstrong’s It’s Not about the Bike: My Journey Back to Life about his battle with cancer at 20, and Dave Eggers’s self-consciously fictionalised memoir, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius at 32. In 2001, only the top 14 bestsellers were recorded. At number 1 is John Adams by David McCullough and, at 11, Jack: Straight from the Gut by USA golfer Jack Welch. In 2002, Leadership by Rudolph Giuliani was at 12; Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert Caro at 29; Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper by Patricia Cornwell at 42; Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex-Conservative by David Brock at 48; and Louis Gerstner’s autobiographical Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance: Inside IBM’s Historic Turnaround at 50. In 2003, Living History by Hillary Clinton was 7th; Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson 14th; Dereliction of Duty: The Eyewitness Account of How President Bill Clinton Endangered America’s Long-Term National Security by Robert Patterson 20th; Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer 32nd; Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life by Queen Noor of Jordan 33rd; Kate Remembered, Scott Berg’s biography of Katharine Hepburn, 37th; Who’s your Caddy?: Looping for the Great, Near Great and Reprobates of Golf by Rick Reilly 39th; The Teammates: A Portrait of a Friendship about a winning baseball team by David Halberstam 42nd; and Every Second Counts by Lance Armstrong 49th. In 2004, My Life by Bill Clinton was the best selling book of the year; American Soldier by General Tommy Franks was 16th; Kevin Phillips’s American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush 18th; Timothy Russert’s Big Russ and Me: Father and Son. Lessons of Life 20th; Tony Hendra’s Father Joe: The Man who Saved my Soul 23rd; Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton 27th; Cokie Roberts’s Founding Mothers: The Women Who Raised our Nation 31st; Kitty Kelley’s The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty 42nd; and Chronicles, Volume 1 by Bob Dylan was 43rd. In 2005, auto/biographical texts were well down the list with only The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion at 45 and The Glass Castle: A Memoir by Jeanette Walls at 49. In 2006, there was a resurgence of life writing with Nora Ephron’s I Feel Bad About My Neck: and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman at 9; Grisham’s The Innocent Man at 12; Bill Buford’s food memoir Heat: an Amateur’s Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany at 23; more food writing with Julia Child’s My Life in France at 29; Immaculée Ilibagiza’s Left to Tell: Discovering God amidst the Rwandan Holocaust at 30; CNN anchor Anderson Cooper’s Dispatches from the Edge: A Memoir of War, Disasters and Survival at 43; and Isabella Hatkoff’s Owen & Mzee: The True Story of a Remarkable Friendship (between a baby hippo and a giant tortoise) at 44. In 2007, Ishmael Beah’s discredited A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier came in at 8; Walter Isaacson’s Einstein: His Life and Universe 13; Ayaan Hirst Ali’s autobiography of her life in Muslim society, Infidel, 18; The Reagan Diaries 25; Jesus of Nazareth by Pope Benedict XVI 29; Mother Teresa: Come be my Light 36; Clapton: The Autobiography 40; Tina Brown’s The Diana Chronicles 45; Tony Dungy’s Quiet Strength: The Principles, Practices & Priorities of a Winning Life 47; and Daniel Tammet’s Born on a Blue Day: Inside the Extraordinary Mind of an Autistic Savant at 49. Acknowledgements A sincere thank you to Michael Webster at RMIT for assistance with access to Nielsen BookScan statistics, and to the reviewers of this article for their insightful comments. Any errors are, of course, our own. References Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC). “About Us.” Australian Story 2008. 1 June 2008. ‹http://www.abc.net.au/austory/aboutus.htm>. Australian Bureau of Statistics. “1363.0 Book Publishers, Australia, 2003–04.” 2005. 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/1363.0>. Bair, Deirdre “Too Much S & M.” Sydney Morning Herald 10–11 Sept. 2005: 17. Basset, Troy J., and Christina M. Walter. “Booksellers and Bestsellers: British Book Sales as Documented by The Bookman, 1891–1906.” Book History 4 (2001): 205–36. Brien, Donna Lee, Leonie Rutherford, and Rosemary Williamson. “Hearth and Hotmail: The Domestic Sphere as Commodity and Community in Cyberspace.” M/C Journal 10.4 (2007). 1 June 2008 ‹http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0708/10-brien.php>. Carter, David, and Anne Galligan. “Introduction.” Making Books: Contemporary Australian Publishing. St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2007. 1–14. Corporall, Glenda. Project Octopus: Report Commissioned by the Australian Society of Authors. Sydney: Australian Society of Authors, 1990. Dempsey, John “Biography Rewrite: A&E’s Signature Series Heads to Sib Net.” Variety 4 Jun. 2006. 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117944601.html?categoryid=1238&cs=1>. Donaldson, Ian. “Matters of Life and Death: The Return of Biography.” Australian Book Review 286 (Nov. 2006): 23–29. Douglas, Kate. “‘Blurbing’ Biographical: Authorship and Autobiography.” Biography 24.4 (2001): 806–26. Eliot, Simon. “Very Necessary but not Sufficient: A Personal View of Quantitative Analysis in Book History.” Book History 5 (2002): 283–93. Feather, John, and Hazel Woodbridge. “Bestsellers in the British Book Industry.” Publishing Research Quarterly 23.3 (Sept. 2007): 210–23. Feather, JP, and M Reid. “Bestsellers and the British Book Industry.” Publishing Research Quarterly 11.1 (1995): 57–72. Galligan, Anne. “Living in the Marketplace: Publishing in the 1990s.” Publishing Studies 7 (1999): 36–44. Grossman, Lev. “Time’s Person of the Year: You.” Time 13 Dec. 2006. Online edition. 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C1569514%2C00.html>. Gutjahr, Paul C. “No Longer Left Behind: Amazon.com, Reader Response, and the Changing Fortunes of the Christian Novel in America.” Book History 5 (2002): 209–36. Hamilton, Nigel. Biography: A Brief History. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. Kaplan, Justin. “A Culture of Biography.” The Literary Biography: Problems and Solutions. Ed. Dale Salwak. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. 1–11. Korda, Michael. Making the List: A Cultural History of the American Bestseller 1900–1999. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2001. Miller, Laura J. “The Bestseller List as Marketing Tool and Historical Fiction.” Book History 3 (2000): 286–304. Morreale, Joanne. “Revisiting The Osbournes: The Hybrid Reality-Sitcom.” Journal of Film and Video 55.1 (Spring 2003): 3–15. Rak, Julie. “Bio-Power: CBC Television’s Life & Times and A&E Network’s Biography on A&E.” LifeWriting 1.2 (2005): 1–18. Starck, Nigel. “Capturing Life—Not Death: A Case For Burying The Posthumous Parallax.” Text: The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs 5.2 (2001). 1 June 2008 ‹http://www.textjournal.com.au/oct01/starck.htm>.

Abstract:

BackgroundIn the past twenty years the discourse of the weight-centred health paradigm (WCHP) has attained almost complete dominance in the sphere of public health policy throughout the developed English speaking world. The national governments of Australia and many countries around the world have responded to what is perceived as an ‘epidemic of obesity’ with public health policies and programs explicitly focused on reducing and preventing obesity through so called ‘lifestyle’ behaviour change. Weight-related public health initiatives have been subjected to extensive critique based on ideological, ethical and empirical grounds (Solovay; Oliver; Gaesser; Gard; Monaghan, Colls and Evans; Wright; Rothblum and Solovay; Saguy; Rich, Monaghan and Aphramor; Bacon and Aphramor; Brown). Many scholars have raised concerns about the stigmatising and harmful effects of the WCHP (Aphramor; Bacon and Aphramor; O'Dea; Tylka et al.), and in particular the inequitable distribution of such negative impacts on women, people who are poor, and people of colour (Campos). Weight-based stigma is now well recognised as a pervasive and insidious form of stigma (Puhl and Heuer). Weight-based discrimination (a direct result of stigma) in the USA has a similar prevalence rate to race-based discrimination, and discrimination for fatter and younger people in particular is even higher (Puhl, Andreyeva and Brownell). Numerous scholars have highlighted the stigmatising discourse evident in obesity prevention programs and policies (O'Reilly and Sixsmith; Pederson et al.; Nuffield Council on Bioethics; ten Have et al.; MacLean et al.; Carter, Klinner, et al.; Fry; O'Dea; Rich, Monaghan and Aphramor). The ‘war on obesity’ can therefore be regarded as a social determinant of poor health (O'Hara and Gregg). Focusing on overweight and obese people is not only damaging to people’s health, but is ineffective in addressing the broader social and economic issues that create health and wellbeing (Cohen, Perales and Steadman; MacLean et al.; Walls et al.). Analyses of the discourses used in weight-related public health initiatives have highlighted oppressive, stigmatizing and discriminatory discourses that position body weight as pathological (O'Reilly; Pederson et al.), anti-social and a threat to the viable future of society (White). There has been limited analysis of discourses in Australian social marketing campaigns focused on body weight (Lupton; Carter, Rychetnik, et al.).Social Marketing CampaignsIn 2006 the Australian, State and Territory Governments funded the Measure Up social marketing campaign (Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing "Measure Up"). As the name suggests Measure Up focuses on the measurement of health through body weight and waist circumference. Campaign resources include brochures, posters, a tape measure, a 12 week planner, a community guide and a television advertisement. Campaign slogans are ‘The more you gain, the more you have to lose’ and ‘How do you measure up?’Tomorrow People is the component of Measure Up designed for Indigenous Australians (Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing "Tomorrow People"). Tomorrow People resources focus on healthy eating and physical activity and include a microsite on the Measure Up website, booklet, posters, print and radio advertisements. The campaign slogan is ‘Tomorrow People starts today. Do it for our kids. Do it for our culture.’ In 2011, phase two of the Measure Up campaign was launched (Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing "Swap It, Don't Stop It"). The central premise of Swap It, Don’t Stop It is that you ‘can lose your belly without losing all the things you love’ by making ‘simple’ swaps of behaviours related to eating and physical activity. The campaign’s central character Eric is made from a balloon, as are all of the other characters and visual items used in the campaign. Eric claims thatover the years my belly has ballooned and ballooned. It’s come time to do something about it — the last thing I want is to end up with some cancers, type 2 diabetes and heart disease. That’s why I’ve become a Swapper! What’s a swapper? It’s simple really. It just means swapping some of the things I’m doing now for healthier choices. That way I can lose my belly, without losing all the things I love. It’s easy! The campaign has produced around 30 branded resource items including brochures, posters, cards, fact sheets, recipes, and print, radio, television and online advertisements. All resources include references to Eric and most also include the image of the tape measure used in the Measure Up campaign. The Swap It, Don’t Stop It campaign also includes resources specifically directed at Indigenous Australians including two posters from the generic campaign with a dot painting motif added to the background. MethodologyThe epistemological position in this project was constructivist (Crotty) and the theoretical perspective was critical theory (Crotty). Multimedia critical discourse analysis (Machin and Mayr) was the methodology used to examine the social marketing campaigns and identify the discourses within them. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) focuses on critiquing text for evidence of power and ideology. CDA is used to reveal the ideas, absences and assumptions, and therefore the power interests buried within texts, in order to bring about social change. As a method, CDA has a structured three dimensional approach involving textual practice analysis (for lexicon) at the core, within the context of discursive practice analysis (for rhetorical and lexical strategies particularly with respect to claims-making), which falls within the context of social practice analysis (Jacobs). Social practice analysis explores the role played by power and ideology in supporting or disturbing the discourse (Jacobs; Machin and Mayr). Multimodal CDA (MCDA) uses a broad definition of text to include words, pictures, symbols, ideas, themes or any message that can be communicated (Machin and Mayr). Analysis of the social marketing campaigns involved examining the vocabulary, grammar, sentence structure, visuals and overall structure of the text for textual, discursive and social practices.Results and DiscussionIndividual ResponsibilityThe discourse of individual responsibility is strongly evident in the campaigns. In this discourse, it is ultimately the individual who is held responsible for their body weight and their health. The individual responsibility discourse is signified by the discursive practice of using epistemic (related to the truth or certainty) and deontic (compelling or instructing) modality words, particularly modal verbs and modal adverbs. High modality epistemic words are used to convince the reader of the certainty of statements and to portray the statement-maker as authoritative. High modality deontic words are used to instil power and authority in the instructions.The extensive use of high modality epistemic and deontic words is demonstrated in the following paragraph assembled from various campaign materials: Ultimately (epistemic modality adverb) individuals must take responsibility (deontic modality verb) for their own health, including their and weight. Obesity is caused (epistemic modality verb) by an imbalance in energy intake (from diet) (epistemic modality verb) and expenditure (from activity) (epistemic modality verb). Individually (epistemic modality adverb) we make decisions (epistemic modality verb) about how much we eat (epistemic modality verb) and how much activity we undertake (epistemic modality verb). Each of us can control (epistemic modality) our own weight by controlling (deontic modality) what we eat (deontic modality verb) and how much we exercise (deontic modality verb). To correct (deontic modality verb) the energy imbalance, individuals need to develop (deontic modality verb) a healthy lifestyle by making changes (deontic modality verb) to correct (deontic modality verb) their dietary habits and increase (deontic modality verb) their activity levels. The verbs must, control, correct, develop, change, increase, eat and exercise are deontic modality verbs designed to instruct or compel the reader.These discursive practices result in the clear message that individuals can and must control, correct and change their eating and physical activity, and thereby control their weight and health. The implication of the individualist discourse is that individuals, irrespective of their genes, life-course, social position or environment, are charged with the responsibility of being more self-surveying, self-policing, self-disciplined and self-controlled, and therefore healthier. This is consistent with the individualist orientation of neoliberal ideology, and has been identified in various critiques of obesity prevention public health programs that centralise the self-responsible subject (Murray; Rich, Monaghan and Aphramor) and the concept of ‘healthism’, the moral obligation to pursue health through healthy behaviours or healthy lifestyles (Aphramor and Gingras; Mansfield and Rich). The hegemonic Western-centric individualist discourse has also been critiqued for its role in subordinating or silencing other models of health and wellbeing including Aboriginal or indigenous models, that do not place the individual in the centre (McPhail-Bell, Fredericks and Brough).Obesity Causes DiseaseEpistemic modality verbs are used as a discursive practice to portray the certainty or probability of the relationship between obesity and chronic disease. The strength of the epistemic modality verbs is generally moderate, with terms such as ‘linked’, ‘associated’, ‘connected’, ‘related’ and ‘contributes to’ most commonly used to describe the relationship. The use of such verbs may suggest recognition of uncertainty or at least lack of causality in the relationship. However this lowered modality is counterbalanced by the use of verbs with higher epistemic modality such as ‘causes’, ‘leads to’, and ‘is responsible for’. For example:The other type is intra-abdominal fat. This is the fat that coats our organs and causes the most concern. Even though we don’t yet fully understand what links intra-abdominal fat with chronic disease, we do know that even a small deposit of this fat increases the risk of serious health problems’. (Swap It, Don’t Stop It Website; italics added)Thus the prevailing impression is that there is an objective, definitive, causal relationship between obesity and a range of chronic diseases. The obesity-chronic disease discourse is reified through the discursive practice of claims-making, whereby statements related to the problem of obesity and its relationship with chronic disease are attributed to authoritative experts or expert organisations. The textual practice of presupposition is evident with the implied causal relationship between obesity and chronic disease being taken for granted and uncontested. Through the textual practice of lexical absence, there is a complete lack of alternative views about body weight and health. Likewise there is an absence of acknowledgement of the potential harms arising from focusing on body weight, such as increased body dissatisfaction, disordered eating, and, paradoxically, weight gain.Shame and BlameBoth Measure Up and Swap It, Don’t Stop It include a combination of written/verbal text and visual images that create a sense of shame and blame. In Measure Up, the central character starts out as young, slim man, and as he ages his waist circumference grows. When he learns that his expanding waistline is associated with an increased risk of chronic disease, his facial expression and body language convey that he is sad, dejected and fearful. In the still images, this character and a female character are positioned looking down at the tape measure as they measure their ‘too large’ waists. This position and the looks on their faces suggest hanging their heads in shame. The male characters in both campaigns specifically express shame about “letting themselves go” by unthinkingly practicing ‘unhealthy’ behaviours. The characters’ clothing also contribute to a sense of shame. Both male and female characters in Measure Up appear in their underwear, which suggests that they are being publicly shamed. The clothing of the Measure Up characters is similar to that worn by contestants in the television program The Biggest Loser, which explicitly uses shame to ‘motivate’ contestants to lose weight. Part of the public shaming of contestants involves their appearance in revealing exercise clothing for weigh-ins, which displays their fatness for all to see (Thomas, Hyde and Komesaroff). The stigmatising effects of this and other aspects of the Biggest Loser television program are well documented (Berry et al.; Domoff et al.; Sender and Sullivan; Thomas, Hyde and Komesaroff; Yoo). The appearance of the Measure Up characters in their underwear combined with their head position and facial expressions conveys a strong, consistent message that the characters both feel shame and are deserving of shame due to their self-inflicted ‘unhealthy’ behaviours. The focus on ‘healthy’ and ‘unhealthy’ behaviours contributes to accepted and contested health identities (Fry). The ‘accepted health identity’ is represented as responsible and aspiring to and pursuing good health. The ‘contested health identity’ is represented as unhealthy, consuming too much food, and taking health risks, and this identity is stigmatised by public health programs (Fry). The ‘contested health identity’ represents the application to public health of Goffman’s ‘spoiled identity’ on which much stigmatisation theorising and research has been based (Goffman). As a result of both lexical and visual textual practices, the social marketing campaigns contribute to the construction of the ‘accepted health identity’ through discourses of individual responsibility, choice and healthy lifestyle. Furthermore, they contribute to the construction of the spoiled or ‘contested health identity’ through discourses that people are naturally unhealthy and need to be frightened, guilted and shamed into stopping ‘unhealthy’ behaviours and adopting ‘healthy’ behaviours. The ‘contested health identity’ constructed through these discourses is in turn stigmatised by such discourses. Thus the campaigns not only risk perpetuating stigmatisation through the reinforcement of the health identities, but possibly extend it further by legitimising the stigma associated with such identities. Given that these campaigns are conducted by the Australian Government, the already deeply stigmatising social belief system receives a significant boost in legitimacy by being positioned as a public health belief system perpetrated by the Government. Fear and AlarmIn the Measure Up television advertisement the main male character’s daughter, who has run into the frame, abruptly stops and looks fearful when she hears about his increased risk of disease. Using the discursive practice of claims-making, the authoritative external source informs the man that the more he gains (in terms of his waist circumference), the more he has to lose. The clear implication is that he needs to be fearful of losing his health, his family and even his life if he doesn’t reduce his waist circumference. The visual metaphor of a balloon is used as the central semiotic trope in Swap It, Don’t Stop It. The characters and other items featuring in the visuals are all made from twisting balloons. Balloons themselves may not create fear or alarm, unless one is unfortunate to be afflicted with globophobia (Freed), but the visual metaphor of the balloon in the social marketing campaign had a range of alarmist meanings. At the population level, rates and/or costs of obesity have been described in news items as ‘ballooning’ (Body Ecology; Stipp; AFP; Thien and Begawan) with accompanying visual images of extremely well-rounded bodies or ‘headless fatties’ (Cooper). Rapid or significant weight gain is referred to in everyday language as ‘ballooning weight’. The use of the balloon metaphor as a visual device in Swap It, Don’t Stop It serves to reinforce and extend these alarmist messages. Further, there is no attempt in the campaigns to reduce alarm by including positive or neutral photographs or images of fat people. This visual semiotic absence – a form of cultural imperialism (Young) – contributes to the invisibilisation of ‘real life’ fat people who are not ashamed of themselves. Habermas suggests that society evolves and operationalises through rational communication which includes the capacity to question the validity of claims made within communicative action (Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere; Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society). However the communicative action taken by the social marketing campaigns analysed in this study presents claims as uncontested facts and is therefore directorial about the expectations of individuals to take more responsibility for themselves, adopt certain behaviours and reduce or prevent obesity. Habermas argues that the lack or distortion of rational communication erodes relationships at the individual and societal levels (Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society; Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere). The communicative actions represented by the social marketing campaigns represents a distortion of rational communication and therefore erodes the wellbeing of individuals (for example through internalised stigma, shame, guilt, body dissatisfaction, weight preoccupation, disordered eating and avoidance of health care), relationships between individuals (for example through increased blame, coercion, stigma, bias, prejudice and discrimination) and society (for example through stigmatisation of groups in the population on the basis of their body size and increased social and health inequity). Habermas proposes that power differentials work to distort rational communication, and that it is these distortions in communication that need to be the focal point for change (Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalisation of Society; Habermas The Theory of Communicative Action: The Critique of Functionalist Reason; Habermas The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere). Through critical analysis of the discourses used in the social marketing campaigns, we identified that they rely on the power, authority and status of experts to present uncontested representations of body weight and ‘appropriate’ health responses to it. In identifying the discourses present in the social marketing campaigns, we hope to focus attention on and thereby disrupt the distortions in the practical knowledge of the weight-centred health paradigm in order to contribute to systemic reorientation and change.ConclusionThrough the use of textual, discursive and social practices, the social marketing campaigns analysed in this study perpetuate the following concepts: everyone should be alarmed about growing waistlines and ‘ballooning’ rates of ‘obesity’; individuals are to blame for excess body weight, due to ignorance and the practice of ‘unhealthy behaviours’; individuals have a moral, parental, familial and cultural responsibility to monitor their weight and adopt ‘healthy’ eating and physical activity behaviours; such behaviour changes are easy to make and will result in weight loss, which will reduce risk of disease. 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Abstract:

Now in its thirtieth season, in 2018, The Simpsons is a popular culture phenomenon. The series is known as much for its social commentary as its humour and celebrity appearances. Nonetheless, The Simpsons’ ratings have declined steadily since the early 2000s, and fans have grown more vocal in their calls for the program’s end. This article provides a case study of episode “That 90s Show” (S19, E11) as a flashpoint that exemplifies fan desires for the series’ conclusion. This episode is one of the most contentious in the program’s history, with online outrage at the retconning of canon and both fans and anti-fans (Gray) of The Simpsons demanding its cancellation or “fan euthanasia”. The retconning of the canon in this episode makes evident the perceived decline in the quality of the series, and the regard for fan desires. “That 90s Show” is ultimately a failed attempt to demonstrate the continued relevance of the series to audiences, and popular culture at large, via its appeal to 1990s nostalgia.“That 90s Show”“That 90s Show” begins with Bart and Lisa’s discovery of Marge’s Springfield University diploma. This small incident indicates an impending timeline shift and “retcon”; canonically Marge never attended college, having fallen pregnant with Bart shortly after completing high school. The episode then offers an extended flashback to Marge and Homer’s life in the 1990s. The couple are living together in the Springfield Place apartment complex, with Homer working a variety of menial jobs to support Marge while she attends college. Homer and Marge subsequently break up, and Marge begins to date Professor Stephan August. In his despair, Homer can no longer perform R & B ballads with his ensemble. The band changes genres, and their new incarnation, Sadgasm, are soon credited with initiating the grunge movement. Sadgasm gain worldwide fame for their songs “Margerine” (a version of “Glycerine” by Bush), and “Politically Incorrect/Shave Me” (set to the melody of “Rape Me” by Nirvana) – which is later parodied in the episode by guest star Weird Al Yankovic as “BrainFreeze”. Homer develops an addiction to oversized, sweetened Starbucks coffee, and later, insulin, becoming a recluse despite the legion of fans camped out on his front lawn.Marge and Professor August soon part company due to his rejection of heteronormative marriage rituals. Upon her return to campus, Marge observes an MTV report on Sadgasm’s split, and Homer’s addiction, and rushes to Homer’s bedside to help him through recovery. Marge and Homer resume their relationship, and the grunge movement ends because Homer claims he “was too happy to ever grunge again.”While the episode rates a reasonable 6.1 on IMDB, fan criticism has largely focused on the premise of the episode, and what has been perceived to be the needless retconning of The Simpsons canon. Critic Robert Canning notes: “…what ‘That 90s Show’ did was neither cool nor interesting. Instead, it insulted lifelong Simpsons fans everywhere. With this episode, the writers chose to change the history of the Simpson family.” Canning observes that the episode could have worked if the flashback had been to the 1980s which supports canonicity, rather than a complete “retcon”. The term “retcon” (retroactive continuity) originates from narrative devices used in North American superhero comics, and is now broadly applied to fictional narrative universes. Andrew Friedenthal (10-11) describes retconning as “… a revision of the fictional universe in order to make the universe fresh and exciting for contemporary readers, but it also involves the influence of the past, as it directly inscribes itself upon that past.” While Amy Davis, Jemma Gilboy and James Zborowski (175-188) have highlighted floating timelines as a feature of long running animation series’ where characters remain the same age, The Simpsons does not fully adhere to this trope: “… one of the ‘rules’ of the ‘comic-book time’ or ‘floating timeline’ trope is that ‘you never refer to specific dates’… a restriction The Simpsons occasionally eschews” (Davis, Gilboy, and Zborowski 177).For many fans, “That 90s Show” becomes abstruse by erasing Marge and Homer’s well-established back story from “The Way We Was” (S2, E12). In the established narrative, Marge and Homer had met, fell in love and graduated High School in 1974; shortly after Marge fell pregnant with Bart, resulting in the couple’s shotgun wedding. “That 90s Show” disregards the pre-existing timeline, extending their courtship past high school and adding the couple’s breakup, and Homer’s improbable invention of grunge. Fan responses to “That 90s Show” highlight this episode of The Simpsons as a flashpoint for the sharp decline of quality in the series (despite having long since “jumped the shark”); but also, a decline in regard for the desires of fans. Thus, “That 90s Show” fails not only in rewriting its canon, and inserting the narrative into the 1990s; it also fails to satiate its loyal audience by insisting upon its centrality to 1990s pop culture.While fans have been vocal in online forums about the shift in the canon, they have also reflected upon the tone-deaf portrayal of the 1990s itself. During the course of the episode many 90s trends are introduced, the most contentious of which is Homer’s invention of grunge with his band Sadgasm. While playing a gig at Springfield University a young man in the audience makes a frantic phone call, shouting over the music: “Kurt, it’s Marvin. Your cousin, Marvin Cobain. You know that new sound you’re looking for…?,” thrusting the receiver towards the stage. The link to Nirvana firmly established, the remainder of the episode connects Homer’s depression and musical expression more and more blatantly to Kurt Cobain’s biography, culminating in Homer’s seclusion and near-overdose on insulin. Fans have openly debated the appropriateness of this narrative, and whether it is disrespectful to Cobain’s legacy (see Amato). Henry Jenkins (41) has described this type of debate as a kind of “moral economy” where fans “cast themselves not as poachers but as loyalists, rescuing essential elements of the primary text ‘misused’ by those who maintain copyright control over the program materials.” In this example, many original fans of The Simpsons felt the desire to rescue both Cobain’s and The Simpsons’ legacy from a poorly thought-out retcon seen to damage the legacy of both.While other trends associated with the 90s (Seinfeld; Beanie babies; Weird Al Yankovic; Starbucks; MTV VJs) all feature, it is Homer’s supposed invention of grunge which most overtly attempts to rewrite the 90s and reaffirm The Simpsons’ centrality to 90s pop culture. As the rest of this article will discuss, by rewriting the canon, and the 1990s, “That 90s Show” has two unrealised goals— firstly, to captivate an audience who have grown up with The Simpsons, via an appeal to nostalgia; and secondly, inserting themselves into the 1990s as an effort to prove the series’ relevance to a new generation of audience members who were born during that decade, and who have a nostalgic craving for the media texts of their childhood (Atkinson). Thus, this episode is indicative of fan movement towards an anti-fan position, by demanding the series’ end, or “fan euthanasia” (Williams 106; Booth 75-86) and exposing the “… dynamic spectrum of emotional reactions that fandom can generate” (Booth 76-77).“Worst. Episode. Ever”: Why “That 90s Show” FailedThe failure of “That 90s Show” can be framed in terms of audience reception— namely the response of original audience members objecting to the retconning of The Simpsons’ canon. Rather than appealing to a sense of nostalgia among the audience, “That 90s Show” seems only to suggest that the best episodes of The Simpsons aired before the end of the 1990s. Online forums devoted to The Simpsons concur that the series was at its peak between Seasons 1-10 (1989-1999), and that subsequent seasons have failed to match that standard. British podcaster Sol Harris spent four months in 2017 watching, rating, and charting The Simpsons’ declining quality (Kostarelis), with the conclusion that series’ downfall began from Season 11 onwards (despite a brief spike following The Simpsons Movie (2007)). Any series that aired on television post-1999 has been described as “Zombie Simpsons” by fans on the Dead Homer Society forum: “a hopelessly mediocre imitation that bears only a superficial resemblance to the original. It is the unwanted sequel, the stale spinoff, the creative dry hole that is kept pumping in the endless search for more money. It is Zombie Simpsons” (Sweatpants). It is essential to acknowledge the role of economics in the continuation of The Simpsons, particularly in terms of the series’ affiliation with the Fox Network. The Simpsons was the first series screened on Fox to reach the Top 30 programs in the US, and despite its overall decline, it is still one of the highest rating programs for the 18-49 demographic, enabling Fox to charge advertisers accordingly for a so-called “safe” slot (Berg). During its run, it has been estimated variously that Fox has been building towards a separate Simpsons cable channel, thus the consistent demand for new content; and, that the series has earned in excess of $4.6 billion for Fox in merchandising alone (Berg). Laura Bradley outlines how the legacy of The Simpsons beyond Season 30 has been complicated by the ongoing negotiations for Disney to buy 20th Century Fox – under these arrangements, The Simpsons would likely be screened on ABC or Hulu, should Disney continue producing the series (Bradley). Bradley emphasises the desire for fan euthanasia of the Zombie Simpsons, positing that “the series itself could end at Season 30, which is what most fans of the show’s long-gone original iteration would probably prefer.”While more generous fans expand the ‘Golden Age’ of The Simpsons to Season 12 (Power), the Dead Homer Society argues that their Zombie Simpsons theory is proven by the rise of “Jerkass Homer”, where Homer’s character changed from delightful doofus to cruel and destructive idiot (Sweatpants; Holland). The rise of Jerkass Homer coincides with the moment where Chris Plante claims The Simpsons “jumped the shark”. The term “jumping the shark” refers to the peak of a series before its inevitable, and often sharp, decline (Plante). In The Simpsons, this moment has been variously debated as occurring during S8, E23 “Homer’s Enemy” (Plante), or more popularly, S9, E2 “The Principle and the Pauper” (Chappell; Cinematic) – which like “That 90s Show”, received a vitriolic response for its attempt to retcon the series’ narrative history. “The Principal and the Pauper” focuses on Principal Skinner, and the revelation that he had assumed the identity of his (presumed dead during the Vietnam War) Army Sergeant, Seymour Skinner. The man we have known as Skinner is revealed to be “no-good-nik” Armin Tanzarian. This episode is loathed not only by audiences, but in hindsight, The Simpsons’ creative team. Voice actor Harry Shearer was scathing in his assessment:You’re taking something that an audience has built eight years or nine years of investment in and just tossed it in the trash can for no good reason, for a story we’ve done before with other characters. It’s so arbitrary and gratuitous, and it’s disrespectful to the audience. (Wilonsky)The retcon present in both “That 90s Show” and “The Principal and the Pauper” proves that long-term fans of The Simpsons have been forgotten in Groening’s quest to reach the pinnacle of television longevity. On this basis, it is unsurprising that fans have been demanding the end of the series since the turn of the millennium.As a result, fans such as the Dead Homer Society maintain a nostalgic longing for the Golden Age of The Simpsons, while actively campaigning for the program’s cancellation, a practice typically associated with anti-fans. Jonathan Gray coined the term “anti fan” to describe “… the active and vocal dislike or hate of a program, genre, or personality (841). For Gray, the study of anti-fans emphasises that the hatred of a text can “… produce just as much activity, identification, meaning, and ‘effects’ or serve just as powerfully to unite and sustain a community or subculture” (841). Gray also stresses the discourse of morality used by anti-fans to validate their reading position, particularly against texts that are broadly popular. This argument is developed further by Jenkins and Paul Booth.“Just Pick a Dead End, and Chill Out till You Die”: Fan EuthanasiaWhile some fans of The Simpsons have moved towards anti-fan practices (active hatred of the series, and/or a refusal to watch the show), many more occupy a “middle-ground”, pleading for a form of “fan euthanasia”; where fans call for their once loved object (and by extension, themselves) to “be put out of its misery” (Booth 76). The shifting relationship of fans of The Simpsons represents an “affective continuum”, where “… fan dissatisfaction arises not because they hate a show, but because they feel betrayed by a show they once loved. Their love of a text has waned, and now they find themselves wishing for a quick end to, a revaluation of, something that no longer lives up to the high standard they once valued” (Booth 78). While calls to end The Simpsons have existing since the end of the Golden Age, other fans (Ramaswamy) have suggested it is more difficult to pinpoint when The Simpsons lost its way. Despite airing well after the Golden Age, “That 90s Show” represents a flashpoint for fans who read the retcon as “… an insult to life-long Simpsons fans everywhere… it’s an episode that rewrites history… for the worse” (Canning). In attempting to appeal to the 90s nostalgia of original fans, ‘That 90s Show’ had the opposite effect; it instead reaffirms the sharp decline of the series since its Golden Age, which ended in the 1990s.Shifting the floating timeline of The Simpsons into the 1990s and overturning the canon to appeal to a new generation is dubious for several reasons. While it is likely that original viewers of The Simpsons (their parents) may have exposed their children to the series, the program’s relevance to Millennials is questionable. In 2015, Todd Schneider data mapped audience ratings for Seasons 1-27, concluding that there has been an 80% decline in viewership between Season 2 (which averaged at over 20 million American viewers per episode) to Season 27 (which averaged at less than 5 million viewers per episode). With the growth of SVOD services during The Simpsons’ run, and the sheer duration of the series, it is perhaps obvious to point out the reduced cultural impact of the program, particularly for younger generations. Secondly, “That 90s Show’s” appeal to nostalgia raises the question of whom nostalgia for the 1990s is aimed at. Atkinson argues that children born in the 1990s feel nostalgia for the era becausewe're emotionally invested in the entertainment from that decade because back then, with limited access to every album/TV show/film ever, the ones you did own meant absolutely everything. These were the last pop-culture remnants from that age when the internet existed without being all-consuming. … no wonder we still 'ship them so hard.Following this argument, if you watched The Simpsons as a child during the 1990s, the nostalgia you feel would be, like your parents, for the Golden Age of The Simpsons, rather than the pale imitation featured in “That 90s Show”. As Alexander Fury writes of the 90s: “perhaps the most important message … in the 90s was the idea of authenticity;” thus, if the children of the 90s are watching The Simpsons, they would look to Seasons 1-10 – when The Simpsons was an authentic representation of ‘90s popular culture.Holland has observed that The Simpsons endures “in part due to the way it adapts and responds to events around it”, citing the recent release of clips responding to current events – including Homer attempting to vote; and Trump’s tenure in the White House (Brockington). Yet the failure of “That 90s Show” marks not only The Simpsons increasingly futile efforts to appeal to a “liberal audience” by responding to contemporary political discourse. The failure to adapt is most notable in Hari Kondabolu’s documentary The Problem With Apu which targeted racist stereotypes, and The Simpsons’ poorly considered response episode (S29, E 15) “No Good Read Goes Unpunished”, the latter of which featured an image of Apu signed with Bart’s catchphrase, “Don’t have a cow, man” (Harmon). Groening has remained staunch, insisting that “it’s a time in our culture where people love to pretend they’re offended”, and that the show “speaks for itself” (Keveney). Groening’s statement was followed by the absence of Apu from the current season (Snierson), and rumours that he would be removed from future storylines (Culbertson).“They’ll Never Stop The Simpsons”The case study of The Simpsons episode “That 90s Show” demonstrates the “affective continuum” occupied at various moments in a fan’s relationship with a text (Booth). To the displeasure of fans, their once loved object has frequently retconned canon to capitalise on popular culture trends such as nostalgia for the 1990s. This episode demonstrates the failure of this strategy, as it both alienated the original fan base, and represented what many fans have perceived to be a sharp decline in The Simpsons’ quality. Arguably the relevance of The Simpsons might also remain in the 1990s. Certainly, the recent questioning of issues regarding representations of race, negative press coverage, and the producers’ feeble response, increases the weight of fan calls to end The Simpsons after Season 30. As they sang in S13, E17, perhaps “[We’ll] Never Stop The Simpsons”, but equally, we may have reached the tipping point where audiences have stopped paying attention.ReferencesAmato, Mike. “411: ‘That 90s Show.” Me Blog Write Good. 12 Dec. 2012. 2 Oct. 2018 <https://meblogwritegood.wordpress.com/2012/12/12/411-that-90s-show/>.Atkinson, S. “Why 90s Kids Can’t Get over the 90s and Are Still So Nostalgic for the Decade.” Bustle. 14 Apr. 2018. 28 Sep. 2018 <https://www.bustle.com/p/why-90s-kids-cant-get-over-the-90s-are-still-so-nostalgic-for-the-decade-56354>.Berg, Madeline. “The Simpsons Signs Renewal Deal for the Record Books.” Forbes. 4 Nov. 2016. 20 Nov. 2018 <https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2016/11/04/the-simpsons-signs-renewal-deal-for-the-record-books/#264a50b61b21>.Booth, Paul. “Fan Euthanasia: A Thin Line between Love and Hate.” Everybody Hurts: Transitions, Endings, and Resurrections in Fan Cultures. Ed. Rebecca Williams. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2018. 75-86.Bradley, Laura. “What Disney and Comcast’s Battle over Fox Means for Film and TV Fans.” Vanity Fair. 14 June 2018. 20 Nov. 2018 <https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/06/comcast-fox-bid-disney-merger-tv-film-future-explainer>.Brockington, Ariana. “Donald Trump Reconsiders His Life in Simpsons Video ‘A Tale of Two Trumps.” Variety. 23 Mar. 2018. 28 Sep. 2018 <https://variety.com/2018/politics/news/the-simpsons-donald-trump-a-tale-of-two-trumps-1202735526/>.Canning, Robert. “The Simpsons: ‘That 90s Show’ Review.” 28 Jan. 2008. 2 Oct. 2018 <https://au.ign.com/articles/2008/01/28/the-simpsons-that-90s-show-review>.Chappell, Les. “The Simpsons (Classic): ‘The Principal and the Pauper’.” AV Club. 28 June 2015. 20 Nov. 2018 <https://tv.avclub.com/the-simpsons-classic-the-principal-and-the-pauper-1798184317>.Cinematic. “The Principal and the Pauper: The Fall of The Simpsons.” 15 Aug. 2012. 20 Nov. 2018 <https://cinematicfilmblog.com/2012/08/15/the-principal-and-the-pauper-the-fall-of-the-simpsons/>.Culbertson, Alix. “The Simpsons Producer Responds to Apu Controversy.” Sky News. 30 Oct. 2018. 20 Nov. 2018 <https://news.sky.com/story/the-simpsons-indian-character-apu-axed-after-racial-controversy-11537982>.Davis, Amy M., Jemma Gilboy, and James Zborowski. “How Time Works in The Simpsons.” Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 10.3 (2015): 175-188.Friedenthal, Andrew. Retcon Game: Retroactive Continuity and the Hyperlinking of America. USA: University Press of Mississippi, 2017.Fury, Alexander. “The Return of the ‘90s.” New York Times. 13 July 2016. 28 Sep. 2018. <https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/t-magazine/fashion/90s-fashion-revival.html>.Gray, Jonathan. “Antifandom and the Moral Text: Television without Pity and Textual Dislike.” American Behavioral Scientist 48.7 (2005): 840-858.Harmon, Steph. “‘Don’t Have a Cow’: The Simpsons Response to Apu Racism Row Criticised as ‘Toothless’.” The Guardian. 10 Apr. 2018. 28 Sep. 2018 <https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/apr/10/dont-have-a-cow-the-simpsons-response-to-apu-racism-row-criticised-as-toothless>.Holland, Travis. “Why The Simpsons Lost Its Way.” The Conversation. 3 Nov. 2016. 28 Sep. 2018. <https://theconversation.com/why-the-simpsons-has-lost-its-way-67845>.IMDB. “The Simpsons – That 90s Show.” 2 Oct. 2018 <https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1166961/>.Jenkins, Henry. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: NYU P, 2006.Keveney, Bill. “The Simpsons Exclusive: Matt Groening (Mostly) Remembers the Show’s Record 636 Episodes.” USA Today. 27 Apr. 2018. 20 Nov. 2018 <https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/tv/2018/04/27/thesimpsons-matt-groening-new-record-fox-animated-series/524581002/>.Kostarelis, Stefan. “This Genius Chart That Tracks the Decline in The Simpsons Is Too Real”. Techly. 21 July 2017. 2 Oct. 2018 <https://www.techly.com.au/2017/07/21/british-man-binges-all-simpsons-episodes-in-a-month-charts-decline-in-shows-quality/>.Plante, Chris. “The Simpsons Jumped the Shark in One of Its Best Episodes”. The Verge. 22 Aug. 2014. 20 Nov. 2018 <https://www.theverge.com/2014/8/22/6056915/frank-grimes-the-simpsons-jump-the-shark>.Power, Kevin. “I Watched All 629 Episodes of The Simpsons in a Month. Here’s What I Learned.” Antihuman. 9 Feb. 2018. 1 Oct. 2018 <https://antihumansite.wordpress.com/2018/02/09/i-watched-all-629-episodes-of-the-simpsons-in-a-month-heres-what-i-learned/>.Rabin, Nathan, and Steven Hyden. “Crosstalk: Is It Time for The Simpsons to Call It a Day?” AV Club. 26 July 2007. 20 Nov. 2018 <https://tv.avclub.com/crosstalk-is-it-time-for-the-simpsons-to-call-it-a-day-1798211912>.Ramaswarmy, Chitra. “When Good TV Goes Bad: How The Simpsons Ended Up Gorging on Itself.” The Guardian. 24 Apr. 2017. 28 Sep. 2018 <https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2017/apr/24/jump-the-shark-when-good-tv-goes-bad-the-simpsons>.Schneider, Todd. “The Simpsons by the Data.” Todd W. Schneider’s Home Page. 2015. 28 Sep. 2018 <http://toddwschneider.com/posts/the-simpsons-by-the-data/>.Snierson, Dan. “Simpsons Showrunner on Homer’s ‘Cheating’ on Marge, RuPaul’s Guest Spot, Apu Controversy”. Entertainment Weekly. 28 Sep. 2018. 26 Nov. 2018 <https://ew.com/tv/2018/09/28/simpsons-showrunner-season-30-preview/>.Sweatpants, Charlie. “Zombie Simpsons: How the Best Show Ever Became the Broadcasting Undead.” Dead Homer Society. 28 Sep. 2018 <https://deadhomersociety.com/zombiesimpsons/>.Williams, Rebecca. Post-Object Fandom: Television, Identity, and Self-Narrative. New York: Bloomsbury, 2015.

Abstract:

In the HBO series The Sopranos, Tony and his friends use “prosthetic memories” to anchor their ethnic and criminal identities. Prosthetic memories were theorised by Alison Landsberg in her book Prosthetic Memory: The Transformation of American Remembrance in the Age of Mass Culture. She argues that prosthetic memories are memories acquired through the mass media and do not come from a person’s lived experience in any sense (Landsberg 20). In this article, I will outline how The Sopranos television show and its characters interact with prosthetic memories. Extending Christopher Kocela’s work on The Sopranos and white ethnicities, I will show how characters use prosthetic memories to define their ethnicity while the show itself knowingly plays with this to provide comedic and critical commentary about the influence of gangster stereotypes. According to Landsberg, prosthetic memories are powerful memories of historical events or narratives that an individual was not present for. They are typically formed at the "interface between a personal and historical narrative about the past at an experiential site such as a movie theatre or museum" (2). It is at such a moment that a person can suture themselves into a larger history. Consequently, these memories do not just enhance an individual’s apprehension of a historical event. Rather, they create a deeply felt personal memory of a past event through which they did not live (Landsberg 4). Prosthetic memories are largely made available through the technologies of mass culture such as film, television and experiential places like museums. Their accessibility helps to differentiate them from other cultural strategies for passing on memories to future generations. Other strategies have typically been rooted in the cultural or racial status of an individual (Landsberg 22). In addition, Landsberg asserts that the successfulness of mnemotechnic rituals like the Jewish Passover Seder is dependent on ethnicity (26). Similarly, Walter Benn Michaels concludes that these rituals can only be effective if the individual has “some prior assumption of identity between you and them and this assumption is often racial” (680). Contrastingly, the perpetuation of prosthetic memories through mass media makes them widely accessible across racial lines. According to Landsberg, they are not “naturally- ethnically, racially or biologically- one’s intended inheritance” (26). Prosthetic memories introduce the possibility that memories can be acquired by anyone. The technologies of mass culture make these memories portable and as such, challenges the assumption that memory is “in anyway essential or organically grounded or the private property of a specific ethnic or racial group” (27). In The Sopranos, most characters are third or fourth generation Italian immigrants. Much like for many ‘real’ Italian migrants, time has severed familial connections to their homeland (see Landsberg 49-55). Landsberg suggests that immigrants initially became Americanised in order to escape persecution and being labelled as “other” (51). This meant that ethnically exclusive mnemotechnic rituals were not preserved for subsequent generations of immigrants. In order to sustain an ethnic identity, immigrants (and the characters in The Sopranos) have been forced to turn to more accessible tools like prosthetic memories. Christopher Kocela’s analysis of Italian-Americanness in The Sopranos, argues that characters maintain an Italian American ethnicity while still racially identifying as white. According to Colin Webster “white ethnicity” can be best exemplified through the long tradition of European immigration to America (295). With the influx of immigrants, there was a codification of the idea that “some whites are ‘whiter’ than others” (Webster 297). European working-class immigrants struggled to be afforded the same white “privileges” and membership to the white race. Instead, they were defined as being members of “other” white ethnicities. Roediger argued that such a denial of whiteness pushed European immigrants to insist on their own whiteness by defining themselves against other ethnic minorities like African Americans (8). Between 1890 and 1945, eventual assimilation saw white ethnicities become “fully white” (Roediger 8). Webster argues that: “In this sense, whiteness is nearly always salvageable in a way that black, Mexican, Asian, and Native American ethnicity is not (sic)” (Webster 297). In a similar vein, Kocela suggests that the assimilated characters in The Sopranos benefit from their white racial status while still maintaining an Italian ethnicity. This celebration of ethnic difference by Tony and his friends can serve as a smokescreen for the silent maintenance of whiteness (Kocela 14). Kocela suggests that the show critiques these types of responses that characters have to their ethnicity, stating that "we do not learn from The Sopranos the language of ethnic sons deprived of their Italian godfathers, but the language of racial misrecognition spoken by sons whose lost white fathers were never really their own" (16).Kocela’s article provides a useful discussion about the relationship that characters in The Sopranos have with their ethnicity. This article extends this discussion by showing how prosthetic memories and characters’ understanding of mass media are a crucial element in how such ethnic identities are formed. This will lead to a discussion about how The Sopranos comments on and treats these adopted stereotypes. “What do poor Italian-immigrants have to do with you?”: How Characters Interact with Prosthetic MemoriesCharacters in The Sopranos heavily rely upon stereotypes from gangster films to perform their version of Italian Americanness. A reliance on prosthetic memories from such films leads to the manifestation of violence being intertwined with the characters’ ethnic identities. Brian Faucette has discussed the inherent link between violence and gangster films from the 1930s-60s. He claims that “it was violence that enabled the upward mobility of these figures” (76). It is almost impossible to separate violence from the gangster films referenced in The Sopranos. As such, violence becomes part of the ritualistic ways prosthetic memories are created. This is evident in the pilot episode of The Sopranos when Christopher performs his first hit (kill). In the scene, he shoots rival gang member, Emil, in the back of the head at Satriales Pork Store. Before the hit, the pair are standing close together in front of a pinboard collage of “classic” Italian movie gangsters. As they both walk away in opposite directions the camera pulls out diagonally to follow Christopher. Throughout the duration of the shot, the collage is always placed behind Christopher. Finally, when the pan stops, Christopher is positioned in the foreground, with the collage behind him to the right. The placement of the collage gives it a front row seat to the ensuing murder while serving as a kind of script for it. It is not enough for Christopher to simply kill Emil, rather it is important that it is done in the presence of his idols in order to ensure his enhanced identification with them. Moreover, for Christopher, being an Italian American gangster and violence are inseparable. He must perform acts of extreme violence in order to suture himself into a larger, stereotypical narrative, that equates Italian-Americanness with the mafia. Through Landsberg’s theory, it is possible to see the intertwined relationship between performances of Italian-Americanness and violence. To enact their version of Italian-Americanism, characters follow the script of masculine-violence inherent to gangster films. As well as tools to perform Italian American identities, prosthetic memories can be used by characters to deny their whiteness. Kocela argues that Tony can deny or affirm his whiteness, depending on the situation. According to Kocela, Tony’s economic success is intrinsically linked to his racial status as a white man (16). However, this is not a view shared by characters in the show. In the episode From Where to Eternity Dr. Melfi asks Tony how he justifies his criminal lifestyle: Tony: When America opened the floodgates and let all us Italians in, what do you think they were doing it for? ... The Carnegies and the Rockefellers, they needed worker bees and there we were. But some of us didn't want to swarm around their hive and lose who we were. We wanted to stay Italian and preserve the things that meant something to us: honor, and family, and loyalty. ... Now we weren't educated like the Americans, but we had the balls to take what we wanted. And those other fucks, the J.P. Morgans, they were crooks and killers too, but that was the business, right? The American way.Dr. Melfi: That might all be true. But what do poor Italian immigrants have to do with you and what happens every morning when you step out of bed?Kocela describes Tony’s response as a “textbook recitation of the two-family myth of Italian-American identity in which criminal activities are justified in a need to resist assimilation” (28). It is evident that for Tony, being Italian American is defined by being ethnically different. To admit that whiteness contributes to his economic success would undermine the justification he gives for his criminal lifestyle and his self-perceived status as an Italian American. Despite this, Melfi’s statement rings true. The experience of “poor Italian immigrants” does not affect Tony’s daily lifestyle. Characters in The Sopranos do not face the same oppression and discrimination as first-generation migrants (Kocela 28). After decades of assimilation, Tony and his friends turn to the narratives of discrimination and ethnic difference present in gangster films. This is exemplified through Tony’s identification with Vito Corleone from The Godfather. Vito exemplifies Tony’s notion of Italian Americanism. He was a poor immigrant that turned to criminality to protect the Italian-American community and their way of life. Vito is also connected to Italy in a way that Tony admires. When Paulie asks Tony what his favourite scene from The Godfather is he responds with: Don Ciccio’s Villa, when Vito goes back to Sicily, the crickets, the great old house. Maybe it’s because I’m going over there, ya know? Gangster films and representations of Italian-Americanness often deliberately differentiate Italian families from “regular” white people (D’Acierno 566). According to D’Acierno, gangster narratives often involve two types of Italian families, one that has been left powerless by its assimilation to American culture and another that has resisted this through organised crime (D’Acierno 567). Tony and his friends tap into these narratives in their attempt to create prosthetic memories that differentiate their ethnicity and ultimately draw attention away from the whiteness which silently benefits them.The “inauthenticity” of these prosthetic memories is probably most pronounced in the episode Commendatori when Tony, Christopher and Paulie visit Italy. The trip shatters the expectations that the characters had of their homeland and sheds light on some of their delusions about what it means to be Italian. Paulie expects to love Italy and be greeted with open arms by the locals. Unfortunately, he dislikes it all because it is too foreign for him. At the banquet, Paulie finds the authentic Italian octopus uneatable and instead orders “spaghetti and gravy.” He is also unable to use the bathrooms because he is so used to American toilets. When at a local café he tries to initiate conversation with some local men using broken Italian. Even though they hear him, the group ignores him. Despite all this Paulie, pretends that it was a great trip:Big Pussy: So how was it?Paulie: Fabulous, I felt right at home… I feel sorry for anyone who hasn’t been … especially any Italian. The prosthetic memories that defined these characters’ perceptions of Italy are based on the American media’s portrayal of Italy. Commendatori thus exposes the differences between what is “authentically Italian” and the prosthetic memories about Italy generated by American gangster films. By the end of the episode it has become clear that these “inauthentic” prosthetic memories have forged an entirely different, hybrid ethnic identity.“Louis Brasi sleeps with the fishes”: How The Sopranos Treats Prosthetic MemoriesIntertextuality is an important way through which the audience can understand how The Sopranos treats prosthetic memories. The prosthetic memories generated by characters in The Sopranos are heavily based on stereotypes of Italian Americans. Papaleo states that the Italian stereotype is “composed of overreactions: after bowing, smiling and being funny, the Italian loses control” (93). Mafia films are crucial in defining the identity of Tony and his friends, and David Pattie suggests that they are a “symbolic framework within which Tony, Paulie, Christopher and Silvio attempt to find meaning and justification for their lives” (137). In a similar way, the audience is invited to use these same films as a frame for watching The Sopranos itself. Mafia stereotypes are one of the dominant ways that depict Italian Americans on screen. According to Larke-Walsh, this has perpetuated the belief that crime and Italian-Americanness are synonymous with each other (226). The show is obsessively referential and relies on the viewer’s knowledge of these films for much of its effect. Pattie describes how such use of intertextuality can be explained: "[there are] two ways of looking at self-referential programs: one in which readings of other media texts can be contained first of all within the film or program in which they occur; and a more covert type of referential work, which relies almost exclusively on the audience’s detailed, constantly-updated cultural intelligence" (137). The Sopranos operates on both levels as references that are simultaneously textual and meta-textual. This is evident through the way the show treats The Godfather films. They are by far the most frequently mentioned ones (Golden 95). According to Chris Messenger, the central link between the two is the acknowledgement that “America itself has been totally colonised by The Godfather” (Messenger 95). The Godfather is an urtext that frames how audiences are invited to view the show. As such, The Sopranos invites the viewer to use the Godfather as a lens to uncover extra layers of meaning. For example, The Sopranos uses the misguided ways in which its characters have taken on stereotypes from The Godfather as a source of humour. The series plays on the fact that characters will allow prosthetic memories derived from gangster films to dictate their behaviour. In the pilot episode, Christopher calls “Big Pussy” Bonpensiero to help him dispose of a body. Christopher informs Pussy that it’s his plan to leave the body at a garbage stop to be discovered by the rival Czechoslovakians. Christopher hoped this would emulate the “Luca Brasi situation” from The Godfather and intimidate the Czechoslovakians. When he explains this to Pussy, they have the following exchange. Pussy: The Kolar uncle is gonna find a kid dead on one of his bins and get on our fuckin’ business… no way!Christopher: Louis Brasi sleeps with the fishes.Pussy: Luca Brasi… Luca! There are differences Christopher… okay… from the Luca Brasi situation and this. Look, the Kolar’s know a kid is dead, it hardens their position... plus now the cops are lookin’ for a fuckin’ murderer!To members of the audience who are familiar with The Godfather, it immediately becomes clear that Christopher is comically misguided. In the Godfather, Luca Brasi was murdered because he was caught trying to infiltrate a powerful rival organisation. Fish wrapped in his bullet-proof vest were then sent back to the Corleones in order to notify them that their plan had been foiled (“Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes”). The “Luca Brasi situation” was a calculated and strategic move whereas Christopher’s situation amounts to a seemingly random, unauthorised killing. This sequence in The Sopranos uses this comparison for comedic effect and plays on the stereotype that all Italian Americans are mafioso and that all mafia behaviour is interchangeable. The symbolic language of the “Luca Brasi” scene is contrasted with explicit shots of a slumped, lifeless body. These shots are a source of macabre humour. The audience is invited to laugh at the contrast between the subtle, thoughtful nature of the Luca Brasi situation and the brash violence of Christopher’s own predicament. Through this comedic situation, The Sopranos critiques Christopher’s aspiration to be a godfather-esque gangster by showing his incompetence. Christopher’s misreading of the situation is further emphasised by his mistakenly referring to Luca Brasi as “Louis”. After Pussy says: “There are differences… from the Luca Brasi situation and this”, the dialogue pauses and the scene cuts to an immediate close up of Emil’s body falling to the side. This illustrates that part of the joke is that characters are willing to allow prosthetic memories derived from gangster films to dictate their behaviour, no matter how inappropriate. Therefore, Christopher is willing to refer to a scene from the Godfather that fails to account for the context of a situation without even consulting the knowledge of Big Pussy. This leads to a larger critique of the ways in which films like The Godfather are presented as a script for all Italian Americans to follow. Nevertheless, The Sopranos still has a role in perpetuating these same stereotypes. Tomasulo has argued that "despite its use of postclassical generic, narrative aesthetic devices, and its creation by an Italian American, The Sopranos relies heavily on demeaning tropes of ethnicity, class, sexuality and gender" (206). This results in a perpetuation of negative stereotypes about working class Italian Americans that affirm old Hollywood clichés. While The Sopranos has tried to transcend this through complex characterisation, irony and universalisation, Tomasulo asserts that most audiences “take The Sopranos as straight - that is a raw unvarnished anthropology of Americans of Italian descent” (206). The origin of characters’ anti-social personalities seems to stem directly from their ethnicity and their being Italian appears to constitute an explanation for their behaviour. In his article Kocela discusses the complicated relationship that characters have with their white ethnicity. Through an application of Landsberg’s theory it is possible to understand how these ethnicities are initially formed and how they continue to circulate. In response to assimilation, characters in The Sopranos have turned to mass media to generate prosthetic memories of their ethnic heritage. These memories generally originate in classic gangster films. They are used by characters in The Sopranos to deny their whiteness and justify their criminality. The Sopranos itself comments on the complex ways that characters interpret gangster film stereotypes for both comedic and critical commentary. In the epilogue of her book, Landsberg asks: “How can we be sure the politics inspired by prosthetic memories are progressive and ethical?” Prosthetic memories generated by gangster texts are almost inherently problematic. Scholars have criticised the hyper-aggressive masculinity and regressive gender roles that are rampant throughout the genre (Larke-Walsh 226). For Tony and his friends, these problematic gender politics have helped justify their criminal lifestyle and valorised violence as part of ethnic performance. Similarly, these stereotypes are not always circulated critically and are at times perpetuated for audience enjoyment. AcknowledgmentI would like to express my gratitude to Dr. Michelle Phillipov for providing constructive feedback on earlier drafts. References“Commendatori.” The Sopranos: The Complete Second Season. Writ. David Chase. Dir. Tim Van Patten. HBO, 2000. DVD.Coppola, Francis, and Mario Puzo. The Godfather. Hollywood, CA: Paramount Home Video, 1972.“D-Girl.” The Sopranos: The Complete Second Season. Writ. Todd A. Kessler. Dir. Allen Coulter. HBO, 2000. DVD.D'Acierno, Pellegrino. “Cinema Paradiso.” The Italian American Heritage: A Companion to Literature and Arts. New York: Garland, 1999. 563-690.Faucette, Brian. "Interrogations of Masculinity: Violence and the Retro-Gangster Cycle of the 60s." Atenea 28.1 (2008): 75-85.“From Where to Eternity.” The Sopranos: The Complete Second Season. Writ. Michael Imperioli. Dir. Henry Bronchtein. HBO, 2000. DVD. Golden, Cameron. "You're Annette Bening? Dreams and Hollywood Subtext in The Sopranos." Lavery, David. Reading The Sopranos: Hit TV from H.B.O. London: I.B. Tauris, 2006. 91-103.Kocela, Christopher. "Unmade Men: The Sopranos after Whiteness." Postmodern Culture 15.2 (2005). <http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/issue.105/15.2kocela.html>.Landsberg, Alison. Prosthetic Memories: The Transformation of American Rememberance in the Age of Mass Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.Messenger, Christopher. Godfather and American Culture: How the Corleones Became Our Gang. New York: State University of New York Press, 2002.Michaels, Walter Ben. "Race into Culture: A Critical Geneology of Cultural Identity." Critical Inquiry 18.4 (1992): 655-85.Larke-Walsh, George. Screening the Mafia: Masculinity, Ethnicity and Mobsters from The Godfather to The Sopranos. Jefferson: McFarland, 2010.Papaleo, Joseph. "Ethnic Images and Ethnic Fate: The Media Image of Italian Americans." Ethnic Images in American Film and Television (1978): 44-95.Pattie, David. "Mobbed Up: The Sopranos and the Modern Gangster Film." Lavery, David. This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos. New York: Wallflower Press, 2002. 137-152.Roediger, D.R. The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class. London: Verso, 2007. Thorburn, D. "The Sopranos." In The Essential H.B.O Reader, eds. G. Edgerton and J. Jones. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2008. 61-70.Tomasulo, Frank. "The Guinea as Tragic Hero: The Complex Representation of Italian Americans." In The Essential Sopranos Reader, eds. David Lavery, Douglas Howard, and Paul Levinson. Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 2011. 196-207.“The Sopranos.” The Sopranos: The Complete First Season. Writ. David Chase. Dir. David Chase. HBO, 1999. DVD. “Walk like a Man.” The Sopranos: The Complete Sixth Season. Writ. Terence Winter. Dir. Terence Winter. HBO, 2007. DVD. Webster, Colin. "Marginalized White Ethnicity, Race and Crime." Theoretical Criminology 12 (2008): 293-312.

Abstract:

IntroductionThe existential question today is not whether to be or not to be, but how one can become what one truly is. (Golomb 200)In contemporary Western culture the ideal of living authentically, of being “true to yourself,” is ubiquitous. Authenticity is “taken for granted” as an absolute value in a multitude of areas, from music, to travel to identity (Lindholm 1). A core component of authentic selfhood is to find an occupation that is a “passion:” work that is “really you.” This article draws on recent qualitative interviews with Australians from a range of occupations about work, identity and meaning (James). It will demonstrate that for these contemporary individuals, occupation is often closely linked to perceptions of authentic selfhood. I begin by overviewing the significance and presence of authenticity as a value in contemporary culture through discussions of reality television and self-help literature focussed on careers. This is followed by a discussion of sociological theories of authenticity, drawing out the connections between the authentic self, modernity and work. The final section uses examples from the interviews to argue that the ideal of work being an extension of the authentic self is compelling because in providing direction and purpose, it helps the individual avoid anomie, disenchantment and other modern malaises (Taylor).The Authentic Self and Career Guidance in Contemporary Popular CultureThe prevalence of authenticity in contemporary Western popular culture can be seen in reality television programs like Master Chef (a cooking competition) and The Voice (a singing competition). Generally, contestants take part in the show in order to “follow their dreams” and pursue the career they feel they were “destined” for. When elimination is immanent, those at risk of departure are given one last chance to tell the judges what being in the competition means to them. This usually takes the form of a tearful monologue in which the contestant explains that the past few weeks have been the best of their life, that they finally feel “alive” and that they have found their “passion.” In these shows, finding work that is “really you”—that is an extension of your authentic-self—is portrayed as being a fundamental component of fulfillment and self-actualization.The same message is delivered in self-help media and texts. Since the 1970s, “finding your passion” and “finding yourself” have been popular subjects for the genre. The best known of these books is perhaps Richard Bolles’s What Color is Your Parachute?: a job-hunting manual aimed primarily at people looking for a career change. First published in 1970, a new edition has been released every year and there are over 10 million copies in print. In 1995 it was included in the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book’s 25 Books That Have Shaped Readers’ Lives, placing Bolles in the company of Cervantes and Tolstoy (Bolles).Bolles’s book and similar career guidance titles generally follow a pattern of providing exercises for the reader to help them discover the “real you,” which then becomes the basis for choosing the “right” occupation, or as Bolles puts it, “first deciding who you are before deciding the kind of work you want to pursue.” Another best-selling self-help writer is Phil McGraw or “Dr. Phil,” better known for his television program than his books. In his Self Matters—Creating Your Life from the Inside Out, McGraw begins bytelling the story of his own search for his authentic “passion.” Before moving into television, McGraw spent ten years working as a practicing psychiatrist. He recalls:So much of what I did—while totally okay if it had been what I had a passion for—was as unnatural for me as it would be for a dog. It didn’t come from the heart. It wasn’t something that sprang from who I really was ... I wasn’t doing what was meaningful for me. I wasn’t doing what I was good at and therefore was not pursuing my mission in life, my purpose for being here … You and everyone else has a mission, a purpose in life that cannot be denied if you are to live fully. If you have no purpose, you have no passion. If you have no passion, you have sold yourself out (7–12).McGraw connects living authentically with living meaningfully. Working in an occupation that is in accordance with the authentic self gives one’s life purpose. This is the same message Oprah Winfrey chose to deliver in the final episode of the The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was watched by more than 16 million viewers in the U.S. alone. Rather than following the usual pattern of the show and interview celebrity guests, Winfrey chose to talk directly to her viewers about what matters in life:Everybody has a calling, and your real job in life is to figure out what that is and get about the business of doing it. Every time we have seen a person on this stage who is a success in their life, they spoke of the job, and they spoke of the juice that they receive from doing what they knew they were meant to be doing [...] Because that is what a calling is. It lights you up and it lets you know that you are exactly where you're supposed to be, doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing. And that is what I want for all of you and hope that you will take from this show. To live from the heart of yourself.Like McGraw, Winfrey draws a link between living authentically—living “from the heart”—and finding a “calling.” The message here is that the person whose career is in accordance with their authentic self can live with certainty, direction and purpose. Authenticity may act as a buffer against the anomie and disenchantment that arguably plague individuals in late modernity (Elliott & du Gay).Disenchantment, Modernity and Authenticity For many sociologists, most famously Max Weber, finding something that gives life purpose is the great challenge for individuals in the modern West. In a disenchanted society, without religion or other “mysterious incalculable forces” to provide direction, individuals may struggle to work out what they should do with their lives (149). For Weber the answer is to find your calling. Each individual must discover the “demon who holds the fibers of his very life” and obey its demands (156).Following Weber, John Carroll has argued that in modern secular societies, individuals must draw on their inner resources to find answers to life’s “fundamental questions” (Ego 3–4). As Carroll stresses, it is not that the religious impulse has disappeared from contemporary society, but it is expressed in new ways. Individuals still yearn for a sense of purpose but they are “more likely to pursue their quests for meaning on their own, in experimental ways and with their main resource being their ontological qualities” (Carroll, Beauty 221).Other Australian academics, like Gary Bouma and David Tacey, argue that rather than a decline in religiosity in Australia, what we are seeing is a change in the way people pursue the spiritual. Tacey suggests that while many Australians may “slink away” from the idea of God as something external to our lives, they may find more resonance with a conception of God as a “core dimension” of the person (167). Contemporary Australians continue to yearn for guidance, but they are more likely to look within to find it.There is a clear link between this process of turning inward to pursue the spiritual, the prevalence of authenticity in contemporary Western culture, and modernity. With the breakdown of traditional structures, individuals become more “free to self-create” (Bauman, Identity 3). As Charles Lindholm describes it: “The inclination toward a spontaneous mode of expressive self-revelation correlates with the collapse of reliable and sacralised institutional frameworks that once offered meaning and succour” (65–66).For Charles Taylor, the origins of this “massive subjective turn of modern culture” (26) lie in the 18th-century romantic period with the idea that each individual has an intuitive moral sense. To determine what is right, the individual must be in touch with their “inner voice” and act in accordance with it. It is in this notion that Taylor identifies the background to the belief, which is so prominent today, that “There is a certain way of being human that is my way. I am called upon to live my life in this way, and not in imitation of anyone else’s” (28–29). Lindholm points to Rousseau as the “inventor” of this ideal, with his revelatory Confessions becoming “the harbinger of a new ideal in which exploring and revealing one’s essential nature was taken as an absolute good” (8). According to Rousseau, social norms suppress the individual’s true nature, and so it is only possible for one to be authentic if they break these chains and act in accordance with their inner depths. For employees in today’s service-oriented knowledge economy, there are significant risks involved in following Rousseau’s advice and expressing one’s “true feelings.” As many researchers have noted, in the new capitalism, workers are increasingly required to regulate their emotions and present themselves as calm, agreeable and above all positive (Hochschild; Sennett; Ehrenreich). To offer criticism or express frustration, to drop the “mask of cooperativeness” (Sennett 112), may mean risking one’s employment.Nevertheless, while it is arguably becoming more difficult to express authentic feeling at work, for contemporary workers, choice of occupation is still often closely linked to perceptions of authentic selfhood. In fact, in a time of increasingly fragmented careers and short-term, episodic work, it becomes more necessary to create a meaningful narrative to link numerous and varied jobs to a core sense of self. As Richard Sennett argues, today’s flexible employees—frequently moving from one workplace to the next—are at risk of “drift:” a sensation of aimless movement (30). To counter this, individuals must create a convincing story that provides a rationale for career changes and can thereby “form their characters into sustained narratives” (31).In the next section, drawing on recent empirical research, I argue that linking authentic selfhood to work provides individuals with a way to make sense of the trajectory of their work lives and to accept change. Today’s employees are able to interpret even the most unexpected career changes as a beneficial occurrence—something that was “meant to be”—by rationalising that such changes are part of a process of finding work that is an expression of the authentic self.The Authentic Self at Work: Being True to Your EssenceThe following discussion focuses on how authenticity as an ideal influences individuals’s work identity and career aspirations. It draws examples from recent qualitative interviews with Australian workers from a range of occupations (James 2012). A number of interviewees described a search for an occupation that was authentically “them,” a task that was well-suited to their capabilities and came “naturally:”I have a feeling that I was sort of a natural teacher. (Teacher, 60)Medical is what I like, that’s me. (Paramedic, 49)I found my thing, I stick to it. (Farrier, 27) These beliefs are quite clearly influenced by the idea of vocation, in that there is a particular task the individual is most suited to, but they do not invoke the sense of duty that a religious “calling” entails. Often, the interviewees had discovered the occupation that was “really them” by working in other jobs that were not their “true passion.” Realising that performing a particular role felt inauthentic helped them to define their authentic self and encouraged them to pursue more fulfilling work. This process often required experimentation, since “one knows what one is only after realising what one is not” (Golomb 201).For instance, Olivia, a 33-year old lawyer had begun her career in a corporate law firm. She had never felt comfortable in the corporate environment: “I always thought, ‘They know I don’t belong here’.” Her performance at work felt inauthentic: “I was never good at smiling and saying yes.” This experience led her to move into human rights, which she found more fulfilling. Similarly Hazel, a 50 year-old social worker, had started her career in what she described as “boring administration jobs.” Although she had “always wanted” to work in the “caring sector” her family’s expectations and her low self-confidence had stopped her from applying for university. When she finally quit the administration work and began to study it was liberating: “a weight had come out off my shoulders.” In her occupation as a social worker she felt that her work fitted with her authentic self: “the kind of person I am,” and for the first time in her life she looked forward to going to work. Both of these women, and many of the other interviewees, rationalised their decision to work in a particular field by appealing to narratives of authentic selfhood.Similarly, in explaining why they enjoyed their work, a number of interviewees looked back to their childhood for signs of what was “meant to be.” For instance, Tim, a 27 year-old farrier, justified his work with horses: “Mum came from a farming background, every school holidays I was up there…I followed my grandpa around like a little dog, annoyed and pestered him and asked him ‘Why’ and How?’ I’ve always been like that … So I think from an early age I was destined to do something like this.” Ken, a 50 year-old electrician, had a similar explanation for his choice of occupation: “Even as a little kid I was always mucking around with batteries and getting lights to work and things like that, so I think it was just a natural progression.”This tendency to associate childhood interests with authentic selfhood is perhaps due to the belief that childhood is a time of innocence and freedom, where the individual had not yet been moulded by society. As Duschinsky argues, childhood is often connected with an “originary natural essence.” We are close here to Rousseau’s “sentiment of being,” or its contemporary manifestation the “real you.” Of course, the idea that the child is free from external influence is problematised by ideas of socialisation. From birth the infant learns by copying “significant others” and self-conception is formed through interaction (Cooley; Mead). Therefore, from the very beginning, an individual’s interests, dispositions and tastes are influenced by family and culture.Shane, a 29 year-old real estate agent, had resisted working in property because it was the family business and he “didn’t want to be as boring as to follow in Dad’s footsteps.” He saw himself as “academic” and “creative” and for a number of years worked as a writer. Eventually though he decided that writing was not his calling: it was “not actually me … I categorise myself as someone who has the ability to write but not naturally.” When Shane began working in real-estate however, it felt almost automatic. Like the other members of his family he had the right skills and traits to thrive in the business and was immediately successful. Interestingly, Shane’s conception of his authenticity includes both a belief in an essential, pre-social “true” self and at the same time an understanding of the importance of the influence of family in the formation of the self.Regardless of whether the idea of a natural, inner-essence discernable in childhood pastimes can be disproven, it is clear that the understanding of authentic selfhood as an “immediate expression of our essence” continues to influence how individuals conceive of their work identities. However, at the same time, the interviewees’ accounts of authenticity also acknowledged the role of parents in influencing traits and dispositions. In these narratives of the self, authenticity encompasses opposing understandings of childhood as being both free from social influences and highly influenced by primary agents of socialisation. That individuals are willing to do the necessary mental and emotional work to maintain these contradictory beliefs suggests that there is a strong incentive to frame work identity as an expression of authentic selfhood.Authenticity Provides PurposeThe great benefit of being able to convincingly rationalise one’s work as a manifestation of the true self is that it gives the individual direction and purpose. Work then provides answers to Carroll’s fundamental questions: “who am I?” and “What should I do with my life?” A number of the interviewees recalled their attempts to secure a sense of purpose by linking their current occupation to their inner essence. As Greg, a 36-year-old fitness consultant described it:You just gotta think ‘What do you really wanna do, what makes you happy, what are you about?’ … I guess the strengthening and conditioning work, the fitness, has been the constant right the way through. It’s probably the core of what I’ve done over the years, seeing individuals and teams get fit. It’s what I do. That’s my role, if you put it in a nutshell. That’s what I’m about … I was sort of floating around a little bit … I need to go ‘This is what I am.’ By identifying his authentic self and linking it to his work, Greg was able to make sense of his past. He had once been a professional runner and after an injury was forced to redefine himself. He now rationalised that his ability to run had led him into the fitness field: You look at what is your life mission and basically what are you out here for … with athletics it’s allowed me to deal with any sport, made me flexible in my career … if I was, therefore born to run? Yeah, quite possibly, there had to be a reason. Like many of the interviewees, Greg had been forced to change his plans, but he was able to rationalise that this change was positive by forming a narrative that connected both his current and previous occupations to his perception of his authentic self. As Sennett describes it, he is able to from his character into a “sustained narrative” (31). Similarly, Trish, a 42 year-old retail coordinator, connected both her work as a chef and her job in a hardware store back to her sense of authentic self. Both occupations, she thought, were “down and dirty” and she linked this to her family “roots” and her identity as a “country girl.” In interpreting these two substantially different occupations as an expression of her true self, Trish is able to create a narrative in which unexpected career changes are as seen as something beneficial that was “meant to be.” These accounts of career trajectories suggest that linking authenticity to work identity is a strategy individuals employ to cope with the disorienting effects of fragmented work lives. Even jobs that are unfulfilling and feel inauthentic can be made meaningful by interpreting them as necessary steps leading towards the discovery of one’s “ true passion”. This is quite different to the ideal of a life-long calling in one occupation, which as Bauman has noted, has become a “privilege of the few” in late-modernity (Work 34). In an era of insecure and fragmented work, the narrative of an authentic self becomes particularly appealing as it allows the individual to create a meaningful work-narrative that can accommodate the numerous twists and turns of contemporary “liquid” existence (Bauman, Identity 5) and avoid “drift” (Sennett). Conclusion Drawing on qualitative research, this paper has analysed the connections between authenticity, work and modern selfhood. I have shown that in an era of flexible and fragmented working lives, work-identities are often closely tied to understandings of authentic selfhood. Interpreting particular kinds of work as being expressions of the authentic self provides individuals with a sense of purpose and in some cases assists them in coming to terms with unexpected career changes. A meaningful career narrative acts as a buffer against disorientation, disenchantment and anomie. It is therefore no wonder that authentic selfhood is such a prominent theme in reality television, self-help and other forms of popular culture, since it is taps into an existential need for a sense of purpose that becomes increasingly elusive in late-modernity. It is clear from the accounts presented in this paper that the pursuit of authenticity is not merely a narcissistic endeavor, and is employed by individuals to work through fundamental existential questions. Future work in this area should continue to make use of empirical research to add depth and complexity to theoretical accounts of authentic selfhood. References Bauman, Zygmunt. “Identity in the Globalizing World.” Identity in Question. Ed. Anthony Elliott and Paul du Gay. London: Sage, 2009. 1–12. Bauman, Zygmunt. Work, Consumerism and the New Poor. Buckingham: Open UP, 1998. Bolles, Richard. What Colour Is Your Parachute 2015. 23 Jan. 2015 ‹http://www.jobhuntersbible.com/books/view/what-color-is-your-parachute-2015›. Bolles, Richard. What Colour Is Your Parachute. Berkley: Ten Speed, 1970. Bouma, Gary. Australian Soul: Religion and Spirituality in the 21st Century. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2006. Carroll, John. “Beauty contra God: Has Aesthetics Replaced Religion in Modernity?” Journal of Sociology 48.2 (2012): 206–23. Carroll, John. Ego and Soul: The Modern West in Search of Meaning. Melbourne: Scribe, 2008. Cooley, Charles Horton. Human Nature and the Social Order. New York: Scribner’s, 1902. Duschinsky, Robbie. “Childhood Innocence: Essence, Education, and Performativity.” Textual Practice 27.5 (2013): 763–81. Elliott, Anthony, and Paul du Gay. “Editors’ Introduction.” Identity in Question. Eds. Anthony Elliott and Paul du Gay. London: Sage, 2009. xi–xxi. Ehrenreich, Barbara. Bright-Sided : How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. New York: Henry Holt, 2009. Golomb, Jacob. In Search of Authenticity: From Kierkegaard to Camus. London: Routledge, 1995. Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart: Commercialization Human Feeling. Berkeley: U of California P, 1983. James, Sara. “Making a Living, Making a Life: Contemporary Narratives of Work, Vocation and Meaning.” PhD Thesis. La Trobe U, 2012. Lindholm, Charles. Culture and Authenticity. Malden: Blackwell, 2008. McGraw, Phil. Self Matters—Creating Your Life from the Inside Out. London: Simon and Schuster, 2001. Mead, George Herbert. Mind, Self and Society. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1934. Sennett, Richard. The Corrosion of Character: The Personal Consequences of Work in the New Capitalism, New York: WW Norton, 1998. Tacey, David. Edge of the Sacred: Jung, Psyche, Earth. Sydney: Daimon, 2008. Taylor, Charles. Ethics of Authenticity. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1991. Weber, Max. “Science as a Vocation.” From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology. Ed. Hans Heinrich Gerth and Charles Wright Mills. London: Routledge, 1991. 129–56. Winfrey, Oprah. The Oprah Winfrey Show Finale. 23 Jan. 2015 ‹http://www.oprah.com/oprahshow/The-Oprah-Winfrey-Show-Finale_1#ixzz3PbhBrdBs›.

Abstract:

Online shopping is all the rage these days and the murderabilia industry in particular, which specializes in selling serial killer artifacts, is booming. At Spectre Studios, sculptor David Johnson sells flexible plastic action figures of Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and John Wayne Gacy and plans to produce a figure of Jack the Ripper in the future. Although some might think that making action figures of serial killers is tasteless, Johnson hastens to assure the potential consumer that he does have standards: “I wouldn’t do Osama bin Laden . . . I have some personal qualms about that” (Robinson). At Serial Killer Central, you can buy a range of items made by serial killers themselves, including paintings and drawings by Angelo Buono (one of the “Hillside Stranglers”) and Henry Lee Lucas. For the more discerning consumer, Supernaught.com charges a mere $300 for a brick from Dahmer’s apartment building, while a lock of Charles Manson’s hair is a real bargain at $995, shipping and handling not included. The sale of murderabilia is just a small part of the huge serial killer industry that has become a defining feature of American popular culture over the last twenty-five years. This industry is, in turn, a prime example of what Mark Seltzer has described as “wound culture,” consisting of a “public fascination with torn and open bodies and torn and opened persons, a collective gathering around shock, trauma, and the wound” (1). According to Seltzer, the serial killer is “one of the superstars of our wound culture” (2) and his claim is confirmed by the constant stream of movies, books, magazines, television shows, websites, t-shirts, and a tsunami of ephemera that has given the figure of the serial murderer an unparalleled degree of visibility and fame in the contemporary American public sphere. In a culture defined by celebrity, serial killers like Bundy, Dahmer and Gacy are the biggest stars of all, instantly recognized by the vast majority of Americans. Not surprisingly, murderabilia has been the focus of a sustained critique by the (usually self-appointed) guardians of ‘decency’ in American culture. On January 2, 2003 The John Walsh Show, the daytime television vehicle of the long-time host of America’s Most Wanted, featured an “inside look at the world of ‘murderabilia,’ which involves the sale of artwork, personal effects and letters from well-known killers” (The John Walsh Show Website). Featured guests included Andy Kahan, Director of the Mayor’s Crime Victim Assistance Office in Houston, Texas; ‘Thomas,’ who was horrified to find hair samples from “The Railroad Killer,” the individual who killed his mother, for sale on the Internet; Elmer Wayne Henley, a serial killer who sells his artwork to collectors; Joe, who runs “Serial Killer Central” and sells murderabilia from a wide range of killers, and Harold Schechter, a professor of English at Queens College, CUNY. Despite the program’s stated intention to “look at both sides of the issue,” the show was little more than a jeremiad against the murderabilia industry, with the majority of airtime being given to Andy Kahan and to the relatives of crime victims. The program’s bias was not lost on many of those who visited Joe’s Serial Killer Central site and left messages on the message board on the day The John Walsh Show aired. There were some visitors who shared Walsh’s perspective. A message from “serialkillersshouldnotprofit@aol.com,” for example, stated that “you will rot in hell with these killers,” while “Smithpi@hotmail.com” had a more elaborate critique: “You should pull your site off the net. I just watched the John Walsh show and your [sic] a fucking idiot. I hope your [sic] never a victim, because if you do [sic] then you would understand what all those people were trying to tell you. You [sic] a dumb shit.” Most visitors, however, sympathized with the way Joe had been treated on the show: “I as well [sic] saw you on the John Walsh show, you should [sic] a lot of courage going on such a one sided show, and it was shit that they wouldnt [sic] let you talk, I would have walked off.” But whether the comments were positive or negative, one thing was clear: The John Walsh Show had created a great deal of interest in the Serial Killer Central site. As one of the messages put it, “I think that anything [sic] else he [John Walsh] has put a spark in everyones [sic] curiousity [sic] . . . I have noticed that you have more hits on your page today than any others [sic].” Apparently, even the most explicit rejection and condemnation of serial killer celebrity finds itself implicated in (and perhaps even unwittingly encouraging the growth of) that celebrity. John Walsh’s attack on the murderabilia industry was the latest skirmish in a campaign that has been growing steadily since the late 1990s. One of the campaign’s initial targets was the internet trading site eBay, which was criticized for allowing serial killer-related products to be sold online. In support of such criticism, conservative victims’ rights and pro-death penalty organizations like “Justice For All” organized online petitions against eBay. In November 2000, Business Week Online featured an interview with Andy Kahan in which he argued that the online sale of murderabilia should be suppressed: “The Internet just opens it all up to millions and millions more potential buyers and gives easy access to children. And it sends a negative message to society. What does it say about us? We continue to glorify killers and continue to put them in the mainstream public. That’s not right” (Business Week). Eventually bowing to public pressure, eBay decided to ban the sale of murderabilia items in May 2001, forcing the industry underground, where it continues to be pursued by the likes of John Walsh. Apart from highlighting how far the celebrity culture around serial killers has developed (so that one can now purchase the nail clippings and hair of some killers, as if they are religious icons), focusing on the ongoing debate around the ethics of murderabilia also emphasizes how difficult it is to draw a neat line between those who condemn and those who participate in that culture. Quite apart from the way in which John Walsh’s censoriousness brought more visitors to the Serial Killer Central site, one could also argue that few individuals have done more to disseminate information about violent crime in general and serial murder in particular to mainstream America than John Walsh. Of course, this information is presented in the unimpeachably moral context of fighting crime, but controversial features of America’s Most Wanted, such as the dramatic recreations of crime, pander to the same prurient public interest in crime that the program simultaneously condemns. An ABCNews.Com article on murderabilia inadvertently highlights the difficulty of distinguishing a legitimate from an illegitimate interest in serial murder by quoting Rick Staton, one of the biggest collectors and dealers of murderabilia in the United States, who emphasizes that the people he sells to are not “ghouls and creeps [who] crawl out of the woodwork”, but rather “pretty much your average Joe Blow.” Even his family, Staton goes on to say, who profess to be disgusted by what he does, act very differently in practice: “The minute they step into this room, they are glued to everything in here and they are asking questions and they are genuinely intrigued by it . . . So it makes me wonder: Am I the one who is so abnormal, or am I pretty normal?” (ABCNews.Com). To answer Staton’s question, we need to go back to 1944, when sociologist Leo Lowenthal published an essay entitled “Biographies in Popular Magazines,” an essay he later reprinted as a chapter in his 1961 book, Literature, Popular Culture And Society, under a new title: “The Triumph of Mass Idols.” Lowenthal argues that biographies in popular magazines underwent a striking change between 1901 and 1941, a change that signals the emergence of a new social type. According to Lowenthal, the earlier biographies indicate that American society’s heroes at the time were “idols of production” in that “they stem from the productive life, from industry, business, and natural sciences. There is not a single hero from the world of sports and the few artists and entertainers either do not belong to the sphere of cheap or mass entertainment or represent a serious attitude toward their art” (112-3). Sampling biographies in magazines from 1941, however, Lowenthal reaches a very different conclusion: “We called the heroes of the past ‘idols of production’: we feel entitled to call the present-day magazine heroes ‘idols of consumption’” (115). Unlike the businessmen, industrialists and scientists who dominated the earlier sample, almost every one of 1941’s heroes “is directly, or indirectly, related to the sphere of leisure time: either he does not belong to vocations which serve society’s basic needs (e.g., the worlds of entertainment and sport), or he amounts, more or less, to a caricature of a socially productive agent” (115). Lowenthal leaves his reader in no doubt that he sees the change from “idols of production” to “idols of consumption” as a serious decline: “If a student in some very distant future should use popular magazines of 1941 as a source of information as to what figures the American public looked to in the first stages of the greatest crisis since the birth of the Union, he would come to a grotesque result . . . the idols of the masses are not, as they were in the past, the leading names in the battle of production, but the headliners of the movies, the ball parks, and the night clubs” (116). With Lowenthal in mind, when one considers the fact that the serial killer is generally seen, in Richard Tithecott’s words, as “deserving of eternal fame, of media attention on a massive scale, of groupies” (144), one is tempted to describe the advent of celebrity serial killers as a further decline in the condition of American culture’s “mass idols.” The serial killer’s relationship to consumption, however, is too complex to allow for such a hasty judgment, as the murderabilia industry indicates. Throughout the edition of The John Walsh Show that attacked murderabilia, Walsh showed clips of Collectors, a recent documentary about the industry. Collectors is distributed by a small company named Abject Films and on their website the film’s director, Julian P. Hobbs, discusses some of the multiple connections between serial killing and consumerism. Hobbs points out that the serial killer is connected with consumerism in the most basic sense that he has become a commodity, “a merchandising phenomenon that rivals Mickey Mouse. From movies to television, books to on-line, serial killers are packaged and consumed en-masse” (Abject Films). But as Hobbs goes on to argue, serial killers themselves can be seen as consumers, making any representations of them implicated in the same consumerist logic: “Serial killers come into being by fetishizing and collecting artifacts – usually body parts – in turn, the dedicated collector gathers scraps connected with the actual events and so, too, a documentary a collection of images” (Abject Films). Along with Rick Staton, Hobbs implies that no one can avoid being involved with consumerism in relation to serial murder, even if one’s reasons for getting involved are high-minded. For example, when Jeffrey Dahmer was murdered in prison in 1994, the families of his victims were delighted but his death also presented them with something of a problem. Throughout the short time Dahmer was in prison, there had been persistent rumors that he was in negotiations with both publishers and movie studios about selling his story. If such a deal had ever been struck, legal restrictions would have prevented Dahmer from receiving any of the money; instead, it would have been distributed among his victims’ families. Dahmer’s murder obviously ended this possibility, so the families explored another option: going into the murderabilia business by auctioning off Dahmer’s property, including such banal items as his toothbrush, but also many items he had used in commission of the murders, such as a saw, a hammer, the 55-gallon vat he used to decompose the bodies, and the refrigerator where he stored the hearts of his victims. Although the families’ motives for suggesting this auction may have been noble, they could not avoid participating in what Mark Pizzato has described as “the prior fetishization of such props and the consumption of [Dahmer’s] cannibal drama by a mass audience” (91). When the logic of consumerism dominates, is anyone truly innocent, or are there just varying degrees of guilt, of implication? The reason why it is impossible to separate neatly ‘legitimate’ and ‘illegitimate’ expressions of interest in famous serial killers is the same reason why the murderabilia industry is booming; in the words of a 1994 National Examiner headline: “Serial Killers Are as American as Apple Pie.” Christopher Sharrett has suggested that: “Perhaps the fetish status of the criminal psychopath . . . is about recognizing the serial killer/mass murderer not as social rebel or folk hero . . . but as the most genuine representative of American life” (13). The enormous resistance to recognizing the representativeness of serial killers in American culture is fundamental to the appeal of fetishizing serial killers and their artifacts. As Sigmund Freud has explained, the act of disavowal that accompanies the formation of a fetish allows a perception (in this case, the Americanness of serial killers) to persist in a different form rather than being simply repressed (352-3). Consequently, just like the sexual fetishists discussed by Freud, although we may recognize our interest in serial killers “as an abnormality, it is seldom felt by [us] as a symptom of an ailment accompanied by suffering” (351). On the contrary, we are usually, in Freud’s words, “quite satisfied” (351) with our interest in serial killers precisely because we have turned them into celebrities. It is our complicated relationship with celebrities, affective as well as intellectual, composed of equal parts admiration and resentment, envy and contempt, that provides us with a lexicon through which we can manage our appalled and appalling fascination with the serial killer, contemporary American culture’s ultimate star. References ABCNews.Com. “Killer Collectibles: Inside the World of ‘Murderabilia.” 7 Nov. 2001. American Broadcasting Company. 9 May 2003 http://www.abcnews.com>. AbjectFilms.Com. “Collectors: A Film by Julian P. Hobbs.” Abject Films. 9 May 2003 http://www.abjectfilms.com/collectors.html>. BusinessWeek Online. 20 Nov. 2000. Business Week. 9 May 2003 http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_47/b3708056.htm>. Freud, Sigmund. “Fetishism.” On Sexuality. Trans. James Strachey. London: Penguin Books, 1977. 351-7. The John Walsh Show. Ed. Click Active Media. 2 Jan. 2003. 9 May 2003 http://www.johnwalsh.tv/cgi-bin/topics/today/cgi?id=90>. Lowenthal, Leo. “The Triumph of Mass Idols.” Literature, Popular Culture and Society. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1961. 109-40. National Examiner. “Serial Killers Are as American as Apple Pie.” 7 Jun. 1994: 7. Pizzato, Mark. “Jeffrey Dahmer and Media Cannibalism: The Lure and Failure of Sacrifice.” Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media. Ed. Christopher Sharrett. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1999. 85-118. Robinson, Bryan. “Murder Incorporated: Denver Sculptor’s Serial Killer Action Figures Bringing in Profits and Raising Ire.” ABCNews.Com 25 Mar. 2002. American Broadcasting Company. 27 Apr. 2003 http://abcnews.com/>. Seltzer, Mark. Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture. New York: Routledge, 1998. Sharrett, Christopher. “Introduction.” Mythologies of Violence in Postmodern Media. Ed. Christopher Sharrett. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 1999. 9-20. Tithecott, Richard. Of Men and Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Construction of the Serial Killer. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1997. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Schmid, David. "Murderabilia: Consuming Fame." M/C Journal 7.5 (2004). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/10-schmid.php>. APA Style Schmid, D. (Nov. 2004) "Murderabilia: Consuming Fame," M/C Journal, 7(5). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0411/10-schmid.php>.

Abstract:

This variable describes what kind of concept of culture underlies the cultural coverage at a certain point of time or across time. The variable dissects the concept of culture into cultural forms that are being journalistically covered. It presupposes that each article predominantly focuses on one cultural genre or discipline, such as literature, music, or film, which is the case in most articles in the cultural beat that are written according to cultural journalists’ areas of specialization. By identifying the cultural forms covered, the variable delivers an answer to the question of what kind of culture has been covered, or what kind of culture has been represented. Forms of culture are sometimes also called artistic or cultural disciplines (Jaakkola, 2015) or cultural genres (Purhonen et al., 2019), and cultural classification (Janssen et al., 2011) or cultural hierarchy (Schmutz, 2009). The level of detail varies from study to study, according to the need of knowledge, with some scholars tracing forms of subculture (Schmutz et al., 2010), while others just identify the overall development of major cultural forms (Purhonen et al., 2019; Jaakkola, 2015a). The concepts of culture can roughly be defined as being dominated by high cultural, popular cultural, or everyday cultural forms (Kristensen, 2019). While most culture sections in newspapers are dominated by high culture, and the question is rather about which disciplines, in the operationalization it is not always easy to draw lines between high and popular forms in the postmodern cultural landscape where boundaries are being blurred. Nevertheless, the major forms of culture in the journalistic operationalization of culture are literature, classical music, theatre, and fine arts. As certain forms of culture – such as classical music and opera – are focused on classical high culture, and other forms – such as popular music and comics – represent popular forms, distribution of coverage according to cultural forms may indicate changes in the cultural concept. Field of application/theoretical foundation The question of the concept of culture is a standard question in content analyses on arts and cultural journalism in daily newspapers and cultural magazines, posed by a number of studies conducted in different geographical areas and often with a comparative intent (e.g., Szántó et al., 2004; Janssen, 1999; Reus & Harden, 2005; Janssen et al., 2008; Larsen, 2008; Kõnno et al., 2012; Jaakkola, 2015a, 2015b; Verboord & Janssen, 2015; Purhonen et al., 2019; Widholm et al., 2019). The essence of culture has been theorized in cultural studies, predominantly by Raymond Williams (e.g., 2011), and sociologists of art (Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952). In studying journalistic coverage of arts and culture, the concept of culture reveals the anatomy of coverage and whether the content is targeting a broader audience (inclusive concept of culture) or a narrow audience (exclusive or elitist concept of culture). A prevalent motivation to study the ontological dimension of cultural coverage is also to trace cultural change, which means that the concept of culture is longitudinally studied (Purhonen et al., 2019). References/combination with other methods of data collection Concept of culture often occurs as a variable to trace cultural change. The variable is typically coupled with other variables, mainly with representational means, i.e., the journalistic genre (Jaakkola, 2015), event type (Stegert, 1998), or author gender (Schmutz, 2009; Jaakkola, 2015b). Quantitative content analyses may also be complemented with qualitative analyses (Purhonen et al., 2019). Sample operationalization Cultural forms are separated according to the production structure (journalists and reviewers specializing in one cultural form typically indicate an increase of coverage for that cultural form). At a general level, the concept of culture can be divided into the following cultural forms: literature, music – which is, according to the newsroom specialization typically roughly categorized into classical and popular music – visual arts, theatre, dance, film, design, architecture and built environment, media, comics, cultural politics, cultural history, arts education, and other. Subcategories can be separated according to the interest and level of knowledge. The variable needs to be sensitive towards local features in journalism and culture. Example study Jaakkola (2015b) Information about Jaakkola, 2015 Author: Maarit Jaakkola Research question/research interest: Examination of the cultural concept across time in culture sections of daily newspapers Object of analysis: Articles/text items on culture pages of five major daily newspapers in Finland 1978–2008 (Aamulehti, Helsingin Sanomat, Kaleva, Savon Sanomat, Turun Sanomat) Timeframe of analysis: 1978–2008, consecutive sample of weeks 7 and 42 in five year intervals (1978, 1983, 1988, 1993, 1998, 2003, 2008) Info about variable Variable name/definition: Concept of culture Unit of analysis: Article/text item Values: Cultural form Description 1. Fiction literature Fiction books: fictional genres such as poetry, literary novels, thrillers, detective novels, children’s literature, etc. 2. Non-fiction literature Non-fiction books: non-fictional genres such as textbooks, memoirs, encyclopedias, etc. 3. Classical music Music of more high-cultural character, such as symphonic music, chamber music, opera, etc. 4. Popular music Music of more popular character, such as pop, rock, hip-hop, folk music, etc. 5. Visual arts Fine arts: painting, drawing, graphical art, sculpture, media art, photography, etc. 6. Theatre Scene art, including musicals (if not treated as music, i.e. in coverage of concerts and albums) 7. Dance Scene art, including ballet (if not treated as music, .e. in coverage of concerts and albums) 8. Film Cinema: fiction, documentary, experimental film, etc. 9. Design Design of artefacts, jewelry, fashion, interiors, graphics, etc. 10. Architecture Design, aesthetics, and planning of built environment 11. Media Television, journalism, Internet, games, etc. 12. Comics Illustrated periodicals 13. Cultural politics Policies, politics, and administration concerning arts and culture in general 14. Cultural history Historical issues and phenomena 15. Education Educational issues concerning different cultural disciplines 16. Other Miscellaneous minor categories, e.g., lifestyle issues (celebrity, gossip, everyday cultural issues), and larger categories developed from within the material can be separated into values of their own Scale: nominal Intercoder reliability: Cohen's kappa > 0.76 (two coders) References Jaakkola, M. (2015a). The contested autonomy of arts and journalism: Change and continuity in the dual professionalism of cultural journalism. Tampere: Tampere University Press. Jaakkola, M. (2015b). Outsourcing views, developing news: Changes of art criticism in Finnish dailies, 1978–2008. Journalism Studies, 16(3), 383–402. Janssen, S. (1999). Art journalism and cultural change: The coverage of the arts in Dutch newspapers 1965–1990. Poetics 26(5–6), 329–348. Janssen, S., Kuipers, G., & Verboord, M. (2008). Cultural globalization and arts journalism: The international orientation of arts and culture coverage in Dutch, French, German, and U.S. newspapers, 1955 to 2005. American Sociological Review, 73(5), 719–740. Janssen, S., Verboord, M., & Kuipers, G. (2011). Comparing cultural classification: High and popular arts in European and U.S. elite newspapers. Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie, 63(51), 139–168. Kõnno, A., Aljas, A., Lõhmus, M., & Kõuts, R. (2012). The centrality of culture in the 20th century Estonian press: A longitudinal study in comparison with Finland and Russia. Nordicom Review, 33(2), 103–117. Kristensen, N. N. (2019). Arts, culture and entertainment coverage. In T. P. Vos & F. Hanusch (Eds.), The international encyclopedia of journalism studies. Wiley-Blackwell. Kroeber, A. L., & Kluckhohn, C. (1952). Culture: A critical review of concepts and definitions. Meridian Books. Larsen, L. O. (2008). Forskyvninger. Kulturdekningen i norske dagsaviser 1964–2005 [Displacements: Cultural coverage in Norwegian dailies 1964–2005]. In K. Knapskog & L.O. Larsen (Eds.), Kulturjournalistikk: pressen og den kulturelle offentligheten (pp. 283–329). Scandinavian Academic Press. Purhonen, S., Heikkilä, R., Karademir Hazir, I., Lauronen, T., Rodríguez, C. F., & Gronow, J. (2019). Enter culture, exit arts? The transformation of cultural hierarchies in European newspaper culture sections, 1960–2010. Routledge. Reus, G., & Harden, L. (2005). Politische ”Kultur”: Eine Längsschnittanalyse des Zeitungsfeuilletons von 1983 bis 2003 [Political ‘culture’: A longitudinal analysis of culture pages, 1983–2003]. Publizistik, 50(2), 153–172. Schmutz, V. (2009). Social and symbolic boundaries in newspaper coverage of music, 1955–2005: Gender and genre in the US, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Poetics, 37(4), 298–314. Schmutz, V., van Venrooij, A., Janssen, S., & Verboord, M. (2010). Change and continuity in newspaper coverage of popular music since 1955: Evidence from the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. Popular Music and Society, 33(4), 505–515. Stegert, G. (1998). Feuilleton für alle: Strategien im Kulturjournalismus der Presse [Feuilleton for all: Strategies in cultural journalism of the daily press]. Max Niemeyer Verlag. Szántó, A., Levy, D. S., & Tyndall, A. (Eds.). (2004). Reporting the arts II: News coverage of arts and culture in America. National Arts Journalism Program (NAJP). Verboord, M., & Janssen, J. (2015). Arts journalism and its packaging in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States, 1955–2005. Journalism Practice, 9(6), 829–852. Widholm, A., Riegert, K., & Roosvall, A. (2019). Abundance or crisis? Transformations in the media ecology of Swedish cultural journalism over four decades. Journalism. Advance online publication August, 6. Journalism. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884919866077 Williams, R. (2011). Keywords: A vocabulary of culture and society. Routledge. (Original work published 1976).

Abstract:

History is not over and that includes media history. Jay Rosen (Zelizer & Allan 33) The media in their reporting on terrorism tend to be judgmental, inflammatory, and sensationalistic. — Susan D. Moeller (169) In short, we are directed in time, and our relation to the future is different than our relation to the past. All our questions are conditioned by this asymmetry, and all our answers to these questions are equally conditioned by it. Norbert Wiener (44) The Clash of Geopolitical Pundits America’s geo-strategic engagement with the world underwent a dramatic shift in the decade after the Cold War ended. United States military forces undertook a series of humanitarian interventions from northern Iraq (1991) and Somalia (1992) to NATO’s bombing campaign on Kosovo (1999). Wall Street financial speculators embraced market-oriented globalization and technology-based industries (Friedman 1999). Meanwhile the geo-strategic pundits debated several different scenarios at deeper layers of epistemology and macrohistory including the breakdown of nation-states (Kaplan), the ‘clash of civilizations’ along religiopolitical fault-lines (Huntington) and the fashionable ‘end of history’ thesis (Fukuyama). Media theorists expressed this geo-strategic shift in reference to the ‘CNN Effect’: the power of real-time media ‘to provoke major responses from domestic audiences and political elites to both global and national events’ (Robinson 2). This media ecology is often contrasted with ‘Gateholder’ and ‘Manufacturing Consent’ models. The ‘CNN Effect’ privileges humanitarian and non-government organisations whereas the latter models focus upon the conformist mind-sets and shared worldviews of government and policy decision-makers. The September 11 attacks generated an uncertain interdependency between the terrorists, government officials, and favourable media coverage. It provided a test case, as had the humanitarian interventions (Robinson 37) before it, to test the claim by proponents that the ‘CNN Effect’ had policy leverage during critical stress points. The attacks also revived a long-running debate in media circles about the risk factors of global media. McLuhan (1964) and Ballard (1990) had prophesied that the global media would pose a real-time challenge to decision-making processes and that its visual imagery would have unforeseen psychological effects on viewers. Wark (1994) noted that journalists who covered real-time events including the Wall Street crash (1987) and collapse of the Berlin Wall (1989) were traumatised by their ‘virtual’ geographies. The ‘War on Terror’ as 21st Century Myth Three recent books explore how the 1990s humanitarian interventions and the September 11 attacks have remapped this ‘virtual’ territory with all too real consequences. Piers Robinson’s The CNN Effect (2002) critiques the theory and proposes the policy-media interaction model. Barbie Zelizer and Stuart Allan’s anthology Journalism After September 11 (2002) examines how September 11 affected the journalists who covered it and the implications for news values. Sandra Silberstein’s War of Words (2002) uncovers how strategic language framed the U.S. response to September 11. Robinson provides the contextual background; Silberstein contributes the specifics; and Zelizer and Allan surface broader perspectives. These books offer insights into the social construction of the nebulous War on Terror and why certain images and trajectories were chosen at the expense of other possibilities. Silberstein locates this world-historical moment in the three-week transition between September 11’s aftermath and the U.S. bombings of Afghanistan’s Taliban regime. Descriptions like the ‘War on Terror’ and ‘Axis of Evil’ framed the U.S. military response, provided a conceptual justification for the bombings, and also brought into being the geo-strategic context for other nations. The crucial element in this process was when U.S. President George W. Bush adopted a pedagogical style for his public speeches, underpinned by the illusions of communal symbols and shared meanings (Silberstein 6-8). Bush’s initial address to the nation on September 11 invoked the ambiguous pronoun ‘we’ to recreate ‘a unified nation, under God’ (Silberstein 4). The 1990s humanitarian interventions had frequently been debated in Daniel Hallin’s sphere of ‘legitimate controversy’; however the grammar used by Bush and his political advisers located the debate in the sphere of ‘consensus’. This brief period of enforced consensus was reinforced by the structural limitations of North American media outlets. September 11 combined ‘tragedy, public danger and a grave threat to national security’, Michael Schudson observed, and in the aftermath North American journalism shifted ‘toward a prose of solidarity rather than a prose of information’ (Zelizer & Allan 41). Debate about why America was hated did not go much beyond Bush’s explanation that ‘they hated our freedoms’ (Silberstein 14). Robert W. McChesney noted that alternatives to the ‘war’ paradigm were rarely mentioned in the mainstream media (Zelizer & Allan 93). A new myth for the 21st century had been unleashed. The Cycle of Integration Propaganda Journalistic prose masked the propaganda of social integration that atomised the individual within a larger collective (Ellul). The War on Terror was constructed by geopolitical pundits as a Manichean battle between ‘an “evil” them and a national us’ (Silberstein 47). But the national crisis made ‘us’ suddenly problematic. Resurgent patriotism focused on the American flag instead of Constitutional rights. Debates about military tribunals and the USA Patriot Act resurrected the dystopian fears of a surveillance society. New York City mayor Rudy Guiliani suddenly became a leadership icon and Time magazine awarded him Person of the Year (Silberstein 92). Guiliani suggested at the Concert for New York on 20 October 2001 that ‘New Yorkers and Americans have been united as never before’ (Silberstein 104). Even the series of Public Service Announcements created by the Ad Council and U.S. advertising agencies succeeded in blurring the lines between cultural tolerance, social inclusion, and social integration (Silberstein 108-16). In this climate the in-depth discussion of alternate options and informed dissent became thought-crimes. The American Council of Trustees and Alumni’s report Defending Civilization: How Our Universities are Failing America (2002), which singled out “blame America first” academics, ignited a firestorm of debate about educational curriculums, interpreting history, and the limits of academic freedom. Silberstein’s perceptive analysis surfaces how ACTA assumed moral authority and collective misunderstandings as justification for its interrogation of internal enemies. The errors she notes included presumed conclusions, hasty generalisations, bifurcated worldviews, and false analogies (Silberstein 133, 135, 139, 141). Op-ed columnists soon exposed ACTA’s gambit as a pre-packaged witch-hunt. But newscasters then channel-skipped into military metaphors as the Afghanistan campaign began. The weeks after the attacks New York City sidewalk traders moved incense and tourist photos to make way for World Trade Center memorabilia and anti-Osama shirts. Chevy and Ford morphed September 11 catchphrases (notably Todd Beamer’s last words “Let’s Roll” on Flight 93) and imagery into car advertising campaigns (Silberstein 124-5). American self-identity was finally reasserted in the face of a domestic recession through this wave of vulgar commercialism. The ‘Simulated’ Fall of Elite Journalism For Columbia University professor James Carey the ‘failure of journalism on September 11’ signaled the ‘collapse of the elites of American journalism’ (Zelizer & Allan 77). Carey traces the rise-and-fall of adversarial and investigative journalism from the Pentagon Papers and Watergate through the intermediation of the press to the myopic self-interest of the 1988 and 1992 Presidential campaigns. Carey’s framing echoes the earlier criticisms of Carl Bernstein and Hunter S. Thompson. However this critique overlooks several complexities. Piers Robinson cites Alison Preston’s insight that diplomacy, geopolitics and elite reportage defines itself through the sense of distance from its subjects. Robinson distinguished between two reportage types: distance framing ‘creates emotional distance’ between the viewers and victims whilst support framing accepts the ‘official policy’ (28). The upsurge in patriotism, the vulgar commercialism, and the mini-cycle of memorabilia and publishing all combined to enhance the support framing of the U.S. federal government. Empathy generated for September 11’s victims was tied to support of military intervention. However this closeness rapidly became the distance framing of the Afghanistan campaign. News coverage recycled the familiar visuals of in-progress bombings and Taliban barbarians. The alternative press, peace movements, and social activists then retaliated against this coverage by reinstating the support framing that revealed structural violence and gave voice to silenced minorities and victims. What really unfolded after September 11 was not the demise of journalism’s elite but rather the renegotiation of reportage boundaries and shared meanings. Journalists scoured the Internet for eyewitness accounts and to interview survivors (Zelizer & Allan 129). The same medium was used by others to spread conspiracy theories and viral rumors that numerology predicted the date September 11 or that the “face of Satan” could be seen in photographs of the World Trade Center (Zelizer & Allan 133). Karim H. Karim notes that the Jihad frame of an “Islamic Peril” was socially constructed by media outlets but then challenged by individual journalists who had learnt ‘to question the essentialist bases of her own socialization and placing herself in the Other’s shoes’ (Zelizer & Allan 112). Other journalists forgot that Jihad and McWorld were not separate but two intertwined worldviews that fed upon each other. The September 11 attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center also had deep symbolic resonances for American sociopolitical ideals that some journalists explored through analysis of myths and metaphors. The Rise of Strategic Geography However these renegotiated boundariesof new media, multiperspectival frames, and ‘layered’ depth approaches to issues analysiswere essentially minority reports. The rationalist mode of journalism was soon reasserted through normative appeals to strategic geography. The U.S. networks framed their documentaries on Islam and the Middle East in bluntly realpolitik terms. The documentary “Minefield: The United States and the Muslim World” (ABC, 11 October 2001) made explicit strategic assumptions of ‘the U.S. as “managing” the region’ and ‘a definite tinge of superiority’ (Silberstein 153). ABC and CNN stressed the similarities between the world’s major monotheistic religions and their scriptural doctrines. Both networks limited their coverage of critiques and dissent to internecine schisms within these traditions (Silberstein 158). CNN also created different coverage for its North American and international audiences. The BBC was more cautious in its September 11 coverage and more global in outlook. Three United Kingdom specials – Panorama (Clash of Cultures, BBC1, 21 October 2001), Question Time (Question Time Special, BBC1, 13 September 2001), and “War Without End” (War on Trial, Channel 4, 27 October 2001) – drew upon the British traditions of parliamentary assembly, expert panels, and legal trials as ways to explore the multiple dimensions of the ‘War on Terror’ (Zelizer & Allan 180). These latter debates weren’t value free: the programs sanctioned ‘a tightly controlled and hierarchical agora’ through different containment strategies (Zelizer & Allan 183). Program formats, selected experts and presenters, and editorial/on-screen graphics were factors that pre-empted the viewer’s experience and conclusions. The traditional emphasis of news values on the expert was renewed. These subtle forms of thought-control enabled policy-makers to inform the public whilst inoculating them against terrorist propaganda. However the ‘CNN Effect’ also had counter-offensive capabilities. Osama bin Laden’s videotaped sermons and the al-Jazeera network’s broadcasts undermined the psychological operations maxim that enemies must not gain access to the mindshare of domestic audiences. Ingrid Volkmer recounts how the Los Angeles based National Iranian Television Network used satellite broadcasts to criticize the Iranian leadership and spark public riots (Zelizer & Allan 242). These incidents hint at why the ‘War on Terror’ myth, now unleashed upon the world, may become far more destabilizing to the world system than previous conflicts. Risk Reportage and Mediated Trauma When media analysts were considering the ‘CNN Effect’ a group of social contract theorists including Anthony Giddens, Zygmunt Bauman, and Ulrich Beck were debating, simultaneously, the status of modernity and the ‘unbounded contours’ of globalization. Beck termed this new environment of escalating uncertainties and uninsurable dangers the ‘world risk society’ (Beck). Although they drew upon constructivist and realist traditions Beck and Giddens ‘did not place risk perception at the center of their analysis’ (Zelizer & Allan 203). Instead this was the role of journalist as ‘witness’ to Ballard-style ‘institutionalized disaster areas’. The terrorist attacks on September 11 materialized this risk and obliterated the journalistic norms of detachment and objectivity. The trauma ‘destabilizes a sense of self’ within individuals (Zelizer & Allan 205) and disrupts the image-generating capacity of collective societies. Barbie Zelizer found that the press selection of September 11 photos and witnesses re-enacted the ‘Holocaust aesthetic’ created when Allied Forces freed the Nazi internment camps in 1945 (Zelizer & Allan 55-7). The visceral nature of September 11 imagery inverted the trend, from the Gulf War to NATO’s Kosovo bombings, for news outlets to depict war in detached video-game imagery (Zelizer & Allan 253). Coverage of the September 11 attacks and the subsequent Bali bombings (on 12 October 2002) followed a four-part pattern news cycle of assassinations and terrorism (Moeller 164-7). Moeller found that coverage moved from the initial event to a hunt for the perpetrators, public mourning, and finally, a sense of closure ‘when the media reassert the supremacy of the established political and social order’ (167). In both events the shock of the initial devastation was rapidly followed by the arrest of al Qaeda and Jamaah Islamiyah members, the creation and copying of the New York Times ‘Portraits of Grief’ template, and the mediation of trauma by a re-established moral order. News pundits had clearly studied the literature on bereavement and grief cycles (Kubler-Ross). However the neo-noir work culture of some outlets also fueled bitter disputes about how post-traumatic stress affected journalists themselves (Zelizer & Allan 253). Reconfiguring the Future After September 11 the geopolitical pundits, a reactive cycle of integration propaganda, pecking order shifts within journalism elites, strategic language, and mediated trauma all combined to bring a specific future into being. This outcome reflected the ‘media-state relationship’ in which coverage ‘still reflected policy preferences of parts of the U.S. elite foreign-policy-making community’ (Robinson 129). Although Internet media and non-elite analysts embraced Hallin’s ‘sphere of deviance’ there is no clear evidence yet that they have altered the opinions of policy-makers. The geopolitical segue from September 11 into the U.S.-led campaign against Iraq also has disturbing implications for the ‘CNN Effect’. Robinson found that its mythic reputation was overstated and tied to issues of policy certainty that the theory’s proponents often failed to examine. Media coverage molded a ‘domestic constituency ... for policy-makers to take action in Somalia’ (Robinson 62). He found greater support in ‘anecdotal evidence’ that the United Nations Security Council’s ‘safe area’ for Iraqi Kurds was driven by Turkey’s geo-strategic fears of ‘unwanted Kurdish refugees’ (Robinson 71). Media coverage did impact upon policy-makers to create Bosnian ‘safe areas’, however, ‘the Kosovo, Rwanda, and Iraq case studies’ showed that the ‘CNN Effect’ was unlikely as a key factor ‘when policy certainty exists’ (Robinson 118). The clear implication from Robinson’s studies is that empathy framing, humanitarian values, and searing visual imagery won’t be enough to challenge policy-makers. What remains to be done? Fortunately there are some possibilities that straddle the pragmatic, realpolitik and emancipatory approaches. Today’s activists and analysts are also aware of the dangers of ‘unfreedom’ and un-reflective dissent (Fromm). Peter Gabriel’s organisation Witness, which documents human rights abuses, is one benchmark of how to use real-time media and the video camera in an effective way. The domains of anthropology, negotiation studies, neuro-linguistics, and social psychology offer valuable lessons on techniques of non-coercive influence. The emancipatory tradition of futures studies offers a rich tradition of self-awareness exercises, institution rebuilding, and social imaging, offsets the pragmatic lure of normative scenarios. The final lesson from these books is that activists and analysts must co-adapt as the ‘War on Terror’ mutates into new and terrifying forms. Works Cited Amis, Martin. “Fear and Loathing.” The Guardian (18 Sep. 2001). 1 March 2001 <http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4259170,00.php>. Ballard, J.G. The Atrocity Exhibition (rev. ed.). Los Angeles: V/Search Publications, 1990. Beck, Ulrich. World Risk Society. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 1999. Ellul, Jacques. Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes. New York: Vintage Books, 1973. Friedman, Thomas. The Lexus and the Olive Tree. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999. Fromm, Erich. Escape from Freedom. New York: Farrar & Rhinehart, 1941. Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. New York: Free Press, 1992. Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. Kaplan, Robert. The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War. New York: Random House, 2000. Kubler-Ross, Elizabeth. On Death and Dying. London: Tavistock, 1969. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1964. Moeller, Susan D. Compassion Fatigue: How the Media Sell Disease, Famine, War, and Death. New York: Routledge, 1999. Robinson, Piers. The CNN Effect: The Myth of News, Foreign Policy and Intervention. New York: Routledge, 2002. Silberstein, Sandra. War of Words: Language, Politics and 9/11. New York: Routledge, 2002. Wark, McKenzie. Virtual Geography: Living with Global Media Events. Bloomington IN: Indiana UP, 1994. Wiener, Norbert. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1948. Zelizer, Barbie, and Stuart Allan (eds.). Journalism after September 11. New York: Routledge, 2002. Links http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0 Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Burns, Alex. "The Worldflash of a Coming Future" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/08-worldflash.php>. APA Style Burns, A. (2003, Apr 23). The Worldflash of a Coming Future. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/08-worldflash.php>

Abstract:

While the term “visual literacy” has grown in popularity in the last 50 years, its meaning remains nebulous. It is described variously as: a vehicle for aesthetic appreciation, a means of defence against visual manipulation, a sorting mechanism for an increasingly data-saturated age, and a prerequisite to civic inclusion (Fransecky 23; Messaris 181; McTigue and Flowers 580). Scholars have written extensively about the first three subjects but there has been less research on how visual literacy frames civic life and how it might help the public as a tool to address disadvantage and assist in removing social and cultural barriers. This article examines a forerunner to visual literacy in the push to create an international symbol language born out of popular education movements, a project that fell short of its goals but still left a considerable impression on graphic media. This article, then, presents an analysis of visual literacy campaigns in the early postwar era. These campaigns did not attempt to invent a symbolic language but posited that images themselves served as a universal language in which students could receive training. Of particular interest is how the concept of visual literacy has been mobilised as a pedagogical tool in design, digital humanities and in broader civic education initiatives promoted by Third Space institutions. Behind the creation of new visual literacy curricula is the idea that images can help anchor a world community, supplementing textual communication. Figure 1: Visual Literacy Yearbook. Montebello Unified School District, USA, 1973. Shedding Light: Origins of the Visual Literacy Frame The term “visual literacy” came to the fore in the early 1970s on the heels of mass literacy campaigns. The educators, creatives and media theorists who first advocated for visual learning linked this aim to literacy, an unassailable goal, to promote a more radical curricular overhaul. They challenged a system that had hitherto only acknowledged a very limited pathway towards academic success; pushing “language and mathematics”, courses “referred to as solids (something substantial) as contrasted with liquids or gases (courses with little or no substance)” (Eisner 92). This was deemed “a parochial view of both human ability and the possibilities of education” that did not acknowledge multiple forms of intelligence (Gardner). This change not only integrated elements of mass culture that had been rejected in education, notably film and graphic arts, but also encouraged the critique of images as a form of good citizenship, assuming that visually literate arbiters could call out media misrepresentations and manipulative political advertising (Messaris, “Visual Test”). This movement was, in many ways, reactive to new forms of mass media that began to replace newspapers as key forms of civic participation. Unlike simple literacy (being able to decipher letters as a mnemonic system), visual literacy involves imputing meanings to images where meanings are less fixed, yet still with embedded cultural signifiers. Visual literacy promised to extend enlightenment metaphors of sight (as in the German Aufklärung) and illumination (as in the French Lumières) to help citizens understand an increasingly complex marketplace of images. The move towards visual literacy was not so much a shift towards images (and away from books and oration) but an affirmation of the need to critically investigate the visual sphere. It introduced doubt to previously upheld hierarchies of perception. Sight, to Kant the “noblest of the senses” (158), was no longer the sense “least affected” by the surrounding world but an input centre that was equally manipulable. In Kant’s view of societal development, the “cosmopolitan” held the key to pacifying bellicose states and ensuring global prosperity and tranquillity. The process of developing a cosmopolitan ideology rests, according to Kant, on the gradual elimination of war and “the education of young people in intellectual and moral culture” (188-89). Transforming disparate societies into “a universal cosmopolitan existence” that would “at last be realised as the matrix within which all the original capacities of the human race may develop” and would take well-funded educational institutions and, potentially, a new framework for imparting knowledge (Kant 51). To some, the world of the visual presented a baseline for shared experience. Figure 2: Exhibition by the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum in Vienna, photograph c. 1927. An International Picture Language The quest to find a mutually intelligible language that could “bridge worlds” and solder together all of humankind goes back to the late nineteenth century and the Esperanto movement of Ludwig Zamenhof (Schor 59). The expression of this ideal in the world of the visual picked up steam in the interwar years with designers and editors like Fritz Kahn, Gerd Arntz, and Otto and Marie Neurath. Their work transposing complex ideas into graphic form has been rediscovered as an antecedent to modern infographics, but the symbols they deployed were not to merely explain, but also help education and build international fellowship unbounded by spoken language. The Neuraths in particular are celebrated for their international picture language or Isotypes. These pictograms (sometimes viewed as proto-emojis) can be used to represent data without text. Taken together they are an “intemporal, hieroglyphic language” that Neutrath hoped would unite working-class people the world over (Lee 159). The Neuraths’ work was done in the explicit service of visual education with a popular socialist agenda and incubated in the social sphere of Red Vienna at the Gesellschafts- und Wirtschaftsmuseum (Social and Economic Museum) where Otto served as Director. The Wirtschaftsmuseum was an experiment in popular education, with multiple branches and late opening hours to accommodate the “the working man [who] has time to see a museum only at night” (Neurath 72-73). The Isotype contained universalist aspirations for the “making of a world language, or a helping picture language—[that] will give support to international developments generally” and “educate by the eye” (Neurath 13). Figure 3: Gerd Arntz Isotype Images. (Source: University of Reading.) The Isotype was widely adopted in the postwar era in pre-packaged sets of symbols used in graphic design and wayfinding systems for buildings and transportation networks, but with the socialism of the Neuraths’ peeled away, leaving only the system of logos that we are familiar with from airport washrooms, charts, and public transport maps. Much of the uptake in this symbol language could be traced to increased mobility and tourism, particularly in countries that did not make use of a Roman alphabet. The 1964 Olympics in Tokyo helped pave the way when organisers, fearful of jumbling too many scripts together, opted instead for black and white icons to represent the program of sports that summer. The new focus on the visual was both technologically mediated—cheaper printing and broadcast technologies made the diffusion of image increasingly possible—but also ideologically supported by a growing emphasis on projects that transcended linguistic, ethnic, and national borders. The Olympic symbols gradually morphed into Letraset icons, and, later, symbols in the Unicode Standard, which are the basis for today’s emojis. Wordless signs helped facilitate interconnectedness, but only in the most literal sense; their application was limited primarily to sports mega-events, highway maps, and “brand building”, and they never fulfilled their role as an educational language “to give the different nations a common outlook” (Neurath 18). Universally understood icons, particularly in the form of emojis, point to a rise in visual communication but they have fallen short as a cosmopolitan project, supporting neither the globalisation of Kantian ethics nor the transnational socialism of the Neuraths. Figure 4: Symbols in use. Women's bathroom. 1964 Tokyo Olympics. (Source: The official report of the Organizing Committee.) Counter Education By mid-century, the optimism of a universal symbol language seemed dated, and focus shifted from distillation to discernment. New educational programs presented ways to study images, increasingly reproducible with new technologies, as a language in and of themselves. These methods had their roots in the fin-de-siècle educational reforms of John Dewey, Helen Parkhurst, and Maria Montessori. As early as the 1920s, progressive educators were using highly visual magazines, like National Geographic, as the basis for lesson planning, with the hopes that they would “expose students to edifying and culturally enriching reading” and “develop a more catholic taste or sensibility, representing an important cosmopolitan value” (Hawkins 45). The rise in imagery from previously inaccessible regions helped pupils to see themselves in relation to the larger world (although this connection always came with the presumed superiority of the reader). “Pictorial education in public schools” taught readers—through images—to accept a broader world but, too often, they saw photographs as a “straightforward transcription of the real world” (Hawkins 57). The images of cultures and events presented in Life and National Geographic for the purposes of education and enrichment were now the subject of greater analysis in the classroom, not just as “windows into new worlds” but as cultural products in and of themselves. The emerging visual curriculum aimed to do more than just teach with previously excluded modes (photography, film and comics); it would investigate how images presented and mediated the world. This gained wider appeal with new analytical writing on film, like Raymond Spottiswoode's Grammar of the Film (1950) which sought to formulate the grammatical rules of visual communication (Messaris 181), influenced by semiotics and structural linguistics; the emphasis on grammar can also be seen in far earlier writings on design systems such as Owen Jones’s 1856 The Grammar of Ornament, which also advocated for new, universalising methods in design education (Sloboda 228). The inventorying impulse is on display in books like Donis A. Dondis’s A Primer of Visual Literacy (1973), a text that meditates on visual perception but also functions as an introduction to line and form in the applied arts, picking up where the Bauhaus left off. Dondis enumerates the “syntactical guidelines” of the applied arts with illustrations that are in keeping with 1920s books by Kandinsky and Klee and analyse pictorial elements. However, at the end of the book she shifts focus with two chapters that examine “messaging” and visual literacy explicitly. Dondis predicts that “an intellectual, trained ability to make and understand visual messages is becoming a vital necessity to involvement with communication. It is quite likely that visual literacy will be one of the fundamental measures of education in the last third of our century” (33) and she presses for more programs that incorporate the exploration and analysis of images in tertiary education. Figure 5: Ideal spatial environment for the Blueprint charts, 1970. (Image: Inventory Press.) Visual literacy in education arrived in earnest with a wave of publications in the mid-1970s. They offered ways for students to understand media processes and for teachers to use visual culture as an entry point into complex social and scientific subject matter, tapping into the “visual consciousness of the ‘television generation’” (Fransecky 5). Visual culture was often seen as inherently democratising, a break from stuffiness, the “artificialities of civilisation”, and the “archaic structures” that set sensorial perception apart from scholarship (Dworkin 131-132). Many radical university projects and community education initiatives of the 1960s made use of new media in novel ways: from Maurice Stein and Larry Miller’s fold-out posters accompanying Blueprint for Counter Education (1970) to Emory Douglas’s graphics for The Black Panther newspaper. Blueprint’s text- and image-dense wall charts were made via assemblage and they were imagined less as charts and more as a “matrix of resources” that could be used—and added to—by youth to undertake their own counter education (Cronin 53). These experiments in visual learning helped to break down old hierarchies in education, but their aim was influenced more by countercultural notions of disruption than the universal ideals of cosmopolitanism. From Image as Text to City as Text For a brief period in the 1970s, thinkers like Marshall McLuhan (McLuhan et al., Massage) and artists like Bruno Munari (Tanchis and Munari) collaborated fruitfully with graphic designers to create books that mixed text and image in novel ways. Using new compositional methods, they broke apart traditional printing lock-ups to superimpose photographs, twist text, and bend narrative frames. The most famous work from this era is, undoubtedly, The Medium Is the Massage (1967), McLuhan’s team-up with graphic designer Quentin Fiore, but it was followed by dozens of other books intended to communicate theory and scientific ideas with popularising graphics. Following in the footsteps of McLuhan, many of these texts sought not just to explain an issue but to self-consciously reference their own method of information delivery. These works set the precedent for visual aids (and, to a lesser extent, audio) that launched a diverse, non-hierarchical discourse that was nonetheless bound to tactile artefacts. In 1977, McLuhan helped develop a media textbook for secondary school students called City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media. It is notable for its direct address style and its focus on investigating spaces outside of the classroom (provocatively, a section on the third page begins with “Should all schools be closed?”). The book follows with a fine-grained analysis of advertising forms in which students are asked to first bring advertisements into class for analysis and later to go out into the city to explore “a man-made environment, a huge warehouse of information, a vast resource to be mined free of charge” (McLuhan et al., City 149). As a document City as Classroom is critical of existing teaching methods, in line with the radical “in the streets” pedagogy of its day. McLuhan’s theories proved particularly salient for the counter education movement, in part because they tapped into a healthy scepticism of advertisers and other image-makers. They also dovetailed with growing discontent with the ad-strew visual environment of cities in the 1970s. Budgets for advertising had mushroomed in the1960s and outdoor advertising “cluttered” cities with billboards and neon, generating “fierce intensities and new hybrid energies” that threatened to throw off the visual equilibrium (McLuhan 74). Visual literacy curricula brought in experiential learning focussed on the legibility of the cities, mapping, and the visualisation of urban issues with social justice implications. The Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute (DGEI), a “collective endeavour of community research and education” that arose in the aftermath of the 1967 uprisings, is the most storied of the groups that suffused the collection of spatial data with community engagement and organising (Warren et al. 61). The following decades would see a tamed approach to visual literacy that, while still pressing for critical reading, did not upend traditional methods of educational delivery. Figure 6: Beginning a College Program-Assisting Teachers to Develop Visual Literacy Approaches in Public School Classrooms. 1977. ERIC. Searching for Civic Education The visual literacy initiatives formed in the early 1970s both affirmed existing civil society institutions while also asserting the need to better inform the public. Most of the campaigns were sponsored by universities, major libraries, and international groups such as UNESCO, which published its “Declaration on Media Education” in 1982. They noted that “participation” was “essential to the working of a pluralistic and representative democracy” and the “public—users, citizens, individuals, groups ... were too systematically overlooked”. Here, the public is conceived as both “targets of the information and communication process” and users who “should have the last word”. To that end their “continuing education” should be ensured (Study 18). Programs consisted primarily of cognitive “see-scan-analyse” techniques (Little et al.) for younger students but some also sought to bring visual analysis to adult learners via continuing education (often through museums eager to engage more diverse audiences) and more radical popular education programs sponsored by community groups. By the mid-80s, scores of modules had been built around the comprehension of visual media and had become standard educational fare across North America, Australasia, and to a lesser extent, Europe. There was an increasing awareness of the role of data and image presentation in decision-making, as evidenced by the surprising commercial success of Edward Tufte’s 1982 book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Visual literacy—or at least image analysis—was now enmeshed in teaching practice and needed little active advocacy. Scholarly interest in the subject went into a brief period of hibernation in the 1980s and early 1990s, only to be reborn with the arrival of new media distribution technologies (CD-ROMs and then the internet) in classrooms and the widespread availability of digital imaging technology starting in the late 1990s; companies like Adobe distributed free and reduced-fee licences to schools and launched extensive teacher training programs. Visual literacy was reanimated but primarily within a circumscribed academic field of education and data visualisation. Figure 7: Visual Literacy; What Research Says to the Teacher, 1975. National Education Association. USA. Part of the shifting frame of visual literacy has to do with institutional imperatives, particularly in places where austerity measures forced strange alliances between disciplines. What had been a project in alternative education morphed into an uncontested part of the curriculum and a dependable budget line. This shift was already forecasted in 1972 by Harun Farocki who, writing in Filmkritik, noted that funding for new film schools would be difficult to obtain but money might be found for “training in media education … a discipline that could persuade ministers of education, that would at the same time turn the budget restrictions into an advantage, and that would match the functions of art schools” (98). Nearly 50 years later educators are still using media education (rebranded as visual or media literacy) to make the case for fine arts and humanities education. While earlier iterations of visual literacy education were often too reliant on the idea of cracking the “code” of images, they did promote ways of learning that were a deep departure from the rote methods of previous generations. Next-gen curricula frame visual literacy as largely supplemental—a resource, but not a program. By the end of the 20th century, visual literacy had changed from a scholarly interest to a standard resource in the “teacher’s toolkit”, entering into school programs and influencing museum education, corporate training, and the development of public-oriented media (Literacy). An appreciation of image culture was seen as key to creating empathetic global citizens, but its scope was increasingly limited. With rising austerity in the education sector (a shift that preceded the 2008 recession by decades in some countries), art educators, museum enrichment staff, and design researchers need to make a case for why their disciplines were relevant in pedagogical models that are increasingly aimed at “skills-based” and “job ready” teaching. Arts educators worked hard to insert their fields into learning goals for secondary students as visual literacy, with the hope that “literacy” would carry the weight of an educational imperative and not a supplementary field of study. Conclusion For nearly a century, educational initiatives have sought to inculcate a cosmopolitan perspective with a variety of teaching materials and pedagogical reference points. Symbolic languages, like the Isotype, looked to unite disparate people with shared visual forms; while educational initiatives aimed to train the eyes of students to make them more discerning citizens. The term ‘visual literacy’ emerged in the 1960s and has since been deployed in programs with a wide variety of goals. Countercultural initiatives saw it as a prerequisite for popular education from the ground up, but, in the years since, it has been formalised and brought into more staid curricula, often as a sort of shorthand for learning from media and pictures. The grand cosmopolitan vision of a complete ‘visual language’ has been scaled back considerably, but still exists in trace amounts. Processes of globalisation require images to universalise experiences, commodities, and more for people without shared languages. Emoji alphabets and globalese (brands and consumer messaging that are “visual-linguistic” amalgams “increasingly detached from any specific ethnolinguistic group or locality”) are a testament to a mediatised banal cosmopolitanism (Jaworski 231). In this sense, becoming “fluent” in global design vernacular means familiarity with firms and products, an understanding that is aesthetic, not critical. It is very much the beneficiaries of globalisation—both state and commercial actors—who have been able to harness increasingly image-based technologies for their benefit. To take a humorous but nonetheless consequential example, Spanish culinary boosters were able to successfully lobby for a paella emoji (Miller) rather than having a food symbol from a less wealthy country such as a Senegalese jollof or a Morrocan tagine. This trend has gone even further as new forms of visual communication are increasingly streamlined and managed by for-profit media platforms. The ubiquity of these forms of communication and their global reach has made visual literacy more important than ever but it has also fundamentally shifted the endeavour from a graphic sorting practice to a critical piece of social infrastructure that has tremendous political ramifications. Visual literacy campaigns hold out the promise of educating students in an image-based system with the potential to transcend linguistic and cultural boundaries. This cosmopolitan political project has not yet been realised, as the visual literacy frame has drifted into specialised silos of art, design, and digital humanities education. It can help bridge the “incomplete connections” of an increasingly globalised world (Calhoun 112), but it does not have a program in and of itself. Rather, an evolving visual literacy curriculum might be seen as a litmus test for how we imagine the role of images in the world. References Brown, Neil. “The Myth of Visual Literacy.” Australian Art Education 13.2 (1989): 28-32. Calhoun, Craig. “Cosmopolitanism in the Modern Social Imaginary.” Daedalus 137.3 (2008): 105–114. Cronin, Paul. “Recovering and Rendering Vital Blueprint for Counter Education at the California Institute for the Arts.” Blueprint for Counter Education. Inventory Press, 2016. 36-58. Dondis, Donis A. A Primer of Visual Literacy. MIT P, 1973. Dworkin, M.S. “Toward an Image Curriculum: Some Questions and Cautions.” Journal of Aesthetic Education 4.2 (1970): 129–132. Eisner, Elliot. Cognition and Curriculum: A Basis for Deciding What to Teach. Longmans, 1982. Farocki, Harun. “Film Courses in Art Schools.” Trans. Ted Fendt. Grey Room 79 (Apr. 2020): 96–99. Fransecky, Roger B. Visual Literacy: A Way to Learn—A Way to Teach. Association for Educational Communications and Technology, 1972. Gardner, Howard. Frames Of Mind. Basic Books, 1983. Hawkins, Stephanie L. “Training the ‘I’ to See: Progressive Education, Visual Literacy, and National Geographic Membership.” American Iconographic. U of Virginia P, 2010. 28–61. Jaworski, Adam. “Globalese: A New Visual-Linguistic Register.” Social Semiotics 25.2 (2015): 217-35. Kant, Immanuel. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. Cambridge UP, 2006. Kant, Immanuel. “Perpetual Peace.” Political Writings. Ed. H. Reiss. Cambridge UP, 1991 [1795]. 116–130. Kress, G., and T. van Leeuwen. Reading images: The Grammar of Visual Design. Routledge, 1996. Literacy Teaching Toolkit: Visual Literacy. Department of Education and Training (DET), State of Victoria. 29 Aug. 2018. 30 Sep. 2020 <https://www.education.vic.gov.au:443/school/teachers/teachingresources/discipline/english/literacy/ readingviewing/Pages/litfocusvisual.aspx>. Lee, Jae Young. “Otto Neurath's Isotype and the Rhetoric of Neutrality.” Visible Language 42.2: 159-180. Little, D., et al. Looking and Learning: Visual Literacy across the Disciplines. Wiley, 2015. Messaris, Paul. “Visual Literacy vs. Visual Manipulation.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 11.2: 181-203. DOI: 10.1080/15295039409366894 ———. “A Visual Test for Visual ‘Literacy.’” The Annual Meeting of the Speech Communication Association. 31 Oct. to 3 Nov. 1991. Atlanta, GA. <https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED347604.pdf>. McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. McGraw-Hill, 1964. McLuhan, Marshall, Quentin Fiore, and Jerome Agel. The Medium Is the Massage, Bantam Books, 1967. McLuhan, Marshall, Kathryn Hutchon, and Eric McLuhan. City as Classroom: Understanding Language and Media. Agincourt, Ontario: Book Society of Canada, 1977. McTigue, Erin, and Amanda Flowers. “Science Visual Literacy: Learners' Perceptions and Knowledge of Diagrams.” Reading Teacher 64.8: 578-89. Miller, Sarah. “The Secret History of the Paella Emoji.” Food & Wine, 20 June 2017. <https://www.foodandwine.com/news/true-story-paella-emoji>. Munari, Bruno. Square, Circle, Triangle. Princeton Architectural Press, 2016. Newfield, Denise. “From Visual Literacy to Critical Visual Literacy: An Analysis of Educational Materials.” English Teaching-Practice and Critique 10 (2011): 81-94. Neurath, Otto. International Picture Language: The First Rules of Isotype. K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1936. Schor, Esther. Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language. Henry Holt and Company, 2016. Sloboda, Stacey. “‘The Grammar of Ornament’: Cosmopolitanism and Reform in British Design.” Journal of Design History 21.3 (2008): 223-36. Study of Communication Problems: Implementation of Resolutions 4/19 and 4/20 Adopted by the General Conference at Its Twenty-First Session; Report by the Director-General. UNESCO, 1983. Tanchis, Aldo, and Bruno Munari. Bruno Munari: Design as Art. MIT P, 1987. Warren, Gwendolyn, Cindi Katz, and Nik Heynen. “Myths, Cults, Memories, and Revisions in Radical Geographic History: Revisiting the Detroit Geographical Expedition and Institute.” Spatial Histories of Radical Geography: North America and Beyond. Wiley, 2019. 59-86.

Abstract:

Welcome to the world of pop. Even to announce this issue in such a way seems like a quaint anachronism, a mild nostalgia; the expression echoes the voices of countless TV presenters on Top of the Pops, Beat Club, Countdown, or whatever your local variety was. This association demonstrates that pop has been historically located in the arts and in popular culture as something connected to the 1960s: not so much to the politicisation of musical intent that embodied the late sixties, but to the current of the three-minute-or-less love song, the early Beatles, the vacant but loving repeat of Andy Warhol and his images. The Archies kept it going into the late sixties along with the Monkees and the 1910 Fruitgum Company's beautiful pop bubble "Yummy Yummy Yummy I've Got Love in My Tummy". What pop implied retrospectively was a clear sentiment of unity even as it set up binarisms that separated the serious and significant in popular culture from the ephemera and the momentary, with the perishable products of pop apparently placed quite clearly on the lighter side. This is why there is a nostalgic association between pop and the world: pop implies a simpler unity of the world that is carried momentarily by the pleasure of the song, the image, the dance. It is also why we associate pop with the transitional moments in our lives: it is the music of preteendom, the images of early youth and the moment of unselfconscious dancing to and in front of this aural and visual landscape provided by the very core of the transnational (read "world") culture industries. Those affective connections to cultural products is what pop art plays with and makes the viewer ponder. At the same time, pop styles also move beyond the preteen stage, grow up and change: within the space of a decade, "Yummy Yummy Yummy" mutated to The Buggles' "Video Killed the Radio Star"; within a similar space of years, a suntanned, mirrorshaded George Michael in Wham! became a Sony-battling (mis)user of public toilets; and eventually, even the once united quintamfeminate of Spice World seems inevitably on the course towards diadochal wars. As much as we may look back on personal and public memories with fondness, pop isn't forever caught in a static McHappyland, where nothing ever changes. Or perhaps that is to say that these (and other) pop styles aren't: beyond the stylistic formations, there seems to be a deeper kind of pop, a kind of primordial soup of popness from which a particular species of pop evolves every once in a while, matures, mutates, and discovers whether it is capable of survival even once it's left home. The momentary pleasure of pop is never completely compartmentalised into an historical moment, however much British popular music documentaries try to produce that effect, or however much the postwar generation venerate their particular liminal moments of the 1960s as the most significant. Pop is regenerative. Just when one thinks that the various strands of popular culture have organised themselves completely into niche markets we have the will-to- worldpop, with something like Spice World or Aqua's Barbie Girl. The term 'pop sensibility' -- sensibility to an underlying 'popness' which doesn't equate with any particular style of pop, but pervades all of them -- is useful here, and it informs some of the articles in this issue. Pop sensibility is an understanding of the pleasure generated by popular culture, and recognises that in some ways they point to complex relationships between people and cultural forms. It is difficult to explain why one of our editors (David) enjoys a hit by the boygroup Five while the other (Axel) has serious difficulties telling one boygroup from another, or from many of the more forgettable members of the Stock/Aitken/Waterman stable of the early 80s; but it is partly connected to seeing through the various generations of musical style a pop sensibility that has something to do with accessibility and the pleasure generated by that complex simplicity. Pop engages us with what Fiske described as the "art of making do" and thereby is a conduit to the operations of contemporary culture, industrially and culturally. The 'pop' issue of M/C explores this pop sensibility or, in some cases, a pop sensitivity through a variety of channels that should onomatopoeically "pop" into your thinking processes. Martin Laba's feature article "Picking through the Trash" provides the pin to burst cultural studies' reading of the popular bubble, by identifying and then working through the meaning of the supposed detritus of popular culture that doesn't possess the cultural cache of either 'marginal' or 'hip' status. His inspiration remains Don DeLillo's White Noise for its celebration and lament of the popular as it is organised through consumer culture and the various uses made of the apparent ephemera of contemporary culture. Pop, from Laba's perspective, remains the source for understanding the deep structure of the contemporary, and through detailed investigation in the tradition of DeLillo we can unearth the organisation of cultural value. Sean Smith also dances in the light of consumer culture in his tragicomic "Ya Bloody Cappie!", through his sudden realisation that his hard-working consumption practices had been appropriated as a popular culture practice and demographically defined in a way that made them seem as contrived and deplorable as those of the 1980s yuppie. The identification of the cappie, the Face-designed acronym for Consumer of Alternative Pricey Products, presents a crisis of persona for Smith, and leads to a perceptive reading of this shift as evidence of a new "class formation" through a shifted organisation of the self via a form of exclusive cultural capital. Such media stereotyping gone wrong may be partly behind the atrocities committed by members of the often-quoted "trenchcoat mafia" at Littleton, Colorado, but the media have turned a predictably blind eye to their own complicity in the shootings. In "Seen But Not Heard: Pop Culture Scapegoats and the Media Discourse Hierarchy", Nick Caldwell investigates the incredibly repetitive media patterning of establishing cause and effect relationships between outbreaks of youth violence and the usual suspects of cultural artefacts: 'satanic' popular music and grossly violent and antisocial computer games. Caldwell's article finds the discursive proliferation sadly familiar as the media looks to popular culture to stitch together its neverending narrative without the requisite sideways glance at the cultural context of violence. Benign or malignant, media power is also evident in the excitement leading up to and surrounding the release of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, and we simply couldn't pass by this major artefact of current pop culture in this issue. In many ways, Tara Brabazon's "A Red Light Sabre to Go and Other Histories of the Present" is a process of excavation of popular cultural memory. In an elaborate reclamation program, Brabazon establishes Star Wars as a generational benchmark for a certain affectivity or -- in our terms -- pop sensibility that intersects with how cultural experiences are received by that same generation. Linking the Star Wars generation with Generation X (and her academic/pop self), Brabazon weaves a shifted tapestry of the significance of cultural memory in working out contemporary engagements with culture, and thereby presents whole new territories for the investigation of what Raymond Williams called "the structure of feeling". Cultural studies academics unimpressed with George Lucas's storytelling abilities have plenty of other fields to cover, too, though. Diane Railton's "Justify My Love: Popular Culture and the Academy" provides an invigilating examination of where academics have engaged with popular culture. Her critique is with what may be called new Bourdieuian 'distinctions', where popular music is reintegrated into cultural judgments of taste and thereby simply recategorised with shifted monikers of high (legitimate) and low (illegitimate) designations. Railton calls for a realisation of the political nature of academic work on popular culture that moves beyond this new and shifted constitution of cultural elitism. One of the key divides in research into popular music is about authenticity, which often gets reorganised into new categorisations of cultural value. In "Seeing Sound, Hearing Image: 'Remixing' Authenticity in Popular Music Studies" Steve Jones has provided a map through the debates in popular music studies on how the authentic is deployed by scholars. Jones situates the significance of affect in understanding the pop aesthetic and provides some material for how new technologies are shifting the ground on which popular music's authenticity has been built. Two of the remaining articles in this issue also deal with authenticity in various ways, if not necessarily as the term is used by Jones. In the first of these, "Painting Out Pop: 'Andy Warhol' as a Character in 90s Films", Julie Turnock traces more or less authentic portrayals of Andy Warhol (what would a 'pop' issue be without him?) in recent movies. She uncovers how Andy Warhol's blank visage sits uncomfortably with the narrative and content of three films that need the richness of a normative biography. In the process, the films cannot deal with the conceptualisation of pop that Warhol embodied as an artist, where content disappears to surface and repetition. The celebrity persona of Warhol in its contentlessness is Warhol's ultimate canvas, but the films miss this completely. Where Warhol's celebrity refuses its biopic, David Riddell discovers that sports god Wayne Gretzky's retirement reproduces naturally and seamlessly the spectacle of ice hockey into a movie narrative. Riddell's "Wayne's World: The Making of a Hockey Movie" is a close textual reading of Wayne Gretzky's last game in terms of heavily pre- planned causation which transforms the pleasures of the unexpected that are part of watching any sporting event into the constructed celebrity spectacle, throwing into doubt its authenticity as a sports contest. The blur of speed and spontaneity that is ice hockey becomes the blur of celebrity where fact and fabrication are melted together. Warhol and Gretzky (there's an unexpected pairing!) as media superstars both represent the way pop is defined by the cultural industries in all its crassness and oversimplification; frequently, though, the media's attention is self- centred, in a continuous desire to rate their popularity and measure it against those of their rivals. Axel Bruns's "What's Pop, and What's Not? Measuring Popularity in the Many-to-Many Age" questions the meaningfulness of these ratings, and debates the significance of the ways the Internet determines popularity (for example through the ubiquitous counters). Playing against the need to construct an audience to sell to someone (and advertisers are of course always welcome at the bustling M/C site itself) is the manner in which the Internet is constructed, used and abused by its surfers. The mythic models of measuring the television audience prove to be inadequate to describe the forms of interactions and sideward hypertext movements on the contemporary Web. Nevertheless, the counting goes on.... Finally, we turn to myths of a different kind. There is a certain pop sensitivity that Adam Dodd's article, "Making It Unpopular: The CIA and UFOs in Popular Culture" identifies in 1950s America. Dodd's provocatively argued piece indicates that a fear of mass hysteria motivated moves by the CIA and other government agencies to debunk through apparent explanation any possibility that UFOs actually existed and were seen. The desire to believe was so strong in the popular will that the American agencies felt compelled to work in propagandistic techniques to manipulate that belief. Although we may never know with the amount of propaganda and misinformation masquerading as fact, Dodd presents an interesting case study in the government control and movement of information about a popular cultural phenomenon. From "Yummy Yummy Yummy" to White Noise, from Warhol to Gretzky, from satanic music to academically accepted 'pop', from Star Wars to 'real' UFOs, the scope of this issue of M/C demonstrates the wide reach and diversity of 'the popular'. As issue editors, we hope it will also prove popular with our readers (a pun which had to be made eventually), and won't leave the shallow aftertaste of so much average pop. Much rather, we'd like you to remember once again those 60s pop music shows and agree that "it's a hit!" (And feel free to hit M/C's pages frequently and repeatedly.) P. David Marshall Axel Bruns 'Pop' Issue Editors Citation reference for this article MLA style: P. David Marshall, Axel Bruns. "Editorial: 'Pop'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.4 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/edit.php>. Chicago style: P. David Marshall, Axel Bruns, "Editorial: 'Pop'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 4 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/edit.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: P. David Marshall, Axel Bruns. (1999) Editorial: 'Pop'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(4). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9906/edit.php> ([your date of access]).

Abstract:

Introduction: From Trifle to Tiramisu Tiramisu is an Italian dessert cake, usually comprising sponge finger biscuits soaked in coffee and liquor, layered with a mixture of egg yolk, mascarpone and cream, and topped with sifted cocoa. Once a gourmet dish, tiramisu, which means “pick me up” in Italian (Volpi), is today very popular in Australia where it is available for purchase not only in restaurants and cafés, but also from fast food chains and supermarkets. Recipes abound in cookery books and magazines and online. It is certainly more widely available and written about in Australia than the once ubiquitous English trifle which, comprising variations on the theme of sherry soaked sponge cake, custard and cream, it closely resembles. It could be asserted that its strong coffee taste has enabled the tiramisu to triumph over the trifle in contemporary Australia, yet coffee is also a recurrent ingredient in cakes and icings in nineteenth and early twentieth century Australian cookbooks. Acknowledging that coffee consumption in Australia doubled during the years of the Second World War and maintained high rates of growth afterwards (Khamis; Adams), this article draws on examples of culinary writing during this period of increasing popularity to investigate the use of coffee in cookery as well as a beverage in these mid-twentieth century decades. In doing so, it engages with a lively scholarly discussion on what has driven this change—whether the American glamour and sophistication associated with coffee, post-war immigration from the Mediterranean and other parts of Europe, or the influence of the media and developments in technology (see, for discussion, Adams; Collins et al.; Khamis; Symons). Coffee in Australian Mid-century Epicurean Writing In Australian epicurean writing in the 1950s and 1960s, freshly brewed coffee is clearly identified as the beverage of choice for those with gourmet tastes. In 1952, The West Australian reported that Johnnie Walker, then president of the Sydney Gourmet Society had “sweated over an ordinary kitchen stove to give 12 Melbourne women a perfect meal” (“A Gourmet” 8). Walker prepared a menu comprising: savoury biscuits; pumpkin soup made with a beef, ham, and veal stock; duck braised with “26 ounces of dry red wine, a bottle and a half of curacao and orange juice;” Spanish fried rice; a “French lettuce salad with the Italian influence of garlic;” and, strawberries with strawberry brandy and whipped cream. He served sherry with the biscuits, red wine with the duck, champagne with the sweet, and coffee to finish. It is, however, the adjectives that matter here—that the sherry and wine were dry, not sweet, and the coffee was percolated and black, not instant and milky. Other examples of epicurean writing suggested that fresh coffee should also be unadulterated. In 1951, American food writer William Wallace Irwin who travelled to, and published in, Australia as “The Garrulous Gourmet,” wrote scathingly of the practice of adding chicory to coffee in France and elsewhere (104). This castigation of the French for their coffee was unusual, with most articles at this time praising Gallic gastronomy. Indicative of this is Nancy Cashmore’s travel article for Adelaide’s Advertiser in 1954. Titled “In Dordogne and Burgundy the Gourmet Will Find … A Gastronomic Paradise,” Cashmore details the purchasing, preparation, presentation, and, of course, consumption of excellent food and wine. Good coffee is an integral part of every meal and every day: “from these parts come exquisite pate de fois, truffles, delicious little cakes, conserved meats, wild mushrooms, walnuts and plums. … The day begins with new bread and coffee … nothing is imported, nothing is stale” (6). Memorable luncheons of “hors-d’oeuvre … a meat course, followed by a salad, cheese and possibly a sweet” (6) always ended with black coffee and sometimes a sugar lump soaked in liqueur. In Australian Wines and Food (AW&F), a quarterly epicurean magazine that was published from 1956 to 1960, coffee was regularly featured as a gourmet kitchen staple alongside wine and cheese. Articles on the history, growing, marketing, blending, roasting, purchase, and brewing of coffee during these years were accompanied with full-page advertisements for Bushell’s vacuum packed pure “roaster fresh” coffee, Robert Timms’s “Royal Special” blend for “coffee connoisseurs,” and the Masterfoods range of “superior” imported and locally produced foodstuffs, which included vacuum packed coffee alongside such items as paprika, bay leaves and canned asparagus. AW&F believed Australia’s growing coffee consumption the result of increased participation in quality dining experiences whether in restaurants, the “scores of colourful coffee shops opening their doors to a new generation” (“Coffee” 39) or at home. With regard to domestic coffee drinking, AW&F reported a revived interest in “the long neglected art of brewing good coffee in the home” (“Coffee” 39). Instructions given range from boiling in a pot to percolating and “expresso” (Bancroft 10; “Coffee” 37-9). Coffee was also mentioned in every issue as the only fitting ending to a fine meal, when port, other fortified wines or liqueurs usually accompanied a small demi-tasse of (strong) black coffee. Coffee was also identified as one of the locally produced speciality foods that were flown into the USA for a consulate dinner: “more than a ton of carefully selected foodstuffs was flown to New York by Qantas in three separate airlifts … beef fillet steaks, kangaroo tails, Sydney rock oysters, King prawns, crayfish tails, tropical fruits and passion fruit, New Guinea coffee, chocolates, muscatels and almonds” (“Australian” 16). It is noteworthy that tea is not profiled in the entire run of the magazine. A decade later, in the second half of the 1960s, the new Australian gourmet magazine Epicurean included a number of similar articles on coffee. In 1966 and 1969, celebrity chef and regular Epicurean columnist Graham Kerr also included an illustrated guide to making coffee in two of the books produced alongside his television series, The Graham Kerr Cookbook (125) and The Graham Kerr Cookbook by the Galloping Gourmet (266-67). These included advice to buy freshly roasted beans at least once a week and to invest in an electric coffee grinder. Kerr uses a glass percolator in each and makes an iced (milk) coffee based on double strength cooled brewed coffee. Entertaining with Margaret Fulton (1971) is the first Margaret Fulton cookery book to include detailed information on making coffee from ground beans at home. In this volume, which was clearly aimed at the gourmet-inclined end of the domestic market, Fulton, then cookery editor for popular magazine Woman’s Day, provides a morning coffee menu and proclaims that “Good hot coffee will never taste so good as it does at this time of the day” (90). With the stress on the “good,” Fulton, like Kerr, advises that beans be purchased and ground as they are needed or that only a small amounts of freshly ground coffee be obtained at one time. For Fulton, quality is clearly linked to price—“buy the best you can afford” (90)—but while advising that “Mocha coffee, which comes from Aden and Mocha, is generally considered the best” (90), she also concedes that consumers will “find by experience” (90) which blends they prefer. She includes detailed information on storage and preparation, noting that there are also “dozens of pieces of coffee making equipment to choose from” (90). Fulton includes instructions on how to make coffee for guests at a wedding breakfast or other large event, gently heating home sewn muslin bags filled with finely ground coffee in urns of barely boiling water (64). Alongside these instructions, Fulton also provides recipes for a sophisticated selection of coffee-flavoured desserts such as an iced coffee soufflé and coffee biscuits and meringues that would be perfect accompaniments to her brewed coffees. Cooking with Coffee A prominent and popular advocate of Continental and Asian cookery in Melbourne in the 1950s, Maria Kozslik Donovan wrote and illustrated five cookery books and had a successful international career as a food writer in the 1960s and 1970s. Maria Kozslik was Hungarian by birth and education and was also educated in the USA before marrying Patrick Donovan, an Australian, and migrating to Sydney with him in 1950. After a brief stay there and in Adelaide, they relocated to Melbourne in 1953 where she ran a cookery school and wrote for prominent daily newspaper The Age, penning hundreds of her weekly “Epicure’s Corner: Continental Recipes with Maria Kozslik” column from 1954 to 1961. Her groundbreaking Continental Cookery in Australia (1955) collects some 140 recipes, many of which would appear in her column—predominantly featuring French, Italian, Viennese, and Hungarian dishes, as well as some from the Middle East and the Balkans—each with an informative paragraph or two regarding European cooking and dining practices that set the recipes in context. Continental Cookery in Australia includes one recipe for Mocha Torte (162), which she translates as Coffee Cream Cake and identifies as “the favourite of the gay and party-loving Viennese … [in] the many cafés and sweet shops of Salzburg and Vienna” (162). In this recipe, a plain sponge is cut into four thin layers and filled and covered with a rich mocha cream custard made from egg yolks, sugar and a good measure of coffee, which, when cooled, is beaten into creamed butter. In her recipe for Mocha Cream, Donovan identifies the type of coffee to be used and its strength, specifying that “strong Mocha” be used, and pleading, “please, no essence!” She also suggests that the cake’s top can be decorated with shavings of the then quite exotic “coffee bean chocolate,” which she notes can be found at “most continental confectioners” (162), but which would have been difficult to obtain outside the main urban centres. Coffee also appears in her Café Frappe, where cooled strong black coffee is poured into iced-filled glasses, and dressed with a touch of sugar and whipped cream (165). For this recipe the only other direction that Donovan gives regarding coffee is to “prepare and cool” strong black coffee (165) but it is obvious—from her eschewing of other convenience foods throughout the volume—that she means freshly brewed ground coffee. In contrast, less adventurous cookery books paint a different picture of coffee use in the home at this time. Thus, the more concise Selected Continental Recipes for the Australian Home (1955) by the Australian-born Zelmear M. Deutsch—who, stating that upon marrying a Viennese husband, she became aware of “the fascinating ways of Continental Cuisine” (back cover)—includes three recipes that include coffee. Deutsch’s Mocha Creams (chocolate truffles with a hint of coffee) (76-77), almond meringues filled with coffee whipped cream (89-90), and Mocha Cream Filling comprising butter beaten with chocolate, vanilla, sugar, and coffee (95), all use “powdered” instant coffee, which is, moreover, used extremely sparingly. Her Almond Coffee Torte, for example, requires only half a teaspoon of powdered coffee to a quarter of a pint (300 mls) of cream, which is also sweetened with vanilla sugar (89-90). In contrast to the examples from Fulton and Donovan above (but in common with many cookbooks before and after) Deutsch uses the term “mocha” to describe a mix of coffee and chocolate, rather than to refer to a fine-quality coffee. The term itself is also used to describe a soft, rich brown color and, therefore, at times, the resulting hue of these dishes. The word itself is of late eighteenth century origin, and comes from the eponymous name of a Red Sea port from where coffee was shipped. While Selected Continental Recipes appears to be Deutsch’s first and only book, Anne Mason was a prolific food, wine and travel writer. Before migrating to England in 1958, she was well known in Australia as the presenter of a live weekly television program, Anne Mason’s Home-Tested Recipes, which aired from 1957. She also wrote a number of popular cookery books and had a long-standing weekly column in The Age. Her ‘Home-Tested Recipes’ feature published recipes contributed by readers, which she selected and tested. A number of these were collected in her Treasury of Australian Cookery, published in London in 1962, and included those influenced by “the country cooking of England […] Continental influence […] and oriental ideas” (11). Mason includes numerous recipes featuring coffee, but (as in Deutsch above) almost all are described as mocha-flavoured and listed as such in the detailed index. In Mason’s book, this mocha taste is, in fact, featured more frequently in sweet dishes than any of the other popular flavours (vanilla, honey, lemon, apple, banana, coconut, or passionfruit) except for chocolate. These mocha recipes include cakes: Chocolate-Mocha Refrigerator cake—plain sponge layered with a coffee-chocolate mousse (134), Mocha Gateau Ring—plain sponge and choux pastry puffs filled with cream or ice cream and thickly iced with mocha icing (136) and Mocha Nut Cake—a coffee and cocoa butter cake filled and iced with mocha icing and almonds (166). There are also recipes for Mocha Meringues—small coffee/cocoa-flavoured meringue rosettes joined together in pairs with whipped cream (168), a dessert Mocha Omelette featuring the addition of instant coffee and sugar to the eggs and which is filled with grated chocolate (181) and Mocha-Crunch Ice Cream—a coffee essence-scented ice cream with chocolate biscuit crumbs (144) that was also featured in an ice cream bombe layered with chocolate-rum and vanilla ice creams (152). Mason’s coffee recipes are also given prominence in the accompanying illustrations. Although the book contains only nine pages in full colour, the Mocha Gateau Ring is featured on both the cover and opposite the title page of the book and the Mocha Nut Cake is given an entire coloured page. The coffee component of Mason’s recipes is almost always sourced from either instant coffee (granules or powdered) or liquid coffee essence, however, while the cake for the Mocha Nut Cake uses instant coffee, its mocha icing and filling calls for “3 dessertspoons [of] hot black coffee” (167). The recipe does not, however, describe if this is made from instant, essence, or ground beans. The two other mocha icings both use instant coffee mixed with cocoa, icing sugar and hot water, while one also includes margarine for softness. The recipe for Mocha Cup (202) in the chapter for Children’s Party Fare (198-203), listed alongside clown-shaped biscuits and directions to decorate cakes with sweets, plastic spaceships and dolls, surprisingly comprises a sophisticated mix of grated dark chocolate melted in a pint of “hot black coffee” lightened with milk, sugar and vanilla essence, and topped with cream. There are no instructions for brewing or otherwise making fresh coffee in the volume. The Australian culinary masterwork of the 1960s, The Margaret Fulton Cookbook, which was published in 1968 and sold out its first (record) print run of 100,000 copies in record time, is still in print, with a revised 2004 edition bringing the number of copies sold to over 1.5 million (Brien). The first edition’s cake section of the book includes a Coffee Sponge sandwich using coffee essence in both the cake and its creamy filling and topping (166) and Iced Coffee Cakes that also use coffee essence in the cupcakes and instant coffee powder in the glacé icing (166). A Hazelnut Swiss Roll is filled with a coffee butter cream called Coffee Creme au Beurre, with instant coffee flavouring an egg custard which is beaten into creamed butter (167)—similar to Koszlik’s Mocha Cream but a little lighter, using milk instead of cream and fewer eggs. Fulton also includes an Austrian Chocolate Cake in her Continental Cakes section that uses “black coffee” in a mocha ganache that is used as a frosting (175), and her sweet hot coffee soufflé calls for “1/2 cup strong coffee” (36). Fulton also features a recipe for Irish Coffee—sweetened hot black coffee with (Irish) whiskey added, and cream floated on top (205). Nowhere is fresh or brewed coffee specified, and on the page dedicated to weights, measures, and oven temperatures, instant coffee powder appears on the list of commonly used ingredients alongside flour, sugar, icing sugar, golden syrup, and butter (242). American Influence While the influence of American habits such as supermarket shopping and fast food on Australian foodways is reported in many venues, recognition of its influence on Australian coffee culture is more muted (see, for exceptions, Khamis; Adams). Yet American modes of making and utilising coffee also influenced the Australian use of coffee, whether drunk as beverage or employed as a flavouring agent. In 1956, the Australian Women’s Weekly published a full colour Wade’s Cornflour advertorial of biscuit recipes under the banner, “Dione Lucas’s Manhattan Mochas: The New Coffee Cookie All America Loves, and Now It’s Here” (56). The use of the American “cookie” instead of the Australian “biscuit” is telling here, the popularity of all things American sure to ensure, the advert suggested, that the Mochas (coffee biscuits topped with chocolate icing) would be so popular as to be “More than a recipe—a craze” (56). This American influence can also been seen in cakes and other baked goods made specifically to serve with coffee, but not necessarily containing it. The recipe for Zulu Boys published in The Argus in 1945, a small chocolate and cinnamon cake with peanuts and cornflakes added, is a good example. Reported to “keep moist for some time,” these were “not too sweet, and are especially useful to serve with a glass of wine or a cup of black coffee” (Vesta Junior 9), the recipe a precursor to many in the 1950s and 1960s. Margaret Fulton includes a Spicy Coffee Cake in The Margaret Fulton Cookbook. This is similar to her Cinnamon Tea Cake in being an easy to mix cake topped with cinnamon sugar, but is more robust in flavour and texture with the addition of whole bran cereal, raisins and spices (163). Her “Morning Coffee” section in Entertaining with Margaret Fulton similarly includes a selection of quite strongly flavoured and substantially textured cakes and biscuits (90-92), while her recipes for Afternoon Tea are lighter and more delicate in taste and appearance (85-89). Concluding Remarks: Integration and Evolution, Not Revolution Trusted Tasmanian writer on all matters domestic, Marjorie Bligh, published six books on cookery, craft, home economics, and gardening, and produced four editions of her much-loved household manual under all three of her married names: Blackwell, Cooper and Bligh (Wood). The second edition of At Home with Marjorie Bligh: A Household Manual (published c.1965-71) provides more evidence of how, rather than jettisoning one form in favour of another, Australian housewives were adept at integrating both ground and other more instant forms of coffee into their culinary repertoires. She thus includes instructions on both how to efficiently clean a coffee percolator (percolating with a detergent and borax solution) (312) as well as how to make coffee essence at home by simmering one cup of ground coffee with three cups of water and one cup of sugar for one hour, straining and bottling (281). She also includes recipes for cakes, icings, and drinks that use both brewed and instant coffee as well as coffee essence. In Entertaining with Margaret Fulton, Fulton similarly allows consumer choice, urging that “If you like your coffee with a strong flavour, choose one to which a little chicory has been added” (90). Bligh’s volume similarly reveals how the path from trifle to tiramisu was meandering and one which added recipes to Australian foodways, rather than deleted them. Her recipe for Coffee Trifle has strong similarities to tiramisu, with sponge cake soaked in strong milk coffee and sherry layered with a rich custard made from butter, sugar, egg yolks, and black coffee, and then decorated with whipped cream, glace cherries, and walnuts (169). This recipe precedes published references to tiramisu as, although the origins of tiramisu are debated (Black), references to the dessert only began to appear in the 1980s, and there is no mention of the dish in such authoritative sources as Elizabeth David’s 1954 Italian Food, which features a number of traditional Italian coffee-based desserts including granita, ice cream and those made with cream cheese and rice. By the 1990s, however, respected Australian chef and food researcher, the late Mietta O’Donnell, wrote that if pizza was “the most travelled of Italian dishes, then tiramisu is the country’s most famous dessert” and, today, Australian home cooks are using the dish as a basis for a series of variations that even include replacing the coffee with fruit juices and other flavouring agents. Long-lived Australian coffee recipes are similarly being re-made in line with current taste and habits, with celebrated chef Neil Perry’s recent Simple Coffee and Cream Sponge Cake comprising a classic cream-filled vanilla sponge topped with an icing made with “strong espresso”. To “glam up” the cake, Perry suggests sprinkling the top with chocolate-covered roasted coffee beans—cycling back to Maria Koszlik’s “coffee bean chocolate” (162) and showing just how resilient good taste can be. Acknowledgements The research for this article was completed while I was the recipient of a Research Fellowship in the Special Collections at the William Angliss Institute (WAI) of TAFE in Melbourne, where I utilised their culinary collections. Thank you to the staff of the WAI Special Collections for their generous assistance, as well as to the Faculty of Arts, Business, Informatics and Education at Central Queensland University for supporting this research. Thank you to Jill Adams for her assistance with this article and for sharing her “Manhattan Mocha” file with me, and also to the peer reviewers for their generous and helpful feedback. All errors are, of course, my own.References “A Gourmet Makes a Perfect Meal.” The West Australian 4 Jul. 1952: 8.Adams, Jill. “Australia’s American Coffee Culture.” Australasian Journal of Popular Culture (2012): forthcoming. “Australian Wines Served at New York Dinner.” Australian Wines and Food 1.5 (1958): 16. Bancroft, P. A. “Let’s Make Some Coffee.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 4.1 (1960): 10. Black, Jane. “The Trail of Tiramisu.” Washington Post 11 Jul. 2007. 15 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/10/AR2007071000327.html›. Bligh, Marjorie. At Home with Marjorie Bligh: A Household Manual. Devonport: M. Bligh, c.1965-71. 2nd ed. Brien, Donna Lee. “Australian Celebrity Chefs 1950-1980: A Preliminary Study.” Australian Folklore 21 (2006): 201-18. Cashmore, Nancy. “In Dordogne and Burgundy the Gourmet Will Find … A Gastronomic Paradise.” The Advertiser 23 Jan. (1954): 6. “Coffee Beginnings.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.4 (1957/1958): 37-39. Collins, Jock, Katherine Gibson, Caroline Alcorso, Stephen Castles, and David Tait. A Shop Full of Dreams: Ethnic Small Business in Australia. Sydney: Pluto Press, 1995. David, Elizabeth. Italian Food. New York: Penguin Books, 1999. 1st pub. UK: Macdonald, 1954, and New York: Knoft, 1954. Donovan, Maria Kozslik. Continental Cookery in Australia. Melbourne: William Heinemann, 1955. Reprint ed. 1956. -----.“Epicure’s Corner: Continental Recipes with Maria Kozslik.” The Age 4 Jun. (1954): 7. Fulton, Margaret. The Margaret Fulton Cookbook. Dee Why West: Paul Hamlyn, 1968. -----. Entertaining with Margaret Fulton. Dee Why West: Paul Hamlyn, 1971. Irwin, William Wallace. The Garrulous Gourmet. Sydney: The Shepherd P, 1951. Khamis, Susie. “It Only Takes a Jiffy to Make: Nestlé, Australia and the Convenience of Instant Coffee.” Food, Culture & Society 12.2 (2009): 217-33. Kerr, Graham. The Graham Kerr Cookbook. Wellington, Auckland, and Sydney: AH & AW Reed, 1966. -----. The Graham Kerr Cookbook by The Galloping Gourmet. New York: Doubleday, 1969. Mason, Anne. A Treasury of Australian Cookery. London: Andre Deutsch, 1962. Mason, Peter. “Anne Mason.” The Guardian 20 Octo.2006. 15 Feb. 2012 Masterfoods. “Masterfoods” [advertising insert]. Australian Wines and Food 2.10 (1959): btwn. 8 & 9.“Masters of Food.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 2.11 (1959/1960): 23. O’Donnell, Mietta. “Tiramisu.” Mietta’s Italian Family Recipe, 14 Aug. 2004. 15 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.miettas.com/food_wine_recipes/recipes/italianrecipes/dessert/tiramisu.html›. Perry, Neil. “Simple Coffee and Cream Sponge Cake.” The Age 12 Mar. 2012. 15 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.theage.com.au/lifestyle/cuisine/baking/recipe/simple-coffee-and-cream-sponge-cake-20120312-1utlm.html›. Symons, Michael. One Continuous Picnic: A History of Eating in Australia. Adelaide: Duck Press, 2007. 1st. Pub. Melbourne: Melbourne UP, 1982. ‘Vesta Junior’. “The Beautiful Fuss of Old Time Baking Days.” The Argus 20 Mar. 1945: 9. Volpi, Anna Maria. “All About Tiramisu.” Anna Maria’s Open Kitchen 20 Aug. 2004. 15 Feb. 2012 ‹http://www.annamariavolpi.com/tiramisu.html›. Wade’s Cornflour. “Dione Lucas’ Manhattan Mochas: The New Coffee Cookie All America Loves, and Now It’s Here.” The Australian Women’s Weekly 1 Aug. (1956): 56. Wood, Danielle. Housewife Superstar: The Very Best of Marjorie Bligh. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2011.

Abstract:

Introduction With a deluge of mouthwatering pre-publicity, the opening of The Spotted Pig, the USA’s first self-identified British-styled gastropub, in Manhattan in February 2004 was much anticipated. The late Australian chef, food writer and restauranteur Mietta O’Donnell has noted how “taking over a building or business which has a long established reputation can be a mixed blessing” because of the way that memories “can enrich the experience of being in a place or they can just make people nostalgic”. Bistro Le Zoo, the previous eatery on the site, had been very popular when it opened almost a decade earlier, and its closure was mourned by some diners (Young; Kaminsky “Feeding Time”; Steinhauer & McGinty). This regret did not, however, appear to affect The Spotted Pig’s success. As esteemed New York Times reviewer Frank Bruni noted in his 2006 review: “Almost immediately after it opened […] the throngs started to descend, and they have never stopped”. The following year, The Spotted Pig was awarded a Michelin star—the first year that Michelin ranked New York—and has kept this star in the subsequent annual rankings. Writing Restaurant Biography Detailed studies have been published of almost every type of contemporary organisation including public institutions such as schools, hospitals, museums and universities, as well as non-profit organisations such as charities and professional associations. These are often written to mark a major milestone, or some significant change, development or the demise of the organisation under consideration (Brien). Detailed studies have also recently been published of businesses as diverse as general stores (Woody), art galleries (Fossi), fashion labels (Koda et al.), record stores (Southern & Branson), airlines (Byrnes; Jones), confectionary companies (Chinn) and builders (Garden). In terms of attracting mainstream readerships, however, few such studies seem able to capture popular reader interest as those about eating establishments including restaurants and cafés. This form of restaurant life history is, moreover, not restricted to ‘quality’ establishments. Fast food restaurant chains have attracted their share of studies (see, for example Love; Jakle & Sculle), ranging from business-economic analyses (Liu), socio-cultural political analyses (Watson), and memoirs (Kroc & Anderson), to criticism around their conduct and effects (Striffler). Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal is the most well-known published critique of the fast food industry and its effects with, famously, the Rolling Stone article on which it was based generating more reader mail than any other piece run in the 1990s. The book itself (researched narrative creative nonfiction), moreover, made a fascinating transition to the screen, transformed into a fictionalised drama (co-written by Schlosser) that narrates the content of the book from the point of view of a series of fictional/composite characters involved in the industry, rather than in a documentary format. Akin to the range of studies of fast food restaurants, there are also a variety of studies of eateries in US motels, caravan parks, diners and service station restaurants (see, for example, Baeder). Although there has been little study of this sub-genre of food and drink publishing, their popularity can be explained, at least in part, because such volumes cater to the significant readership for writing about food related topics of all kinds, with food writing recently identified as mainstream literary fare in the USA and UK (Hughes) and an entire “publishing subculture” in Australia (Dunstan & Chaitman). Although no exact tally exists, an informed estimate by the founder of the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards and president of the Paris Cookbook Fair, Edouard Cointreau, has more than 26,000 volumes on food and wine related topics currently published around the world annually (ctd. in Andriani “Gourmand Awards”). The readership for publications about restaurants can also perhaps be attributed to the wide range of information that can be included a single study. My study of a selection of these texts from the UK, USA and Australia indicates that this can include narratives of place and architecture dealing with the restaurant’s location, locale and design; narratives of directly food-related subject matter such as menus, recipes and dining trends; and narratives of people, in the stories of its proprietors, staff and patrons. Detailed studies of contemporary individual establishments commonly take the form of authorised narratives either written by the owners, chefs or other staff with the help of a food journalist, historian or other professional writer, or produced largely by that writer with the assistance of the premise’s staff. These studies are often extensively illustrated with photographs and, sometimes, drawings or reproductions of other artworks, and almost always include recipes. Two examples of these from my own collection include a centennial history of a famous New Orleans eatery that survived Hurricane Katrina, Galatoire’s Cookbook. Written by employees—the chief operating officer/general manager (Melvin Rodrigue) and publicist (Jyl Benson)—this incorporates reminiscences from both other staff and patrons. The second is another study of a New Orleans’ restaurant, this one by the late broadcaster and celebrity local historian Mel Leavitt. The Court of Two Sisters Cookbook: With a History of the French Quarter and the Restaurant, compiled with the assistance of the Two Sisters’ proprietor, Joseph Fein Joseph III, was first published in 1992 and has been so enduringly popular that it is in its eighth printing. These texts, in common with many others of this type, trace a triumph-over-adversity company history that incorporates a series of mildly scintillating anecdotes, lists of famous chefs and diners, and signature recipes. Although obviously focused on an external readership, they can also be characterised as an instance of what David M. Boje calls an organisation’s “story performance” (106) as the process of creating these narratives mobilises an organisation’s (in these cases, a commercial enterprise’s) internal information processing and narrative building activities. Studies of contemporary restaurants are much more rarely written without any involvement from the eatery’s personnel. When these are, the results tend to have much in common with more critical studies such as Fast Food Nation, as well as so-called architectural ‘building biographies’ which attempt to narrate the historical and social forces that “explain the shapes and uses” (Ellis, Chao & Parrish 70) of the physical structures we create. Examples of this would include Harding’s study of the importance of the Boeuf sur le Toit in Parisian life in the 1920s and Middlebrook’s social history of London’s Strand Corner House. Such work agrees with Kopytoff’s assertion—following Appadurai’s proposal that objects possess their own ‘biographies’ which need to be researched and expressed—that such inquiry can reveal not only information about the objects under consideration, but also about readers as we examine our “cultural […] aesthetic, historical, and even political” responses to these narratives (67). The life story of a restaurant will necessarily be entangled with those of the figures who have been involved in its establishment and development, as well as the narratives they create around the business. This following brief study of The Spotted Pig, however, written without the assistance of the establishment’s personnel, aims to outline a life story for this eatery in order to reflect upon the pig’s place in contemporary dining practice in New York as raw foodstuff, fashionable comestible, product, brand, symbol and marketing tool, as well as, at times, purely as an animal identity. The Spotted Pig Widely profiled before it even opened, The Spotted Pig is reportedly one of the city’s “most popular” restaurants (Michelin 349). It is profiled in all the city guidebooks I could locate in print and online, featuring in some of these as a key stop on recommended itineraries (see, for instance, Otis 39). A number of these proclaim it to be the USA’s first ‘gastropub’—the term first used in 1991 in the UK to describe a casual hotel/bar with good food and reasonable prices (Farley). The Spotted Pig is thus styled on a shabby-chic version of a traditional British hotel, featuring a cluttered-but-well arranged use of pig-themed objects and illustrations that is described by latest Michelin Green Guide of New York City as “a country-cute décor that still manages to be hip” (Michelin 349). From the three-dimensional carved pig hanging above the entrance in a homage to the shingles of traditional British hotels, to the use of its image on the menu, website and souvenir tee-shirts, the pig as motif proceeds its use as a foodstuff menu item. So much so, that the restaurant is often (affectionately) referred to by patrons and reviewers simply as ‘The Pig’. The restaurant has become so well known in New York in the relatively brief time it has been operating that it has not only featured in a number of novels and memoirs, but, moreover, little or no explanation has been deemed necessary as the signifier of “The Spotted Pig” appears to convey everything that needs to be said about an eatery of quality and fashion. In the thriller Lethal Experiment: A Donovan Creed Novel, when John Locke’s hero has to leave the restaurant and becomes involved in a series of dangerous escapades, he wants nothing more but to get back to his dinner (107, 115). The restaurant is also mentioned a number of times in Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell’s Lipstick Jungle in relation to a (fictional) new movie of the same name. The joke in the book is that the character doesn’t know of the restaurant (26). In David Goodwillie’s American Subversive, the story of a journalist-turned-blogger and a homegrown terrorist set in New York, the narrator refers to “Scarlett Johansson, for instance, and the hostess at the Spotted Pig” (203-4) as the epitome of attractiveness. The Spotted Pig is also mentioned in Suzanne Guillette’s memoir, Much to Your Chagrin, when the narrator is on a dinner date but fears running into her ex-boyfriend: ‘Jack lives somewhere in this vicinity […] Vaguely, you recall him telling you he was not too far from the Spotted Pig on Greenwich—now, was it Greenwich Avenue or Greenwich Street?’ (361). The author presumes readers know the right answer in order to build tension in this scene. Although this success is usually credited to the joint efforts of backer, music executive turned restaurateur Ken Friedman, his partner, well-known chef, restaurateur, author and television personality Mario Batali, and their UK-born and trained chef, April Bloomfield (see, for instance, Batali), a significant part has been built on Bloomfield’s pork cookery. The very idea of a “spotted pig” itself raises a central tenet of Bloomfield’s pork/food philosophy which is sustainable and organic. That is, not the mass produced, industrially farmed pig which produces a leaner meat, but the fatty, tastier varieties of pig such as the heritage six-spotted Berkshire which is “darker, more heavily marbled with fat, juicier and richer-tasting than most pork” (Fabricant). Bloomfield has, indeed, made pig’s ears—long a Chinese restaurant staple in the city and a key ingredient of Southern US soul food as well as some traditional Japanese and Spanish dishes—fashionable fare in the city, and her current incarnation, a crispy pig’s ear salad with lemon caper dressing (TSP 2010) is much acclaimed by reviewers. This approach to ingredients—using the ‘whole beast’, local whenever possible, and the concentration on pork—has been underlined and enhanced by a continuing relationship with UK chef Fergus Henderson. In his series of London restaurants under the banner of “St. John”, Henderson is famed for the approach to pork cookery outlined in his two books Nose to Tail Eating: A Kind of British Cooking, published in 1999 (re-published both in the UK and the US as The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating), and Beyond Nose to Tail: A Kind of British Cooking: Part II (coauthored with Justin Piers Gellatly in 2007). Henderson has indeed been identified as starting a trend in dining and food publishing, focusing on sustainably using as food the entirety of any animal killed for this purpose, but which mostly focuses on using all parts of pigs. In publishing, this includes Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s The River Cottage Meat Book, Peter Kaminsky’s Pig Perfect, subtitled Encounters with Some Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways to Cook Them, John Barlow’s Everything but the Squeal: Eating the Whole Hog in Northern Spain and Jennifer McLagan’s Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes (2008). In restaurants, it certainly includes The Spotted Pig. So pervasive has embrace of whole beast pork consumption been in New York that, by 2007, Bruni could write that these are: “porky times, fatty times, which is to say very good times indeed. Any new logo for the city could justifiably place the Big Apple in the mouth of a spit-roasted pig” (Bruni). This demand set the stage perfectly for, in October 2007, Henderson to travel to New York to cook pork-rich menus at The Spotted Pig in tandem with Bloomfield (Royer). He followed this again in 2008 and, by 2009, this annual event had become known as “FergusStock” and was covered by local as well as UK media, and a range of US food weblogs. By 2009, it had grown to become a dinner at the Spotted Pig with half the dishes on the menu by Henderson and half by Bloomfield, and a dinner the next night at David Chang’s acclaimed Michelin-starred Momofuku Noodle Bar, which is famed for its Cantonese-style steamed pork belly buns. A third dinner (and then breakfast/brunch) followed at Friedman/Bloomfield’s Breslin Bar and Dining Room (discussed below) (Rose). The Spotted Pig dinners have become famed for Henderson’s pig’s head and pork trotter dishes with the chef himself recognising that although his wasn’t “the most obvious food to cook for America”, it was the case that “at St John, if a couple share a pig’s head, they tend to be American” (qtd. in Rose). In 2009, the pigs’ head were presented in pies which Henderson has described as “puff pastry casing, with layers of chopped, cooked pig’s head and potato, so all the lovely, bubbly pig’s head juices go into the potato” (qtd. in Rose). Bloomfield was aged only 28 when, in 2003, with a recommendation from Jamie Oliver, she interviewed for, and won, the position of executive chef of The Spotted Pig (Fabricant; Q&A). Following this introduction to the US, her reputation as a chef has grown based on the strength of her pork expertise. Among a host of awards, she was named one of US Food & Wine magazine’s ten annual Best New Chefs in 2007. In 2009, she was a featured solo session titled “Pig, Pig, Pig” at the fourth Annual International Chefs Congress, a prestigious New York City based event where “the world’s most influential and innovative chefs, pastry chefs, mixologists, and sommeliers present the latest techniques and culinary concepts to their peers” (Starchefs.com). Bloomfield demonstrated breaking down a whole suckling St. Canut milk raised piglet, after which she butterflied, rolled and slow-poached the belly, and fried the ears. As well as such demonstrations of expertise, she is also often called upon to provide expert comment on pork-related news stories, with The Spotted Pig regularly the subject of that food news. For example, when a rare, heritage Hungarian pig was profiled as a “new” New York pork source in 2009, this story arose because Bloomfield had served a Mangalitsa/Berkshire crossbreed pig belly and trotter dish with Agen prunes (Sanders) at The Spotted Pig. Bloomfield was quoted as the authority on the breed’s flavour and heritage authenticity: “it took me back to my grandmother’s kitchen on a Sunday afternoon, windows steaming from the roasting pork in the oven […] This pork has that same authentic taste” (qtd. in Sanders). Bloomfield has also used this expert profile to support a series of pork-related causes. These include the Thanksgiving Farm in the Catskill area, which produces free range pork for its resident special needs children and adults, and helps them gain meaningful work-related skills in working with these pigs. Bloomfield not only cooks for the project’s fundraisers, but also purchases any excess pigs for The Spotted Pig (Estrine 103). This strong focus on pork is not, however, exclusive. The Spotted Pig is also one of a number of American restaurants involved in the Meatless Monday campaign, whereby at least one vegetarian option is included on menus in order to draw attention to the benefits of a plant-based diet. When, in 2008, Bloomfield beat the Iron Chef in the sixth season of the US version of the eponymous television program, the central ingredient was nothing to do with pork—it was olives. Diversifying from this focus on ‘pig’ can, however, be dangerous. Friedman and Bloomfield’s next enterprise after The Spotted Pig was The John Dory seafood restaurant at the corner of 10th Avenue and 16th Street. This opened in November 2008 to reviews that its food was “uncomplicated and nearly perfect” (Andrews 22), won Bloomfield Time Out New York’s 2009 “Best New Hand at Seafood” award, but was not a success. The John Dory was a more formal, but smaller, restaurant that was more expensive at a time when the financial crisis was just biting, and was closed the following August. Friedman blamed the layout, size and neighbourhood (Stein) and its reservation system, which limited walk-in diners (ctd. in Vallis), but did not mention its non-pork, seafood orientation. When, almost immediately, another Friedman/Bloomfield project was announced, the Breslin Bar & Dining Room (which opened in October 2009 in the Ace Hotel at 20 West 29th Street and Broadway), the enterprise was closely modeled on the The Spotted Pig. In preparation, its senior management—Bloomfield, Friedman and sous-chefs, Nate Smith and Peter Cho (who was to become the Breslin’s head chef)—undertook a tasting tour of the UK that included Henderson’s St. John Bread & Wine Bar (Leventhal). Following this, the Breslin’s menu highlighted a series of pork dishes such as terrines, sausages, ham and potted styles (Rosenberg & McCarthy), with even Bloomfield’s pork scratchings (crispy pork rinds) bar snacks garnering glowing reviews (see, for example, Severson; Ghorbani). Reviewers, moreover, waxed lyrically about the menu’s pig-based dishes, the New York Times reviewer identifying this focus as catering to New York diners’ “fetish for pork fat” (Sifton). This representative review details not only “an entree of gently smoked pork belly that’s been roasted to tender goo, for instance, over a drift of buttery mashed potatoes, with cabbage and bacon on the side” but also a pig’s foot “in gravy made of reduced braising liquid, thick with pillowy shallots and green flecks of deconstructed brussels sprouts” (Sifton). Sifton concluded with the proclamation that this style of pork was “very good: meat that is fat; fat that is meat”. Concluding remarks Bloomfield has listed Michael Ruhlman’s Charcuterie as among her favourite food books. Publishers Weekly reviewer called Ruhlman “a food poet, and the pig is his muse” (Q&A). In August 2009, it was reported that Bloomfield had always wanted to write a cookbook (Marx) and, in July 2010, HarperCollins imprint Ecco publisher and foodbook editor Dan Halpern announced that he was planning a book with her, tentatively titled, A Girl and Her Pig (Andriani “Ecco Expands”). As a “cookbook with memoir running throughout” (Maurer), this will discuss the influence of the pig on her life as well as how to cook pork. This text will obviously also add to the data known about The Spotted Pig, but until then, this brief gastrobiography has attempted to outline some of the human, and in this case, animal, stories that lie behind all businesses. References Andrews, Colman. “Its Up To You, New York, New York.” Gourmet Apr. (2009): 18-22, 111. Andriani, Lynn. “Ecco Expands Cookbook Program: HC Imprint Signs Up Seven New Titles.” Publishers Weekly 12 Jul. (2010) 3 Sep. 2010 http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/cooking/article/43803-ecco-expands-cookbook-program.html Andriani, Lynn. “Gourmand Awards Receive Record Number of Cookbook Entries.” Publishers Weekly 27 Sep. 2010 http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/book-news/cooking/article/44573-gourmand-awards-receive-record-number-of-cookbook-entries.html Appadurai, Arjun. 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St Lucia: U of Queensland P, 2007: 333-351. Ellis, W. Russell, Tonia Chao and Janet Parrish. “Levi’s Place: A Building Biography.” Places 2.1 (1985): 57-70. Estrine, Darryl. Harvest to Heat: Cooking with America’s Best Chefs, Farmers, and Artisans. Newton CT: The Taunton Press, 2010 Fabricant, Florence. “Food stuff: Off the Menu.” New York Times 26 Nov. 2003. 3 Sep. 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/26/dining/food-stuff-off-the-menu.html?ref=april_bloomfield Fabricant, Florence. “Food Stuff: Fit for an Emperor, Now Raised in America.” New York Times 23 Jun. 2004. 2 Sep. 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/23/dining/food-stuff-fit-for-an-emperor-now-raised-in-america.html Farley, David. “In N.Y., An Appetite for Gastropubs.” The Washington Post 24 May 2009. 1 Sep. 2010 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/22/AR2009052201105.html Fearnley-Whittingstall, Hugh. The River Cottage Meat Book. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2004. 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Hughes, Kathryn. “Food Writing Moves from Kitchen to bookshelf.” The Guardian 19 Jun. 2010. 1 Sep. 2010 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jun/19/anthony-bourdain-food-writing Jakle, John A. and Keith A. Sculle. Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins U P, 1999. Jones, Lois. EasyJet: The Story of Britain's Biggest Low-cost Airline. London: Aurum, 2005. Kaminsky, Peter. “Feeding Time at Le Zoo.” New York Magazine 12 Jun. 1995: 65. Kaminsky, Peter. Pig Perfect: Encounters with Some Remarkable Swine and Some Great Ways To Cook Them. New York: Hyperion 2005. Koda, Harold, Andrew Bolton and Rhonda K. Garelick. Chanel. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005. Kopytoff, Igor. “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process.” The Social Life of things: Commodities in Cultural Perspectives. Ed. Arjun Appadurai. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge U P, 2003. 64-94. (First pub. 1986). Kroc, Ray and Robert Anderson. Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald’s, Chicago: H. Regnery, 1977 Leavitt, Mel. The Court of Two Sisters Cookbook: With a History of the French Quarter and the Restaurant. Gretna, LA: Pelican Publishing, 2005. Pub. 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2003. Leventhal, Ben. “April Bloomfield & Co. Take U.K. Field Trip to Prep for Ace Debut.” Grub Street 14 Apr. 2009. 3 Sep. 2010 http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2009/04/april_bloomfield_co_take_uk_field_trip_to_prep_for_ace_debut.html Fast Food Nation. R. Linklater (Dir.). Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2006. Liu, Warren K. KFC in China: Secret Recipe for Success. Singapore & Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley (Asia), 2008. Locke, John. Lethal Experiment: A Donovan Creed Novel. Bloomington: iUniverse, 2009. Love, John F. McDonald’s: Behind the Arches. Toronto & New York: Bantam, 1986. Marx, Rebecca. “Beyond the Breslin: April Bloomfield is Thinking Tea, Bakeries, Cookbook.” 28 Aug. 2009. 3 Sep. 2010 http://blogs.villagevoice.com/forkintheroad/archives/2009/08/beyond_the_bres.php Maurer, Daniel. “Meatball Shop, April Bloomfield Plan Cookbooks.” Grub Street 12 Jul. 2010. 3 Sep. 2010 http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2010/07/meatball_shop_april_bloomfield.html McLagan, Jennifer. Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 2008. Michelin. Michelin Green Guide New York City. Michelin Travel Publications, 2010. O’Donnell, Mietta. “Burying and Celebrating Ghosts.” Herald Sun 1 Dec. 1998. 3 Sep. 2010 http://www.miettas.com.au/restaurants/rest_96-00/buryingghosts.html Otis, Ginger Adams. New York Encounter. Melbourne: Lonely Planet, 2007. “Q and A: April Bloomfield.” New York Times 18 Apr. 2008. 3 Sep. 2010 http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/q-and-a-april-bloomfield Rodrigue, Melvin and Jyl Benson. Galatoire’s Cookbook: Recipes and Family History from the Time-Honored New Orleans Restaurant. New York: Clarkson Potter, 2005. Rose, Hilary. “Fergus Henderson in New York.” The Times (London) Online, 5 Dec. 2009. 23 Aug. 2010 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/recipes/article6937550.ece Rosenberg, Sarah & Tom McCarthy. “Platelist: The Breslin’s April Bloomfield.” ABC News/Nightline 4 Dec. 2009. 23 Aug. 2010 http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/april-bloomfield-spotted-pig-interview/story?id=9242079 Royer, Blake. “Table for Two: Fergus Henderson at The Spotted Pig.” The Paupered Chef 11 Oct. 2007. 23 Aug. 2010 http://thepauperedchef.com/2007/10/table-for-two-f.html Ruhlman, Michael and Brian Polcyn. Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing. New York: W. Norton, 2005. 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Publishing, 1996. Starchefs.com. 4th Annual StarChefs.com International Chefs Congress. 2009. 1 Sep. 2010 http://www.starchefs.com/cook/icc-2009 Stein, Joshua David. “Exit Interview: Ken Friedman on the Demise of the John Dory.” Grub Street 15 Sep. 2009. 1 Sep. 2010 http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2009/09/exit_interview_ken_friedman_on.html Steinhauer, Jennifer & Jo Craven McGinty. “Yesterday’s Special: Good, Cheap Dining.” New York Times 26 Jun. 2005. 1 Sep. 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/26/nyregion/26restaurant.html Striffler, Steve. Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America’s Favorite Food. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. The Spotted Pig (TSP) 2010 The Spotted Pig website http://www.thespottedpig.com Time Out New York. “Eat Out Awards 2009. Best New Hand at Seafood: April Bloomfield, the John Dory”. Time Out New York 706, 9-15 Apr. 2009. 10 Sep. 2010 http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/eat-out-awards/73170/eat-out-awards-2009-best-new-hand-at-seafood-a-april-bloomfield-the-john-dory Vallis, Alexandra. “Ken Friedman on the Virtues of No Reservations.” Grub Street 27 Aug. 2009. 10 Sep. 2010 http://newyork.grubstreet.com/2009/08/ken_friedman_on_the_virtues_of.html Watson, James L. Ed. Golden Arches East: McDonald’s in East Asia. Stanford: Stanford U P, 1997.Woody, Londa L. All in a Day's Work: Historic General Stores of Macon and Surrounding North Carolina Counties. Boone, North Carolina: Parkway Publishers, 2001. Young, Daniel. “Bon Appetit! It’s Feeding Time at Le Zoo.” New York Daily News 28 May 1995. 2 Sep. 2010 http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/lifestyle/1995/05/28/1995-05-28_bon_appetit__it_s_feeding_ti.html

Abstract:

In 1996, the iconoclastic economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote a manifesto, The Good Society, that elaborated his vision for what societal excellence and goodness should amount to. Though nearly 96, Galbraith was still a rabble-rouser, and he castigated the powers that be in the United States for propping up a “democracy of the fortunate” (8). To Galbraith, those who engaged in electoral politics, win or lose on any specific issue, tended to have all the social and economic advantages, while the less well off were deliberately marginalised by ‘the system.’ He lamented that “money, voice and political activism are now extensively controlled by the affluent, very affluent, and business interests" (140), making of the political sphere an "unequal contest" (8).To make democracy American style more inclusive, Galbraith called for “a coalition of the concerned and the compassionate and those now outside the political system” (143), so that all citizens had optimal prospects for enjoying “personal liberty, basic well-being, social and ethnic equality, the opportunity for a rewarding life" (4). Have inroads been made, in the nearly 15 years since first publication of The Good Society, in making come true Galbraith’s version of a good society? If not, how might such a coalition be achieved? What would it look like? Who among Americans would constitute the concerned, compassionate outsiders that would make such a coalition authentically ‘Galbraithian’? A Coalition on the MoveWhat about MoveOn.org? A progressive public advocacy group founded in 1998, MoveOn.org, according to Lelia Green in The Internet, is “an important indicator of the potential for bringing together communities of like-minded individuals” (139). Green singles out MoveOn.org as particularly pivotal in galvanising support for Barack Obama’s presidency (139). The New York Times describes MoveOn.org as “a bottom-up organization that has inserted itself into the political process in ways large and small” (Janofsky and Lee). Indeed, it represents “the next evolutionary change in American politics, a move away from one-way tools of influence like television commercials and talk radio to interactive dialogue, offering everyday people a voice in a process that once seemed beyond their reach.” MoveOn.org has expertly utilised the Internet to mobilise its members “to sign online petitions, organize street demonstrations and donate money to run political advertisements”. Green considers MoveOn.org one of today’s standout “coalitions of interests and political agendas”, “extraordinary” in its ability to “use websites and email lists to build communities around a shared passion” (139). In 2008, its 4.2 million members were at the vortex of a “dynamic that tipped the balance in favour of a more radical agenda with the election of President Barack Obama in 2008” (139). Galbraith, for one, would certainly agree with MoveOn.org’s politics, and likely would claim that their radical agenda is a compassionate and encompassing one that effectively addresses the concerns of everyday citizens. Yet the fact is that millions of disaffected Americans are not liberals, and so are not in sync with MoveOn.org’s interests and agendas, such as its firm insistence that a ‘public option’ is the best way to bring about meaningful health care reform, and its demand that all U.S. troops be immediately withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan. Tea Anyone?Another sort of coalition filled the void created by MoveOn.org. Enter the Tea Party. A movement that has been every bit as effective in its way in inspiring once-jaded ordinary citizens to coalesce around a set of interests and agendas – albeit, at least in principal if not necessarily in actual practice, of a professed libertarian strain – the Tea Party got underway in the waning days of the second presidential term of George W. Bush. It started out as a one-issue protest group voicing umbrage over the proposed economic stimulus plan, which it considered an unconstitutional subsidy. After Barack Obama became president, the Tea Party burgeoned into a much more influential movement that now professes to be a grassroots citizens’ watchdog for all unconstitutional activities (or what it deems to be such) on the part of the federal government. A New York Times article notes that many of its members are victims of the economic downturn; they “had lost their jobs, or perhaps watched their homes plummet in value, and they found common cause in the Tea Party’s fight for lower taxes and smaller government” (Zernike). Its members are akin to the millions of middle class Americans who lost their livelihoods during the Great Depression of the 1930s, an unparalleled economic downturn that eventually “mobilized many middle-class people who had fallen on hard times” to join forces in order to have an effective political voice. But those during the Great Depression who were aroused to political consciousness “tended to push for more government involvement”; in contrast, the Tea Party is a coalition that “vehemently wants less”. While Galbraith depicted the Republican Party of his time as “avowedly on the side of the fortunate” (141), the majority of today’s Tea Party members align themselves with the Republican Party, yet they are by no means principally made up of "the fortunate." Erick Erickson, a prominent Tea Party spokesman and a television commentator for the CNN news channel, blogs on Redstate.com that the Tea Party “has gotten a lot of people off the sidelines and into the political arena...” Erickson further contends that the Tea Party has “brought together a lot of likeminded citizens who thought they were alone in the world. They realized that not only were they not alone, but there were millions of others just as concerned.” Galbraithian Coalitions?Do MoveOn.org and Tea Party constitute Galbraithian-type coalitions, each in its own right? Both have inspired millions of once-disenchanted common citizens to come together around common political concerns and become a force to be reckoned with in electoral politics. As such, each has served as an effective counterweight against the money, voice and political activism of the very affluent. While Galbraith would probably have as much disdain for the Tea Party as he would have praise for MoveOn.org, the fact is that both groups have seen to it that an increasing number of regular Americans whose concerns had been ignored in the political arena now have to be reckoned with. But this is by no means where their commonality ends. Above and beyond the fact that both are comprised of millions who had been political outsiders, each has a decided anti-establishmentarian strain, along with a professed sense of alienation from and disdain for "politics as usual" and an impassioned belief in the right to self-government (though they differ on what this right amounts to). Moreover, both consider themselves grassroots-driven, and harbor anathema for professional lobbying organisations, which both regularly criticize for their undue political influence. Even though the two groups usually differ to the nth degree when it comes to those solutions they believe would effectively remedy the most pressing public problems in the U.S., they nonetheless share the conviction that one must initially focus one’s efforts at the local level if one is eventually to have the greatest impact on political decision-making on a national scale. The two groups came of age during the Internet revolution – indeed, it would have been impossible for their like-minded members to have found one another and coalesced so quickly and in such great numbers without the Internet – and they utilise the Internet as the principal tool for spurring concerted activism at the local level among their members. One can consider their shared approach Deweyan, in that Dewey maintained that genuinely democratic community, “in its deepest and richest sense, must always remain a matter of face-to-face intercourse” (367). Yet the two groups’ legion differences prevent them from engaging in meaningful face-to-face exchanges with one another. While the prospect of cultivating linkages between Tea Party and MoveOn.org are remote for the foreseeable future, it might nonetheless be seen as a promising development that some rank and file Tea Party acolytes do at least recognise that they must not identify solely with the Republican Party, lest they discourage potential recruits from rallying around their cause. For instance, one warns fellow members on the Redstate.com blog to be wary of casting their lot with Republicans, “because it would drive away the Democrats and Independents”. He actually uses Galbraith’s coinage in describing the Tea Party: “This movement is a coalition of the concerned, not a Republican outreach program.” Indeed, contrary to popular belief, the Tea Party is not, as a whole, on the conservative fringe (though it does often seem that those members who are given the most attention by the mainstream media are the fringe element, particularly the breakaway Tea Party Express). A Gallup Poll reveals that fully 17 percent of all Americans of voting age identify themselves as affiliated with the Tea Party; and while a majority have Republican leanings, fully 45 percent of all Tea Party members claimed they were either Democrats (17 percent) or independents (28 percent). To Tea Party leader Erick Erickson, the paramount challenge today for the Tea Party is for it to transform itself into a greater umbrella coalition, since the “issues and advocacy within the tea party movement are issues that resonate with the majority of Americans.” After all, he asserts, the Tea Party’s is “a very American cause — the first amendment right to protest, petition, and speak up.” While an expansion of its coalition does not in any way make it incumbent for the Tea Party to find common cause with MoveOn.org, can the claim nonetheless be legitimately made – utilising Erickson’s own criteria – that MoveOn.org’s is equally a very American cause? Christopher Hayes points out in an essay in The Nation that most of MoveOn.org’s members, as with the Tea Party’s, are “not inclined to protest,” but their “rising unease with the direction of the country has led to a new political consciousness.” Hayes could just as well be speaking of the Tea Party when he describes MoveOn.org’s members as made up mostly of “citizens angered, upset and disappointed with their government but [who were] unsure how to channel those sentiments.” For such citizens, MoveOn.org “provides simple, discrete actions: sign this petition, donate money to run this ad, show up at this vigil.” This is convincing evidence that MoveOn.org’s is also “a very American cause”, by the very benchmarks set forth by Erickson. A ‘Higher Coalition’?But is this in any way akin to a demonstrable sign that these unlikeliest of political bedfellows might be inspired at some future point to see themselves as part of a ‘higher coalition’ — one of the unlikeminded, that celebrates difference? Might a critical mass in both movements ever deem it a boon to coalesce around the cause of democratic pluralism? As things stand, neither side embraces such pluralism. Rather, one other attribute they share pervasively is dogmatism: both are convinced that their respective political sensibilities are beyond reproach. As a consequence, over the shorter term, neither group is likely to shed its brand of dogmatism and supplant it with an openness or receptivity to new, much less opposing, points of view. So, for instance, even as the Tea Party seeks to expand its fold, it is no more inclined to change its ideology-based stances on the issues than is MoveOn.org. For the time being, each group not only is entrenched in its own collective political mindset, but each coalesces around a demonstrated antipathy towards alternative approaches to public problem-solving. Is there any remotely plausible scenario by which the members of MoveOn.org and Tea Party might eventually come not just to tolerate their differences but to extol them? One other key Galbraithian element that those comprising an ideal coalition in a democracy must possess is compassion. For members of any coalition to cultivate compassion, they must first, or concomitantly, inculcate empathy, which is typically considered either a precursor to compassion or, along with understanding, a vital component of it. Henning Melber, Executive Director of the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation, and Reinhard Kössler maintain that “(w)hile empathy does not automatically translate into solidarity (nor into ethical behaviour), it can serve as a compass” for doing so, and can lead to a Galbraithian “coalition of the concerned and aware”(37). Such empathy is “a prerequisite for the ability to listen to one another and for permissiveness and openness towards ‘otherness’, and further, can only be born out of a sense of shared suffering” (37). To the authors, it isn’t just that “(s)uffering in its variety of forms requires empathy and solidarity by all,” but that it necessarily “transcends a politically correct ideology” (37). Millions in both the Tea Party and MoveOn.org long suffered from being a mere afterthought to the political establishment, both of them impacted by policies that they are convinced exacerbated rather than ameliorated their woes. But they have shown few if any indications of a willingness to transcend a politically correct ideology. For this to come about, it would, as Melber and Kössler maintain, require “hard, sustained, and imaginative work” (33). How might this come to pass? Greg Anderson, in The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508-490 B.C., points to ancient Athens as a paradigmatic example of a society that undertook the hard imaginative work needed to develop the types of mediated connections that over time created a sense of shared belonging to a democratic community. “The process of transformation” in Attica, he argues, is “best understood as a bold exercise in social engineering, an experiment designed to bring together the diverse and far-flung inhabitants of an entire region and forge them into a single, self-governing political community of like-minded individuals” (5). While those males of sufficient socioeconomic distinction who were privileged enough to be citizens in the West’s first experiment in democracy were indeed like-minded, prising a self-governing political community, they were not single-minded; rather, those in the twelve dispersed tribes throughout Attica who coalesced to form a self-governing community apparently thrived on the free exchange and consideration of a wide range of ideas. They held that greater insights emerged only when a variety of views were subjected to scrutiny in the public sphere. Paul Woodruff notes in First Democracy that each Athenian was “given a share of the ability to be citizens, and that ability is understood both as a pair of virtues and as a kind of citizen wisdom.” Governing in this way was based on the shared view that “it is a natural part of being human to know enough to help govern your community” (149). Neither Tea Party nor MoveOn.org followers at present have this shared view on any semblance of a broad scale; rather, each betrays the sensibility that each ‘knows better’. As a consequence, any efforts at expanding their respective folds clearly do not include making overtures (or even extending olive branches) to one another. Even so, as impossibly optimistic as it might seem under current circumstances, I believe eventually they might come to see themselves as part of a greater or higher coalition – one serving the overriding cause of democracy itself – over the much longer term. But for this to become a reality, each group will first have to suffer some more. One other commonality they demonstrate is the power of grassroots activism – and the decided limitations. My hunch is that just as MoveOn.org’s progressives came to feel betrayed when Obama abandoned the liberal agenda of his presidential campaign to engage in political compromise and accommodation, Tea Party activists will come to find that their own expectations for political change will be equally stymied. In the 2010 elections, the Tea Party was a kingmaker in electoral politics, giving Republicans a decisive majority in Congress in the 2010 elections. But I suspect that those candidates the Tea Party supported will eventually resort to the practice of “politics as usual,” largely departing from the Tea Party agenda, in order to accomplish anything in Washington or become irrelevant in the existing system – a system long dominated by two political parties interested above and beyond all else in perpetuating their shared stranglehold on political power, and each equally beholden to corporate America for the contributions to their coffers that enable them to sustain this. If this scenario plays out, then at least some Tea Party activists might plausibly arrive at the unsettling conclusion that their suffering in the political arena is remarkably similar to that experienced by MoveOn.org’s cadre of concerned citizens who catapulted Obama into the office in the land, only to have most of their principal concerns neglected or dismissed, lost in the seamy world of back-room political deal-making. There is another possible scenario: What if either MoveOn.org or Tea Party becomes such an overwhelming force in politics that the other is attenuated, its members relegated once again to the fringe? If this occurred, the public sphere in the United States would be missing a vital dimension that has been part of its makeup since its founding days. For as Joseph Ellis, the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, points out: the achievement of the revolutionary generation was a collective enterprise that succeeded because of the diversity of personalities and ideologies present in the mix. Their interactions and juxtapositions generated a dynamic form of balance and equilibrium, not because any of them was perfect or infallible, but because their mutual imperfections and fallibilities, as well as their eccentricities and excesses, checked each other… . (17) At the United States’s beginnings, the ties that bound those who revolted against Britain were forged despite their unbridgeable chasms of ideology; their “differing postures toward the twin goals of freedom and equality” were “not resolved so much as built into the fabric of our national identity” (16). Even or especially as irreconcilable differences prompted early Americans to continue waging a battle of ideas in the political trenches, Thomas Jefferson, for one, believed they were all (or nearly all) “constitutionally and conscientiously democrats” (185). Extrapolating from this, one can posit that MoveOn.org and Tea Party, regardless of whether they choose to acknowledge it, are in tandem a modern-day manifestation of the original American coalition. If they could be inspired to see that each is an important player in furthering the democratic experiment as singularly practiced in the U.S., they just might come to care more for one another. Out of such caring, they might realise that neither has a monopoly on political wisdom, and as a result coalesce around the cause of promoting a less hostile body politic. AcknowledgementsThe author is grateful to the two blind peer reviewers for their most helpful suggestions. ReferencesAnderson, Greg. The Athenian Experiment: Building an Imagined Political Community in Ancient Attica, 508-490 B.C. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2003. Dewey, John. In J. Boydston (Ed.) John Dewey, Volume 2: 1925-1927. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University, 1984. Ellis, Joseph. Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation. New York, NY: Vintage. 2002. Erickson, Erick. “Tea Party Movement 2.0: Moving beyond Protesting to Fighting in Primaries, Ballot Boxes, and Becoming More Effective Activists.” 14 April 2010. 28 Sep. 2010 ‹http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/04/14/tea-party-movement-20/>.Galbraith, John Kenneth. The Good Society: The Humane Agenda. New York: Mariner Books, 1997. Green, Lelia. The Internet: An Introduction to New Media. Oxford: Berg, 2010.Hayes, Christopher. “MoveOn.org Is Not as Radical as Conservatives Think." The Nation. 16 July 2008. 28 Sep. 2010 ‹http://www.thenation.com/article/moveonorg-not-radical-conservatives-think>. Janofsky, Michael, Jennifer B. Lee. “Net Group Tries to Click Democrats to Power”. New York Times, 18 Nov 2003. 1 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/18/us/net-group-tries-to-click- democrats-to-power.html?scp=1&sq=%22bottom-up%20organization%22&st=cse>. Jefferson, Thomas. In M. Peterson, ed. The Political Writings of Thomas Jefferson. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1993. Kossler, Reinhart, and Hening Melber. “International Civil Society and the Challenge for Global Solidarity.” Development Dialogue 49 (Oct. 2007): 29-39. Malcolm, Andrew. “Myth-Busting Polls: Tea Party Members Are Average Americans, 41% Are Democrats, Independents.” Los Angeles Times, 5 April 2010 ‹http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2010/04/tea-party-obama.html>.MoveOn.org. n.d. 27 Sep. 2010 ‹http://moveon.org>. Tea Party. n.d. 1 Oct. 2010 ‹http://teaparty.freedomworks.org>.Tea Party Express. n.d. 1 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www.teapartyexpress.org>. Woodruff, Paul. First Democracy: The Challenge of an Ancient Idea. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Zernike, Kate. “With No Jobs, Plenty of Time for Tea Party.” New York Times, 27 Mar. 2010. 29 Sep. 2010 ‹http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/28/us/politics/28teaparty.html?scp=1&sq=%22watched%20their%20homes%20plummet%20in%20value%22&st=cse>.

Abstract:

Swine semantics erupted into a linguistic battle between the two U.S. presidential candidates in the 2008 campaign over a lesser-known colloquialism “lipstick on a pig” reference in a speech by then Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama. This resulted in the Republicans sparring with the Democrats over the identification of the “swine” in question, claiming “sexism” and demanding an apology on behalf of then Governor Sarah Palin, the first female Republican vice presidential candidate. The Republican Party, fearful of being criticised for its own sexist and racist views (Kuhn par. 1), seized the opportunity to attack the Democrats with a proactive media campaign that made the lipstick comment a lead story in the media during a critical time less than two months before the election, derailing more serious campaign issues and focusing attention on Palin, who had just made her national political debut and whose level of experience was widely debated. Leskovec, Backstrom, and Kleinberg conducted a meme-tracking study for analysing news-cycle phrases in approximately 90 million stories from 1.6 million online sites spanning mainstream news to blogs during the final three months of the U.S. presidential election (1). They discovered that “lipstick on a pig” was “stickier” than other phrases and received “unexpectedly high popularity” (4). A simple Google search of “lipstick on a pig” resulted in 244,000 results, with more than half originating in 2008. Obama’s “Lipstick on a Pig” Reference During the final rounds of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s words at a widely televised campaign stop in Lebanon, Virginia, on 9 September, sparked a linguistic debate between the two major American political parties 56 days before Election Day. Obama attempted to debunk McCain’s strategy about change in the following statement:John McCain says he’s about change, too. [...] And so I guess his whole angle is, watch out, George Bush. Except for economic policy, healthcare policy, tax policy, education policy, foreign policy, and Karl Rove-style politics [...] That’s not change. That’s just calling some—the same thing, something different. But you know [...] you can put [...] lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig (“Obama’s Take”).A reporter from The New York Times commented that it was clear to the audience that Obama’s “lipstick” phrase was a direct reference to McCain’s policies (Zeleny par. 5). Known as a well-educated, articulate speaker, perhaps one considered too professorial for mainstream America, Obama attempted to inject more folksy language and humour into his dialogue with the public. However, the Republicans interpreted the metaphor quite differently. Republicans Claim “Sexism” from a “Male Chauvinist Pig” The Republican contender John McCain and his entourage immediately took offence, claiming that the “pig” in question was a sexist comment referring to Palin, who was introduced on 29 August as the first female vice presidential candidate on the Republican ticket (“VP Pick”). A Republican National Committee spokeswoman quickly told the media, “Sarah Palin’s maverick record of reform doesn’t need any ‘dressing up,’ but the Obama campaign’s condescending commentary deserves some dressing down” (Chozick par. 8). McCain’s camp formed the Palin Truth Squad with 54 Republican women, primarily lawyers and politicians, on the same day as the metaphor was used, to counter negative media and Internet commentary about Palin (Harper A13). Almost immediately after Obama’s “lipstick” comment, McCain’s camp conducted a conference call with journalists and former Massachusetts Governor Jane Swift, a Republican and chair of the Palin Truth Squad, who stated the lipstick comment referred to Palin, “the only one of the four—the presidential and vice presidential candidates—who wears lipstick” (Kornblut and Shear par. 12). Another member of the Squad, Thelma Drake, then a Republican Representative from Virginia, said that “it’s hard for Barack Obama to paint himself as the agent of change if he harbors the same mindset that Palin and millions of women just like her, have been fighting against their whole lives” (Applegate par. 8). Swift and others also claimed Obama was referring to Palin since she had herself used a lipstick metaphor during her Republican National Convention speech, 3 Sepember: “I love those hockey moms. You know, they say the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick” (“Palin’s Speech” par. 26). The Republicans also created an anti-Obama Web ad with the theme, “Ready to Lead? No. Ready to Smear? Yes,“ (Weisman and Slevin A01) with a compilation of video clips of Palin’s “lipstick” joke, followed by the latter part of Obama's “lipstick” speech, and CBS News anchorwoman, Katie Couric, talking about “sexism” in politics, that latter of which referred to an older clip referring to Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the White House. Both clips on Obama and Couric were taken out of context. CBS retaliated and released a statement that the network “does not endorse any candidate” and that “any use of CBS personnel in political advertising that suggests the contrary is misleading” (Silva par. 8). YouTube pulled the Republican Web ads stating that the cause was “due to a copyright claim” (Silva par. 7). Another porcine phrase became linked to Obama—“male chauvinist pig”—an expression that evolved as an outgrowth of the feminist movement in the 1960s and first appeared with the third word, “pig,” in the media in 1970 (Mansbridge and Flaster 261). BlogHer, a blog for women, posted “Liberal Chauvinist Pigs,” on the same day as Obama's speech, asking: “Does the expression male chauvinist pig come to mind?” (Leary par. 5) Other conservative blogs also reflected on this question, painting Obama as a male chauvinist pig, and chastising both the liberal media and the Democrats for questioning Palin’s credentials as a viable vice presidential candidate. Obama “Sexist Pig Gear” protest tee-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers were sold online by Zazzle.com. Democratic Response to “Controversy” During a campaign stop in Norfolk, Virginia, the day after his “lipstick” comment, Obama called the Republican backlash the “latest made-up controversy by the John McCain campaign” and appealed for a return to more serious topics with “enough” of “foolish diversions” (“Obama Hits”). He stated that the Republicans “seize on an innocent remark, try to take it out of context, throw up an outrageous ad, because they know it’s catnip for the news media” (“Obama Hits”). Obama also referred to the situation as the “silly season of politics” in media interviews (James par. 8). Obama’s spokespeople rallied claiming that McCain played the “gender card about the use of a common analogy” (Kornblut and Shear par. 6). An Obama campaign spokesman distributed to the media copies of articles from a Chicago Tribune story in 2007 in which McCain applied the lipstick analogy about the healthcare strategy of Hillary Clinton, a previous female Democratic presidential contender (Chozick 11). Another Obama spokeswoman said that the porcine expression “was older than my grandfather’s grandfather,” (Zimmer par. 1) which also inspired the media and linguists to further investigate this claim. Evolution of “Lipstick on a Pig” This particular colloquial use of a “pig” evolved from a long history of porcine expressions in American politics. American political discourse has been rich with cultural references to porcine idioms with negative connotations. Pork barrels were common 19th-century household items used to store salt pork, and some plantation owners doled out the large barrels as rewards to slaves who then had to compete with each other to grab a portion (Maxey 693). In post-Civil War America, “pork barrel” became a political term for legislative bills “loaded with special projects for Members of Congress to distribute to their constituents back home as an act of largesse, courtesy of the federal taxpayer” (“Pork Barrel Legislation”). Today, “pork barrel” is widely used in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and other countries (“Definition Pork Barrel”) to refer to “government projects or appropriations yielding rich patronage benefits” (“Pork Barrel”). Conservative radio personality Rush Limbaugh coined the term, “porkulus,” as another expression for “pork barrel” by merging the words “pork and “stimulus,” while discussing President Obama’s economic stimulus package in January 2009 (Kuntz par. 1). Ben Zimmer, an American lexicologist, explained that “many porcine proverbs describe vain attempts at converting something from ugly to pretty, or from useless to useful” (par. 2). Zimmer and other writers investigated the heritage of “lipstick on a pig” over the past 500 years from “you can't make a silk purse from a sow’s ear,” “a hog in armour is still a hog,” and “a hog in a silk waistcoat is still a hog.” Zimmer connected the dots between the words “lipstick,” a 19th-century invention, and “pig” to a Los Angeles Times editor in 1926 who wrote: “Most of us know as much of history as a pig does of lipsticks” (par. 3). American Politicians Who Have Smeared “Lipstick on a Pig” Which American politicians had used “lipstick on a pig” before Obama? Both Democrats and Republicans have coloured their speech with this colloquialism to refer to specific issues, not specific people. In 2008, Elizabeth Edwards, wife of presidential hopeful John Edwards, used the porcine expression about McCain’s healthcare proposals at a Democratic campaign event and House Minority Leader John Boehner, a Republican, about weak Republican fundraising efforts during the same month (Covington and Curry par. 7-8). McCain ironically used the term twice to criticise Hillary Clinton’s healthcare proposals as “lipstick on a pig,” while they were both campaigning in 2007 (Covington and Curry par. 6). His statement received limited attention at the time. During a telephone interview in 2007, Obama also had used the pig analogy when referring to an “impossible assignment” George W. Bush gave to General Petraeus, who was then serving as the Multinational Forces Iraq Commander (Tapper par. 15). In 2004, Republican Vice President Richard Cheney applied a regional slant: “As we like to say in Wyoming, you can put all the lipstick you want on a pig, but at the end of the day it's still a pig,” about the national defence record of John Kerry, then a Democratic presidential nominee (Covington and Curry par. 4). A few months earlier that year, John Edwards, Democratic vice presidential candidate, scolded the Bush administration for putting “lipstick on a pig” on “lackluster job-creation numbers” (Covington and Curry par. 3). Representative Charles Rangel, a Democrat, identified the “pig” as a tax bill the same year (Siegel par. 15-16). In 1992, the late Governor of Texas, Ann Richards, a Democrat, who was known for colourful phrases, gave the pig a name when she said: “You can put lipstick on a hog and call it Monique, but it is still a pig,” referring to the Republican administration for deploying warships to protect oil tankers in the Middle East, effectively subsidizing foreign oil (Zimmer par. 4). A year earlier, when she introduced her first budget for Texas, she said: “This is not another one of those deals where you put lipstick on a hog and call it a princess” (Zimmer par. 4). The earliest reputed recorded use of an American politician using the phrase was Texas Democrat Jim Hightower, who applied it to depict the reorganisation of Ronald Reagan's Cabinet in 1986 (Macintyre 16). Time magazine reporters (Covington and Curry par. 2) and Zimmer (par. 3) claimed that a San Francisco radio personality, Ron Lyons, was one of the earliest quoted in print with “lipstick on a pig” about renovation plans for a local park in November 1985 in the Washington Post. Author of the Double-Tongued Dictionary, Grant Barrett, uncovered a 1980 article from a small Washington state newspaper as the earliest written record with an article that stated: “You can clean up a pig, put a ribbon on it’s [sic] tail, spray it with perfume, but it is still a pig” (Guzman par. 7). A book on communication also adopted the pig metaphor in its title in 2006, Lipstick on a Pig: Winning in the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game, by Torie Clarke, who previously served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs under Donald Rumsfield during the early years of the G.W. Bush Administration. Media Commentary According to The New York Times (Leibovich and Barrett), “lipstick on a pig” was one of the most popular political buzzwords and phrases of 2008, along with others directly referring to Palin, “Caribou Barbie” and “Hockey Mom,” as well as “Maverick,” a popular term used by both McCain and Palin. Many journalists played on the metaphor to express disdain for negative political campaigns. A Wall Street Journal article asked: “What's the difference between a more hopeful kind of politics and old-fashioned attacks? Lipstick” (Chozick par. 1). International media also covered the Obama-McCain lipstick wars. The Economist, for example, wrote that the “descent of American politics into pig wrestling has dismayed America’s best friends abroad” (“Endless Culture War” par. 6). Bloggers claimed that Obama’s “lipstick” speech was influenced by copy and imagery from two leading American cartoonists. The Free Republic, self-acclaimed to be “the premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism” (Freerepublic.com), claimed that Obama plagiarized almost verbatim the language leading into the “pig” comment from a Tom Toles cartoon that ran in the Washington Post on 5 Sepember (see fig. 1).Fig. 1. Toles, Tom. Cartoon. Washington Post. 5 Sep. 2008. 30 July 2010 Another cartoon by R. J. Matson appeared in the St. Louis Post Dispatch (see fig. 2) four days before Obama’s speech that depicted Palin not just as a pig wearing lipstick, but as one using pork barrel funding. The cartoon’s caption provides an interpretation of Palin's lipstick analogy: “Question: What’s the Difference Between a Hockey Mom Reformer and a Business-As-Usual Pork Barrel-Spending Politician? Answer: Lipstick.” Newsbusters.org blogger stated: “It’s not too far-fetched to say Team Obama is cribbing his stump speech laugh lines from the liberal funnies” (Shepherd par. 3). Fig 2. Matson, R. J. Cartoon. St. Louis Post Dispatch. 5 Sep. 2008. 30 July 2010 . A porcine American character known for heavy makeup and a starring role as one of the Muppets created by puppeteer Jim Henson in the 1970s, Miss Piggy still remains an American icon. She commented on the situation during an interview on the set of “Today,” an American television program. When the interviewer asked, “Were you surprised by all the hubbub this election season over your lipstick practices?,” Miss Piggy’s response was “Moi will not dignify that with a response” (Raphael par. 6-7). Concluding Comments The 2008 U.S. presidential election presented new players in the arena: the first African-American in a leading party and the first female Republican. During a major election, words used by candidates are widely scrutinised and, in this case, the “lipstick on a pig” phrase was misconstrued by the opposing party, known for conservative values, that latched onto the opportunity to level a charge of sexism against the more liberal party. Vocabulary about gender, like language about race, can become a “minefield” (Givhan M01). With today’s 24/7 news cycle and the blogosphere, the perceived significance of a political comment, whether innocent or not, is magnified through repeated analysis and commentary. The meme-tracking study by Leskovec, Backstrom, and Kleinberg observed that 2.5 hours was the typical time lag between stories originating in mainstream media and reaching the blogosphere (8); whereas only 3.5 percent of the stories began in blogs and later permeated into traditional media (9). An English author of the history of clichés and language, Julia Cresswell, stated that the “lipstick” term “seems to be another candidate for clichéhood” (61). Although usage of clichés can prove to cause complications as in the case of Obama’s lipstick reference, Obama was able to diffuse the Republican backlash quickly and make a plea to return to serious issues affecting voters. David Greenberg analysed Obama’s presidential win and explained: And although other factors, especially the tanking economy, obviously contributed more directly to his November victory, it would be a mistake to overlook the importance of his skill at mastering the politics of negative attacks. When Obama went negative against others, he carefully singled out aspects of his opponents’ characters that, he argued, American politics itself had to transcend; he associated his foes with the worst of the old politics and himself with the best of the new. When others fired at him, in contrast, he was almost always able to turn the criticisms back upon them—through feigned outrage, among other tactics—as perpetuating those selfsame blights on our politics (70). References Applegate, Aaron. “Rep. Drake Criticizes Obama for ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ Remark.” Virginia Pilot 10 Sep. 2008. 28 Jul. 2010. Chozick, Amy. “Obama Puts Different Twist on Lipstick.” Wall Street Journal 9 Sep. 2008. 30 Jul. 2010. Covington, Marti, and Maya Curry. “A Brief History of: ‘Putting Lipstick on a Pig.’” Time 11 Sep. 2008. 17 May 2010. Cresswell, Julia. “Let’s Hear it for the Cliché.” British Journalism Review 19.57 (2008): 57-61. “Endless Culture War.” The Economist 4 Oct. 2008: ABI/INFORM Global, ProQuest. 30 Jul. 2010. “Definition Pork Barrel.” Webster’s Online Dictionary. 30 Jul. 2010. freerepublic.com. “Welcome to Free Republic.” Free Republic 2009. 30 Jul. 2010. Givhan, Robin. “On the Subject of Race, Words Get in the Way.” Washington Post 20 Jan. 2008: M01. Greenberg, David. “Accentuating the Negative.” Dissent 56.2 (2009): 70-75. Guzman, Monica. “‘Lipstick on a Pig’ Finds Origin in Tiny State Newspaper.” Seattlepi.com 10 Sep. 2008. 17 May 2010. Harper, Jennifer. “Obama Comment Offends GOP Women; ‘Palin Truth Squad’ Sent Out to Counter ‘Lipstick on a Pig’ Remark.” Washington Times 10 Sep. 2008: A13. Huston, Warner Todd. “Did Obama Steal His Lip Stick on a Pig From a Political Cartoon?” Newsbusters.org 10 Sep. 2008. 15 Jul. 2010 . James, Frank. “Barack Obama on David Letterman.” Chicago Tribune 11 Sep. 2008. 15 Jul. 2010 http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/09/barack_obama_on_david_letterma.html>. Kornblut, Anne E., and Michael D. Shear. “McCain Camp Sees an Insult in a Saying.” Washington Post 10 Sep. 2008. 30 Jul. 2010 AR2008090903531.html>. Kuhn, David P. “GOP Fears Charges of Racism, Sexism.” Politico.com 23 Feb. 2008. 4 Oct. 2010. Kuntz, Tom. “Porkulus.” NYTimes.com 8 Feb. 2009. 30 Jul. 2010. Leary, Anne. “Liberal Chauvinist Pigs.” BlogHer 9 Sep. 2008. 2 Oct. 2010. Leibovich, Mark, and Grant Barrett. “The Buzzwords of 2008.” New York Times 21 Dec. 2008. 29 Jul. 2010 http://www.nytimes.com/ref/weekinreview/buzzwords2008.html>. Leskovec, Jure, Lars Backstrom, and Jon Kleinberg. “Meme-tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle.” ACM SIGKDD International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining, Paris, 28 Jun. 2009. 30 Jul. 2010 . Macintyre, Ben. “US Politics is Littered with Dawgs, Crawdaddys and Pigs in Lipstick.” The Times [London] 27 Sep. 2008: 16. Mansbridge, Jane, and Katherine Flaster. “Male Chauvinist, Feminist, Sexist, and Sexual Harassment: Different Trajectories in Feminist Linguistic Innovation.” American Speech 80.3 (Fall 2005): 256-279. Maxey, Chester Collins. “A Little History of Pork.” National Municipal Review, Volume VIII. Concord: Rumford Press, 1919. Google Books. 30 Jul. 2010. “Obama Hits Back Against McCain Campaign.” MSNBC 10 Sep. 2008. Televised Speech. 18 May 2010. “Obama’s Take on McCain's Version of Change.” CNN 9 Sep. 2009. YouTube.com. 17 May 2010. “Palin’s Speech at the Republican National Convention.” New York Times 3 Sep. 2008. 17 May 2010. “Pork Barrel.” Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary 2010. 30 Jul. 2010. “Pork Barrel Legislation.” C-SPAN Congressional Glossary. c-span.org. 17 May 2010. Raphael, Rina. “Miss Piggy: Obama Should Make Poodle First Pet” Today 13 Nov. 2008. MSNBC.com. 29 Jul. 2010. Shepherd, Ken. “Palin Shown As Lipsticked Pig in Cartoon Days Before Obama Remark.” NewsBusters.org 11 Sep. 2008. 30 Jul. 2010 . Siegel, Robert. “Putting Lipstick on a Pig.” National Public Radio 10 Sep. 2008. 16 Jul. 2010. Silva, Mark. “Katie Couric's 'Lipstick' Rescue: CBS.” Chicago Tribune 11 Sep. 2008. 30 Jul. 2010. Tapper, Jack. “A Piggish Debate: Power, Pop, and Probings from ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper.” ABC News 9 Sep. 2008. 29 Jul. 2010. “VP Pick Palin Makes Appeal to Women Voters.” NBC News, msnbc.com, and Associated Press 28 Aug. 2008. 30 Jul. 2010. Weisman, Jonathan, and Peter Slevin. “McCain Camp Hits Obama on More Than One Front.” Washington Post 11 Sep. 2008: A04. Zeleny, Jeff. “Feeling a Challenge, Obama Sharpens His Silver Tongue.” New York Times 10 Sep. 2008. 27 Jul. 2010. Zimmer, Ben. “Who First Put ‘Lipstick on a Pig’?” The Slate 10 Sep. 2008. 17 May 2010.

Abstract:

Introduction This paper highlights the efforts of cultural intermediaries operating social networks for pets, known as petworking. Petworking aligns with the ever-increasing use of social media platforms where “one in ten pet owners have a social media account especially for their pet” (Schroeder). Petworking represents the increased affect of connectivity between pets and their owners within the broader pet community. Although it is true that “no one knows you are a dog on the Internet” (Steiner), it is fair to say that petworking is not the work of the animals directly, but the cultural intermediaries who construct the environment for pets to interact with others. Boo the Pomeranian is one example of a highly networked, cute and celebrity pet, whose antics are broadcast across a plethora of online networks including Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. However, to contradict the rhetoric that cats rule the Internet, it is instead the strategic efforts of cultural intermediaries that take the banal activities of Boo and his “petworked individualism” to his global fan base. The research within this paper, through the lens of animal celebrity, extends recent work undertaken in the celebrity studies field that seeks to understand the connection between celebrities and ‘ordinary folk’, or rather ordinary folk as celebrities. In that regard, the connection between ordinary and celebrity animals is explored through the work of the cultural intermediary who capitalises on the authenticity and cute characteristics of animals. This paper also seeks to understand the role of the petworking cultural intermediary by exploring the cyclic process of disintermediation/remediation/intermediation of Internet communication. Celebrity Studies, Cute Culture and Petworking It is appropriate to first outline the connection of cute with celebrity, and how they relate to petworking. In the first instance, the notion of celebrity is primarily a phenomenon associated with humans. Historically, one of the earliest studies on celebrity focused on the “the person who is known for his well-knownness” (Boorstin 57). Further, celebrity has been noted as a construct by the media industries that has developed “entertainment figures as transmitted via the 20th century mass media” (Feeley 468). Celebrity has a history with the 19th and 20th century literature on the Hollywood star system and its transmission of fame to the mass audiences. As media and cultural studies adopted celebrity as a focus, celebrity studies became fascinated with “how the star image was produced and consumed and how it both shaped and reflected social and cultural identity” (Feeley 470). A more contemporary study into the exploration of celebrity is, as Turner suggests, a demotic turn that sees the media create ‘celebrities’ from ordinary folk. Dyer has argued that one of the core characteristics of celebrity is the ability for one to identify and imitate the star. In each of these examples of celebrity studies, it is assumed that the celebrity is indeed a human being. The humanistic value of celebrity then is problematic when considering how it relates to animals, specifically one’s pet. One way of approaching the study of celebrity and pets is through the lens of animal celebrity. There have been numerous cases of famous animals, with one of the earliest records in Hanno, a famous elephant who was a gift for Pope Leo X on his coronation from King Manuel I of Portugal, 1514. More recent animal celebrity has been demonstrated in cases of Paul the octopus whose celebrity status was reached through his ability to predict the winning teams during the 2010 World Cup, or Dolly the sheep who is infamous as being not only the first cloned sheep but also the first cloned being. Other famous pets are struck by celebrity status for non-favourable acts, for example Tilikum, or Tilly as he is known. TIlly is a bull orca that has been responsible for the deaths of three people during his time in captivity. His story, which also represents his association with celebrity, is documented in the 2013 documentary, Blackfish. Each of these cases of famous animals demonstrates that animal celebrity is not a new issue, but highlights the significance between ‘ordinary’ animals and ‘celebrity’ animals. It could be argued it is the impact of the mass media’s depiction of these animals that defines them as celebrity animals beyond their ordinary counterparts. Yet, in attempting to understand the appeal of animal celebrity, Blewitt notes that pets “wear the badge of authenticity that is held to be so important for credible image-management; there is never any question as to whether or not they are ‘being themselves’” (117). The appeal of animal celebrity for humans is represented through the animal’s authenticity because they are incapable of misrepresenting facts. Often the authentic animal characteristic is combined with ‘cute’ characteristics to increase their appeal, or their relational value with humans, and thereby their popularity. This is certainly the case with giant pandas where they “have the credibility of being an endangered species, look cuddly, have big moony eyes and so have automatic non-human conservation charisma” (Blewitt 326). In this scenario, the giant panda represents the popular qualities of animal cuteness which increases their relational value with humans. McVeigh suggests cute is a symbol of daily aesthetic equaling a “standard attribute” (230) to facilitate high reading of cultural texts and goods. Kinsella argues that cute builds on cutie, which “takes cuteness as its starting point, but on top of the basic ingredient of childlikeness, Cutie style is also chic, eccentric, androgynous and humorous” (Fetishism 229). Cute can shift from pop culture signifiers, to high cultural symbols that represent young, amusing and helpless representations. When cute is in dialogue with celebrity, specifically animal celebrity, it is the cute appeal, or the “silent desperation of the lost puppy dog” (Harris 179) that propels humans to increasingly construct and consume celebrity through animals. Distributing the appeal of cute animal celebrities across digital communication technologies provides the opportunity to explore and understand the petworking phenomenon. The authentic representation of cute animals outlined above has demonstrated the increased relational value of animal celebrity in a non-networked environment. However, when contextualised in a digitally connected environment that engages the affordances of social media platforms, the exploration of petworking can answer some animal celebrity questions raised by Giles. In his taxonomy of animal celebrity, Giles defines four categories that distinguish famous pets: “(a) public figures; (b) the meritocratically famous; (c) show business ‘stars’; and (d) the accidentally famous” (118). He suggests the first two categories are exemplified by the pets of politicians, or the biggest or smallest of a species. However he notes “it is impossible to distinguish between the remaining categories since ‘accidental fame’ presupposes that the other famous animals have engineered their own celebrity to some extent” (ibid.). This is precisely the space that petworking occupies. Pets do not engineer their own celebrity; rather, it is the strategic and coordinated efforts of their owners that create “accidentally famous” animals. The example of petworking demonstrates the role of the intermediary who constructs the identity of the non-ordinary pet with high relational value. A pet with high relational value does not occur serendipitously nor is it the work of a famous animal engineering his or her own celebrity. Rather, it is the work of human intermediaries who strategically utilise authenticity and cute as animal characteristics that increase the animal’s appeal, and thereby its popularity. To successfully engage in petworking, intermediaries use social media platforms to disseminate or broadcast the celebrity animal’s characteristics. The following case study of Boo the Pomeranian demonstrates the connection of celebrity studies with cute culture that is disseminated through social media platforms – a petworking example. The Case of BooThe conceptual framework for this research draws from the media’s coverage of petworking. In that environment, petworking is referenced wherever journalists refer to the practice of “cute” animals engaging in social networking activities. Warr suggests petworking represents “people who want to set up personal social profiles on behalf of their pets”. Ortiz suggests petworking aims to “employ a network marketing strategy for social, political or commercial gain using animals, pets, and goods and services related to animals and pets”. Interestingly, much of the discussion of petworking relates to the act of networking through pets to break the ice with other pet owners to engage in more complex interactions. To move the existing work beyond pets to break the ice, Williams notes that “one in 10 of all UK pets have their own Facebook page, Twitter account or YouTube channel” and “14 per cent of dog owners maintain a Facebook page for their pet, whereas 6 per cent boast Twitter accounts”. Regardless of the motivation of pet owners to engage in petworking, there is an increasing presence of pets in an online environment. Boo the Pomeranian, rose to fame as the world’s cutest dog during 2009. His Facebook page has 10,435,458 likes at the time of writing, making him the most popular dog on Facebook and aligning him with the Public Figure page category, a key celebrity indicator. His tagline reads, “My name is Boo. I am a dog. Life is good.” His connection to popularity came on 26 October 2010, when celebrity blogger Khloé Kardashian wrote “OMG, I just found this dog named Boo on facebook and I am seriously in LOVE […] If you are in facebook, go like this page because it’s beyond cute!” Boo’s popularity gained momentum across the Internet and since then he has featured on television shows, has produced a line of plush toys and has a book for sale on Amazon, “Boo: The life of the World’s Cutest Dog”. This example of Kardashian’s public call to action is a clear celebrity endorsement which trades on both cute and celebrity. Boo’s rise to fame also aligns with Giles’ fourth category of animal celebrity, accidentally famous. If it were not for Khloé Kardashian’s celebrity endorsement, the distinction between Boo as an ordinary pet and a celebrity pet would be very clear. Boo’s rise to a celebrity status is a clear example of how a human intermediary can create and develop a high relational value of a pet through the endorsement of cute. The connection between cute and popularity also suggests cute creates strong Internet connections between individuals with a compulsion to belong to the larger fan group. Although Boo’s owner remains anonymous under the moniker of J.H. Lee, it would appear the motivation behind Boo, although started as a joke Facebook page (Lee), is to commodify the pet. The popularity of Boo’s cuteness has bolstered the dog as a cultural product with production of countless novelty items, indicative of the creative vernacular of the pet’s owner. In this example, the soft power that accompanies Boo is persuasive and invisible. Soft power in this context is a “concept of strategic narrative […] especially in regard to how influence works in a new media environment” (Roselle et al. 70). In the context of globalisation, Boo is the ideal transnational cultural icon that embodies an ideology, disseminated through the instrument of cute. When cute is used as an ideological construct, it is rarely the object that generates soft power but rather the intermediary constructing the cultural artefact. The following section explores the cultural intermediary as the individual responsible for the mediation of ideology through cultural production and consumption. The cultural intermediary determines how cute shapes and redefines social and cultural identity. Petworking as Cultural Intermediation Much of the existing literature on cute culture has focussed on the impact of cute upon culture, negating the process of their cultural construction. Their construction is, like other creative discourses, the result of mediation by multiple roles between the production and consumption of cultural artefacts. The cultural intermediary plays a crucial role in aligning the construction of meaning that aligns the perspectives of both cultural artefact producers and consumers. For example, cute is constructed by designers and stylists, whereas celebrity is the work of the public relations agent. Cultural intermediation was first used by Pierre Bourdieu as a way of describing the individual who mediates between and connects different cultural fields. Negus reappropriated the idea by contextualising the cultural intermediary within the creative industries as a means of bridging the gap between cultural production and consumption. Negus focuses on roles such as accountants, A&R agents and senior executives within the creative industries, and concluded that instead of bridging the gap, these roles increase the distance between production and consumption. Disintermediation – a process that involves a direct connection between producer and consumer, or artist and audience – would be more appropriate. I have previously argued for a combined producer/consumer production model (Hutchinson) that is facilitated by cultural intermediation within the context of media institutions. The cultural intermediary plays a crucial role in aligning the perspective of the contributing authors with the regulatory frameworks of the hosting institutions. Cultural intermediaries may be community managers, program producers, legal teams, or archivists that interface between the contributors and the institutional regulatory framework. For example, an artist might contribute work to a participatory project with little understanding of the regulatory constraints of the project. It is the role of the cultural intermediary to ensure the work maintains its creative and thematic aspiration while aligning with the governing rules of the institution. To turn cultural intermediation to the practice of petworking, there are two distinct stakeholders: the pets and pet fans. Within petworking, the cultural intermediary is responsible for understanding the interests of pet fans and an understanding of how to represent pets to align with those interests: a process Blewitt described as increasing high relational value. As described earlier, cute is a powerful instrument to promote the popularity of pets and increase their prominence across online spaces. It is therefore not the cuteness of the pets that determine their popularity and virality, but rather the strategic efforts of the cultural intermediary who engages in cute as a useful communication tool. Boo is a clear example of how cultural intermediaries engage in cute as an apparatus to increase the high relational value of animals for their human counterparts. It is not necessarily the animal themselves as they are not, as Giles suggests, within the first two categories of public figures or the meritocratically famous. They are ordinary pets that have been aligned with the authentic and cute characteristics of animal celebrity by their cultural intermediaries which increases their relational value, thereby creating celebrity pets. In this example, Boo the Pomeranian demonstrates how a cultural icon has been created, or mediated, by his owner, the cultural intermediary, by embracing authentic and cute characteristics and distributing the cultural artefact across social media platforms. In these instances, the agency of the cultural intermediary becomes increasingly important. Conclusion If constructed correctly, cute can be used as a powerful instrument to create a cultural artefact. This paper has highlighted the similarities between animal celebrity and cute culture through authenticity and popularity, or “knownness”, of animals. The cute/celebrity framework aligns with petworking to highlight how cute pets are created, mediated and distributed across social media platforms. In this context, it is the role of the cultural intermediary to mediate these celebrity animals by identifying the stakeholder groups associated with petworking, understanding their interests and producing cultural artefacts that address those interests. In the case study of Boo the Pomeranian, it has been demonstrated that the authenticity and cute characteristics are directly connected to popularity. In this situation, the role of the cultural intermediary is to promote those characteristics for the stakeholder groups interested in the cultural artefact, to increase its popularity. The role of the cultural intermediary also demonstrates the significance of intermediation within the production and distribution of cultural goods. Acknowledgements Andrew Whelan, Grace O’Neil, Mikaela Griffith, Elizabeth Arnold, Greta Mayr. References Blewitt, John. “What’s New Pussycat? A Genealogy of Animal Celebrity.” Celebrity Studies 4.3 (2013): 325-338. Boorstin, D.J. The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America. New York: Harper and Row, 1962. Bourdieu, Pierre. A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. 1st ed. London: Routledge, 1984. Dyer, Richard. Stars. London: British Film Institute, 1979. Feeley, Kathleen. "Gossip as News: On Modern U.S. Celebrity Culture and Journalism." History Compass 10.6 (2012): 467-82. Giles, David. “Animal Celebrities.” Celebrity Studies 4.2 (2013): 115-128. Harris, Daniel. “Cuteness.” Salmagundi 96 (1992): 177-186. Hutchinson, Jonathon. “Communication Models of Institutional Online Communities: The Role of the ABC Cultural Intermediary.” Platform: Journal of Media and Communication 5.1 (2013). 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://journals.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/platform/v5i1_hutchinson.html›. Kardashian, Khloé. "Introducing the Cutest Dog on the Planet… Boo!!!!!!". Khloé Kardashian Blog, 2010. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://khloekardashian.celebuzz.com/introducing_the_cutest_dog_on_the_planetboo-10-2010›. Kinsella, Sharon. "What's behind the Fetishism of Japanese School Uniforms?" Fashion Theory 6.2 (2000): 215-38. McVeigh, Brian J. “How Hello Kitty Commodifies the Cute, Cool and Camp: ‘Consumutopia’ versus ‘Control’ in Japan.” Journal of Material Culture 5.2 (2000): 225-245. Negus, Keith. "The Work of Cultural Intermediaries and the Enduring Distance between Production and Consumption." Cultural Studies 16.4 (2002): 501-15. Ortiz, Robert. "Petworking — Defined by Robert Ortiz." The GOD BOLT, 23 Jan. 2009. ‹http://thegodbolt.blogspot.com.au/2009/01/petworking-defined-by-robert-ortiz.html›. Roselle, Laura, Alister Miskimmon, and Ben O’Loughlin. “Strategic Narrative: A New Means to Understanding Soft Power.” Media, War & Conflict 7.1 (2014): 70-84. Schroeder, Stan. “1 in 10 Pets Have a Social Networking Profile.” Mashable 13 July 2011. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://mashable.com/2011/07/13/pets-social-networking›. Steiner, Peter. “On the Internet, Nobody Knows You're a Dog.” Cartoon. The New Yorker, 5 July 1993. Turner, Graeme. “Surrendering the Space.” Cultural Studies 25.4-5 (2011): 685-99. Warr, Philippa. “My Social Petwork: Facebook for Your Pets.” Wired.co.uk 12 Apr. 2013. 29 Apr. 2014 ‹http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-04/12/my-social-petwork›. Williams, Rhiannon. “Dogs Dominate Social 'Petworking'.” The Telegraph 15 Feb. 2014.

Abstract:

What strikes me about the habits of the people who spend so much time on the Net—well, it’s so new that we don't know what will come next—is in fact precisely how niche in character it is. You ask people what nets they are on, and they’re all so specialised! The Argentines on the Argentine Net and so forth. And it’s particularly the Argentines who are not in Argentina. (Anderson, in Gower, par. 5) The preceding quotation, taken from his 1996 interview with Eric Gower, sees Benedict Anderson reflecting on the formation of imagined, transnational communities on the Internet. Anderson is, of course, famous for his work on how nationalism, as an “imagined community,” gets constructed through the shared consumption of print media (6-7, 26-27); although its readers will never all see each other face to face, people consuming a newspaper or novel in a shared language perceive themselves as members of a collective. In this more recent interview, Anderson recognised the specific groupings of people in online communities: Argentines who find themselves outside of Argentina link up online in an imagined diaspora community. Over the course of the last decade and a half since Anderson spoke about Argentinian migrants and diaspora communities, we have witnessed an exponential growth of new forms of digital communication, including social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), Weblogs, micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter), and video-sharing sites (e.g. YouTube). Alongside these new means of communication, our current epoch of globalisation is also characterised by migration flows across, and between, all continents. In his book Modernity at Large, Arjun Appadurai recognised that “the twin forces of mass migration and electronic mediation” have altered the ways the imagination operates. Furthermore, these two pillars, human motion and digital mediation, are in constant “flux” (44). The circulation of people and digitally mediatised content proceeds across and beyond boundaries of the nation-state and provides ground for alternative community and identity formations. Appadurai’s intervention has resulted in increasing awareness of local, transnational, and global networking flows of people, ideas, and culturally hybrid artefacts. In this article, we analyse the various innovative tactics taken up by migrant youth to imagine digital diasporas. Inspired by scholars such as Appadurai, Avtar Brah and Paul Gilroy, we tease out—from a postcolonial perspective—how digital diasporas have evolved over time from a more traditional understanding as constituted either by a vertical relationship to a distant homeland or a horizontal connection to the scattered transnational community (see Safran, Cohen) to move towards a notion of “hypertextual diaspora.” With hypertextual diaspora, these central axes which constitute the understanding of diaspora are reshuffled in favour of more rhizomatic formations where affiliations, locations, and spaces are constantly destabilised and renegotiated. Needless to say, diasporas are not homogeneous and resist generalisation, but in this article we highlight common ways in which young migrant Internet users renew the practices around diaspora connections. Drawing from research on various migrant populations around the globe, we distinguish three common strategies: (1) the forging of transnational public spheres, based on maintaining virtual social relations by people scattered across the globe; (2) new forms of digital diasporic youth branding; and (3) the cultural production of innovative hypertexts in the context of more rhizomatic digital diaspora formations. Before turning to discuss these three strategies, the potential of a postcolonial framework to recognise multiple intersections of diaspora and digital mediation is elaborated. Hypertext as a Postcolonial Figuration Postcolonial scholars, Appadurai, Gilroy, and Brah among others, have been attentive to diasporic experiences, but they have paid little attention to the specificity of digitally mediated diaspora experiences. As Maria Fernández observes, postcolonial studies have been “notoriously absent from electronic media practice, theory, and criticism” (59). Our exploration of what happens when diasporic youth go online is a first step towards addressing this gap. Conceptually, this is clearly an urgent need since diasporas and the digital inform each other in the most profound and dynamic of ways: “the Internet virtually recreates all those sites which have metaphorically been eroded by living in the diaspora” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 396). Writings on the Internet tend to favour either the “gold-rush” mentality, seeing the Web as a great equaliser and bringer of neoliberal progress for all, or the more pessimistic/technophobic approach, claiming that technologically determined spaces are exclusionary, white by default, masculine-oriented, and heteronormative (Everett 30, Van Doorn and Van Zoonen 261). For example, the recent study by Ito et al. shows that young people are not interested in merely performing a fiction in a parallel online world; rather, the Internet gets embedded in their everyday reality (Ito et al. 19-24). Real-life commercial incentives, power hierarchies, and hegemonies also get extended to the digital realm (Schäfer 167-74). Online interaction remains pre-structured, based on programmers’ decisions and value-laden algorithms: “people do not need a passport to travel in cyberspace but they certainly do need to play by the rules in order to function electronically” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 405). We began our article with a statement by Benedict Anderson, stressing how people in the Argentinian diaspora find their space on the Internet. Online avenues increasingly allow users to traverse and add hyperlinks to their personal websites in the forms of profile pages, the publishing of preferences, and possibilities of participating in and affiliating with interest-based communities. Online journals, social networking sites, streaming audio/video pages, and online forums are all dynamic hypertexts based on Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) coding. HTML is the protocol of documents that refer to each other, constituting the backbone of the Web; every text that you find on the Internet is connected to a web of other texts through hyperlinks. These links are in essence at equal distance from each other. As well as being a technological device, hypertext is also a metaphor to think with. Figuratively speaking, hypertext can be understood as a non-hierarchical and a-centred modality. Hypertext incorporates multiplicity; different pathways are possible simultaneously, as it has “multiple entryways and exits” and it “connects any point to any other point” (Landow 58-61). Feminist theorist Donna Haraway recognised the dynamic character of hypertext: “the metaphor of hypertext insists on making connections as practice.” However, she adds, “the trope does not suggest which connections make sense for which purposes and which patches we might want to follow or avoid.” We can begin to see the value of approaching the Internet from the perspective of hypertext to make an “inquiry into which connections matter, why, and for whom” (128-30). Postcolonial scholar Jaishree K. Odin theorised how hypertextual webs might benefit subjects “living at the borders.” She describes how subaltern subjects, by weaving their own hypertextual path, can express their multivocality and negotiate cultural differences. She connects the figure of hypertext with that of the postcolonial: The hypertextual and the postcolonial are thus part of the changing topology that maps the constantly shifting, interpenetrating, and folding relations that bodies and texts experience in information culture. Both discourses are characterised by multivocality, multilinearity, openendedness, active encounter, and traversal. (599) These conceptions of cyberspace and its hypertextual foundations coalesce with understandings of “in-between”, “third”, and “diaspora media space” as set out by postcolonial theorists such as Bhabha and Brah. Bhabha elaborates on diaspora as a space where different experiences can be articulated: “These ‘in-between’ spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation (4). (Dis-)located between the local and the global, Brah adds: “diaspora space is the point at which boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, of belonging and otherness, of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ are contested” (205). As youths who were born in the diaspora have begun to manifest themselves online, digital diasporas have evolved from transnational public spheres to differential hypertexts. First, we describe how transnational public spheres form one dimension of the mediation of diasporic experiences. Subsequently, we focus on diasporic forms of youth branding and hypertext aesthetics to show how digitally mediated practices can go beyond and transgress traditional formations of diasporas as vertically connected to a homeland and horizontally distributed in the creation of transnational public spheres. Digital Diasporas as Diasporic Public Spheres Mass migration and digital mediation have led to a situation where relationships are maintained over large geographical distances, beyond national boundaries. The Internet is used to create transnational imagined audiences formed by dispersed people, which Appadurai describes as “diasporic public spheres”. He observes that, as digital media “increasingly link producers and audiences across national boundaries, and as these audiences themselves start new conversations between those who move and those who stay, we find a growing number of diasporic public spheres” (22). Media and communication researchers have paid a lot of attention to this transnational dimension of the networking of dispersed people (see Brinkerhoff, Alonso and Oiarzabal). We focus here on three examples from three different continents. Most famously, media ethnographers Daniel Miller and Don Slater focused on the Trinidadian diaspora. They describe how “de Rumshop Lime”, a collective online chat room, is used by young people at home and abroad to “lime”, meaning to chat and hang out. Describing the users of the chat, “the webmaster [a Trini living away] proudly proclaimed them to have come from 40 different countries” (though massively dominated by North America) (88). Writing about people in the Greek diaspora, communication researcher Myria Georgiou traced how its mediation evolved from letters, word of mouth, and bulletins to satellite television, telephone, and the Internet (147). From the introduction of the Web, globally dispersed people went online to get in contact with each other. Meanwhile, feminist film scholar Anna Everett draws on the case of Naijanet, the virtual community of “Nigerians Living Abroad”. She shows how Nigerians living in the diaspora from the 1990s onwards connected in global transnational communities, forging “new black public spheres” (35). These studies point at how diasporic people have turned to the Internet to establish and maintain social relations, give and receive support, and share general concerns. Establishing transnational communicative networks allows users to imagine shared audiences of fellow diasporians. Diasporic imagination, however, goes beyond singular notions of this more traditional idea of the transnational public sphere, as it “has nowadays acquired a great figurative flexibility which mostly refers to practices of transgression and hybridisation” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Subjects” 208). Below we recognise another dimension of digital diasporas: the articulation of diasporic attachment for branding oneself. Mocro and Nikkei: Diasporic Attachments as a Way to Brand Oneself In this section, we consider how hybrid cultural practices are carried out over geographical distances. Across spaces on the Web, young migrants express new forms of belonging in their dealing with the oppositional motivations of continuity and change. The generational specificity of this experience can be drawn out on the basis of the distinction between “roots” and “routes” made by Paul Gilroy. In his seminal book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Gilroy writes about black populations on both sides of the Atlantic. The double consciousness of migrant subjects is reflected by affiliating roots and routes as part of a complex cultural identification (19 and 190). As two sides of the same coin, roots refer to the stable and continuing elements of identities, while routes refer to disruption and change. Gilroy criticises those who are “more interested in the relationship of identity to roots and rootedness than in seeing identity as a process of movement and mediation which is more appropriately approached via the homonym routes” (19). He stresses the importance of not just focusing on one of either roots or routes but argues for an examination of their interplay. Forming a response to discrimination and exclusion, young migrants in online networks turn to more positive experiences such as identification with one’s heritage inspired by generational specific cultural affiliations. Here, we focus on two examples that cross two continents, showing routed online attachments to “be(com)ing Mocro”, and “be(coming) Nikkei”. Figure 1. “Leipe Mocro Flavour” music video (Ali B) The first example, being and becoming “Mocro”, refers to a local, bi-national consciousness. The term Mocro originated on the streets of the Netherlands during the late 1990s and is now commonly understood as a Dutch honorary nickname for youths with Moroccan roots living in the Netherlands and Belgium. A 2003 song, Leipe mocro flavour (“Crazy Mocro Flavour”) by Moroccan-Dutch rapper Ali B, familiarised a larger group of people with the label (see Figure 1). Ali B’s song is exemplary for a wider community of youngsters who have come to identify themselves as Mocros. One example is the Marokkanen met Brainz – Hyves (Mo), a community page within the Dutch social networking site Hyves. On this page, 2,200 youths who identify as Mocro get together to push against common stereotypes of Moroccan-Dutch boys as troublemakers and thieves and Islamic Moroccan-Dutch girls as veiled carriers of backward traditions (Leurs, forthcoming). Its description reads, “I assume that this Hyves will be the largest [Mocro community]. Because logically Moroccans have brains” (our translation): What can you find here? Discussions about politics, religion, current affairs, history, love and relationships. News about Moroccan/Arabic Parties. And whatever you want to tell others. Use your brains. Second, “Nikkei” directs our attention to Japanese migrants and their descendants. The Discover Nikkei website, set up by the Japanese American National Museum, provides a revealing description of being and becoming Nikkei: As Nikkei communities form in Japan and throughout the world, the process of community formation reveals the ongoing fluidity of Nikkei populations, the evasive nature of Nikkei identity, and the transnational dimensions of their community formations and what it means to be Nikkei. (Japanese American National Museum) This site was set up by the Japanese American National Museum for Nikkei in the global diaspora to connect and share stories. Nikkei youths of course also connect elsewhere. In her ethnographic online study, Shana Aoyama found that the social networking site Hi5 is taken up in Peru by young people of Japanese heritage as an avenue for identity exploration. She found group confirmation based on the performance of Nikkei-ness, as well as expressions of individuality. She writes, “instead of heading in one specific direction, the Internet use of Nikkei creates a starburst shape of identity construction and negotiation” (119). Mocro-ness and Nikkei-ness are common collective identification markers that are not just straightforward nationalisms. They refer back to different homelands, while simultaneously they also clearly mark one’s situation of being routed outside of this homeland. Mocro stems from postcolonial migratory flows from the Global South to the West. Nikkei-ness relates to the interesting case of the Japanese diaspora, which is little accounted for, although there are many Japanese communities present in North and South America from before the Second World War. The context of Peru is revealing, as it was the first South American country to accept Japanese migrants. It now hosts the second largest South American Japanese diaspora after Brazil (Lama), and Peru’s former president, Alberto Fujimoro, is also of Japanese origin. We can see how the importance of the nation-state gets blurred as diasporic youth, through cultural hybridisation of youth culture and ethnic ties, initiates subcultures and offers resistance to mainstream western cultural forms. Digital spaces are used to exert youthful diaspora branding. Networked branding includes expressing cultural identities that are communal and individual but also both local and global, illustrative of how “by virtue of being global the Internet can gift people back their sense of themselves as special and particular” (Miller and Slater 115). In the next section, we set out how youthful diaspora branding is part of a larger, more rhizomatic formation of multivocal hypertext aesthetics. Hypertext Aesthetics In this section, we set out how an in-between, or “liminal”, position, in postcolonial theory terms, can be a source of differential and multivocal cultural production. Appadurai, Bhabha, and Gilroy recognise that liminal positions increasingly leave their mark on the global and local flows of cultural objects, such as food, cinema, music, and fashion. Here, our focus is on how migrant youths turn to hypertextual forms of cultural production for a differential expression of digital diasporas. Hypertexts are textual fields made up of hyperlinks. Odin states that travelling through cyberspace by clicking and forging hypertext links is a form of multivocal digital diaspora aesthetics: The perpetual negotiation of difference that the border subject engages in creates a new space that demands its own aesthetic. This new aesthetic, which I term “hypertext” or “postcolonial,” represents the need to switch from the linear, univocal, closed, authoritative aesthetic involving passive encounters characterising the performance of the same to that of non-linear, multivocal, open, non-hierarchical aesthetic involving active encounters that are marked by repetition of the same with and in difference. (Cited in Landow 356-7) On their profile pages, migrant youth digitally author themselves in distinct ways by linking up to various sites. They craft their personal hypertext. These hypertexts display multivocal diaspora aesthetics which are personal and specific; they display personal intersections of affiliations that are not easily generalisable. In several Dutch-language online spaces, subjects from Dutch-Moroccan backgrounds have taken up the label Mocro as an identity marker. Across social networking sites such as Hyves and Facebook, the term gets included in nicknames and community pages. Think of nicknames such as “My own Mocro styly”, “Mocro-licious”, “Mocro-chick”. The term Mocro itself is often already multilayered, as it is often combined with age, gender, sexual preference, religion, sport, music, and generationally specific cultural affiliations. Furthermore, youths connect to a variety of groups ranging from feminist interests (“Women in Charge”), Dutch nationalism (“I Love Holland”), ethnic affiliations (“The Moroccan Kitchen”) to clothing (the brand H&M), and global junk food (McDonalds). These diverse affiliations—that are advertised online simultaneously—add nuance to the typical, one-dimensional stereotype about migrant youth, integration, and Islam in the context of Europe and Netherlands (Leurs, forthcoming). On the online social networking site Hi5, Nikkei youths in Peru, just like any other teenagers, express their individuality by decorating their personal profile page with texts, audio, photos, and videos. Besides personal information such as age, gender, and school information, Aoyama found that “a starburst” of diverse affiliations is published, including those that signal Japanese-ness such as the Hello Kitty brand, anime videos, Kanji writing, kimonos, and celebrities. Also Nikkei hyperlink to elements that can be identified as “Latino” and “Chino” (Chinese) (104-10). Furthermore, users can show their multiple affiliations by joining different “groups” (after which a hyperlink to the group community appears on the profile page). Aoyama writes “these groups stretch across a large and varied scope of topics, including that of national, racial/ethnic, and cultural identities” (2). These examples illustrate how digital diasporas encompass personalised multivocal hypertexts. With the widely accepted adagio “you are what you link” (Adamic and Adar), hypertextual webs can be understood as productions that reveal how diasporic youths choose to express themselves as individuals through complex sets of non-homogeneous identifications. Migrant youth connects to ethnic origin and global networks in eclectic and creative ways. The concept of “digital diaspora” therefore encapsulates both material and virtual (dis)connections that are identifiable through common traits, strategies, and aesthetics. Yet these hypertextual connections are also highly personalised and unique, offering a testimony to the fluid negotiations and intersections between the local and the global, the rooted and the diasporic. Conclusions In this article, we have argued that migrant youths render digital diasporas more complex by including branding and hypertextual aesthetics in transnational public spheres. Digital diasporas may no longer be understood simply in terms of their vertical relations to a homeland or place of origin or as horizontally connected to a clearly marked transnational community; rather, they must also be seen as engaging in rhizomatic digital practices, which reshuffle traditional understandings of origin and belonging. Contemporary youthful digital diasporas are therefore far more complex in their engagement with digital media than most existing theory allows: connections are hybridised, and affiliations are turned into practices of diasporic branding and becoming. There is a generational specificity to multivocal diaspora aesthetics; this specificity lies in the ways migrant youths show communal recognition and express their individuality through hypertext which combines affiliation to their national/ethnic “roots” with an embrace of other youth subcultures, many of them transnational. These two axes are constantly reshuffled and renegotiated online where, thanks to the technological possibilities of HTML hypertext, a whole range of identities and identifications may be brought together at any given time. We trust that these insights will be of interest in future discussion of online networks, transnational communities, identity formation, and hypertext aesthetics where much urgent and topical work remains to be done. References Adamic, Lada A., and Eytan Adar. “You Are What You Link.” 2001 Tenth International World Wide Web Conference, Hong Kong. 26 Apr. 2010. ‹http://www10.org/program/society/yawyl/YouAreWhatYouLink.htm›. Ali B. “Leipe Mocro Flavour.” ALIB.NL / SPEC Entertainment. 2007. 4 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www3.alib.nl/popupAlibtv.php?catId=42&contentId=544›. Alonso, Andoni, and Pedro J. Oiarzabal. Diasporas in the New Media Age. Reno: U of Nevada P, 2010. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. 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Abstract:

The debate on the social role of museums trundles along in an age where complex associations between community, collections, and cultural norms are highly contested (Silverman 3–4; Sandell, Inequality 3–23). This article questions whether, in the case of community groups whose aspirations often go unrecognised (in this case people with either blindness or low vision), there is a need to discuss and debate institutionalised approaches that often reinforce social exclusion and impede cultural access. If “access is [indeed] an entry point to experience” (Papalia), then the privileging of visual encounters in museums is clearly a barrier for people who experience sight loss or low vision (Levent and Pursley). In contrast, a multisensory aesthetic to exhibition display respects the gamut of human sensory experience (Dudley 161–63; Drobnick 268–69; Feld 184; James 136; McGlone 41–60) as do discursive gateways including “lectures, symposia, workshops, educational programs, audio guides, and websites” (Cachia). Independent access to information extends beyond Braille on toilet doors.Underpinning this article is an ongoing qualitative case study undertaken by the author involving participant observation, workshops, and interviews with eight adults who experience vision impairment. The primary research site has been the National Museum of Australia. Reflecting on the role of curators as storytellers and the historical development of museums and their practitioners as agents for social development, the article explores the opportunities latent in museum collections as they relate to community members with vision impairment. The outcomes of this investigation offer insights into emerging issues as they relate to the International Council of Museums (ICOM) definitions of the museum program. Curators as Storytellers“The ways in which objects are selected, put together, and written or spoken about have political effects” (Eilean Hooper-Greenhill qtd. in Sandell, Inequality 8). Curators can therefore open or close doors to discrete communities of people. The traditional role of curators has been to collect, care for, research, and interpret collections (Desvallées and Mairesse 68): they are characterised as information specialists with a penchant for research (Belcher 78). While commonly possessing an intimate knowledge of their institution’s collection, their mode of knowledge production results from a culturally mediated process which ensures that resulting products, such as cultural significance assessments and provenance determinations (Russell and Winkworth), privilege the knowing systems of dominant social groups (Fleming 213). Such ways of seeing can obstruct the access prospects of underserved audiences.When it comes to exhibition display—arguably the most public of work by museums—curators conventionally collaborate within a constellation of other practitioners (Belcher 78–79). Curators liaise with museum directors, converse with conservators, negotiate with exhibition designers, consult with graphics designers, confer with marketing boffins, seek advice from security, chat with editors, and engage with external contractors. I question the extent that curators engage with community groups who may harbour aspirations to participate in the exhibition experience—a sticking point soon to be addressed. Despite the team based ethos of exhibition design, it is nonetheless the content knowledge of curators on public display. The art of curatorial interpretation sets out not to instruct audiences but, in part, to provoke a response with narratives designed to reveal meanings and relationships (Freeman Tilden qtd. in Alexander and Alexander 258). Recognised within the institution as experts (Sandell, Inclusion 53), curators have agency—they decide upon the stories told. In a recent television campaign by the National Museum of Australia, a voiceover announces: a storyteller holds incredible power to connect and to heal, because stories bring us together (emphasis added). (National Museum of Australia 2015)Storytelling in the space of the museum often shares the histories, perspectives, and experiences of people past as well as living cultures—and these stories are situated in space and time. If that physical space is not fit-for-purpose—that is, it does not accommodate an individual’s physical, intellectual, psychiatric, sensory, or neurological needs (Disability Discrimination Act 1992, Cwlth)—then the story reaches only long-established patrons. The museum’s opportunity to contribute to social development, and thus the curator’s as the primary storyteller, will have been missed. A Latin-American PerspectiveICOM’s commitment to social development could be interpreted merely as a pledge to make use of collections to benefit the public through scholarship, learning, and pleasure (ICOM 15). If this interpretation is accepted, however, then any museum’s contribution to social development is somewhat paltry. To accept such a limited and limiting role for museums is to overlook the historical efforts by advocates to change the very nature of museums. The ascendancy of the social potential of museums first blossomed during the late 1960s at a time where, globally, overlapping social movements espoused civil rights and the recognition of minority groups (Silverman 12; de Varine 3). Simultaneously but independently, neighbourhood museums arose in the United States, ecomuseums in France and Quebec, and the integral museum in Latin America, notably in Mexico (Hauenschild; Silverman 12–13). The Latin-American commitment to the ideals of the integral museum developed out of the 1972 round table of Santiago, Chile, sponsored by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Giménez-Cassina 25–26). The Latin-American signatories urged the local and regional museums of their respective countries to collaborate with their communities to resolve issues of social inequality (Round Table Santiago 13–21). The influence of Brazilian educator Paulo Freire should be acknowledged. In 1970, Freire ushered in the concept of conscientization, defined by Catherine Campbell and Sandra Jovchelovitch as:the process whereby critical thinking develops … [and results in a] … thinker [who] feels empowered to think and to act on the conditions that shape her living. (259–260)This model for empowerment lent inspiration to the ideals of the Santiago signatories in realising their sociopolitical goal of the integral museum (Assunção dos Santos 20). Reframing the museum as an institution in the service of society, the champions of the integral museum sought to redefine the thinking and practices of museums and their practitioners (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 37–39). The signatories successfully lobbied ICOM to introduce an explicitly social purpose to the work of museums (Assunção dos Santos 6). In 1974, in the wake of the Santiago round table, ICOM modified their definition of a museum to “a permanent non-profit institution, open to the public, in the service of society and its development” (emphasis added) (Hauenschild). Museums had been transformed into “problem solvers” (Judite Primo qtd. in Giménez-Cassina 26). With that spirit in mind, museum practitioners, including curators, can develop opportunities for reciprocity with the many faces of the public (Guarini). Response to Social Development InitiativesStarting in the 1970s, the “second museum revolution” (van Mensch 6–7) saw the transition away from: traditional roles of museums [of] collecting, conservation, curatorship, research and communication … [and toward the] … potential role of museums in society, in education and cultural action. (van Mensch 6–7)Arguably, this potential remains a work in progress some 50 years later. Writing in the tradition of museums as agents of social development, Mariana Lamas states:when we talk about “in the service of society and its development”, it’s quite different. It is like the drunk uncle at the Christmas party that the family pretends is not there, because if they pretend long enough, he might pass out on the couch. (Lamas 47–48)That is not to say that museums have neglected to initiate services and programs that acknowledge the aspirations of people with disabilities (refer to Cachia and Krantz as examples). Without discounting such efforts, but with the refreshing analogy of the drunken uncle still fresh in memory, Lamas answers her own rhetorical question:how can traditional museums promote community development? At first the word “development” may seem too much for the museum to do, but there are several ways a museum can promote community development. (Lamas 52) Legitimising CommunitiesThe first way that museums can foster community or social development is to:help the community to over come [sic] a problem, coming up with different solutions, putting things into a new perspective; providing confidence to the community and legitimizing it. (Lamas 52)As a response, my doctoral investigation legitimises the right of people with vision impairment to participate in the social and cultural aspects of publicly funded museums. The Australian Government upheld this right in 2008 by ratifying the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (and Optional Protocol), which enshrines the right of people with disability to participate in the cultural life of the nation (United Nations).At least 840,700 people in Australia (a minimum of four per cent of the population) experiences either blindness or low vision (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2009). For every one person in the Australian community who is blind, nearly five other people experience low vision. The medical model of disability identifies the impairment as the key feature of a person and seeks out a corrective intervention. In contrast, the social model of disability strives to remove the attitudinal, social, and physical barriers enacted by people or institutions (Landman, Fishburn, and Tonkin 14). Therein lies the opportunity and challenge for museums—modifying layouts and practices that privilege the visual. Consequently, there is scope for museums to partner with people with vision impairment to identify their aspirations rather than respond as a problem to be fixed. Common fixes in the museums for people with disabilities include physical alterations such as ramps and, less often, special tours (Cachia). I posit that curators, as co-creators and major contributors to exhibitions, can be part of a far wider discussion. In the course of doctoral research, I accompanied adults with a wide array of sight impairments into exhibitions at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, the Australian War Memorial, and the National Museum of Australia. Within the space of the exhibition, the most commonly identified barrier has been the omission of access opportunities to interpreted materials: that is, information about objects on display as well as the wider narratives driving exhibitions. Often, the participant has had to work backwards, from the object itself, to understand the wider topic of the exhibition. If aesthetics is “the way we communicate through the senses” (Thrift 291), then the vast majority of exhibits have been inaccessible from a sensory perspective. For people with low vision (that is, they retain some degree of functioning sight), objects’ labels have often been too small to be read or, at times, poorly contrasted or positioned. Objects have often been set too deep into display cabinets or too far behind safety barriers. If individuals must use personal magnifiers to read text or look in vain at objects, then that is an indicator that there are issues with exhibition design. For people who experience blindness (that is, they cannot see), neither the vast majority of exhibits nor their interpretations have been made accessible. There has been minimal access across all museums to accessioned objects, handling collections, or replicas to tease out exhibits and their stories. Object labels must be read by family or friends—a tiring experience. Without motivated peers, the stories told by curators are silenced by a dearth of alternative options.Rather than presume to know what works for people with disabilities, my research ethos respects the “nothing about us without us” (Charlton 2000; Werner 1997) maxim of disability advocates. To paraphrase Lamas, we have collaborated to come up with different solutions by putting things into new perspectives. In turn, “person-centred” practices based on rapport, warmth, and respect (Arigho 206–07) provide confidence to a diverse community of people by legitimising their right to participate in the museum space. Incentivising Communities Museums can also nurture social or community development by providing incentives to “the community to take action to improve its quality of life” (Lamas 52). It typically falls to (enthusiastic) public education and community outreach teams to engage underserved communities through targeted programs. This approach continues the trend of curators as advocates for the collection, and educators as advocates for the public (Kaitavouri xi). If the exhibition briefs normally written by curators (Belcher 83) reinforced the importance of access, then exhibition designers would be compelled to offer fit-for-purpose solutions. Better still, if curators (and other exhibition team members) regularly met with community based organisations (perhaps in the form of a disability reference group), then museums would be better positioned to accommodate a wider spectrum of community members. The National Standards for Australian Museums and Galleries already encourages museums to collaborate with disability organisations (40). Such initiatives offer a way forward for improving a community’s sense of itself and its quality of life. The World Health Organization defines health as a “state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. While I am not using quality of life indicators for my doctoral study, the value of facilitating social and cultural opportunities for my target audience is evident in participant statements. At the conclusion of one sensory based workshop, Mara, a female participant who experiences low vision in one eye and blindness in the other, stated:I think it was interesting in that we could talk together about what we were experiencing and that really is the social aspect of it. I mean if I was left to go to a whole lot of museums on my own, I probably wouldn’t. You know, I like going with kids or a friend visiting from interstate—that sort of thing. And so this group, in a way, replicates that experience in that you’ve got someone else to talk about your impressions with—much better than going on your own or doing this alone.Mara’s statement was in response to one of two workshops I held with the support of the Learning Services team at the National Museum of Australia in May 2015. Selected objects from the museum’s accessioned collection and handling collection were explored, as well as replicas in the form of 3D printed objects. For example, participants gazed upon and handled a tuckerbox, smelt and tasted macadamia nuts in wattle seed syrup, and listened to a genesis story about the more-ish nut recorded by the Butchulla people—the traditional owners of Fraser Island. We sat around a table while I, as the workshop mediator, sought to facilitate free-flowing discussions about their experiences and, in turn, mused on the capacity of objects to spark social connection and opportunities for cultural access. While the workshop provided the opportunity for reciprocal exchanges amongst participants as well as between participants and me, what was highly valued by most participants was the direct contact with members of the museum’s Learning Services team. I observed that participants welcomed the opportunity to talk with real museum workers. Their experience of museum practitioners, to date, had been largely confined to the welcome desk of respective institutions or through special events or tours where they were talked at. The opportunity to communicate directly with the museum allowed some participants to share their thoughts and feelings about the services that museums provide. I suggest that curators open themselves up to such exchanges on a more frequent basis—it may result in reciprocal benefits for all stakeholders. Fortifying IdentityA third way museums can contribute to social or community development is by:fortify[ing] the bonds between the members of the community and reaffirm their identities making them feel more secure about who they are; and give them a chance to tell their own version of their history to “outsiders” which empowers them. (Lamas 52)Identity informs us and others of who we are and where we belong in the world (Silverman 54). However, the process of identity marking and making can be fraught: “some communities are ours by choice … [and] … some are ours because of the ways that others see us” (Watson 4). Communities are formed by identifying who is in and who is out (Francois Dubet qtd. in Bessant and Watts 260). In other words, the construction of collective identity is reinforced through means of social inclusion and social exclusion. The participants of my study, as members or clients of the Royal Society for the Blind | Canberra Blind Society, clearly value participating in events with empathetic peers. People with vision impairment are not a homogenous group, however. Reinforcing the cultural influences on the formation of identity, Fiona Candlin asserts that “to state the obvious but often ignored fact, blind people … [come] … from all social classes, all cultural, racial, religious and educational backgrounds” (101). Irrespective of whether blindness or low vision arises congenitally, adventitiously, or through unexpected illness, injury, or trauma, the end result is an assortment of individuals with differing perceptual characteristics who construct meaning in often divergent ways (De Coster and Loots 326–34). They also hold differing world views. Therefore, “participation [at the museum] is not an end in itself. It is a means for creating a better world” (Assunção dos Santos 9). According to the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Professor Gillian Triggs, a better world is: a society for all, in which every individual has an active role to play. Such a society is based on fundamental values of equity, equality, social justice, and human rights and freedoms, as well as on the principles of tolerance and embracing diversity. (Triggs)Publicly funded museums can play a fundamental role in the cultural lives of societies. For example, the Powerhouse Museum (Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences) in Sydney partnered with Vision Australia to host an exhibition in 2010 titled Living in a Sensory World: it offered “visitors an understanding of the world of the blindness and low vision community and celebrates their achievements” (Powerhouse Museum). With similar intent, my doctoral research seeks to validate the world of my participants by inviting museums to appreciate their aspirations as a distinct but diverse community of people. ConclusionIn conclusion, the challenge for museum curators and other museum practitioners is balancing what Richard Sennett (qtd. in Bessant and Watts 265) identifies as opportunities for enhancing social cohesion and a sense of belonging while mitigating parochialism and community divisiveness. Therefore, curators, as the primary focus of this article, are indeed challenged when asked to contribute to serving the public through social development—a public which is anything but homogenous. Mindful of cultural and social differences in an ever-changing world, museums are called to respect the cultural and natural heritage of the communities they serve and collaborate with (ICOM 10). It is a position I wholeheartedly support. This is not to say that museums or indeed curators are capable of solving the ills of society. However, inviting people who are frequently excluded from social and cultural events to multisensory encounters with museum collections acknowledges their cultural rights. I suggest that this would be a seismic shift from the current experiences of adults with blindness or low vision at most museums.ReferencesAlexander, Edward, and Mary Alexander. Museums in Motion: An Introduction to the History and Functions of Museums. 2nd ed. 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